by Scott Creighton
Sometimes a couple of news articles pop up at the same time and if you’re paying attention, it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Let’s see…
- new expansive tort reform keeping citizens from suing venues for “terrorist attacks”
- history of senator suggesting false flag attacks to seated presidents and not being exposed for doing so
- “leftist’ dissidents talking about “blowback” bombings from “international” leftists
- Obama claims chemical weapons are the “red line” for Syria
hmmm….
A reader here, Jan, gave me a head’s up on a new article from NBC News which I happened to be reading at the time, about the subtle expansion of a 2002 law designed to protect security equipment manufacturers from lawsuits in the event of a terrorist attack.The expansion, which is already happening, will allow the corporations who run large public venues, near total immunity from civil lawsuits brought by people harmed during terrorist acts committed within their facilities. The New York Yankees seem to be the first sporting venue granted such immunity by the Department of Homeland Security but there are already others like the NFL, the N.Y. Stock Exchange (Dark Knight?) and the Cincinnati Airport.
Well, the expansion isn’t very subtle, in fact it’s rather frightening, especially when you consider the fact that back in 1960 a seated US Senator suggested to J. F. Kennedy that they stage a false flag attack to create the pretext to go to war with Cuba.That was about 2 years prior to the Operation Northwoods plan the joint chiefs of staff came up with in ’62. Seems like a lot of people start openly talking about false flag events when there’s a big push toward engaging in an unpopular war. (Iran anyone?)
That senator was democrat George Smathers of Florida who went on to enjoy many more years as a senator (9) and was even considered by Kennedy to replace Johnson as the vice presidential candidate in the 1964 election (guess Johnson fixed that)
Smathers was a legacy baby, his uncle was a senator as well. He was firmly anti-Castro, regularly accused his opponents of being communists and even voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was what they called a “moderate” democrat back then. When he left the senate he cashed in on the lobbyist game and opened a few businesses becoming a very wealthy man. Sold his Florida home to a guy by the name of Richard Milhouse Nixon. Lived a long and prosperous life after seriously suggesting to the then president of the United States that he stage an attack on his own soldiers, killing some of them, so the anti-Castro Cubans could sweep back into power and American corporations could go back to imposing their tyrannical will on the Cuban people like they did back in the good old days.
The JFK library just released some statement made by the good senator and the New York Times dutifully published them immediately. Right on cue, the east of the pond globalist mouth piece took up the call and wrote about them as well. Here’s what the Guardian had to say about it…
When the assassination idea was discarded Mr Smathers suggested provoking an incident at the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the eastern tip of Cuba as a pretext for a US invasion.
“I did talk to him about a plan of having a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and do the job,” he said. “He asked me to write him something about it. And I think I did.” The Guardian
We all know about Operation Northwoods and the joint chiefs plan to stage false flag terrorist attacks against military and civilian targets in 1962. Well, that plan went all the way up the chain of command and landed on Kennedy’s desk before it was shot down by Kennedy himself. But this story about Smathers just goes to show how commonplace the idea of staging false flag events were in the government back then, when they had a pesky problem getting the country behind a war of aggression for financial gain.
Fast forward 50 years and we have a situation where the same kind of “business first” or “moderate” (read as “fascist”) leaders are in control facing not one but two campaigns to start unpopular wars: Syria and Iran. Is it outrageous to worry about the implications?
In the aftermath of 9/11 there were more than 40 billion dollars worth of lawsuits filed on the basis of liability and neglect on the part of various corporations. Insurance companies bore the brunt of these.
Well, that problem may soon be fixed.
According to NBC News, the Department of Homeland Security is now allowing various venues complete immunity from such lawsuits under a law that was designed to keep Michael Chertoff’s full body scanner company from being sued for giving air passengers cancer. According to the report, everything is dependent on the designation of the DHS from the classification of the “terrorist act” to the approval of the various companies protected by the 2002 legislation.
“The Safety Act (SAFETY is actually an acronym for “Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies”) was passed as part of the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002….”
“… essentially, a terrorist attack is anything the Department of Homeland Security calls a terrorist attack, which could include domestic terrorism, such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 or even the recent Aurora, Colo., mass shooting.”
