FACTS AND TRUTH, NO MATTER WHOM IT OFFENDS. POLITICALLY INCORRECT, 100% INDEPENDENT. THINK! IT'S NOT ILLEGAL ...YET!
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
IF THE FBI KNOCKS ON YOUR DOOR, YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
WOULD YOU KNOW HOW TO RESPOND IF FEDERAL AGENTS KNOCKED ON YOUR DOOR, WITH OR WITHOUT WITHOUT A WARRANT, AND WANTED TO QUESTION YOU?
FIRST, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PROVIDE ANY IDENTIFICATION TO AGENTS WHO HAVE NO WARRANT.
"A law enforcement official can only obtain your name and address if he or she has a reasonable suspicion to believe that you have committed or are about to commit a crime [note #2]. Thus, if an FBI agent knocks at your door you do not have to identify yourself to him; you can simply say "I don't want to talk to you," or "You'll have to speak to my lawyer," and then close the door. An FBI agent, unlike a local police officer, does not have jurisdiction to investigate violations of state statute."
ALWAYS VERIFY THEIR IDENTITY. INSIST ON CREDENTIALS. IF NECESSARY, CALL THE AGENCY TO DO THIS AS MANY FAKE IDs EXIST TODAY.
SECONDLY, IF THERE IS NO WARRANT, AS STATED ABOVE, YOU MAY JUST CLOSE YOUR DOOR AND END THE ENCOUNTER.
IF YOU CHOOSE TO SPEAK WITH AGENTS, STEP OUTSIDE YOUR HOME AND CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND YOU.
BEFORE YOU VENTURE OUT, ANNOUNCE THAT YOU ARE BRINGING A VIDEO CAMERA OR SOME OTHER RECORDING DEVICE OUT WITH YOU AND INFORM THEM THAT YOU INTEND TO TAPE THE ENTIRE ENCOUNTER OUTSIDE YOUR HOME,
LIKE A STORY OF A TEXAS WOMAN WHO FACED THIS SITUATION EXPLAINED <HERE> ,
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ALLOW THEM INSIDE.
HAVE THEM STATE EXACTLY WHY THEY ARE THERE.
IF MORE THAN ONE AGENT IS PRESENT, ASK ALL OF THEM THE SAME QUESTION, "WHY ARE YOU HERE?" THEN TO QUALIFY THEIR ANSWERS, ASK, "IS THAT THE ONLY REASON YOU'RE HERE?"
THIRDLY, REMAIN CALM, KEEP YOUR HANDS VISIBLE TO THE AGENTS AT ALL TIMES, MAKE NO SUDDEN MOVES, DO NOT BEHAVE AGGRESSIVELY.
BE RESPECTFUL, BUT REMEMBER YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT.
WHILE "PLEADING THE 5TH" WORKS FOR MOST AND HAS SURELY WORKED FOR A LOT OF POLITICIANS, INCLUDING PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND SECRETARIES OF STATE, ETC, REFUSING TO ANSWER QUESTIONS IS FROWNED UPON BY MANY.
DON'T LET THAT SWAY YOU.
SAYING NOTHING CONVICTS YOU OF NOTHING.
YOU MAY STATE THAT YOU CHOOSE NOT TO ANSWER 'AT THIS TIME'.
YOU MAY NOT KNOW THAT FEDERAL AGENTS CAN LIE TO YOU TO GET YOU TO DISCLOSE INFORMATION, BUT IF YOU LIE TO AN AGENT, YOU CAN GO TO JAIL.
AFTER ALL, YOU WON'T KNOW IF THEY ARE RECORDING YOU BY SOME TYPE OF HIDDEN DEVICE.
NEVER SAY SOMETHING LIKE, "I KNOW WHY YOU'RE HERE."
EVERYTHING YOU SAY CAN BE CONSTRUED AS "VOLUNTEERING INFORMATION".
THERE IS ALSO A PAMPHLET THAT VERY SIMPLY EXPLAINS YOUR RIGHTS IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS.
IT IS AVAILABLE IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES AS AN INSTANT DOWNLOAD AT <THE CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS>.
IT IS AVAILABLE IN PLAIN TEXT AT http://bcn.boulder.co.us/environment/vail/ifanagentknocks.html.
IT IS ALSO SHOWN ON THE WEBSITE DETAILING THE TEXAS WOMAN'S ENCOUNTER.
AFTER THE AGENTS HAVE LEFT, IT MAY BE WISE TO CONTACT AN ATTORNEY AND AT LEAST DOCUMENT THAT YOU WERE APPROACHED BY FEDERAL AGENTS.
Are there any circumstances under which it is advisable to cooperate with an FBI investigation?
Never without a lawyer.
There are situations, however, in which an investigation appears to be legitimate, narrowly focused, and not designed to gather political intelligence.
Such an investigation might occur if you have been the victim of a crime, or are a witness to civil rights violations being prosecuted by the federal government.
Under those circumstances, you should work closely with a lawyer to see that your rights are protected while you provide only necessary information relevant to a specific incident. Lawyers may be able to avoid a witness' appearance before a grand jury, or control the circumstances of the appearance so that no one's rights are jeopardized.
DO BE AWARE THAT THE TACTICAL OPERATIONS UNIT OF THE FBI AND OTHER AGENCIES ARE, FOR ALL INTENT AND PURPOSE, COURT-SANCTIONED BURGLARS.
