Qatar's World Cup Slavery

Last year one worker died every two days during construction work for Qatar's 2022 World cup.
Qatar's guest worker program lures workers from Nepal and Sri Lanka promising good jobs.  Instead they end up working excessively long hours in scorching 50 degree heat, are denied sufficient food and water and barred from escaping home due to their passports being held and confiscated by abusive bosses.  They are modern day slaves.

A major part of the project is managed by an American company called CH2M Hill who's CEO is Jacqueline Hinman.  CH2M Hill claim that local contractors and Qatari government laws are to blame for the horrific working conditions but they will obviously have some power and leverage and should be taking some responsibility to prevent seven more years of worker deaths.  On current form there might be over 1200 more deaths due to working conditions by the time the world cup kicks off in seven years.  Clearly it's in the interest of many involved to keep this quiet.

There is a petition you can sign to pressure CH2M Hill who are the public face of World Cup construction to speak out and change things.  If the spotlight is put on this issue hopefully they will question their interests and in turn lead other companies to do the same and stop this modern day slavery.
The petition is hoping to reach at least 1 million names and will be delivered directly to CH2M Hill's CEO Jacqueline Hinman and to the Qatari government.
 Sign it
 https://secure.avaaz.org/en/bloodiest_world_cup_loc/?btfdHgb&v=54251

"As global citizens, we're deeply concerned by the conditions migrant workers in Qatar are forced to work under for the 2022 World Cup. We urge you to put in place a public policy that ensures every worker on World Cup sites can keep their passports, are granted exit visas, and protected with basic rights and safeties. We also call on the Qatari government to reform its "guest" worker programme and allow any foreign labourer the right to return home. These changes would inspire global confidence in Qatar and CH2M Hill, and have a dramatic impact on the 1.4 million migrants working in the country."

SIGN THE PETITION

Info sources:

Death toll among Qatar’s 2022 World Cup workers revealed (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/qatar-nepal-workers-world-cup-2022-death-toll-doha

Building a Better World Cup (Human Rights Watch)
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/qatar0612webwcover_0.pdf

At a Qatar Project Overseen by Americans, Workers Die Almost Daily (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-09-26/at-a-qatar-project-overseen-by-americans-workers-die-almost-daily

Qatar accused of dragging its feet over treatment of migrant workers
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/12/qatar-accused-dragging-feet-migrant-workers-world-cup-amnesty

Qatar risks losing World Cup without job reform (Reuters)
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/qatar-risks-losing-world-cup-without-job-reform-124324042--sow.html

Je suis une opération sous fausse bannière?

Is all as it seems with the Charlie Hebdo shootings? Could it really be a false flag operation?  Impossible to know but there's some rather odd discrepancies to the official story presented by the mainstream media.

• See the embedded video below for analysis of the un-edited footage of the cop that was reported dead with a point blank shot to the head with an ak-47? so the shot missed? no recoil? no blood? make your own conclusion as to why this part is edited out for the news because it's not at all gory. (link to uncensored footage)
•  The terrorists performed a well organised, well planned, well drilled operation but were identified by the ID card they dropped in the getaway car!  hmmmm, they took ID with them??? It's a bit like when they found the perfectly intact passports of the 9/11 hijackers amongst all the debris. What a stroke of luck!
•  The Police Commissioner on the case mysteriously 'committed suicide' on the night of the incident while preparing his report.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/police-commissioner-involved-in-charlie-hebdo-investigation-commits-suicide-total-news-blackout/5424149 It seems the media aren't allowed to mention this.
• Apparently- “police identified Coulibaly’s DNA from a cloth found near the scene of the policewoman’s in Montrouge, leading to his identification within two hours.” Wouldn't this be impossible in two hours??? Forensic DNA analysis takes time. Around two days or longer!
• By Wednesday night, the day it happened thousands of "Je Suis Charlie" banners had been produced ready to march on the streets to be televised around the world. That was done pretty quick, not impossible of course but easier to organise in advance. 
• The suspects are all reported dead.  Damn could have been useful to interogate them. Oh well!

 Why all this? I don't know!

Watch this video.....

 http://stormcloudsgathering.com/charlie-hebdo-shootings-censored-video

and here's a link to the original footage on liveleak.com being as it's all been taken down from youtube
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc6_1420632668&use_old_player=1

More War = Love and Peace

So for the last couple of years the US, Britain, NATO and Western aligned Arab countries have been funding, arming and assisting 'rebels' in Syria to try and overthrow Assad's Government, erm oops i meant to say Assad's regime, and now it has been decided that these rebels are actually terrorists and so we have to bomb them.  So does this mean they were previously collaborating with these Islamic State terrorists?  Oooh don't worry about that! stop asking questions, here are the facts.....