“… “Yankee Stadium is not unlike the Cincinnati airport, the Stock Exchange, the NFL, or Super Bowl venues, all of which have received Safety Act protection,” he said. “The regulations for the Safety Act are very clear that the (Department of Homeland Security) secretary has great flexibility in approving applications.”
““When you look at the law — it’s for makers and suppliers of technology,” he said. “That was their intent, not to protect ballparks and give them a get-out-of-jail-free card, as long as they didn’t lie … during the approval process.”
“… Bob Karl, who operates SafetyActConsultants.com and has helped dozens of companies achieve certification, says liability protection is absolutely essential for companies deploying newfangled anti-terrorism technologies….”
“Karl gave the example of a company that had invented a new radioactivity detector for cargo containers on ships. Selling the detectors would be, initially, a tiny $10 million annual business for the multibillion-dollar company, but the firm feared that if something went wrong with its product, victims could sue for the entirety of the firm’s value. It makes no sense for companies to take on risk like that, and the firm didn’t start selling its detectors until it achieved Safety Act designation, he said. He declined to name the firm.” NBC News
There are any number of reasons to be deeply concerned about such an over reach of the DHS’s power in this matter. To claim they literally have the right to issue immunity orders to various venues should give one pause for concern during even the most politically tranquil of times.
But these days, when the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, and the entire right-wing political establishment are beating the war drums like they HOPE there is no tomorrow… when Hillary and Susan are out there paying terrorists to attack a country simply to force neo-liberal regime change like their lives (or bank accounts) depend on it… when the Israelis are foaming at the mouth claiming we have to attack Syria AND Iran before the End of Days is upon us… and with a tight election coming up followed by the imposition of the kind of severe austerity measures which are tearing apart Greece right now… with all of this happening, how does one not worry about this kind of far reaching legal umbrella being opened up, all of a sudden, for certain venues?
Then you got so-called “leftist” dissidents like Chris Hedges (how “leftist” can he really be considering he was an establishment embedded war correspondent for most of his adult life missing the obvious point many times over in the various destabilization campaigns he covered? I guess I missed the point on him, but not any more) writing stuff like this a day or so ago…
“These clandestine armies travel the globe, awash in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, sowing dragon’s teeth that rise up later, like the warriors in the myth of the Golden Fleece, to become mirror images of our own monstrosities.’ Chris Hedges
His article mistakenly attributes a CIA destabilization bombing attack to the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua based solely on the say-so of the probably CIA asset who set off the bomb in the first place.
Typically you would expect this kind of anti-leftist propaganda from the likes of Glenn Beck but occasionally you get it from the likes of, I don’t know, someone on the “left” like Senator George Smathers for instance.
We call this “priming the pot”; when the respected alternative media (and face it, only the alternative media is respected these days) plants little seeds of disinformation out in the hive mind of the targeted population. Looks to me like an ongoing campaign with “dissident sites” like Democracy Now! and AntiWar not so subtly supporting both the Libyan invasion while that was going on and currently the destabilization campaign against Syria.
For me, it’s a bad time to start talking about “leftist bombings”. But if that’s where the former embedded war correspondent (mouth piece) felt the need to go, so be it.
Why am I worried so much? What really gets the hair on the back of my neck standing up? Is all of this enough to make one worry about a possible false flag event being exempted from legal action and blamed on the “international leftists” who are still the few opposed to illegal war and the spread of neoliberal corporatism across this country (don’t kid yourselves, libertarians are neoliberals.. look up the two platforms)?
Well, try this one on for size:
President Barack Obama has declared the threat of chemical or biological warfare in Syria a “red line” for the United States, outlining for the first time the point at which his administration could feel forced to intervene militarily in the Arab country’s increasingly messy conflict…
… “That’s an issue that doesn’t just concern Syria. It concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us,” Obama said, underscoring that the U.S. wouldn’t accept the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, rebels fighting the government, or militant groups aiding either side. “We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.” Newsday
Poor President Obama… he may be “forced” into taking action against a country that his Secretary of State has been covertly attacking for over a year.
Poor President Obama. If someone (those damn leftists) were to attack a US military base in Iraq or say a football game in Jersey, then he would be “forced” to launch an attack on the people he’s been attacking via al Qaeda for quite sometime.