THEY CAN AND HAVE QUIETLY BROKEN INTO HOMES, OFFICES, ETC, AND PLANTED 'BUGGING DEVICES' WHICH MAY HAVE RECORDED EVERY WORD SAID WITHIN RANGE.
THIS WAS PERHAPS EXPLAINED BEST IN RONALD KESSLER'S BOOK, THE SECRETS OF THE FBI.
IF YOU THINK YOUR INDOOR CANINE PAL WILL PREVENT THIS, THINK AGAIN.
AS KESSLER WARNS, THE FBI HAS VETERINARIANS ON CONTRACT WHO CAN PROVIDE BOTH TRANQUILIZERS AND "WAKE-UP DRUGS" THAT WILL SAFELY DISABLE 'FIDO' WHILE THEY ARE ON THE PREMISES.
IF YOU ARE NOT HOME WHEN AGENTS COME TO CALL BUT A FAMILY MEMBER OR GUEST IS, OR EVEN A NEIGHBOR WHO HAS A KEY TO YOUR HOME, BE AWARE THAT, IF THEY ALLOW THE AGENTS INSIDE, THOSE AGENTS CAN LOOK AROUND WHERE THEY PLEASE.
THEY CAN EVEN WALK OUT WITH ANYTHING THEY DEEM "EVIDENCE".
BE SURE TO DISCUSS THIS WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY.
THE SAME APPLIES TO BUSINESS OFFICES.
IF THE WORST HAPPENS...
Q: Agents arrested me in my home. Can they search my house?
A: The area near where you are arrested can be searched without a warrant. But your entire house cannot be searched unless there is a warrant that describes in detail the places to be searched and the people or things to be seized.
Q: What if agents have a search warrant?
A: You have the right to see the warrant. The warrant must tell in detail the places to be searched and the people or things to be seized. If the police have a warrant, you cannot stop them from entering and searching, but you can and should tell them to search only where the warrant authorizes. Ask if you are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. You should take notes including names, badge numbers, and what agency the officers are from. If others are present, have them act as witnesses. Give the information from you and your witnesses to your lawyer.
Q: Do I have to answer questions if the police have a search warrant?
A: No. You may be asked questions before, during, or after the search. A search warrant does not mean you have to answer questions.
ALSO BE AWARE THAT THE FBI, AS WELL AS OTHER AGENCIES, HAVE A HABIT OF CHARGING YOU WITH AN EASILY PROVABLE "CRIME" SO THEY CAN OBTAIN WARRANTS FOR SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER WHICH MIGHT BE HARDER TO PROVE.
EXAMPLE:
FCC REGULATIONS ARE MANY AND LITTLE KNOWN, BUT ANY CONSUMER CAN BE "GUILTY" OF BREAKING ONE OF THESE MULTITUDE OF LITTLE RULES.
DID YOU DOWNLOAD COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, SONGS, MOVIES? ARE YOU "BORROWING OR LENDING" WI-FI, ACCEPTING OR GIVING ACCESS TO ANOTHER'S INTERNET OR TV SERVICE?
"According to the pseudo-copyright regime that Big Cable and Hollywood believe in, your television manufacturer needed a contract to show you a movie, your router needed a license to stream video data to your smart phone, and before you activated your personally built computer at home you would need a license to view content on the internet. It gets worse than just arguments for new rights to controls that have no basis in copyright law.
The Unlock the (Set-Top) Box opponents even express fears about user-empowering technologies from 30 years ago. The Recording Industry Association of America, for example, expressed concerns that third-party set-top box devices will include features such as the ability to manually or automatically record streaming content ."
"By 2010, the FCC enacted open Internet rules, but the agency's legal approach was eventually struck down. FCC officials would erase the legal ambiguity by no longer classifying the Internet as an "information service" but a "telecommunications service" subject to Title II of the 1934 Communications Act."
YOU MAY BE 'BUSTED' FOR SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS THAT, OR ACCUSED ALONG THE LINES OF THE FCC's "OBSCENITY, INDECENCY AND PROFANITY" LAWS, SO THE FEDS CAN HAVE A LONG LOOK AROUND FOR EVIDENCE REGARDING SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY.
WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THE FBI MAKES A WAY.
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, KNOW THE LAW.
KNOWING BOTH CAN KEEP US ALL OUT OF JAIL IF WE EVER BECOME TARGETS OF ONE OF OUR 'BIG BROTHER' AGENCIES WHO ARE WATCHING US 24 HOURS A SAY, EVERY DAY, AND EVERYWHERE WE GO.
AS I HAVE WRITTEN BEFORE, WE ARE EASILY TRACKED BY THE CHIPS IN OUR CREDIT CARDS, CELL PHONES, PETS' MICROCHIPS, GROCERY STORE "DISCOUNT CARDS", DRIVER'S LICENSES, AUTOMOBILE TAGS AND AUTOMOBILE ONBOARD COMPUTERIZED HARDWARE AND STORE PURCHASES, JUST TO NAME A FEW.
WE ARE BASICALLY SITTING DUCKS, BUT WE CAN BE INFORMED DUCKS AND AVOID A LOT OF UNNECESSARY GRIEF WHEN DEALING WITH OUR BELOVED WATCHERS.
KNOWLEDGE EMPOWERS.
IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NOT A VALID EXCUSE.
