veteranstoday--2020-11-01--Former CIA, Pandemic’s Prophet as Gates, in Biden’s Team. To manage Military Intel, AI, Big Tech and

Former CIA, Pandemic’s Prophet as Gates, in Biden’s Team. To manage Military Intel, AI, Big Tech and Trading in EU

For the umpteenth time in the course of our WuhanGates dossier focused on the SARS-CoV-2 virus built in the laboratory in “ a deal between China and the US ” , as claimed by the French virologist Luc Montagnier , Nobel Prize for Medicine and former department head of Shanghai Jiao Tong University , disturbing clues emerge about the role of members of the American Democratic Party in a pandemic , “ planned for decades by Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates ” according to lawyer Robert F. Kennedy , nephew of the assassinated president JFK .
In fact , last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lady of National Security , an expert in military missions with drones but above all in biological weapons , joined the team of Joe Biden who will have to revolutionize US intelligence if the democratic candidate succeeds to win the race in the White House against outgoing President Donald Trump , supported by a part of the Republicans but above all by the Americans who know the danger of the Deep State against which he has been fighting since his inauguration ( as shamelessly admitted by a former CIA director on the case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who grew up in the Dem judicial “ nursery ” and then became first deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency ( 2013-2015 ) and then elevated to deputy national security adviser to the White House ( 2015-2017 ) , is working behind the scenes to Biden despite his co-optation by some fronds of the progressives themselves for some contradictory positions on the always hot issues in Washington of torture against prisoners of war and the persecution of immigrants from Latin America but above all for his embarrassing proximity to authoritative figures in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contradictions , however , appear such only in the short-sighted eyes of those who are not experts in geopolitics .
Those who are well aware of the role of the so-called Deep International State , the occult potentate of veteran Masonic politicians , of shady businessmen largely Zionists , of officials and military of the secret services , knows very well that it is absolutely transversal to the bipolar political system Democrats-Republicans as confirmed by the fact that George Bush jr. has already made its emblematic endorsement in Biden along with a slice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Party ) that only the election results will tell how thick it really is … Mrs Haines is therefore the new Matha Hari in a perfect suit to represent the link between Biden and the Deep State ( or NWO ) precisely by virtue of her long experience in the military , espionage but also academic fields .
It is no coincidence that she was therefore chosen by the prestigious Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore ( Maryland ) , also her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the famous Event 201 drills held in mid-October 2019 in New York to simulate a Coronavirus pandemic in terrifyingly suspicious times .
That summit , also capable of predicting the delay in the arrival of vaccines but the useful support in the treatment of an antiviral as it really happened with Remdesivir ( definitively approved in recent days by the Food & Drug Administration as an effective therapy against Covid-19 ) , was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of the two famous billionaires also known for their fundamental role as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the former president Barack Obama of which the current candidate Biden was deputy .
HAINES AND BIDEN PROPHECIES ON THE PANDEMIC Obama on Sunday 25 October invited voters to support the Democratic candidate Biden , sharing a tweet that his former vice-president published on 25 October 2019 , in which he warned that President Trump was not prepared to face a pandemic .
The Hill reported it , reporting the full tweet : “ We are not prepared for a pandemic .
Trump reversed the progress President Obama and I have made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need leadership that enjoys public confidence , is focused on real threats and mobilizes the world to stop epidemics before they reach our shores ” .
Biden ’ s comment was inspired by an article published the previous day by the Washington Post , which reported the Global Health Security Index report , “ the first comprehensive assessment of global health capabilities ” , which indicated that 195 countries in the world were unprepared to face a “ Global catastrophic biological event ” .
“ The Index , wrote the Washington Post , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Threat Initiative ( NTI ) , a non-profit organization based in Washington , and of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security “ - quotes the Italian blog Piccole Note republished by the Milanese newspaper Il Giornale – The Nuclear Threat Initiative was founded by Democratic Senator Sam Nunn and CNN founder Ted Turner ; of the Johns Hopkins Center we have dealt with in previous notes regarding some anti-pandemic military exercises that took place in 2019 in the United States of America , before the emergence of Covid-19 “ .
However , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that of the lawyer Dem Avril Haines who is responsible for the bio-weapons sector on the NTI board .
In 2013 , when Haines became deputy director of the CIA , the Obama administration brought the Richiard Lugar Center , one of the Pentagon ’ s most advanced and secretive biological laboratories , coordinated through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency ( DTRA ) , into operation near Tbilisi , Georgia .
and the CIA itself , where the pharmaceutical multinational Gilead ( producer of the miraculous Remdesivir ) carried out clinical tests that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a few months .
So much so as to induce Russia to launch accusations for military bacteriological experiments never subject to investigations also for the influential role of President Gilead Donald Henry Rumsfeld , Secretary of the Defense Department in two terms .
The Georgian project , launched after the Rose Revolution openly financed by Soros , was born after the visit of the late Republican Senator Lugar , president for the Disarmament Commission in the former Soviet Union countries , accompanied by his Democrat colleague Obama who carried out the project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In 2014 Obama made a moratorium to block funding for dual use vaccine-bioweapon research due to the very dangerous practice of Function Gain , the GOF process that allows the enhancement in the laboratory of a pathogen , as would have happened for the SARS virus .
Cov-2 infected with HIV , according to bio-engineer Pierre Bicage , former NATO consultant Pierre Bricage .
For the umpteenth curious coincidence , six experiments on the SARS virus ( 2003 strain isolated from bats in the Wuhan Institute of Virlogy ) conducted between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ PREDICT-2 project obtained a derogation from the moratorium thanks to funding from USAID , a government agency tool of the CIA , Gates Foundation and EcoHealthAlliance of New York .
The latter is an initiative to promote vaccine research that sees as partners the two American universities Columbia and John Hopkins , with which former CIA deputy director Avril Haines collaborates , but also the big pharma Johnson & Johnson and a university of the Saudi Arabia , the financing nation of the global immunization project launched by Obama in 2014 with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but also a partner country of GlaxoSmithKleine , administered by a director of Microsoft Corporation , founded by Gates thanks to the investments of Warren Buffet , founder of the aforementioned Nuclear Threat Initiative .
GSK is the vaccine giant that has profited from the “ pilot project ” carried out by the Democratic Party in Italy with the Lorenzin Decree which made 10 school-age vaccines mandatory after the visit of plutarch George Soros , donors of the American Dems and investor in Gilead , to former Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
It should not be forgotten that the first experiments on the 2003 SARS virus infected with HIV began in 2004 in the biosecurity laboratory in Wuhan ( then Bsl 2 today Bsl 4 ) thanks to the financing of the Episars project of the European Commission chaired by Romano Prodi , future premier of the Party Democrat in Italy where years earlier his preface to a book by George Soros himself had aroused controversy .
According to former British MI6 counterintelligence director Richard Dearlove , the SARS-Cov-2 visur would have escaped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CIna .
A thesis also supported by whistleblower Li-Meng Yan , the Chinese virologist who fled to the United States of America and placed under protection by the FBI for having denounced the construction of the pathogen of the current pandemic in the Wuhan Insistute of Virology .
To deny it , so far , only a study by John Hopkins University itself has tried , implicated for multiple connections with the pandemic announced by former CIA deputy director Avril Haines in 2018 during the Camdem conference in which it also evoked a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only solution to counter these threats from Coronavirus epidemics .
To combat Covid-19 infection , GSK , in collaboration with AstraZeneca in Italy and with Sanofi in Europe , is putting the vaccine already purchased by the European Union , despite some unforeseen events that occurred during the clinical trials of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson .
In late June , Biden ’ s campaign announced that Haines , a lawyer who served as CIA deputy director from 2013 to 2015 , will direct the foreign policy and national security aspects of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activists , security experts , congressional aides who are more left than liberal—as well as mainstream human rights campaigners and at least one ex-senator—Haines ’ elevation is worrisome or unacceptable – wrote the Daily Beast – She approved an “ accountability board ” that spared CIA personnel reprisal for spying on the Senate ’ s torture investigators , and was part of the team that redacted their landmark report .
After the administration ended , Haines supported Gina Haspel for CIA director , someone directly implicated in CIA torture , a decision that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ late June , she consulted for the Trump-favorite data firm Palantir , which emerged from the CIA » .
« “ This is a pretty ominous signal about what is to come ” in a Biden administration , said a Senate staffer who works on national security issues .
“ To have the deputy CIA director touted for her record in advancing human rights and respect for the rule of law I don ’ t think can be adequately squared with not only her record but her deliberate choices of advocacy.
” To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than left , the antipathy for Haines is stunning .
Haines was perhaps the leading voice inside the administration for restricting the drone campaign .
She was “ a voice of restraint on all counterterrorism issues , ” said Harold Koh , the former State Department legal adviser » .
« In addition to her past national security work and impressive presence in the D.C. think tank world , Haines has in the past described herself as a former consultant for the controversial data-mining firm Palantir .
Haines ’ s biography page at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ listed as a nonresident senior fellow , boasted of this affiliation until at least last week , when it suddenly no longer appeared on the page – wrote The Intercept – The nature of the consulting work that Haines did for Palantir is not clear .