Poor President Obama.
Sometimes things just kinda fall into place. No conspiracy needed.
Take for instance; back when 3 magic bullets put 7 holes in two separate men and a couple in street curbs and manhole covers; they just happened to to pull off the regular security team prior to that trip to Dallas; it just so happened that one of the men shot was calling an end to the Cold War looking to promote a new era of peace and social justice as well as ending the oil depletion allowances to big Texas oil companies; one guy who that man fired from the CIA just happened to be put on the commission tasked with finding out who shot him another one’s brother was the Mayor of Dallas; and the business friendly Texas bloodsport politician who that man beat in the Democratic primary in 1960 just happened to become the president who then expanded the imperialist war in Vietnam and stoked the coals of the cold war for years to come.
See? Sometimes things just happen, right?
But in this case, it certainly seems like some really odd timing. Like someone getting their ducks in a row. Someone who knows that the MSM are never going to connect the dots and who doesn’t really care anyway just so long as the Yankees and their insurance company don’t have to pay out billions of dollars to the useless eaters for another anti-communist Senator Smathers false flag brainstorm.
Do these recent developments suggest a pending domestic chemical/biological false flag event to be tied to Syrian and Iranian intelligence agencies conducted by left leaning radicalized homegrown terrorists? Would anyone in the international community actually believe it if they did it? Wouldn’t it be kind of obvious at this point after all the efforts and false statements used in the past to justify attacks on Syria and Iran?
Lotta things in our history seem obvious to some, less so to others. Some would say it’s obvious that the president shouldn’t be sitting around Tuesdays chatting about which people to murder because they are opposed to our occupation of their country. Some would say it’s kinda obvious that the LIBOR scandal proves the privately owned central banking system is a cabal of criminal gangsters defrauding the people of the globe so they can steal their countries out from under them. Some would say that it’s obvious that we shouldn’t be hitting funerals with hell fire missiles killing massive numbers of innocent civilians…
Some say these things, some ignore them.
I say pledge to avoid purchasing anything from any company who is on that DHS list of companies granted their own special universal immunity. Don’t buy their shirts, don’t eat their food, and for God’s sake, don’t go to their venues.
Filed under: Scott Creighton
Tried to post this before (wordpress seems to have a lot of trigger words for blocking)
I’d noticed myself that that last Sunday was the 20th anniversary of Ruby Ridge (and provided opportunity for numerous mainstream articles that continue to white-wash the events despite the 20 years of clarification of what actually occured). Next year will be the 20th anniversary of Waco. Obviously 10 years ago there was no need for a domestic terrorist threat as 9/11 was all they needed for both foreign and domestic policy.
At present the US is facing major military cutbacks that bring into question whether it can sustain its international position by pure force. The key target long term target is not Syria or Iran, but preventing China from becoming a dominant regional power in Asia. US military strategy’s primary focus is on preventing that occurence (which is the same thing that lead to war with Japan. Not the fact Japan was doing the same thing that the Westerners had been doing in Asia for a century Asia (imperial expansion and colonization), but the danger that Japanese expansion would leave them in control of the vital rubber supplies of South East Asia and have a choke-hold on America’s industries.
To challnge China, however, will mean cutting back (heavily) on US domestic spending which will bring even stronger protest than the occupy movement. The past Summer has seen a rash of shooting incidents (some suspect, some probably just coincidental) and also a refocusing on the ‘Sovereign Citizen’ movement as potential domestic terrorists which, if anything like White Power groups or Muslim ‘militants’, have been throughly infiltrated by the FBI.
To suggest that the next few years might see a harsh crackdown on domestic US dissent is not to go off into Alex Jones territory and FEMA concentration camps or Blackwater (later Xe, now Academi) death squads roaming the streets, but rather raises the possibility that certain groups will be demonized and made to seem like a threat to the general (noncritical) public in order to maintain support for police powers and divert attention from dissatisfaction with the government.
Already with the movie the Dark Knight Rises itself, you have Negative Framing of the Occupy Movment. It doesn’t matter that the idea of that movement being violent terrorists is ridiculous, the connection exists now on a widespread subconcious level. It has been reinforced by the Aurora shooting (whether intentional or not) and further highlighted by the media’s allegations that Holmes was a member of the Black Bloc anarchist group.