//WW
AMERICA'S 17 SPY AGENCIES BIGGER THREAT THAN RUSSIA
"The U.S. Intelligence Community is a coalition of 17 agencies and organizations, including the ODNI, (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) within the Executive Branch that work both independently and collaboratively to gather and analyze the intelligence necessary to conduct foreign relations and national security activities."
PART OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF AMERICA'S FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, SAME AS THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT, THE 'INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY' HAS ADMITTED TO SPYING ON THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH (CONGRESS) AND WAS RECENTLY BUSTED SPYING ON THE JUDICIAL BRANCH, ON ALMOST 200 JUDGES....OH, AND ON ALMOST ALL THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES.
IT'S HAPPENED OVER AND OVER AGAIN THROUGH THE YEARS...BUT THEN, IT HAPPENS AGAIN.
THOUGH CAUGHT RED-HANDED, NOBODY GOES TO JAIL.
IF YOU OR I WERE CAUGHT DOING WHAT TH CIA, FBI, NSA HAS DONE, WE'D BE IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR LIFE!
CIA admits to spying on Senate staffers | World news | The Guardian
CIA spokesman Dean Boyd acknowledged that agency staff had improperly monitored the computers of committee staff members, who were using a network the agency had set up, called RDINet. “Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between [the committee] and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet,” he said.
Democrat Mark Udall of Colorado, said Brennan should go. “I have no choice but to call for the resignation of CIA director John Brennan,” Udall said after a briefing on the inspector general’s findings.
“The CIA unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking into Senate intelligence committee computers. This grave misconduct is not only illegal, but it violates the US constitution’s requirement of separation of powers. These offenses, along with other errors in judgment by some at the CIA, demonstrate a tremendous failure of leadership, and there must be consequences.
Senators Okay With Spying On Citizens, But Outraged It Happened To Congress
NO, THE SENATORS AND ALL THE REST IN PUBLIC OFFICE ARE SCARED OUT OF THEIR USELESS MINDS, SCARED THAT MAYBE THIS TIME THE 'INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY' HAS ALL THE DIRT ON THEM IT NEEDS TO BLACKMAIL THEM AND 'OWN' THEM FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.AND EVEN MORE AFRAID THAT SOMEONE, SOME NEW WHISTLEBLOWER WILL LEAK WHATEVER THAT DIRT IS TO THE PRESS, OR TO JULIAN ASSANGE.
“This is Richard Nixon stuff,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters.
“This is dangerous to the democracy. Heads should roll, people should go to jail if it’s true.
If it is, the legislative branch should declare war on the CIA.”
THE TEA ROOM WOULD PAY A BUNDLE TO SEE LINDSEY'S FILE, OR TO SEE HIM TRY TO GO TO WAR WITH THE CIA, NOW THAT THEY OWN HIM.
MAR.11, 2014, HUFFINGTON POST
"Edward Snowden said Tuesday it was hypocritical for some lawmakers to finally express anger when the privacy of elected officials was breached.
“It’s clear the CIA was trying to play ‘keep away’ with documents relevant to an investigation by their overseers in Congress, and that’s a serious constitutional concern,” Snowden said in a statement to NBC News. “But it’s equally if not more concerning that we’re seeing another ‘Merkel Effect,’ where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it’s a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them.”
THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA, LONG-TIME TOOL OF THE CIA, BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION.
IT IS THE LATE 1940s...
Operation MOCKINGBIRD — The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort is headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham.
Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player.
Eventually, the CIA’s media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more.
By the CIA’s own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.
A declassified CIA document outlined the project.
1966, The Ramparts Affair —When the C.I.A. Duped College Students - The New Yorker
The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars to hire "professors" to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveals that the National Students’ Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including draft deferments.
1964, FBI BLACKMAILS MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
NOV. 11, 2014
"When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received this letter, nearly 50 years ago, he quietly informed friends that someone wanted him to kill himself — and he thought he knew who that someone was. Despite its half-baked prose, self-conscious amateurism and other attempts at misdirection, King was certain the letter had come from the F.B.I.
Its infamous director, J. Edgar Hoover, made no secret of his desire to see King discredited.
A little more than a decade later, the Senate’s Church Committee on intelligence overreach confirmed King’s suspicion."
FOR MORE ON FBI BLACKMAIL SEE FBI Director Hoover's Dirty Files .
1968, Operation CHAOS — The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.
OPERATION CHAOS IS LISTED IN SALON'S ARTICLE, Mar 20, 2014.
8 times the CIA used American spies to spy on Americans - Salon.com
Sept. 11, 2001
A CIA inspector general’s report published in 2013 found that for a decade after the Twin Towers fell, four CIA officers were embedded in the New York Police Department. The NYPD itself was in trouble at the time, facing allegations of unconstitutional surveillance of Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey.
The report found that one CIA officer operated as if he were exempt from limitations — such as those prohibiting CIA officers from domestic spying — because he was on an unpaid leave of absence. Another CIA analyst had access to “unfiltered” police reports, according to The New York Times.
Project MK-ULTRA, 1950s through 1960s
While not an instance of domestic spying, this case of the CIA’s domestic meddling was much worse. The CIA dosed hundreds of unwitting Americans with psychoactive drugs in the 1950s and 1960’s as part of a program run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The agency’s experiments with LSD targeted patients in mental hospitals, prisoners, prostitutes and addicts,according to The New York Times.