As of press time , requests for comment to her , the Biden campaign , Palantir , and Brookings were not answered » .
« Co-founded by a far-right , Trump-supporting tech billionaire , Palantir , whose business has benefited from a slew of government contracts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump administration ’ s immigration detention programs in the U.S. andhelping the Trump administration build out its surveillance state – added Intercept – Palantir ’ s information technology systems have given the Trump administration the ability to carry out mass deportations that have been tearing apart and terrorizing our immigrant communities , ” said Yasmine Taeb , senior policy counsel at Demand Progress , a group that marshals support for causes ranging from human rights to transparency » .
However , company owner Peter Thiel recently distanced himself from Trump by arguing that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign , in perfect harmony with other Republican members of the Deep State .
Haines is not in Biden ’ s inner circle of foreign policy , like former Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken ; former Pentagon political official Brian McKeon ; Jake Sullivan , Biden Vice President National Security Advisor ; and Carlyn Reichel , his vice president ’ s foreign policy speechwriter .
DailyBeast highlighted , however , attempting to detect the role played by Haines in the context of a strategic segment of Big Tech , especially in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former CIA deputy director , in fact , is part of WestExec Advisors , a think-tank of the Dem area that includes important national security personalities such as the two founders , Blinken himself and Michèle Flournoy , former Undersecretary of Defense for politics with Obama from 2009 to 2012 .
After announcing in June his intention to suspend his activity for WestExec Advisors during the election campaign for Biden , in reality Haines has maintained strong ties that have materialized with the publication of a dossier on AI , developed together with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Pentagon the strategies to be pursued should the Democratic candidate succeed in being elected to the White House .
« This moment is taking place in the context of a technological revolution that exacerbates the challenges we face while simultaneously offering potential solutions , providing breakthroughs in climate , medicine , communications , transportation , intelligence , and many other fields .
Many of these breakthroughs will come through the exploitation of artificial intelligence ( AI ) and its related technologies—chief among them machine learning ( ML ) .
These advances will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of power among nations and the future of work , wealth , and inequality within them » the two authors write in the introduction of the study called “ Building Trust through Testing .
Adapting DOD ’ s Test & Evaluation , Validation & Verification ( TEVV ) Enterprise for Machine Learning Systems , including Deep Learning Systems ” .
A concrete example of AI use has come in recent weeks from the forum of the Italian news agency Ansa in relation to an innovative method of vocal diagnosis of Covid-19 .
Born @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering of the University of Tor Vergata , VoiceWise is today the company protagonist of a clinical trial to diagnose and monitor the coronavirus infection activated at the Tor Vergata Polyclinic of Rome , the Technoscience Technological Park of Latina and the San Matteo Foundation Polyclinic of Pavia .
The system involves the use of devices such as smartphones and tablets provided in support of the project by the Chinese manufacturer Huawei , which are used “ for their ability to record audio properly and because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patients in isolation microphone and recorder we usually use , ” explains Professor Saggio .
The devices are delivered to volunteer ( and anonymous ) Covid-19 patients to record “ their voice , coughs and everything the algorithm needs to be trained to identify the disease ” .
Obviously this can work if the algorithms are interpreted correctly but just like in the case of the controversial PCR buffer , of which we have highlighted the limits of diagnosis connected to countless variables capable of creating “ false positives ” .
Therefore , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worse still its “ manipulation ” can be able to alter the results much more than traditional medical analyzes .
« Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been critical of Big Tech , admonishing Facebook for mishandling misinformation and saying internet companies should lose a central legal protection .
But his campaign has quietly welcomed onto its staff and policy groups people who have worked with or for Silicon Valley giants , raising concerns among the industry ’ s critics that the companies are seeking to co-opt a potential Bidenadministration » .
Thus began @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kenneth P. Vogel in the New York Times in August .
« One of Mr. Biden ’ s closest aides joined the campaign from Apple , while others held senior roles at firms that consulted for major tech companies .
And a nearly 700-person volunteer group advising the campaign , the Innovation Policy Committee , includes at least eight people who work for Facebook , Amazon , Google and Apple , according to documents reviewed by The New York Times .
Other committee members have close ties to the companies , including economists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and officials at think tanks funded by them » .
Here then returns the name of the white lady of 007 : « Avril Haines , a former Obama national security and intelligence official who is helping to lead Mr. Biden ’ s transition team , was a consultant for the data-mining company Palantir and WestExec Advisors , a firm that represented a major tech company it hasn ’ t identified – wrote NYT – A WestExec co-founder and Obama State Department official , Antony J. Blinken , is running the Biden campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has worked with the philanthropy started by Eric Schmidt , the former Google chairman , and with Google ’ s in-house incubation unit , Jigsaw .
But Mr. Blinken and Ms. Haines did not participate in that work , according to the Biden campaign , which said both advisers stepped away from WestExec this month » .
The dossier on Artificial Intelligence strategies for the Department of Defense , signed by Haines in October for WestExec , clearly denied these distances .
From the curriculum of the former deputy director of the CIA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ project her relations in the financial field from the US to Europe and Italy .
From his very long curriculum he appears to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Vodafone Foundation but also of the Member of the international advisory committee of Tikeau Investment Management .
( read more… ) Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio © COPYRIGHT GOSPA NEWS no reproduction without authorization – Versione originale in Italiano

by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio for VT Italy
Versione originale in Italiano
First posted on October, 31,2020
For the umpteenth time in the course of our WuhanGates dossier focused on the SARS-CoV-2 virus built in the laboratory in “a deal between China and the US”, as claimed by the French virologist Luc Montagnier.
He is a Nobel Prize for Medicine recipient and former department head of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, disturbing clues emerge about the role of members of the American Democratic Party in a pandemic, “planned for decades by Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates” according to lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, nephew of the assassinated president JFK.
In fact, last summer, Barack Obama’s white lady of National Security, an expert in military missions with drones but above all in biological weapons, joined the team of Joe Biden who will have to revolutionize US intelligence if the democratic candidate succeeds to win the race in the White House against outgoing President Donald Trump, supported by a part of the Republicans but above all by the Americans who know the danger of the Deep State against which he has been fighting since his inauguration (as shamelessly admitted by a former CIA director on the case UkraineGate).
Lawyer Avril Haines, who grew up in the Dem judicial “nursery” and then became first deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2013-2015) and then elevated to deputy national security adviser to the White House (2015-2017), is working behind the scenes to Biden despite his co-optation by some fronds of the progressives themselves for some contradictory positions on the always hot issues in Washington of torture against prisoners of war and the persecution of immigrants from Latin America but above all for his embarrassing proximity to authoritative figures in Trump’s own entourage.
These contradictions, however, appear such only in the short-sighted eyes of those who are not experts in geopolitics. Those who are well aware of the role of the so-called Deep International State, the occult potentate of veteran Masonic politicians, of shady businessmen largely Zionists, of officials and military of the secret services, knows very well that it is absolutely transversal to the bipolar political system Democrats-Republicans as confirmed by the fact that George Bush jr. has already made its emblematic endorsement in Biden along with a slice of the same GOP (Grand Old Party) that only the election results will tell how thick it really is …
Mrs Haines is therefore the new Matha Hari in a perfect suit to represent the link between Biden and the Deep State (or NWO) precisely by virtue of her long experience in the military, espionage but also academic fields. It is no coincidence that she was therefore chosen by the prestigious Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore (Maryland), also her hometown, as a prominent protagonist at the famous Event 201 drills held in mid-October 2019 in New York to simulate a Coronavirus pandemic in terrifyingly suspicious times.
That summit, also capable of predicting the delay in the arrival of vaccines but the useful support in the treatment of an antiviral as it really happened with Remdesivir (definitively approved in recent days by the Food & Drug Administration as an effective therapy against Covid-19) , was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of the two famous billionaires also known for their fundamental role as donors of the Dems and in particular of the former president Barack Obama of which the current candidate Biden was deputy.
HAINES AND BIDEN PROPHECIES ON THE PANDEMIC
Obama on Sunday 25 October invited voters to support the Democratic candidate Biden, sharing a tweet that his former vice-president published on 25 October 2019, in which he warned that President Trump was not prepared to face a pandemic.
The Hill reported it, reporting the full tweet: “We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump reversed the progress President Obama and I have made in strengthening global health security. We need leadership that enjoys public confidence, is focused on real threats and mobilizes the world to stop epidemics before they reach our shores”.
Biden’s comment was inspired by an article published the previous day by the Washington Post, which reported the Global Health Security Index report, “the first comprehensive assessment of global health capabilities”, which indicated that 195 countries in the world were unprepared to face a “Global catastrophic biological event”.
“The Index, wrote the Washington Post, is” a project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a non-profit organization based in Washington, and of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security “- quotes the Italian blog Piccole Note republished by the Milanese newspaper Il Giornale – The Nuclear Threat Initiative was founded by Democratic Senator Sam Nunn and CNN founder Ted Turner; of the Johns Hopkins Center we have dealt with in previous notes regarding some anti-pandemic military exercises that took place in 2019 in the United States of America, before the emergence of Covid-19 “.