The greater the gap between the elite and the common people grows, the more likely that a political movement will arise arguing for immediate and radical restructuring of the system. Should that occur the atmosphere has to be kept ripe with tension so that plausible (to the average person) allegations can be made and the key people arrested that will allow the movement to be neutered/co-opted.
It’s what they do everywhere these neoliberal reforms are implemented. They demonize the left because they are the ones opposed to the far right reforms, and they stage various terrorist attacks so the general population supports rounding them up. They are doing it now in Libya. They did it in Iraq. They did it in Chile and many places since. In fact, look up Operation Gladio and the stay behind forces who staged terrorist attacks to undermine regimes that were swinging to the socialist left in Europe after WWII. It’s all declassified and readily available for anyone interested in looking it up. They did it to the Sandinistas, Mossadegh in Iran in 1953…
Check out India’s neoliberal transformation as a good example. They had the “international leftists” so hated they went around in the dead of night, with the police leading the way, and took leftists from their homes, either killed them there in front of their kids, or tortured them to give up names of other leftists they could kill the next night.
It’s not new. Nothing they do is. It’s always the same. Why do you think the Nazi’s rounded up Jews especially back then? For the most part, Jewish people were left leaning. So were gays, gypsies, various teachers, you know, the people who were dragged off to the work camps.
Who do you think the CIA’s drones are targeting? terrorists?
this is what they do and it’s coming to our part of America (been in America for decades… Mexico, Central America, South America)
Tried to post this before (wordpress seems to have a lot of trigger words for blocking) and its not showing so I’ll chop it into parts.
1) I’d noticed myself that that last Sunday was the 20th anniversary of Ruby Ridge (and provided opportunity for numerous mainstream articles that continue to white-wash the events despite the 20 years of clarification of what actually occured). Next year will be the 20th anniversary of Waco. Obviously 10 years ago there was no need for a domestic terrorist threat as 9/11 was all they needed for both foreign and domestic policy.
At present the US is facing major military cutbacks that bring into question whether it can sustain its international position by pure force. The key target long term target is not Syria or Iran, but preventing China from becoming a dominant regional power in Asia. US military strategy’s primary focus is on preventing that occurence (which is the same thing that lead to war with Japan. Not the fact Japan was doing the same thing that the Westerners had been doing in Asia for a century Asia (imperial expansion and colonization), but the danger that Japanese expansion would leave them in control of the vital rubber supplies of South East Asia and have a choke-hold on America’s industries.
This isn’t posting so I’ll break it into segments and try and identify the taboo words I seem to be using.
1) I noticed myself that last Sunday was the 20th anniversary of Ruby Ridge (and provided opportunity for numerous mainstream articles that continue to white-wash the events despite the 20 years of clarification of what actually occured). Next year will be the 20th anniversary of Waco. Obviously 10 years ago there was no need for a domestic terrorist threat as 9/11 was all they needed for both foreign and domestic policy.
Weird, the later segment showed up well before the full post I sent through earlier (after refreshing several times) please delete this and any duplicates that pop up after the first post above.
I showed up later because I read your second comment and went to the spam filter and retrieved the first.
Very informative article Scott. In reference to your statement about the upcoming election being “tight”, that’s just to keep up public interest in the purifying ritual called voting, by adding some drama to the planned and rehearsed stage production of American politics. To use a sports metaphor, the fans love a close pennant race. Also check this out http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Activist-Richard-Aoki-named-as-informant-3800133.php another phony “radical” exposed.
[...] Manning back in court over Wikileaks chargeLux Libertas – Light and LibertyDo Recent Developments Suggest a Pending Chemical/Biological False Flag Event jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('#feature .feat_box:first-child').addClass('first'); [...]
Wouldn’t surprise me if dept stores (Walmart) and restaurants, and grocery stores start being protected by this also… and movie theaters…. ice rinks… museums, parks…..
Scott, I dont know if you have ever written anything on The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). But, they are often behind all kinds of tort reform. Wouldn’t surprise me if they had a hand in this.
Check out http://www.ALECexposed.org. Or, just google ALEC & you will find many articles about them.