"The Patriot Act, which the NSA cited as its legal basis for collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, is also cited by the CIA to collect information on international money transfers, according to a Wall Street Journal report from January.
The report cited anonymous officials familiar with a CIA program that tracked the financial transfers of millions, including American citizens. The CIA cannot collect intelligence on Americans, but reportedly gained authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to track international transactions to detect terror operations."
AMERICA'S OSS (OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES), CREATED BY FDR IN 1942, WAS ABOLISHED IN 1945 AND THE CIA WAS CREATED.
AFTER ONLY 42 YEARS IN OPERATION...
The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations.
Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."
AFTER ANOTHER 30 YEARS, DARE WE IMAGINE THAT DEATH TOLL NOW?
THE DRONE STRIKES DURING THE BUSH#2 AND OBAMA REGIMES...HANDLED BY THE CIA.
Obama's Embrace of Drone Strikes Will Be a Lasting Legacy--New York Times
Why the CIA Is Allowed to Run America's Deadliest Drone War
Four U.S. citizens killed in Obama drone strikes
WE READ "OBAMA ALLOWED..." AGAIN AND AGAIN IN THOSE REPORTS, BUT MAINSTREAM MEDIA NOW WANTS US TO BELIEVE OBAMA HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE 7AGENCIES MONITORING TRUMP TOWER?
THAT'S LUDICROUS!
OF COURSE HE KNEW, AND APPROVED.
AN ASTONISHING READ FOR ALL AMERICANS...
"The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" — Victor Marchetti and John Marks publish this whistle-blowing history of CIA crimes and abuses. Marchetti has spent 14 years in the CIA, eventually becoming an executive assistant to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Marks has spent five years as an intelligence official in the State Department.
ANOTHER REVEALING BOOK:
"Inside the Company" — Philip Agee publishes a diary of his life inside the CIA. Agee has worked in covert operations in Latin America during the 60s, and details the crimes in which he took part.
America in Turmoil: From Deep State Insurgency to Deep State Spying
"We’re learning that the Orwellian nightmare of myopic control over us as a national population is far worse than ever imagined.
In recent years during the Bush-Obama regime, U.S. citizens have witnessed their civil rights – once guaranteed under their no longer upheld Constitution, eroded away into complete oblivion. Under the nefarious pretense of national security, the powers-that-shouldn’t-be have opportunistically stolen both our legal rights as well as literally our property rights in the form of our homes, our cars, our cash, and bank account assets under the grossly unlawful civil forfeiture laws regardless of whether any crimes have been committed.
Increasing military and law enforcement “random” checkpoints are rapidly popping up all over the United States to monitor and restrict our right to navigable access. Microchipped drivers licenses, passports, credit cards as well as backdoor installed GPS monitoring and spying devices in our cell phones have illicitly, secretly been in place for years now.
Biometrics like facial and voice recognition and implanted microchips are all population control mechanisms.
But the latest CIA crimes constitute an unprecedented assault allowing deep state to infiltrate and attack us through malware embedded in our iPhones, Android computer applications as well as smart TVs in order to listen in and shockingly violate every last vestige of our decimated privacy.
Even while Samsung Smart TVs are turned off, the monitoring device is still secretly turned on and eavesdropping on our conversations. Another insidiously dangerous feature to this CIA malware is that it can extract usernames, passwords, and Wi-Fi keys expanding invasive access to the victim’s shared network and other connected devices.
As far back as a half decade ago, then CIA Director retired General David Petraeus was touting how hi tech advances facilitated a myriad of ways Americans can be spied on in a Wired article entitled “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You through Your Dishwasher.”
With the rise of the “smart home,” you’d be sending tagged, geo-located data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room’s ambiance.
Constitutional attorney John Whitehead expressed his sobering yet truthful conclusion regarding our stolen liberties:
Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves. If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.
MARCH 9,2017, FORBES REPORTED THAT JULIAN ASSANGE WAS ABOUT TO RELEASE FILES THAT SHOW THE CIA HAS ACTED ILLEGALLY BY SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS, SOMETHING IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO DO, SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLETELY ILLEGAL.
Wikileaks had recovered more than 22,000 IP addresses in the 8,000 pages of Vault 7 files that "corresponded" to the U.S, Assange said.
His comments came after the CIA released a statement Wednesday in response to the massive leak, in which it claimed it would never spy on Americans, as to do so would be illegal. "It is ... important to note that CIA is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals here at home, including our fellow Americans."
In that same statement, the CIA declined to comment on the authenticity of the leaks.
Assange said individuals should be concerned about the CIA's targeted approach to surveillance, as a comparison to the NSA's bulk passive data collection.
That's because the CIA is increasingly moving towards an automated approach, he said, pointing to the CIA's Automated Implant Branch.
According to Assange, the group develops not just viruses and other types of hacking tools, but automates how they work.
"Is the CIA interested in you? With the increasing automation of these attacks, the interest might not need to be that high. You might know someone who knows someone [who is a target]," he added.
If the CIA has spied on U.S. citizens with the myriad hacking tools in the Vault 7 leak, it wouldn't be unprecedented.
It admitted in 2014 to unconstitutionally snooping on Congress by hacking into the network used by the Senate intelligence committee during its investigation into CIA torture."