However, the story lacks a fundamental link: that of the lawyer Dem Avril Haines who is responsible for the bio-weapons sector on the NTI board. In 2013, when Haines became deputy director of the CIA, the Obama administration brought the Richiard Lugar Center, one of the Pentagon’s most advanced and secretive biological laboratories, coordinated through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), into operation near Tbilisi, Georgia. and the CIA itself, where the pharmaceutical multinational Gilead (producer of the miraculous Remdesivir) carried out clinical tests that proved lethal to 72 human guinea pigs in a few months.
So much so as to induce Russia to launch accusations for military bacteriological experiments never subject to investigations also for the influential role of President Gilead Donald Henry Rumsfeld, Secretary of the Defense Department in two terms.
The Georgian project, launched after the Rose Revolution openly financed by Soros, was born after the visit of the late Republican Senator Lugar, president for the Disarmament Commission in the former Soviet Union countries, accompanied by his Democrat colleague Obama who carried out the project once you get to the White House.
In 2014 Obama made a moratorium to block funding for dual use vaccine-bioweapon research due to the very dangerous practice of Function Gain, the GOF process that allows the enhancement in the laboratory of a pathogen, as would have happened for the SARS virus. Cov-2 infected with HIV, according to bio-engineer Pierre Bicage, former NATO consultant Pierre Bricage.
For the umpteenth curious coincidence, six experiments on the SARS virus (2003 strain isolated from bats in the Wuhan Institute of Virlogy) conducted between the USA and China as part of the PREDICT-2 project obtained a derogation from the moratorium thanks to funding from USAID, a government agency tool of the CIA, Gates Foundation and EcoHealthAlliance of New York.
The latter is an initiative to promote vaccine research that sees as partners the two American universities Columbia and John Hopkins, with which former CIA deputy director Avril Haines collaborates, but also the big pharma Johnson & Johnson and a university of the Saudi Arabia, the financing nation of the global immunization project launched by Obama in 2014 with the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), but also a partner country of GlaxoSmithKleine, administered by a director of Microsoft Corporation, founded by Gates thanks to the investments of Warren Buffet, founder of the aforementioned Nuclear Threat Initiative.
GSK is the vaccine giant that has profited from the “pilot project” carried out by the Democratic Party in Italy with the Lorenzin Decree which made 10 school-age vaccines mandatory after the visit of plutarch George Soros, donors of the American Dems and investor in Gilead, to former Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni (later appointed European Commissioner for Economic Affairs).
It should not be forgotten that the first experiments on the 2003 SARS virus infected with HIV began in 2004 in the biosecurity laboratory in Wuhan (then Bsl 2 today Bsl 4) thanks to the financing of the Episars project of the European Commission chaired by Romano Prodi, future premier of the Party Democrat in Italy where years earlier his preface to a book by George Soros himself had aroused controversy.
According to former British MI6 counterintelligence director Richard Dearlove, the SARS-Cov-2 visur would have escaped – or deliberately released – from the CIna. A thesis also supported by whistleblower Li-Meng Yan, the Chinese virologist who fled to the United States of America and placed under protection by the FBI for having denounced the construction of the pathogen of the current pandemic in the Wuhan Insistute of Virology.
To deny it, so far, only a study by John Hopkins University itself has tried, implicated for multiple connections with the pandemic announced by former CIA deputy director Avril Haines in 2018 during the Camdem conference in which it also evoked a new “world order” as the only solution to counter these threats from Coronavirus epidemics.
To combat Covid-19 infection, GSK, in collaboration with AstraZeneca in Italy and with Sanofi in Europe, is putting the vaccine already purchased by the European Union, despite some unforeseen events that occurred during the clinical trials of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
POLEMIC DEM AGAINST HAINES
In late June, Biden’s campaign announced that Haines, a lawyer who served as CIA deputy director from 2013 to 2015, will direct the foreign policy and national security aspects of a potential Biden transition team.
«To activists, security experts, congressional aides who are more left than liberal—as well as mainstream human rights campaigners and at least one ex-senator—Haines’ elevation is worrisome or unacceptable – wrote the Daily Beast – She approved an “accountability board” that spared CIA personnel reprisal for spying on the Senate’s torture investigators, and was part of the team that redacted their landmark report. After the administration ended, Haines supported Gina Haspel for CIA director, someone directly implicated in CIA torture, a decision that remains raw amongst progressive activists. Until late June, she consulted for the Trump-favorite data firm Palantir, which emerged from the CIA».
«“This is a pretty ominous signal about what is to come” in a Biden administration, said a Senate staffer who works on national security issues. “To have the deputy CIA director touted for her record in advancing human rights and respect for the rule of law I don’t think can be adequately squared with not only her record but her deliberate choices of advocacy.” To Obama administration alumni who are more liberal than left, the antipathy for Haines is stunning. Haines was perhaps the leading voice inside the administration for restricting the drone campaign. She was “a voice of restraint on all counterterrorism issues,” said Harold Koh, the former State Department legal adviser».
«In addition to her past national security work and impressive presence in the D.C. think tank world, Haines has in the past described herself as a former consultant for the controversial data-mining firm Palantir. Haines’s biography page at the Brookings Institute, where she is listed as a nonresident senior fellow, boasted of this affiliation until at least last week, when it suddenly no longer appeared on the page – wrote The Intercept – The nature of the consulting work that Haines did for Palantir is not clear. As of press time, requests for comment to her, the Biden campaign, Palantir, and Brookings were not answered».
«Co-founded by a far-right, Trump-supporting tech billionaire, Palantir, whose business has benefited from a slew of government contracts, has been accused of aiding in the Trump administration’s immigration detention programs in the U.S. andhelping the Trump administration build out its surveillance state – added Intercept – Palantir’s information technology systems have given the Trump administration the ability to carry out mass deportations that have been tearing apart and terrorizing our immigrant communities,” said Yasmine Taeb, senior policy counsel at Demand Progress, a group that marshals support for causes ranging from human rights to transparency».
However, company owner Peter Thiel recently distanced himself from Trump by arguing that he would no longer fund his re-election campaign, in perfect harmony with other Republican members of the Deep State.
DOSSIER ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR DEFENSE
Haines is not in Biden’s inner circle of foreign policy, like former Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken; former Pentagon political official Brian McKeon; Jake Sullivan, Biden Vice President National Security Advisor; and Carlyn Reichel, his vice president’s foreign policy speechwriter.
DailyBeast highlighted, however, attempting to detect the role played by Haines in the context of a strategic segment of Big Tech, especially in the military field: Artificial Intelligence. The former CIA deputy director, in fact, is part of WestExec Advisors, a think-tank of the Dem area that includes important national security personalities such as the two founders, Blinken himself and Michèle Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for politics with Obama from 2009 to 2012.
After announcing in June his intention to suspend his activity for WestExec Advisors during the election campaign for Biden, in reality Haines has maintained strong ties that have materialized with the publication of a dossier on AI, developed together with Flournoy, which seems to indicate to the Pentagon the strategies to be pursued should the Democratic candidate succeed in being elected to the White House.
«This moment is taking place in the context of a technological revolution that exacerbates the challenges we face while simultaneously offering potential solutions, providing breakthroughs in climate, medicine, communications, transportation, intelligence, and many other fields. Many of these breakthroughs will come through the exploitation of artificial intelligence (AI) and its related technologies—chief among them machine learning (ML). These advances will likely shape the economic and military balance of power among nations and the future of work, wealth, and inequality within them» the two authors write in the introduction of the study called “Building Trust through Testing. Adapting DOD’s Test & Evaluation, Validation & Verification (TEVV) Enterprise for Machine Learning Systems, including Deep Learning Systems”.
A concrete example of AI use has come in recent weeks from the forum of the Italian news agency Ansa in relation to an innovative method of vocal diagnosis of Covid-19. Born from an idea of Professor Giovanni Saggio, professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering of the University of Tor Vergata, VoiceWise is today the company protagonist of a clinical trial to diagnose and monitor the coronavirus infection activated at the Tor Vergata Polyclinic of Rome, the Technoscience Technological Park of Latina and the San Matteo Foundation Polyclinic of Pavia.
The system involves the use of devices such as smartphones and tablets provided in support of the project by the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, which are used “for their ability to record audio properly and because it was not possible to bring to patients in isolation microphone and recorder we usually use, ”explains Professor Saggio. The devices are delivered to volunteer (and anonymous) Covid-19 patients to record “their voice, coughs and everything the algorithm needs to be trained to identify the disease”.
Obviously this can work if the algorithms are interpreted correctly but just like in the case of the controversial PCR buffer, of which we have highlighted the limits of diagnosis connected to countless variables capable of creating “false positives”. Therefore, any error in setting the AI or worse still its “manipulation” can be able to alter the results much more than traditional medical analyzes.