 No civilians will die or be displaced by these strikes, only evil terrorists will be affected because firing missiles from the sea hundreds of miles away has pin point accuracy.

No roads, homes, water supply or electricity infrastructure will be destroyed and in the remote chance that this does happen US troops will come and clear everything up and assist local independent contractors in repairing the damage.

Bombing a declared Islamic state is definitely not an act of war against Syria because the supposed enemy is not officially Syria as a sovereign nation.  It's also definitely not a war crime because although Syria's government gave no consent for military action the US told them they were going to drop bombs in their country regardless so it's all fine.

The alliance of Arab countries assisting the US militarily is absolutely not a PR front and it's just a coincidence that Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE have been and are staunch allies of the US.  All these countries will have hugely significant involvement and it won't just be their names tagged to the situation because as Obama tells us "IS is not America's fight alone"

The war against ISIS has no wider motive to further destabilise the Syrian Government, it's just a coincidence that US and Britain were eager to bomb them last year but it wasn't politically viable to do so at the time.

Hardly anyone has died in Iraq due to war over the last 10 years, only a million or so people so history suggests that arming Kurdish groups in Iraq won't really ignite more war and more deaths. Arming people to fight against people you have also armed previously has something to do with democracy somewhere, I'm sure it does.  More weapons = peace.

Russia and Iran having a mutual defense agreement with Syria is completely irrelevant and both of these countries warning the US against military actions inside Syria is nothing to be concerned about.

David Cameron announcing his backing of military strikes and offering support to the US will be a complete shock to us all and at no point do we expect to see Britain getting involved in another messy illegal war.

No part of the military industrial complex will profit from this latest round of war mongering, all weapons manufacturers and military contractors will still exist if there is no more war and they will stay make billions in profit if we have nobody to fire tomohawk missiles at and don't decide to bolster our nuclear defense systems when all war has ended.

All of this will be over really soon, everything will have a happy ending and people from all countries involved will be forever grateful that all this war and destruction has yet again brought love and  peace to the world.

stop the killing...and...erm...start the airstrikes!!!

Obama authorises Iraq air strikes on Islamist fighters

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28699832

.....says this mornings headlines.  So the 'rebels' that the US were backing, arming and funding in Syria to fight against the Syrian government are now called Islamic militants since crossing the border into Iraq.  If these Islamic State fighters or ISIS or whatever they are now calling themselves are forcibly taking control of Iraqi towns and slaughtering those who resist then yes it's terrible and must be stopped but then the same groups were trying to do the same in Syria and we were told they were the good guys when they were attacking Damascus.

Mr Obama said the US could not turn a "blind eye" to the prospect of violence "on a horrific scale", he said the US would act "carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide".

Erm..... Obama mate are you talking about Gaza now?  No? Oh right yes I forgot that Israel are merely defending themselves (with F-16 fighter jets), yeh of course you're talking about how we can't stand aside and allow all these innocent people to be oppressed and killed...... in Iraq

Too many people have died and suffered in Iraq already over the last 10 years of war so..... let's start airstrikes!!!

Speaking of the Iraq war and the million that died because of those pesky WMDs.....
http://jonnybrand.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/iraq.html

Scrap Trident

The British government wants to spend over £100,000,000,000 (100 billion) on renewing the countries nuclear weapon capabilities.  These weapons will very unlikely be used and even if they are then that means world war III and so we're all f**ked anyway!

£100billion could be used to employ 150,000 nurses and teachers per year for the next 30 years, think what that could do to help the future of our country!
Instead our MPs are in favour of lining the pockets of the military industrial complex and giving a future leader the potential to commit mass genocide.

Billions are being cut from health care, education and public services.  Currently £3b a year is spent on nuclear weapons, the renewal of the trident nuclear submarines will have a £25 billion procurement cost and a lifetime programme cost of over £100b

The final decision on whether to proceed with the replacement is due to be taken in 2016.

You can sign a petition to scrap trident and it's replacement here

MPs have tabled Early Day Motion 150 Trident Replacement (EDM 150) which calls on the Government to cancel plans to replace the Trident nuclear weapon submarines, arguing the case on both security and spending grounds.

You can find your MP's email and contact details here and ask them to add their name to EDM 150 in support. 68 MP's have signed so far.
click here to see Crewe and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson's reply to my email. I suspect a standard Conservative Party template letter but keep trying!

Nagasaki, Japan, August 1945

Hiroshima, Japan, August 1945

http://www.cnduk.org/

Israel continue their sickening war crimes

Whilst Israel continue their sickening war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza......