ALL OF THE ABOVE SHOULD CONVINCE EVEN THE BIGGEST DOUBTER THAT WE AMERICANS ARE UNDER ILLEGAL AND INCESSANT SURVEILLANCE, CONTRARY TO OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PRIVACY.
WE WOULDN'T KNOW MANY OF THE FACTS PRESENTED ABOVE WERE IT NOT FOR THE WHISTLEBLOWERS FROM THESE 17 AGENCIES, CONCERNED AMERICANS WHO RISKED IT ALL TO COME FORWARD TO LET US KOW THAT THINGS JUST ARE NOT AS THEY SHOULD BE.
BUT WHISTLEBLOWERS, DESPITE NEW LAWS TO PROTECT THEM, ARE STILL HATED AND PUNISHED BY THE AGENCIES THEY UNMASK AND BY OUR OWN MILITARY AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
IN MAY OF 2016, 'THE GUARDIAN' PUBLISHED AN EXTRAORDINARY ARTICLE ENTITLED " HOW THE PENTAGON PUNISHED NSA WHISTLEBLOWERS" .
MOST LIKELY, VERY FEW AMERICANS READ THAT ARTICLE, BUT EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD.
IT SHOWS THE LENGTHS THAT AMERICA'S OWN 'SPY AGENCIES' WILL GO TO TO STOP WHISTLEBLOWERS FROM REVEALING TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC JUST HOW CLOSELY AND HOW ILLEGALLY WE ARE ALL BEING MONITORED, 24 HOURS A DAY.
"By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did. He leaked top-secret documents revealing that the National Security Agency was spying on hundreds of millions of people across the world, collecting the phone calls and emails of virtually everyone on Earth who used a mobile phone or the internet.
IT ISN'T JUST THE NSA.
THE CIA, FBI, DHS (DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY), FEMA AGENTS, BORDER PATROL, STATE BUREAUS OF INVESTIGATION, LOCAL SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENTS, TO NAME A FEW, HAVE ALL MADE HEADLINES BY SPYING ON AMERICANS, ILLEGAL SEARCH AND SEIZURE OR 'PROFILING' MILLIONS OF AMERICANS
THE SAD FATES OF WHISTLEBLOWERS
If you want to know why Snowden did it, you ought to know the stories of two other men.
The first is Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblowerwho blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did.
Leaks and the Law: The Story of Thomas Drake | History | Smithsonian
Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising his concerns through official channels. And he got crushed.
Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today.
Adding insult to injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s surveillance programme were largely ignored.
But there is another man whose story has never been told before, who is speaking out publicly for the first time here. His name is John Crane, and he was a senior official in the Department of Defense who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake – until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well.
Whistle-Blower, Beware - The New York Times
According to Thomas Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), was that he practised “civil disobedience” rather than “lawful” whistleblowing. (GAP, a non-profit group in Washington, DC, that defends whistleblowers, has represented Snowden, Drake and Crane.)
“None of the lawful whistleblowers who tried to expose the government’s warrantless surveillance – and Drake was far from the only one who tried – had any success,” Devine told me.
“They came forward and made their charges, but the government just said, ‘They’re lying, they’re paranoid, we’re not doing those things.’ And the whistleblowers couldn’t prove their case because the government had classified all the evidence.
Whereas Snowden took the evidence with him, so when the government issued its usual denials, he could produce document after document showing that they were lying. That is civil disobedience whistleblowing.”
The Bush administration’s mass surveillance efforts were partly exposed in December 2005, when the New York Times published a front page article by reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, which revealed that the NSA was monitoring international phone calls and emails of some people in the U.S. without obtaining warrants.
Eight years later, that story would be dwarfed by Snowden’s revelations. But at the time, the Bush White House was furious – and they were determined to find and punish whoever had leaked the details to the New York Times.
POLICE STATE..."MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"
"We are now becoming a police state,” Diane Roark said in a 2014 television interview. Referring to herself and the other NSA whistleblowers, she added, “We are the canaries in the coal mine. We never did anything wrong. All we did was oppose this programme. And for that, they just ran over us.”
“They’re saying, ‘We’re doing this to protect you,’” Roark’s fellow whistleblower William Binney told me. “I will tell you that that’s exactly what the Nazis said in Special Order 48 in 1933 – we’re doing this to protect you. And that’s how they got rid of all of their political opponents.”
CHILLING, ISN'T IT?
BUT THAT ISN'T REALLY EVEN THE TIP OF THE PROVERBIAL ICEBERG.
THE MOST RECENT CIA/NSA WHISTLE-BLOWER, FORMER CONTRACTOR DENNIS MONTGOMERY, WENT TO CONGRESS TWO YEARS AGO WITH 47 HARD DRIVES AND OVER 600 MILLION PAGES OF EVIDENCE THAT INCLUDED PROOF THAT DONALD TRUMP WAS BEING MONITORED.
THEY SENT HIM AWAY.
THEY ALSO KEPT QUIET ABOUT WHAT HE REVEALED TO THEM.
TWO YEARS AGO.
WAS WHAT HE TOOK AWAY FROM THE CIA/NSA PART OF THAT MASSIVE WIKILEAKS DUMP IN EARLY MARCH?
OR WAS THAT MORE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY INSIDER AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMER WHOM JULIAN ASSANGE INSINUATED LEAKED THE PODESTA FILES... THE MURDERED SETH RICH?