BIG TECH CONNECTIONS AND TRADING IN EUROPE
«Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been critical of Big Tech, admonishing Facebook for mishandling misinformation and saying internet companies should lose a central legal protection. But his campaign has quietly welcomed onto its staff and policy groups people who have worked with or for Silicon Valley giants, raising concerns among the industry’s critics that the companies are seeking to co-opt a potential Bidenadministration». Thus began an article written by David McCabe and Kenneth P. Vogel in the New York Times in August.
«One of Mr. Biden’s closest aides joined the campaign from Apple, while others held senior roles at firms that consulted for major tech companies. And a nearly 700-person volunteer group advising the campaign, the Innovation Policy Committee, includes at least eight people who work for Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. Other committee members have close ties to the companies, including economists and lawyers who have advised them, and officials at think tanks funded by them».
Here then returns the name of the white lady of 007: «Avril Haines, a former Obama national security and intelligence official who is helping to lead Mr. Biden’s transition team, was a consultant for the data-mining company Palantir and WestExec Advisors, a firm that represented a major tech company it hasn’t identified – wrote NYT – A WestExec co-founder and Obama State Department official, Antony J. Blinken, is running the Biden campaign’s foreign policy operation. WestExec has worked with the philanthropy started by Eric Schmidt, the former Google chairman, and with Google’s in-house incubation unit, Jigsaw. But Mr. Blinken and Ms. Haines did not participate in that work, according to the Biden campaign, which said both advisers stepped away from WestExec this month».
The dossier on Artificial Intelligence strategies for the Department of Defense, signed by Haines in October for WestExec, clearly denied these distances. From the curriculum of the former deputy director of the CIA, however, further elements emerge that project her relations in the financial field from the US to Europe and Italy. From his very long curriculum he appears to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Vodafone Foundation but also of the Member of the international advisory committee of Tikeau Investment Management. (read more…)
POST CONTINUES HERE
Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio
© COPYRIGHT GOSPA NEWS
no reproduction without authorization – Versione originale in Italiano
MAIN SOURCES
GOSPA NEWS – WUHAN.GATES REPORTS
GOSPA NEWS – CORONA VIRUS DOSSIER
GOSPA NEWS – WEAPONS’ LOBBY INVESTIGATIONS
PICCOLE NOTE – LA PROFEZIA DI BIDEN
THE HILL – BIDEN PROPHECY ON PANDEMIC
LUGAR NEWSLETTER – OBAMA E LUGAR IN UKRAINE
DAILY BEAST – DEMS AGAINST HAINES
THE INTERCEPT – PALANTIR ISSUE FOR HAINES
NEW YORK TIMES – BIG TECH AND BIDEN
WESTEXEC – AI DOSSIER BY HAINES
ANSA – AI CONTRO COVID-19
BEBEEZ – TIKEAU CAPITAL IN ITALIA


veteranstoday--2020-11-01--James Le Mesurier, Rascal or Simply Villain, the truth about the founder of the terror group called

James Le Mesurier, Rascal or Simply Villain, the truth about the founder of the terror group called the White Helmets

By Kit Klarenberg , an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions .
Follow Kit on Twitter @ KitKlarenberg A fetishistic Guardian article seeks to rehabilitate the life and death of the former British soldier turned ‘ humanitarian ’ , but can not explain away his lavish lifestyle , missing money , and all the other financial irregularities .
On the morning of November 11 , 2019 , James Le Mesurier , founder of Syria ’ s controversial White Helmets , was found dead in Istanbul .
Since then , the Western establishment has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the man , his professional history , the group he founded , and how he died .
The latest example of mainstream media narrative management in the ever-mysterious case came in the Guardian on October 27 , in the form of a 6,000-word hagiography of Le Mesurier , authored by its veteran Middle East reporter Martin Chulov .
Many at this point will be familiar with the idolatrous portait it paints of its subject – a heroic humanitarian committed to benevolent causes who saved untold lives , tragically driven to suicide by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Syrian officials and peddled by pro-Assad bloggers , alt-right media figures and self-described anti-imperialists.
” Nonetheless , it marks the first time the significant controversy surrounding his financial dealings has ever been explored , let alone mentioned , by a British news outlet .
In July this year , the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published a long-read of its own , explosively revealing how , three days prior to his death , Le Mesurier ‘ confessed ’ via email to the White Helmets ’ many international donors , who ’ d funded the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions over the years , that he ’ d committed fraud .
The disclosure was prompted by an internal audit by a Dutch accountant of the finances of Mayday , the foundation started by Le Mesurier to find , train , and support the White Helmets .
The audit found , among other things , that he had been paying himself and his wife , long-time UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office ( FCO ) operative Emma Winberg , “ excessive ” salaries and supplementing the totals with unjustifiably vast cash bonuses ; that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potential conflict of interest ; and that he might be guilty of tax evasion .
While claiming this malfeasance wasn ’ t intentional , Le Mesurier took full and sole responsibility , and expressed fears that further investigation could expose yet more “ mistakes and internal failures.
” ALSO ON RT.COMWhite Helmets co-founder stole aid money destined for Syria – report Damning stuff indeed , but De Volkskrant ’ s seismic disclosures have been curiously ignored by all other Western media outlets until now .
The Guardian ’ s article deals with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – Le Mesurier , whom Chulov knew personally , and with whom he clearly maintained an intense affinity , is acquitted on all charges .
Indeed , the White Helmets founder is said to have simply “ unravelled under the weight of claims that would later prove to be false.
” The author is at pains throughout to frame “ disinformation ” as fundamental to Le Mesurier ’ s untimely demise , in terms of causing him immense “ stress , ” which led to him “ disintegrating ” mentally , damaging his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the eyes of world opinion , and , in turn , stoking erroneous suspicions in donor countries that he and his company were engaged in various improper activities .
The question of how a battle-hardened military veteran could be so deleteriously impacted mentally and emotionally by “ attacks on Russian television and social media , ” particularly if they were entirely without substance , is unasked and unanswered .
There ’ s little doubt Le Mesurier wasn ’ t in a good state during his final weeks .
It ’ s been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and psychiatric medication .
Less well amplified were Turkish news reports alleging he and his wife had “ fought violently ” while dining out together the day before his death .
Chulov alleges “ a distressed Le Mesurier ” told friends just before he died that claims of Mayday ’ s monetary misconduct “ seemed to come from nowhere.
” In fact , questions about what purpose the vast sums donated to the company were put to , and where they all ultimately ended up , had long circulated .
While his article @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the White Helmets “ despite the disinformation surrounding the group ’ s work , ” this isn ’ t true .
In September 2018 , the Dutch government ended its backing , after a damning Ministry of Foreign Affairs report outlined serious concerns about Mayday ’ s financial practices , including an almost total lack of oversight over , and even awareness of , how its money entered Syria , and precisely whose pockets it eventually lined .
However , Chulov feels confident dismissing any and all suggestions of embezzlement , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report by forensic auditors Grant Thornton , conducted at the request of Mayday ’ s donors , which concluded there was “ no evidence of misappropriation of funds ” by Le Mesurier and Winberg .
Except that he isn ’ t , because it hasn ’ t been made public , at donors ’ express request .
Instead , he relies on the claims of a nameless “ source familiar ” with the report – which could conceivably , of course , be Winberg herself .
ALSO ON RT.COMWhite Helmets use Covid-19 crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Syria It ’ s clear Grant Thornton ’ s report isn ’ t an unalloyed clean bill of health , either – the auditors found “ significant gaps in the administrative organization and internal control environment of Mayday ” and “ identified significant cash transactions that have not been ( fully ) recorded in the cash books and/or general ledger.
” Moreover , due to Mayday ’ s “ informal ” working environment , many key discussions took place “ orally and over WhatsApp , ” meaning auditors “ had to reconstruct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unable to provide certainty in those cases.
” Chulov is quick to dismiss the significance of these failings as nothing more than “ shoddy ” bookkeeping , contending “ auditors found nothing to support the far more serious allegations made ” against Le Mesurier – despite apparently not having actually read the report himself .
Likewise , he concedes Mayday ’ s executive salaries had been “ higher than industry standards ” , although his anonymous source familiar with the report is on hand to reassure him , and readers , “ they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Le Mesurier informed the Netherlands ’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs he was paying himself a salary of €24,000 per month , before bonuses – several orders of magnitude higher than the designated salary ceiling at other Dutch government-funded enterprises .
And considerably more than the $ 150 a day the White Helmet rescuers on the ground received .
References to Le Mesurier founding three separate companies named ‘ Mayday Rescue ’ – Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai , Mayday Search and Rescue Training and Consultancy Services Ltd in Turkey , and Stichting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are predictably absent from the Guardian ’ s article .
Accounts aren ’ t publicly available for any of them – the Dutch entity , while not registered as a charitable organisation , is characterised as being ‘ without commercial enterprise ’ , so doesn ’ t have to file accounts at all .
Dutch ‘ stichtings ’ , or foundations , are openly advertised by Dutch law firms as ideal ways for wealthy individuals and corporations to minimize tax liabilities and distribute funds internationally .
The company nonetheless complied with governance and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Treasurer .
As such , the UK government could plausibly claim that Mayday Rescue , to which London funneled £43 million between 2015 and 2018 , was , to the best of its knowledge , fully above board .