• Obama and co. loudly demand a ceasefire whilst quietly but simultaneously signing off military support to restock Israel's weapons and ammunitions. links to story on antiwar.com,  RT.com, rueters.com

"The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability," Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.  "This defense sale is consistent with those objectives."

This "self-defense capability" has killed 1600 Palestinians and counting, the vast majority of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.  The US give Israel $3.1bn is military aid per year BUT they want a ceasefire???

• The Independent reveal evidence that British supplied arms are being used in the Gaza massacre.  The Government refuses to investigate.  link to article.
• 1600 dead, Over 8000 injured.  400 thousand are homeless or displaced. Much of the Gaza Strip has less than two hours electricity a day and medicine and safe water are increasingly scarce.  Whoever initially broke the ceasefire is irrelevent when you consider all this and how Israel have now actually intensified their attacks since the ceasefire was broken.  globalresearch.com

Why won't world leaders actually do anything meaningful to stop this?  why are Israel untouchable?  David Cameron is scared to criticise Israel too harshly, is it because he'll lose support of the wealthy pro-Israeli conservative Party donors?  He does have a big election campaign to fund soon.....

theguardian.com

anonymous?

Do you want to be tracked online?  Do you want to be profiled and sold to advertisers?  Would you like to pay higher insurance rates?  How do you fancy your house being raided by police after you've done some innocent internet shopping?  Maybe have your private emails scanned?
What do you mean "NO!!!"??? .....Surely you don't mind?

Some of this routinely happens to you already and although you may take the stance of "I've got nothing to hide so I don't care", it's unwise to be ignorant to how data about you is collected, stored and used, and it's rather creepy and frightening when you discover the extent of it all.

You can take various measures to prevent, restrict and reduce your online visibility for which I'll link to the methods I recommend, but first a brief overview on what this is all about about.

• The more extreme case first- Sometime around July 2013 Michele Catalano was looking up prices of pressure cookers, while her husband was on google searching for the best deal on a new backpack. Somewhere within the US surveillance network, red flags went up.  The Catalano family then recieve a visit from 6 armed police officers from the anti-terrorism unit, they are questioned and have their family home searched all because their innocent internet activity vaguely matched the profile of making homemade bombs. full story
  
  
  • Something more likely to happen to you is that you notice those adverts that follow you around and seem to know what you've been searching for recently.  Your web browser stores tracking cookies to relay your previous browsing history.  This is useful to identify you to keep you logged on to an account and to remember your shopping cart but can also be read to recognise your past activity and predict what you may be interested in next.  Third party cookies can also be stored on your computer.  The sites you visit usually have third party adverts, these third parties build profiles about you, and that's why those adverts follow you.  Unfortunately that's not the end of it, profiles built on you can be sold and may be used against you! You may be steered towards higher prices in search results or receive higher insurance quotes, and then who knows what else!
  •  Google also saves all your searches, these search profiles can be legally requested and can be used against you (this does happen!), rogue employees can stalk your activity (this also happens), and google could get hacked (this has also happened).
  • Contrary to what you might think your internet searches on corporate search engines such as google are not listed in accordance to relevance of your search request, they are tailored to you.  Different users see different results and have their own profiled search bubble according to what you supposedly want to see.  Your search history and your 'likes' produce search results based on a prediction of what you already agree with, which effectively means your search is filtered and information that differs from your predicted interests are demoted in the search.  What are you missing?  Do you ever click past page 1 or 2 of the search results? Is your exposure to opposing information being limited?  Have you decided what you want to see?  Or has someone else predicted it?
  • The Edward Snowdon leaks on NSA surveillance revealed what we probably already knew but why be comfortable with the fact that everything we do online can be intercepted and collected as data including our private emails?  So in the name of 'anti-terrorism' NOTHING is private or anonymous?  Shortly following the Snowdon leaks two providers of encrypted email services closed down due to US government pressure to allow access to their data, Lavabit and Silent Circle shut down their services rather than be complicit with these requests.  Snowdon himself used encrypted email services (provided by Lavabit) as do many journalists, activists and civil society groups to prevent or at least make it more difficult for their communications to be monitored. 

• So what can we do about being tracked?  Well remember not long after you opened a facebook account and you realised that all your personal information was visible on your profile? You thought oh shit I don't want all those freaky ex school mates to be able to find my email address, date of birth and mobile number!  So what did you do?  You immediately adjusted your privacy settings and hid it all, right?  Well if you did that then why would you allow companys, comporations and government agencies access to all your personal information and activities?  Because you've got no choice?  Kind of but no, not quite..... like I said before I'm far from an expert but here's what I know.....
• The single easiest thing you can do takes literally 30 seconds, check your browser settings and decide what benefits you and what doesn't.  Some settings may help you complete forms, remember passwords and so on but will also send, save and store your information and activity.  There maybe pros and cons for some but I definitely see no benefit in having third party cookies enabled.  Overall the less features used the better for your privacy.