MARCH 8, 2017
"With the WikiLeaks document dump yesterday, it is now virtually certain that the intelligence agencies, despite court rulings by the Honorable Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, are continuing to violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by engaging in massive spying on the American people.
Specifically, the WikiLeaks documents revealed that "our" intelligence agencies have the power to turn on our smart televisions and cellphones and eavesdrop on a 24/7 basis.
The key to getting to the bottom of all of this does not lie with congressional committees, but with the court of Judge Leon.
The Senate and House intelligence committees have outrageously known about this massive spying for many years, and covered it up.
So too has the FBI, at its highest levels, which is supposed to be investigating this illegal spying, thanks to the information and documentation provided to them under grant of immunity by my client, whistleblower Dennis Montgomery. Montgomery, under grant of immunity to produce classified documents he had taken from the agencies, has even testified under oath to FBI Special Agents William Giardina and William Barnett, working under the authority and direction of FBI Director Comey and his General Counsel James Baker. Importantly, much of what was revealed by WikiLeaks yesterday, Montgomery already had informed the FBI about, including but not limited to the software which allows for this massive spying."
"When Montgomery came forward as a whistleblower to congressional intelligence committees and various other congressmen and senators, including Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, like Comey, once had a reputation for integrity, he was “blown off;” no one wanted to even hear what he had to say.
As a result, Montgomery went to attorney [former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice] and Freedom Watch and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman - who then approached the FBI:
Under grants of immunity, which I (KLAYMAN) obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia. There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration."
THIS IS THE REALITY OF LIFE IN AMERICA TODAY.
WE LIVE IN A POLICE STATE BECAUSE OUR OWN GOVERNMENT, LIKE ANCIENT ROME, IS AFRAID OF ITS OWN CITIZENS AND MILITARY.
WE ARE UNDER 24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE AND THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION BEING COLLECTED ON ALL OF US IS BEYOND COMPREHENSION.
READ THE OFFICIAL LETTER SENT TO NUNES IN FULL, IN PDF FORM <HERE>.
[NOTE: THAT IS AN INSTANT DOWNLOAD FILE.]
AS KLAYMAN EXPLAINS:
"During my meeting with House Intelligence Committee counsel Allen R. Sousa I politely warned him that if Chairman Nunes, who himself had that same day undercut President Trump by also claiming that there is no evidence of surveillance by the Obama administration, I would go public with what would appear to be the House Intelligence Committee’s complicity in keeping the truth from the American people and allowing the FBI to continue its apparent cover-up of the Montgomery “investigation.”
And, that is where it stands today. The big question: will House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes do his job and hold FBI Director Comey’s feet to the fire about the Montgomery investigation?
[NOTE: Klayman has detailed all of this in a NewsMax article,]
WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST TWO DAYS IS BECAUSE OF THAT AGENT COMING FORWARD AND BECAUSE THE MAN WHOM HE WAS ABLE TO CONVINCE TO LOOK AT ALL THAT EVIDENCE SENT A LETTER TO CONGRESS SAYING IF THEY DIDN'T REVEAL THE FACTS, HE WOULD.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.
"Montgomery is in poor health. He suffered a brain aneurysm and a related multi-infarct stroke on May 12, 2014. He suffered both a hemorrhagic stroke (caused by ruptured blood vessels that cause brain bleeding) and ischemic stroke (loss of blood flow).
This type of stroke has a 70-80% death rate in the first 28 days, which miraculously Montgomery survived.
He was in the hospital for two months, through July 2014. He has been left permanently disabled and partially paralyzed."
MAYBE THAT'S WHY THE FBI AND CONGRESS ARE DRAGGING THEIR FEET AND POSTPONING THE INEVITABLE...MAKING IT PUBLICLY KNOWN WHAT WAS IN THOSE FILES?
DO THEY HOPE THIS WITNESS WILL DIE BEFORE REVEALING MORE?
THESE RECENT EVENTS UNFOLDED BACK IN FEBRUARY.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA DID NOT MENTION IT AT ALL.
THAT'S BECAUSE MSM IS COMPLICIT WITH THE "DEEP STATE" THAT RUNS THIS SHOW WE CALL AMERICA.
THE FBI OBVIOUSLY LIED TO CONGRESS WHEN COMEY SAID THERE HAD BEEN NO SURVEILLANCE ON TRUMP DURING THE CAMPAIGN.
DENNIS MONTGOMERY SUPPIED HIM WITH THE PROOF OF THAT.
TRUMP TOWER WAS UNDER "WIDESPREAD" SURVEILLANCE, AS OTHER EX-AGENTS AND CONTRACTORS HAVE TOLD THE BBC AND ABC NEWS, BUT, SUPPOSEDLY, AND AS WE ARE BEING TOLD, THE SPYING WAS "ONLY BECAUSE OF RUSSIAN BUSINESSMEN AND RUSSIAN MAFIA MEMBERS IN 4 TO 6 UNITS INSIDE THE TOWER".
HOW BLOODY DAMNED CONVENIENT, YES?
HILLARY CLINTON'S TEAM, ESPECIALLY JOHN PODESTA, HAD BUSINESS DEALINGS WITH THOSE SAME RUSSIAN BANKS, AND EVEN NANCY PELOSI MET WITH THE SAME RUSSIANS THAT THE TRUMP TEAM IS ACCUSED OF MEETING WITH.