ALSO ON RT.COMWhite Helmets co-founder & ex-British officer Le Mesurier found dead in Istanbul Except the £43 million actually went to Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai – something only begrudgingly admitted by the FCO in March 2019 , in response to a Freedom of Information request , after much heel-dragging and obfuscation .
Dubai @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FZ-LLCs – Free Zone Limited Liability Companies – aren ’ t subject to any taxes on dividends , so they can be used to easily and opaquely repatriate profits .
The entities are required to maintain accounting records , which can be inspected by authorities , but aren ’ t required to file accounts of any kind .
It may be significant that one of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation ’ s three directors , alongside Le Mesurier and Winberg , was a British Army veteran , Rupert Davis , who , in April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Dissolved in October 2020 , it was categorised as dormant – that is , non-operational – for the duration of its existence .
Le Mesurier also founded other companies , with indeterminate connections to his assorted Mayday entities .
For instance , in April 2017 he established Sisu Global BV in the Netherlands .
It has never filed accounts , in breach of Dutch law .
Le Mesurier resigned in November 2018 , but Winberg apparently remains a director .
In January 2019 , Le Mesurier registered My Zahara Limited as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an address belonging to a company formation agent specializing in , among other things , compliance with money laundering regulations , suggesting he intended to use the firm to repatriate money from his overseas firms .
Davis was also , until April 2019 , connected to Sisu Global BV , a company in the Netherlands founded by Le Mesurier in April 2017 .
It has never filed accounts , in breach of Dutch law .
Le Mesurier himself resigned from it in November 2018 .
Winberg apparently remains a director .
Chulov also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disinformation ” allegations that the White Helmets were “ created by governments determined to remove Assad from power ” ; that Le Mesurier was “ an agent of western intelligence , using a rescue organisation as a Trojan horse for regime change ” ; and that the organization was in any way affiliated to violent extremist groups .
What are matters of public record , however , is that the White Helmets were funded by the very governments avowedly committed to ‘ regime change ’ in Syria via covert and overt means ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ included spells as a military intelligence operative ; and that the group has openly collaborated with the Al-Nusra Front , among other jihadist elements , and engaged in violent activity .
In a June 2015 speech discussing his founding of the White Helmets , Le Mesurier cited a market research agency study which found that , in fragile environments , security forces garner low levels of public trust while first responders have the highest as a key motivating factor in his decision to establish a “ humanitarian aid group.
” ALSO ON RT.COMThe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ child kidnappers , should be condemned not condoned That the White Helmets ’ benevolent image was very carefully constructed and promoted by a government attempting to achieve ‘ regime change ’ is amply underlined by FCO documents leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous .
The documents reveal that ARK , a firm founded by FCO veteran Alistair Harris where Le Mesurier worked between 2011 and 2014 , played a pivotal role in promoting the White Helmets , developing “ an internationally focused communications campaign to raise global awareness ” of the group to “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the way , ARK , among many other endeavors , produced a documentary on the White Helmets , and ran its various social media accounts , among them the Facebook page for Idlib City Council , at one time mooted as a potential interim government to replace Bashar Assad .
When Al-Nusra took the city , the White Helmets were filmed celebrating the ‘ victory ’ with the group ’ s fighters in its main square .
ARK profited to the tune of untold millions of pounds from these and other information-warfare efforts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reveals InCoStrat , founded by none other than Emma Winberg , also reaped large bounties for manipulating public perceptions about Syria , within and without the country .
In one file , the firm boasted of surreptitiously “ initiating events to create media effect ” and of “ using media to create events.
” One example of the former strategy saw InCoStrat produce mock Syrian currency , in three denominations , imploring Syrians to “ be on the right side of history.
” It was intended to ensure that international opinion remained arrayed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media attention has shifted almost exclusively towards ISIS and some influential voices are calling for co-operation with the Syrian regime to combat ISIS.
” The file states : “ The notes are due to be smuggled into regime-held parts of Syria once formal clearance has been authorized by HMG officials … We will engage the international media to create a story around the event … The message to the regime [ is ] covert but active resistance continues.
” Another document indicates that Winberg ’ s InCoStrat also established Basma – “ a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaigns that support [ UK government ] policy objectives ” – and engaged in propaganda operations in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq , training and maintaining a network of journalists who were “ instrumental in reporting on events in Basra.
” On the subject of propaganda , establishment efforts to rehabilitate Le Mesurier are scheduled to continue apace in future .
Starting on November 9 , the BBC will transmit a 15-part radio documentary on Mayday Rescue .
Over the summer , Chloe Hadjimatheou , a reporter on the project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers who ’ d publicly raised questions about the White Helmets , asking if they wished to contribute to the program .
Several of the individuals targeted subsequently published their correspondence with Hadjimatheou , showing that the program ’ s preordained agenda and objectives couldn ’ t be more blatant .
What is clear is that any suggestion Le Mesurier was a British intelligence operative surreptitiously attempting to foster regime change in Syria , or that the White Helmets weren ’ t an entirely benevolent , independent humanitarian organization will be rubbished , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be smeared as witting or unwitting agents of the Russian and Syrian governments .

By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
A fetishistic Guardian article seeks to rehabilitate the life and death of the former British soldier turned ‘humanitarian’, but cannot explain away his lavish lifestyle, missing money, and all the other financial irregularities.
On the morning of November 11, 2019, James Le Mesurier, founder of Syria’s controversial White Helmets, was found dead in Istanbul. Since then, the Western establishment has struggled to get its story straight on the man, his professional history, the group he founded, and how he died.
The latest example of mainstream media narrative management in the ever-mysterious case came in the Guardian on October 27, in the form of a 6,000-word hagiography of Le Mesurier, authored by its veteran Middle East reporter Martin Chulov.
Many at this point will be familiar with the idolatrous portrait it paints of its subject – a heroic humanitarian committed to benevolent causes who saved untold lives, tragically driven to suicide by a “disinformation campaign led by Russian and Syrian officials and peddled by pro-Assad bloggers, alt-right media figures and self-described anti-imperialists.” Nonetheless, it marks the first time the significant controversy surrounding his financial dealings has ever been explored, let alone mentioned, by a British news outlet.
In July this year, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published a long-read of its own, explosively revealing how, three days prior to his death, Le Mesurier ‘confessed’ via email to the White Helmets’ many international donors, who’d funded the group to the tune of hundreds of millions over the years, that he’d committed fraud.
The disclosure was prompted by an internal audit by a Dutch accountant of the finances of Mayday, the foundation started by Le Mesurier to find, train, and support the White Helmets. The audit found, among other things, that he had been paying himself and his wife, long-time UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) operative Emma Winberg, “excessive” salaries and supplementing the totals with unjustifiably vast cash bonuses; that his employment of his wife represented a potential conflict of interest; and that he might be guilty of tax evasion.
While claiming this malfeasance wasn’t intentional, Le Mesurier took full and sole responsibility, and expressed fears that further investigation could expose yet more “mistakes and internal failures.”
ALSO ON RT.COMWhite Helmets co-founder stole aid money destined for Syria – report
Monetary misconduct
Damning stuff indeed, but De Volkskrant’s seismic disclosures have been curiously ignored by all other Western media outlets until now. The Guardian’s article deals with the damning revelations, both directly and indirectly – Le Mesurier, whom Chulov knew personally, and with whom he clearly maintained an intense affinity, is acquitted on all charges. Indeed, the White Helmets founder is said to have simply “unraveled under the weight of claims that would later prove to be false.”
The author is at pains throughout to frame “disinformation” as fundamental to Le Mesurier’s untimely demise, in terms of causing him immense “stress,” which led to him “disintegrating” mentally, damaging his reputation and that of the White Helmets in the eyes of world opinion, and, in turn, stoking erroneous suspicions in donor countries that he and his company were engaged in various improper activities.
The question of how a battle-hardened military veteran could be so deleteriously impacted mentally and emotionally by “attacks on Russian television and social media,” particularly if they were entire without substance, is unasked and unanswered.
There’s little doubt Le Mesurier wasn’t in a good state during his final weeks. It’s been widely reported he was taking sleeping pills and psychiatric medication. Less well amplified were Turkish news reports alleging he and his wife had “fought violently” while dining out together the day before his death.
Chulov alleges “a distressed Le Mesurier” told friends just before he died that claims of Mayday’s monetary misconduct “seemed to come from nowhere.” In fact, questions about what purpose the vast sums donated to the company were put to, and where they all ultimately ended up, had long circulated.
While his article states that donor countries maintained their support for the White Helmets “despite the disinformation surrounding the group’s work,” this isn’t true. In September 2018, the Dutch government ended its backing, after a damning Ministry of Foreign Affairs report outlined serious concerns about Mayday’s financial practices, including an almost total lack of oversight over, and even awareness of, how its money entered Syria, and precisely whose pockets it eventually lined.
However, Chulov feels confident dismissing any and all suggestions of embezzlement, for he’s in possession of a report by forensic auditors Grant Thornton, conducted at the request of Mayday’s donors, which concluded there was “no evidence of misappropriation of funds” by Le Mesurier and Winberg.