• Encrypted email- start using a secure email account, there are a number of such providers, most charge a fee, some including riseup.net are free and rely on donations, read about rise up's principles and policies here and here, and their statement on the Lavabit and Silent Circle closures here.  It should be noted of course that emails sent between two secure accounts stays encrypted for it's entire journey but an email sent from a secure account to a normal account is no longer encrypted once it's opened/replied to/forwarded at the other end and thus becomes readable data stored on that server.
• Use the Tor network- "Tor helps to reduce the risks of both simple and sophisticated traffic analysis by distributing your transactions over several places on the Internet, so no single point can link you to your destination. The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you — and then periodically erasing your footprints. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several relays that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going"
• Use a different non-corporate search engine- I suggest Duck Duck Go because they do not collect or share any personal information as per their privacy policy.  You can just go to the web page or you can add the search egine to your browser.
• Pirate Browser is a custom configured version of the firefox browser that uses the Tor client.  The configuration and application of this browser is designed to allow you to access blocked and censored parts of the web ie. websites that the government doesn't want you to see.  YES this is relevant in the UK!  not just in Iran and North Korea like you might have thought.

 And finally, do you know about David Cameron's new internet censorship plans?  The new 'porn filter' policy will require British ISP's to block pornographic content by default unless you request to opt in.  Can you imagine many people phoning Sky or BT and asking "erm...err...can you turn my porn filter off please?",  okay that's quite funny but it's not just objectionable because the government are deciding what's best for you (whether you like it or not) but the word 'pornography' is just the headline hiding the real objective which is much wider reaching web censorship.  Quoting the article linked at the beginning of this paragraph:

"The Open Rights Group spoke with several ISPs and found that in addition to pornography, users will also be required to opt in for any content tagged as violent, extremist, terrorist, anorexia and eating disorders, suicide, alcohol, smoking, Web forums, esoteric material and Web-blocking circumvention tools. These will all be filtered by default, and the majority of users never change default settings with online services."

How far will this develop from this starting point?  And just think how all that could be applied!  For instance political activists are often labelled as extremists and terrorists when authorities need to bring them to 'justice'.  Define extremist! where is the boundary?  Censorship and state surveillance has a long history of resulting in the repression of social movements.  Do we live in a police surveillance state?  Very nearly..... but not quite fully.... YET!

Tor network https://www.torproject.org/
DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com/
Pirate Bay browser http://piratebrowser.com/
Rise Up email https://riseup.net/en

9/11 and the THREE buildings that collapsed

Everyone's heard at least one conspiracy theory about 9/11 but there's so much disinformation, debunking, counter debunking and speculative theories that it's very difficult to know what's credible.  There are many holes in the official version of events but also many holes in most of the alternative theories, so what's true?  Was it an 'inside job', did middle eastern terrorists really plot the whole thing?  I won't attempt to answer that, but instead mention a fact that most people still do not know about 9/11.

World Trade Centre 7 (WTC7) was the third high rise building to collapse in New York on September 11th 2001.  The difference with WTC7 was that it was not hit by a plane but collapsed in free fall after fires burned on some of its floors for 7 hours.  This day is the only day in history that a steel framed high rise skyscraper building has been known to collapse due to fire damage, however severe the fire has been.

This link gives details of numerous skyscraper fires across the world that have suffered from longer, more severe fires but remained standing.
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html

This link is for 'ReThink911', a global public awareness campaign launched in an effort to spark a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001 sponsored by the group Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
http://rethink911.org/

 Any other information will be easy enough to find yourself by anyone who's interested but here's a few facts which may just make you wonder if WTC7 is the smoking gun that proves that 9/11 was even more sinister than you thought.

• If fire caused Building 7 to collapse, it would be the first ever fire-induced collapse of a steel-frame high-rise.

• Building 7’s collapse was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

• 23 minutes before it actually collapsed the BBC reported the collapse of WTC7, during the report the building can actually be seen in the background.... still standing!

• According to a Zogby poll in 2006 (5 years after 9/11), 43% of Americans did not know about Building 7.

• It took the federal government seven years to conduct an investigation and issue a report for Building 7.

• 2,000+ architects and engineers have signed a petition calling for a new investigation into the destruction of Building 7, specifying that it should include a full inquiry into the possible use of explosives.