CLINTON HERSELF HAD MADE A DEAL WITH RUSSIA TO SELL 20% OF AMEREICA'S DEPLETED URANIUM TO RUSSIAN STATE-OWNED COMPANIES.
BOTH TEAMS ALSO MET WITH SAUDI OFFICIALS, GERMAN OFFICIALS, JAPANESE AND CHINESE OFFICIALS, MANY OFFICIALS FROM MANY NATIONS.
WHY IS MEETING WITH RUSSIANS SO DIFFERENT?
AFTER ALL, RUSSIA WAS OUR ALLY IN BOTH WORLD WARS...GERMANY AND JAPAN WERE NOT.
CHINA HAS THREATENED THE U.S. WITH MILITARY RETALIATION FOR YEARS OVER THAT SOUTH CHINA SEA FIASCO.
CHINA HAS HACKED INTO AMERICAN AGENCIES, COMPANIES, EVEN TRIED TO DISABLE OUR POWER GRID FOR YEARS NOW.
IT WAS SAUDI ARABIANS, FOR THE MOST PART, WHO ATTACKED AMERICA ON 9-11.
WHY IS RUSSIA SEEN AS WORSE THAN THOSE?
AFTER READING THE ABOVE, I HAD TO ASK MYSELF HOW WE CAN HONESTLY SAY THAT RUSSIA COULD DO MORE HARM TO THE USA THAN OUT OWN SPY AGENCIES HAVE.
THIS WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY IF ALL THOSE HARD DRIVES AND DOCUMENTS ARE PUBLICLY REVEALED AND THE LID IS BLOWN OFF THE TRUTH OF HOW CLOSELY AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE WATCHED, HOW DEEPLY THE FBI, NSA, HOMELAND SECURITY, THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, ET AL, INVADE OUR PRIVACY.
It boils down to this: Larry Klayman has seen things we have not, knows more than he is disclosing, but has lit a fire under some Congressional butts and we just may see the old 'deep state" cookie crumble...at least a little, if Klayman and Montgomery live to tell the WHOLE tale.
Klayman served as a trial lawyer and prosecutor in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Reagan administration and was on the trial team that succeeded in breaking up the AT&T monopoly in the communications industry.
HE KNOWS HOW THEY OPERATE.
He also knows what gets their attention.
He now has their attention and most in Congress are losing it.
After all, the Obama administration also spied on Congressmen.
One of the audio tapes made public by Federal Judge G. Murray Snow revealed that Brennan and Clapper particularly targeted and wiretapped Donald Trump a “zillion times.”
The audio tapes were released by Judge Snow in Maricopa County, Arizona in the Justice Department’s civil contempt case against Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio. The tapes also reveal that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court (FISA), Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, 156 other judges, members of Congress, and Donald J. Trump were targeted by a computer program designed by Montgomery and named "the HAMMER". This program accessed the phone calls, emails and bank accounts of millions of ordinary Americans.
After Montgomery produced his documentation, the FBI gave him two immunity agreements: one in the area of “production” and the other regarding “testimony.”
The FBI then took possession of Montgomery’s documentation.
Attorney Klayman asserts that this information precipitated James Clapper’s resignation.
How it ALL falls into place...
Clapper had gone before Congress to testify under oath that the NSA, and other intelligence agencies including the CIA,” were NOT collecting massive amounts of telephonic and Internet metadata on hundreds of millions of innocent American citizens” according to Klayman.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations proved otherwise.
Clapper was subsequently found to be untruthful and resigned on November 17, 2016, effective January 20, 2017, the day Donald Trump was sworn in.
Clapper has not been prosecuted for perjury.
Again, the easiest access to the audio tapes released by Judge Snow are at a "questionably reliable" website at http://theamericanreport.org/2017/03/17/whistleblower-tapes-trump-wiretapped-zillion-times-hammer-brennans-clappers-secret-computer-system/
But those tapes WERE evidence against Arapaio, they are REAL, and they are REVEALING, to say the least.
As Montgomery stated, "I Hacked Into All Of America For Brennan & Clapper."
SEVENTEEN AGENCIES SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS AND ON ENLISTED AND VETERAN MILITARY MEMBERS FOR NO JUST CAUSE, WITHOUT WARRANTS, AND STORING OUR MOST PRIVATE INFORMATION FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.
IT COULD BE OUR NAMES BROUGHT UP IN THAT ULTRA-SECRET FISA COURT TOMORROW, LIKE DONALD TRUMP'S NAME CAME UP IN 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016.
THAT TRUMP TEAM MEMBERS HAVE BEEN "UNMASKED" BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ITSELF IS AN OUTRAGE AND SHOWS WHAT WE CAN EXPECT FROM THOSE WITH TOO MUCH INVASIVE POWER OVER THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
THE TERM "UNMASKED" MEANS THAT THE IDENTITY OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHO WAS PART OF AN 'INTELLIGENCE AGENCY'S' SURVEILLANCE WAS ILLEGALLY REVEALED.
ACCORDING TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES:
"Trump presidential transition officials had their communications monitored and “unmasked” by the intelligence community, the chairman of the House intelligence committee said Wednesday, offering the first major piece of evidence of possible illegal activity by Obama officials against Donald Trump as president-elect.
But at some point U.S. intelligence officials unmasked some Trump figures — a process that involves attaching their names to the private conversations.