Except that he isn’t, because it hasn’t been made public, at donors’ express request. Instead, he relies on the claims of a nameless “source familiar” with the report – which could conceivably, of course, be Winberg herself.
Excessive salaries plus bonuses
It’s clear Grant Thornton’s report isn’t an unalloyed clean bill of health, either – the auditors found “significant gaps in the administrative organization and internal control environment of Mayday” and “identified significant cash transactions that have not been (fully) recorded in the cash books and/or general ledger.”
Moreover, due to Mayday’s “informal” working environment, many key discussions took place “orally and over WhatsApp,” meaning auditors “had to reconstruct a number of financial events and are unable to provide certainty in those cases.”
” />
Chulov is quick to dismiss the significance of these failings as nothing more than “shoddy” bookkeeping, contending “auditors found nothing to support the far more serious allegations made” against Le Mesurier – despite apparently not having actually read the report himself.
Likewise, he concedes Mayday’s executive salaries had been “higher than industry standards”, although his anonymous source familiar with the report is on hand to reassure him, and readers, “they were not off-the-scale high.”In 2017, Le Mesurier informed the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs he was paying himself a salary of €24,000 per month, before bonuses – several orders of magnitude higher than the designated salary ceiling at other Dutch government-funded enterprises. And considerably more than the $150 a day the White Helmet rescuers on the ground received.
References to Le Mesurier founding three separate companies named ‘Mayday Rescue’ – Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai, Mayday Search and Rescue Training and Consultancy Services Ltd in Turkey, and Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation in the Netherlands – are predictably absent from the Guardian’s article.
Accounts aren’t publicly available for any of them – the Dutch entity, while not registered as a charitable organisation, is characterised as being ‘without commercial enterprise’, so doesn’t have to file accounts at all. Dutch ‘stichtings’, or foundations, are openly advertised by Dutch law firms as ideal ways for wealthy individuals and corporations to minimize tax liabilities and distribute funds internationally.
The company nonetheless complied with governance and transparency requirements, appointing a Secretary and Treasurer. As such, the UK government could plausibly claim that Mayday Rescue, to which London funneled £43 million between 2015 and 2018, was, to the best of its knowledge, fully above board.
ALSO ON RT.COMWhite Helmets co-founder & ex-British officer Le Mesurier found dead in Istanbul
Tax havens and tangled webs
Except the £43 million actually went to Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai – something only begrudgingly admitted by the FCO in March 2019, in response to a Freedom of Information request, after much heel-dragging and obfuscation.
Dubai is a notorious tax haven, and FZ-LLCs – Free Zone Limited Liability Companies – aren’t subject to any taxes on dividends, so they can be used to easily and opaquely repatriate profits. The entities are required to maintain accounting records, which can be inspected by authorities but aren’t required to file accounts of any kind.
It may be significant that one of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation’s three directors, alongside Le Mesurier and Winberg, was a British Army veteran, Rupert Davis, who, in April 2016, founded the company Chameleon Global. Dissolved in October 2020, it was categorised as dormant – that is, non-operational – for the duration of its existence. Le Mesurier also founded other companies, with indeterminate connections to his assorted Mayday entities. For instance, in April 2017 he established Sisu Global BV in the Netherlands. It has never filed accounts, in breach of Dutch law. Le Mesurier resigned in November 2018, but Winberg apparently remains a director.
In January 2019, Le Mesurier registered My Zahara Limited as a dormant company in northern England, at an address belonging to a company formation agent specializing in, among other things, compliance with money laundering regulations, suggesting he intended to use the firm to repatriate money from his overseas firms.
Davis was also, until April 2019, connected to Sisu Global BV, a company in the Netherlands founded by Le Mesurier in April 2017. It has never filed accounts, in breach of Dutch law. Le Mesurier himself resigned from it in November 2018. Winberg apparently remains a director.
Chulov also, again predictably, dismisses as “disinformation” allegations that the White Helmets were “created by governments determined to remove Assad from power”; that Le Mesurier was “an agent of western intelligence, using a rescue organisation as a Trojan horse for regime change”; and that the organization was in any way affiliated to violent extremist groups.
What are matters of public record, however, is that the White Helmets were funded by the very governments avowedly committed to ‘regime change’ in Syria via covert and overt means; that Le Mesurier’s professional history included spells as a military intelligence operative; and that the group has openly collaborated with the Al-Nusra Front, among other jihadist elements, and engaged in violent activity.
In a June 2015 speech discussing his founding of the White Helmets, Le Mesurier cited a market research agency study which found that, in fragile environments, security forces garner low levels of public trust while first responders have the highest as a key motivating factor in his decision to establish a “humanitarian aid group.”
Untold millions for propaganda
That the White Helmets’ benevolent image was very carefully constructed and promoted by a government attempting to achieve ‘regime change’ is amply underlined by FCO documents leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous.
The documents reveal that ARK, a firm founded by FCO veteran Alistair Harris where Le Mesurier worked between 2011 and 2014, played a pivotal role in promoting the White Helmets, developing“an internationally focused communications campaign to raise global awareness” of the group to “keep Syria in the news.”
Along the way, ARK, among many other endeavors, produced a documentary on the White Helmets, and ran its various social media accounts, among them the Facebook page for Idlib City Council, at one time mooted as a potential interim government to replace Bashar Assad. When Al-Nusra took the city, the White Helmets were filmed celebrating the ‘victory’ with the group’s fighters in its main square.
READ MORE
ARK profited to the tune of untold millions of pounds from these and other information-warfare efforts. The same illicit file tranche also reveals InCoStrat, founded by none other than Emma Winberg, also reaped large bounties for manipulating public perceptions about Syria, within and without the country. In one file, the firm boasted of surreptitiously “initiating events to create media effect” and of “using media to create events.”
One example of the former strategy saw InCoStrat produce mock Syrian currency, in three denominations, imploring Syrians to “be on the right side of history.” It was intended to ensure that international opinion remained arrayed against Assad, at a time “media attention has shifted almost exclusively towards ISIS and some influential voices are calling for co-operation with the Syrian regime to combat ISIS.”
The file states: “The notes are due to be smuggled into regime-held parts of Syria once formal clearance has been authorized by HMG officials … We will engage the international media to create a story around the event … The message to the regime [is] covert but active resistance continues.”
Another document indicates that Winberg’s InCoStrat also established Basma – “a media platform providing human interest stories and campaigns that support [UK government] policy objectives” – and engaged in propaganda operations in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, training and maintaining a network of journalists who were “instrumental in reporting on events in Basra.”
On the subject of propaganda, establishment efforts to rehabilitate Le Mesurier are scheduled to continue apace in future.
Starting on November 9, the BBC will transmit a 15-part radio documentary on Mayday Rescue. Over the summer, Chloe Hadjimatheou, a reporter on the project, approached a number of journalists and researchers who’d publicly raised questions about the White Helmets, asking if they wished to contribute to the program.
Several of the individuals targeted subsequently published their correspondence with Hadjimatheou, showing that the program’s preordained agenda and objectives couldn’t be more blatant.
What is clear is that any suggestion Le Mesurier was a British intelligence operative surreptitiously attempting to foster regime change in Syria, or that the White Helmets weren’t an entirely benevolent, independent humanitarian organization will be rubbished, and all voices critical of the group will be smeared as witting or unwitting agents of the Russian and Syrian governments.


veteranstoday--2020-11-01--‘That Crazy Man Will Kill Us All,’ Today’s unreported News, an Intel Drop

VT : An introduction to what is an Intel Drop I began working elections in 1956 .
We had moved from Bryden Street in Detroit to Redford Township where I lived on a gravel road in a semi-rural area of small homes .
It was 1955 , I was 6 .
By the time Adlai Stevenson ran against pitful mob tool Eisenhower ( J. Edgar Hoover ran him ) , my dad had begun working with the local Democratic Party , part of his work with the UAW .
He worked at the Ford transmission plant in Plymouth , Michigan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Redford Township Democrat to one square mile , 875 homes at that time .
Small paper but this would , by today ’ s standards , be considered the world ’ s largest paper route .
I got $ 1 .
This money went into my fund for Christmas presents .
The route took 12 hours and I did it alone .
This is how things were then .
Today it would be a sign of character , perhaps ‘ fake character.
’ Then it was a dollar when dollars didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not where I came from .
My mother , who grew up in a mining camp outside Hazard , Kentucky always said , “ movies were only a nickel but nobody had a nickel.
” I keep folks from that time around VT. Mike Chester was a childhood friend , Ralph Eckard was my squad leader in Vietnam , others as well .
There were major socioeconomic differences then as now but not like now .
I would like to say I don ’ t know how we got here , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insane assholes but they were always there .
Just read Steinbeck .
During the 20s , the Rothschilds , through their stepchildren on Wall Street , funded a resurgence of the Klan , funded a eugenics movement , funded Hitler , funded Stalin and set up gangs of racist thugs and union busters under the American Legion and Black Legion .
