statism watch

Infowars.com
May 18, 2009

Dutch Queen Beatrix

Queen Sofia of Spain

Prince Constantijn (Belgian Prince)

Prince Philippe Etienne Ntavinion, Belgium

Étienne, Viscount Davignon, Belgium (former vice-president of the European Commission)

Josef Ackermann (Swiss banker and CEO of Deutsche Bank)

Keith B. Alexander, United States (Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, Director of the National Security Agency)

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Charlie Skelton, The Guardian
May 18, 2009

Publicity is pure poison to the world’s global power elite. So we should all turn up to its next annual meeting with a few more tubs of the stuff, writes Charlie Skelton

Ten years ago, when Jon Ronson dared to report on Bilderberg, he found himself “chased by mysterious men in dark glasses through Portugal”. He was scared for his safety.

“When I phoned the British embassy and asked them to explain to the powerful secret society that had set their goons on me that I was essentially a humorous journalist out of my depth, I wasn’t being funny. I was being genuinely desperate,” he wrote. I know exactly how he feels.

Only out of sheer desperation did I try to arrest one of the goons following me and then follow my flimsy leads up the Greek police ladder, finally catching one of the goons wet-handed in the lavatory of the department of government security. And only then did I know the extent of Bilderberg’s paranoia: they had set the state police on me.

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Flashback: Lessons of 1976: swine flu, fear, mass vaccinations, wasted millions | Swine Flu: In Mexico, an outbreak of police-state opportunism | Illinois-based Baxter working on vaccine to stop swine flu outbreak in Mexico | ‘Accidental’ Contamination Of Vaccine With Live Avian Flu Virus Virtually Impossible | Officials investigate how bird flu contaminated vaccines in Europe | Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic

CBC News
May 18, 2009

Drugs and vaccines against the global swine flu outbreak need to be available to poor countries, the head of the United Nations told top health officials Tuesday as they discussed delays in creating a vaccine.

“We must remain vigilant,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told a news conference at the World Health Organization’s annual meeting in Geneva.

“We may be in a grace period with H1N1 but we are still in the danger zone.”

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Flashback: Tamil protesters blockade Gardiner expressway to highlight Sri Lankan plight | Cars moving, but Toronto Tamil protest questioned | UN satellite imagery attests to shelling of Tamil ’safe zone’ | Tamil civilians slaughtered as army shells ‘no-fire zone’ | Seventh Tamil suicide by self-immolation to protest Sri Lankan genocide | Sri Lankans protest genocide at Toronto’s Union Station

CBC News
May 18, 2009

The leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka has been killed, officials said Monday, ending a 25-year quest for an independent homeland for the country’s Tamil minority.

State television broke into programming Monday to announce the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Sri Lanka’s government information department also sent a text message to cellphones across the country, saying the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader and two of his deputies had been killed.

But a pro-Tamil Tiger website later said Prabhakaran was still alive, the Reuters news agency reported.

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Flashback: Claim of Swiss account ‘preposterous,’ Mulroney says | Airbus funds likely source of Schreiber’s ‘Britan’ account: witness | Former Mulroney aide says he can’t recall writing letters about Airbus | Mulroney wanted Schreiber deal kept quiet, inquiry told | Mulroney, Kohl may have discussed Airbus: inquiry document | Schreiber says he paid Mulroney because he’d need him ‘sooner or later’ | Moores linked to Airbus before Mulroney came to power, memo reveals | Schreiber Inquiry: Premier’s wife testifies bank account was to be hers, not Mulroney’s | Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry steers clear of ‘Airbus affair’ on first day | Mulroney-Schreiber probe has no jurisdiction to find liability | Mulroney confidant knew about Airbus commissions: CBC News investigation | The Mulroney Affair: Why politicians seek out the rich | Twenty years ago today, the clock clicked down on free trade | The Fifth Estate: Money, Truth, and Spin

Jim Brown, Canadian Press
May 18, 2009

OTTAWA – Repeated claims by Brian Mulroney that he cancelled the initial version of the Bear Head armoured vehicle project while he was still prime minister are being challenged by a former Mulroney chief of staff.