50 years before it was the Pinkertons killing union organizers and fighting pitched battles to defend child labor in the steel mills and mines , defend the 7 day work week and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changed , the GOP is still the same GOP it was then .
Behind the growth of the GOP/Trump “ base , ” racism , misogyny and fake class warfare is occultism , Kabbalah , Frankism and worship of Moloch , who I am told is a real god who gives GOP insiders kids to screw and murder .
If only I were making this up .
My lessons on this were learned while on an official investigation on behalf of a US president .
I add this only because people love this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are such destructive assholes and why the GOP has so many mindless idiots in position of power , screwing and killing kids is what it is all about .
No , I am not kidding .
VT folks like Kevin or Mike Harris , even to an extent Jim , grew up with money , parents who owned businesses , kids who grew up with nice homes , private schools .
I grew up not quite poor , I always worked and work was a gift .
At times , driving past factories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have no workers here , they can ’ t afford to live here for minimum wage pay ) , I think about how much I would like to have a “ real job.
” Last real job I had was 1968 , wiring and testing prototype telephone switching systems .
What was important , though , was to hold on to the reality of growing up outside Detroit , watching our ditches overflow when it rained and walking to school .
What was also important was understanding politics , being taught , nearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hustlers like Trump , Bush , Reagan , Nixon and so many others , each progressively worse than even Ike .
The them was always the same , unions are communism or organized crime , social security is socialism but behind it , the it was samo-samo… Destroy public education , poison water , air and food , let drug companies kill us all , cigarettes are good for you , and play the Hilteresque game we see with Trump .
When RDS talks about how I should be patient with him , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s base of racist toads and morons , I could see the intelligence in it .
Of course QAnon is crap , a video game , but the fearful and ignorant are the single greatest power that defines the United States , or is it ?
We have a very short wait to see .
This is my 4th election at VT. We predicted 9/11 , we predicted COVID 19 , we warned and warned .
Before VT , we warned of Reagan , the founder of the “ death of America , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funded by Sheldon Adelson and laundered boatloads of Chinese cash .
In the process , knowing what was happening and predicting correctly disaster after disaster , some of us have thrived off the suffering of others that we worked so hard to prevent .
Is it funny that so many who drank the kool aid of neoconservative gangsterism now live hand to mouth and make the same mistakes ?
So many that grew up with money now live without but never learn .
Atlantic : Trump ’ s Pathology Is Now Clear As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the president has gone from downplaying the pandemic to COVID denial .
The human brain makes decisions in two basic modes .
One is analytic , which involves carefully weighing costs and benefits and choosing the best option .
The other mode is intuitive : doing what feels right .
Both have their merits .
Intuitive thinking allows us to make split-second decisions .
It helps guide our romantic lives and our lunchtime sandwich choices .
But it is not the mode that should inform a strategic response to a pandemic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s mode of thinking long ago abandoned hope that he might embrace analytic reasoning ( sometimes referred to simply as “ science ” ) .
But if there were ever a possibility that he might at least come to terms with the power of the coronavirus , it would have been when it sent him to the hospital .
Barely a month ago , recall , we had cause to speculate that the president might soon be dead .
Although details of Trump ’ s illness remain concealed—including abnormalities in his chest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first tested positive for the virus—the known facts of his case indicate that it was not mild .
He received supplemental oxygen to keep his red blood cells saturated , and he was prescribed dexamethasone , which is recommended only in serious cases .
Many patients emerge from illness having had a come-to-Jesus moment that reorients their thinking .
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie , for one , issued a mea culpa last week after he was discharged from a COVID-19 hospitalization that included a week in the intensive-care unit .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hits you how easy it is to prevent , ” he wrote under the headline “ I Should Have Worn a Mask ” in The Wall Street Journal .
“ We are asked to wear cloth over our mouth and nose , wash our hands and avoid crowds .
Seldom has so little been asked for so much benefit.
” Trump had no such revelation .
Instead , in the weeks since his illness , he has escalated from downplaying or neglecting the virus to outright denialism .
After returning to the White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he has centered his reelection campaign around the notion that the pandemic is over .
“ With the fake news , everything is COVID , COVID , COVID , ” he said at an Omaha , Nebraska , rally this week .
“ I had it .
Here I am , right ?
” He cited the illness of his son Barron—who contracted the virus shortly after his father tested positive—as being extremely mild .
He did not mention the first lady , Melania , who described having COVID-19 as “ a rollercoaster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which “ gives you a lot of time to reflect ” and reminded her of the need for “ compassion and humility.
” Read more…

I began working elections in 1956. We had moved from Bryden Street in Detroit to Redford Township where I lived on a gravel road in a semi-rural area of small homes. It was 1955, I was 6.
By the time Adlai Stevenson ran against pitful mob tool Eisenhower (J. Edgar Hoover ran him), my dad had begun working with the local Democratic Party, part of his work with the UAW. He worked at the Ford transmission plant in Plymouth, Michigan, afternoons.
My job was delivering the Redford Township Democrat to one square mile, 875 homes at that time. Small paper but this would, by today’s standards, be considered the world’s largest paper route. I got $1. This money went into my fund for Christmas presents.
The route took 12 hours and I did it alone. This is how things were then. Today it would be a sign of character, perhaps ‘fake character.’ Then it was a dollar when dollars didn’t exist, not for kids anyway, not where I came from.
My mother, who grew up in a mining camp outside Hazard, Kentucky always said, “movies were only a nickel but nobody had a nickel.”
I keep folks from that time around VT. Mike Chester was a childhood friend, Ralph Eckard was my squad leader in Vietnam, others as well.
There were major socioeconomic differences then as now but not like now. I would like to say I don’t know how we got here, a nation with millions of moronic and rabidly insane assholes but they were always there. Just read Steinbeck.
During the 20s, the Rothschilds, through their stepchildren on Wall Street, funded a resurgence of the Klan, funded a eugenics movement, funded Hitler, funded Stalin and set up gangs of racist thugs and union busters under the American Legion and Black Legion.
50 years before it was the Pinkertons killing union organizers and fighting pitched battles to defend child labor in the steel mills and mines, defend the 7 day work week and 12 hour day.
Not much has changed, the GOP is still the same GOP it was then.
Behind the growth of the GOP/Trump “base,” racism, misogyny and fake class warfare is occultism, Kabbalah, Frankism and worship of Moloch, who I am told is a real god who gives GOP insiders kids to screw and murder.
If only I were making this up. My lessons on this were learned while on an official investigation on behalf of a US president. I add this only because people love this stuff.
If you wondered why people are such destructive assholes and why the GOP has so many mindless idiots in position of power, screwing and killing kids is what it is all about.
No, I am not kidding.
VT folks like Kevin or Mike Harris, even to an extent Jim, grew up with money, parents who owned businesses, kids who grew up with nice homes, private schools. I grew up not quite poor, I always worked and work was a gift.
At times, driving past factories with job signs out front (we have no workers here, they can’t afford to live here for minimum wage pay), I think about how much I would like to have a “real job.”
Last real job I had was 1968, wiring and testing prototype telephone switching systems.
What was important, though, was to hold on to the reality of growing up outside Detroit, watching our ditches overflow when it rained and walking to school. What was also important was understanding politics, being taught, nearly at birth, to identify conmen and hustlers like Trump, Bush, Reagan, Nixon and so many others, each progressively worse than even Ike.
The them was always the same, unions are communism or organized crime, social security is socialism but behind it, the it was samo-samo…
Destroy public education, poison water, air and food, let drug companies kill us all, cigarettes are good for you, and play the Hilteresque game we see with Trump.
When RDS talks about how I should be patient with him, while he “works” Trump’s base of racist toads and morons, I could see the intelligence in it. Of course QAnon is crap, a video game, but the fearful and ignorant are the single greatest power that defines the United States, or is it? We have a very short wait to see.
This is my 4th election at VT. We predicted 9/11, we predicted COVID 19, we warned and warned. Before VT, we warned of Reagan, the founder of the “death of America,” and of the Kosher Nostra mechanism funded by Sheldon Adelson and laundered boatloads of Chinese cash.
In the process, knowing what was happening and predicting correctly disaster after disaster, some of us have thrived off the suffering of others that we worked so hard to prevent.
Is it funny that so many who drank the kool aid of neoconservative gangsterism now live hand to mouth and make the same mistakes? So many that grew up with money now live without but never learn.
Atlantic: Trump’s Pathology Is Now Clear
As the coronavirus spreads uncontrolled across the U.S., the president has gone from downplaying the pandemic to COVID denial.
Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi says documents reveal that the Trump administration attempted to use $250 million of taxpayer money, meant for Covid-19 education purposes, as a "slush fund" to help President Trump's reelection campaign by trying to rebrand the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/KEBsLRUBc9 — The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) October 29, 2020
The human brain makes decisions in two basic modes. One is analytic, which involves carefully weighing costs and benefits and choosing the best option. The other mode is intuitive: doing what feels right. Both have their merits.
Intuitive thinking allows us to make split-second decisions. It helps guide our romantic lives and our lunchtime sandwich choices. But it is not the mode that should inform a strategic response to a pandemic.
[ Editor’s Note: Trump has always presented himself as ‘Mr. Intuitive’, the genius that ‘just knows’ what to do. And anyone who disagrees, he deals with them like a mob boss would…JD ]
Russian hackers are now launching cyber attacks against U.S. hospitals at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Trump STILL says nothing. Truly pathetic. — Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) October 30, 2020
Even casual observers of President Donald Trump’s mode of thinking long ago abandoned hope that he might embrace analytic reasoning (sometimes referred to simply as “science”). But if there were ever a possibility that he might at least come to terms with the power of the coronavirus, it would have been when it sent him to the hospital.
Barely a month ago, recall, we had cause to speculate that the president might soon be dead. Although details of Trump’s illness remain concealed—including abnormalities in his chest CT scan and the date that he first tested positive for the virus—the known facts of his case indicate that it was not mild.
He received supplemental oxygen to keep his red blood cells saturated, and he was prescribed dexamethasone, which is recommended only in serious cases.
Many patients emerge from illness having had a come-to-Jesus moment that reorients their thinking. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, for one, issued a mea culpa last week after he was discharged from a COVID-19 hospitalization that included a week in the intensive-care unit.
“When you get this disease, it hits you how easy it is to prevent,” he wrote under the headline “I Should Have Worn a Mask” in The Wall Street Journal. “We are asked to wear cloth over our mouth and nose, wash our hands and avoid crowds. Seldom has so little been asked for so much benefit.”
On Friday US hit highest number of Covid cases EVER at 99,000! Plus nearly 1,000 Americans died-up 16% from last week. Yet Trump keeps lying we "turned a corner" as he encourages supporters to oppose social distancing measures #VoteBlueToEndTheNightmare https://t.co/4EQ3vsFKzC — (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) October 31, 2020
New @Stanford study estimates that 18 Trump rallies have led to 30,000 COVID cases and 700 deaths (via @AaronBelkin) https://t.co/zcR4yKwnEl pic.twitter.com/1yaPivbYFS — Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) October 31, 2020
A Stanford University study estimates that 18 of Trump’s superspreader rallies from June 20 through September 22 have led to at least 30,000 COVID cases and more than 700 deaths…..MAGA is officially a death cult https://t.co/dO5yMRxXcm#Vote @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris pic.twitter.com/lukgpteT1x — Icculus The Brave (@FirenzeMike) October 31, 2020
American Medical Association rips Trump's claim that doctors inflating COVID numbers to get more money: “Malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided" https://t.co/ei8FbA98DG pic.twitter.com/wzWrLX7lug — The Hill (@thehill) October 31, 2020
The American Medical Association hits Trump: "The suggestion that doctors—in the midst of a public health crisis—are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge." https://t.co/MQnDhoJUdL — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 30, 2020
White House sidestepped FDA to distribute hydroxychloroquine to pharmacies, documents show. Trump touted the pills to treat covid-19. https://t.co/KrHpyjomDg — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 31, 2020
As an Iraq war vet and ER doctor, I risk my life every fucking day at work treating patients with COVID. I'm not asking for a thank you, but I am asking that Trump doesn't lie and disrespect us. I've never seen such a weak draft-dodging coward in my life. He is unfit to lead!! — Cleavon MD (@Cleavon_MD) October 30, 2020
Trump had no such revelation. Instead, in the weeks since his illness, he has escalated from downplaying or neglecting the virus to outright denialism. After returning to the White House and sanctimoniously removing his mask, he has centered his reelection campaign around the notion that the pandemic is over.
“With the fake news, everything is COVID, COVID, COVID,” he said at an Omaha, Nebraska, rally this week. “I had it. Here I am, right?” He cited the illness of his son Barron—who contracted the virus shortly after his father tested positive—as being extremely mild.
He did not mention the first lady, Melania, who described having COVID-19 as “a rollercoaster of symptoms,” the experience of which “gives you a lot of time to reflect” and reminded her of the need for “compassion and humility.” Read more…
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/trump-covid-denial/616946/


veteranstoday--2020-11-02--Abandoned by Trump Regime: Racist Kuwait Jailing, torturing Black US Contractors

Dozens of military contractors , most of them Black , have been jailed in the emirate — some on trumped-up drug charges .
Why has the American government failed to help them ?
On the first night of the Republican National Convention , the opening video asserted that America treats all its citizens equally regardless of race .
But at the midway point of the event things took a dark turn .
Images of razor wire and jail bars flashed .
“ American hostages , ” a deep voice intoned .
“ Forgotten and wasting away in far-off prisons .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ were beaten , abused , starved and left for dead .
Until President Donald Trump stepped in.
” A montage of news clips showed Trump welcoming recently freed Americans at airports and news conferences .
Then the feed cut to the White House , where Trump sat flanked by six former prisoners , five of them white , among them a Navy veteran , a missionary and two pastors , who had been accused of crimes including currency smuggling and stockpiling weapons .
They thanked him for securing their releases .
( link @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president has made the mistreatment of Americans imprisoned abroad so central to his administration ’ s identity .
The president seems to relish personally elevating these cases into geopolitical issues , even going so far as to threaten Turkey on Twitter with economic sanctions over the imprisonment of Andrew Brunson , one of the evangelical pastors .
And after Otto Warmbier , a university student , was fatally brain-damaged while incarcerated in North Korea , Trump made the tragedy integral to the administration ’ s confrontation with the dictatorship over its nuclear threat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s memory with total American resolve ” in the 2018 State of the Union address .
American Veterans Say They ’ re Being Abused In A Kuwaiti Prison And The US Government Hardly Cares A photo of Jermaine Rogers taken by Kuwaiti authorities after his arrest .
He was convicted of possessing 7 grams of cocaine .
In early February , Karina Mateo , a logistics analyst for Boeing in San Antonio , Texas , was driving to work when she got a WhatsApp message from a random number with the +965 Kuwaiti @ @ @ @ @ @ @ breath as she began to read .
Two and a half years ago , her fiancé , Jermaine Rogers , was arrested in Kuwait on drug charges while working for General Dynamics on a contract with the U.S. military .
His punishment had recently been reduced from death by public hanging to life in prison .
The sender of the message identified himself as an American and fellow inmate at Kuwait ’ s notorious Central Prison .
As usual , the message was brief : Hey kareena this jermaine friend we had raid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tell kiki he loves her and he ’ s sorry didn ’ t get to see her bday hopefully we will get moved to block so he can make contact with u in in diff room just passing message also if u could notify embassy we need them here thx and take care please do not message will reach out to u Mateo still hasn ’ t told her 8-year-old daughter , Kiahuren , or “ Kiki , ” that Rogers is in prison .
Kiki thinks her father is overseas on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The truth is too mind-boggling .
By most measures , Rogers , 41 , is a model American — a man who served his country for more than two decades , first in the Army and then as a defense contractor .
He has no criminal record in the United States .
In fact , his last job in Kuwait — managing the upkeep of military equipment on Camp Arifjan — required him to have a secret security clearance .
Among his family , friends , and colleagues , there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They suggest he may be a victim of racial persecution .
Most , if not all , of the U.S. citizens currently being detained in Central Prison are African-American .
And each has an eerily similar story to tell .

Dozens of military contractors, most of them Black, have been jailed in the emirate — some on trumped-up drug charges. Why has the American government failed to help them?
— DOUG BOCK CLARK, THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, the opening video asserted that America treats all its citizens equally regardless of race. But at the midway point of the event things took a dark turn. Images of razor wire and jail bars flashed. “American hostages,” a deep voice intoned. “Forgotten and wasting away in far-off prisons. Wrongfully detained by foreign governments.
In 2018, I helped @Adam_Linehan report on these men. I spoke to their families. They had tried to get media attention, tried to get their senators and representatives to act. But no one did anything. https://t.co/3b21gCNxGO — Lauren Katzenberg (@Lkatzenberg) October 29, 2020
Americans were beaten, abused, starved and left for dead. Until President Donald Trump stepped in.” A montage of news clips showed Trump welcoming recently freed Americans at airports and news conferences. Then the feed cut to the White House, where Trump sat flanked by six former prisoners, five of them white, among them a Navy veteran, a missionary and two pastors, who had been accused of crimes including currency smuggling and stockpiling weapons. They thanked him for securing their releases. (link to full article)
“So many things had combined to make him feel stateless — institutionalized racism, the nation’s forever wars… privatization of the military’s responsibilities to those working for it and an administration unwilling to do much for him and his comrades.” https://t.co/eLU6yPMcnv — Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) November 1, 2020
Perhaps no other president has made the mistreatment of Americans imprisoned abroad so central to his administration’s identity. The president seems to relish personally elevating these cases into geopolitical issues, even going so far as to threaten Turkey on Twitter with economic sanctions over the imprisonment of Andrew Brunson, one of the evangelical pastors. And after Otto Warmbier, a university student, was fatally brain-damaged while incarcerated in North Korea, Trump made the tragedy integral to the administration’s confrontation with the dictatorship over its nuclear threat, pledging “to honor Otto’s memory with total American resolve” in the 2018 State of the Union address.