Norman Spector contends that Mulroney, in his testimony before a public inquiry, has offered an inaccurate picture of his handling of the project backed by German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

“What we’ve learned about Mulroney is that he’s very slippery with words and evasive with his testimony,” Spector said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“He didn’t cancel the project in any incarnation. He never cancelled it.”

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Flashback: UK House of Lords warns over ’surveillance state’ | CCTV doesn’t keep us safe

Alan Travis, The Guardian
May 18, 2009

Criminologists’ research shows surveillance cameras are ‘at their most effective’ in cutting vehicle crime in car parks

The use of closed-circuit television in city and town centres and public housing estates does not have a significant effect on crime, according to Home Office-funded research to be distributed to all police forces in England and Wales this summer.

The review of 44 research studies on CCTV schemes by the Campbell Collaboration found that they do have a modest impact on crime overall but are at their most effective in cutting vehicle crime in car parks, especially when used alongside improved lighting and the introduction of security guards.

The authors, who include Cambridge University criminologist, David Farrington, say while their results lend support for the continued use of CCTV, schemes should be far more narrowly targeted at reducing vehicle crime in car parks.

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Flashback: Caught in the crossfire – the Swat valley’s fleeing families | CIA: Our Drones are Killing Terrorists. Promise. | 500,000 fleeing Pakistani airstrikes, fighting, UN reports | Pakistan is ‘abdicating to the Taliban,’ says Clinton | US military may escalate ‘war on terror’ by striking deeper into Pakistan | Report: CIA runs secret bases in Pakistan | Don’t-ask-don’t-tell Policy: Pakistan and U.S. Have Tacit Deal On Airstrikes | US Allowed Taliban, Al-Qaeda Airlift Evacuation

CBC News
May 18, 2009

Defence Minister Peter MacKay will travel to Pakistan on Monday to meet with officials over growing concerns about Taliban activity along the country’s shared border with Afghanistan.

MacKay will meet with his counterpart Ahmad Mukhtar in Islamabad for the talks. Officials have only said the discussions are expected to focus on regional issues.

MacKay has said the current instability in Pakistan is making it “the most dangerous country in the world.”

Pakistan has launched a major military offensive against the Taliban, which controls the Swat Valley in the country’s northwest.

Pakistan officials say at least 800 militants have been killed since the offensive began.

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It’s fitting that this story should emerge on Victoria Day since it is concerned with the stamp left by an individual intimately involved in the expansion of intelligence networks built on the British model throughout the Western hemisphere. Along with NGO’s and thinktanks modelled also after British instutions such as the Royal Institute for International Affairs, intelligence networks are one of the main arterials by which pressure may be exerted upon national governments from the seat of power.

William Stephenson, born in Winnipeg, went on to become the primary British intelligence agent working to integrate military intelligence agencies throughout North America and England. A close confidant of Roosevelt, William Stephenson had a hand in setting up the Wartime Office for Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA (the connections between the OSS and elite secret societies in America were fictionalized in the film The Good Shepherd), as well as MI5 and MI6. He set up a base for covert intelligence training in Whitby, Ontario, at which members of the RCMP and US Military forged their wartime connections. Wikipedia explains that Stephenson’s “British Security Coordination” offices, run out of the Rockefeller Centre in New York, were charged with the task of creating “a secret British intelligence network throughout the western hemisphere, and to operate covertly and very broadly on behalf of the British government and the Allies in aid of winning the war.”

Flashback: History: How the US Government Was Overthrown In Three Easy Steps

CBC News
May 18, 2009

Winston Churchill knew him as “Intrepid.”

But most people in his hometown of Winnipeg don’t know who he is, so a local group wants to rename a street after him to help make him as well-known at home as he is abroad.

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