That information was then circulated within the intelligence community, Mr. Nunes said.
“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated in what appears to be intelligence reporting channels,” said Mr. Nunes,
Mr. Nunes said several dozen examples of surveillance reports were brought to him after he issued an open call for any evidence of illegal behavior. He said the material he saw appeared to have been gathered during the transition, from November to January."
UNMASKED.
WE SAW THE SAME THING HAPPEN BACK DURING THE GEORGE W. BUSH REGIME.
Bush admits administration leaked agent name - CIA operative Valerie Plame | NBC News
WE ARE SIMPLY NOT SAFE FROM THOSE 'SWORN TO PROTECT'.
FROM ABC NEWS 6, NOV. 20, 2014:
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation has 115.7 million files going back to it's start in 1908.
The FBI has a section on it's website explaining how you can see if you have a file.
“For all Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI performs an automated search of the indexes for 115.7 million files contained in the FBI's Central Records System. The search covers the files at all FBI locations. For a search based on a name, the search uses variations of the name- including initials and the order of the words, as well as any additional information provided by the requester,” said an FBI spokesman.You can start the process of requesting your own file or looking at some high profile documents already made public at: http://www.fbi.gov/foia/ ."
WERE YOU EVER CONSIDERED AN ACTIVIST, A 'POLITICAL DISSENTER'?
HAVE YOU PUBLICLY SPOKEN OUT AGAINST ABORTION, IN FAVOR OF ENDING ALL U.S. FOREIGN "INTERVENTIONS" AND UNDECLARED WARS, OR ARE YOU A MILITARY VETERAN, SOMEONE WHO DOES BUSINESS OVERSEAS, TRAVELS OUT OF THE COUNTRY FREQUENTLY, SOMEONE WHO COLLECTS FIREARMS, SOMEONE WHO HAS VOICED THE OPINION THAT GOVERNMENT IS JUST TOO BIG, TOO INVASIVE IN PRIVATE LIVES?
THESE AND MANY OTHER STATEMENTS/CIRCUMSTANCES PROBABLY MEAN THE FBI HAS A FILE ON YOU.
"The Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee that investigated COINTELPRO in the 1970s, found that a combination of factors led law enforcers to become law breakers, resulting in "the unrestrained collection of domestic intelligence."
The Church Committee's exposure of the FBI's COINTELPRO abuses led to a series of reforms, including laws designed to regulate government surveillance and internal guidelines (Attorney General's Guidelines) which limited the FBI's investigative authority and spelled out the rules that govern law enforcement operations.
These reasonable limits have been either abandoned or ignored since 9/11.
With the enactment of the USA Patriot Act Congress expanded the FBI's authority to make secret demands for personal information and records about not just suspected terrorists or spies but about anyone the FBI deemed merely "relevant" to an FBI investigation. Not surprisingly, a series of five audits by the Department of Justice Inspector General confirmed widespread FBI mismanagement, misuse and abuse of this unchecked authority, which is now used, more often than not, to target Americans."
SURPRISED?
YOU SHOULDN'T BE.
IT'S BEEN GOING ON FOR DECADES, WELL OVER 60 YEARS.
AMERICANS HAVE SIMPLY TOLERATED IT, PRETENDED NOT TO NOTICE, OR DECIDED NOT TO CARE.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR CITIZENS TO DEMAND ANEND TO THIS?
I HONESTLY DON'T BELIEVE ENOUGH PEOPLE WILL GIVE A BIG ENOUGH DAMN TO EVER CHANGE IT.
HOPE I'M WRONG, BUT I'VE WATCHED APATHY AND COMPLACENCY GROW IN AMERICA ALL MY 70 YEARS OF LIFE.
AMERICANS ARE RIDING A RUNAWAY TRAIN.
SEEMS WE HAVE NO BRAKEMEN OR ENGINEERS ABOARD.
______________________________________________
OTHER RECENT WHISTLEBLOWERS YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF, A VERY SHORT LIST:
~ 2015 to present day, DCAA J. Kirk McGill was the Auditor-in-Charge of a 2013 audit of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) conducted on behalf of the Office of the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The audit concluded that NEON and the NSF had conspired to evade the prohibition against payment of certain costs to Government grantees including lobbying, parties, luxury foreign travel, and alcohol. The audit was later overruled by top DCAA management. McGill reported the improper overruling of the audit, which violated Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards, to the Office of the Inspector General, United States Department of Defense and DCAA's Internal Review Directorate (later the DCAA Inspector General). Neither watchdog took any action to address McGill's concerns, despite being notified as early as January 2014 of the problem. McGill then reported the findings and the alleged cover up to Congress. On December 11, 2015, NEON was fired from the multibillion-dollar project.
McGill's primary disclosure was published online on January 5, 2015. McGill's allegations of retaliation remain under investigation by the United States Office of Special Counsel.
~ 2014, Former State Department official John Tye released an editorial in The Washington Post in July 2014, highlighting concerns over data collection under Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12333. While Tye's concerns are rooted in classified material he had access to through the State Department, he has not publicly released any classified materials.
~ 2014, Commander (CDR) Ben Strickland, alleged multiple acts of retaliation in violation of the Military Whistleblower Protection Act by Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) and senior Coast Guard Officials after he reported a sexual assault onboard USCGC Munro in May 2013. The Coast Guard denied retaliation on their part and claimed he was not eligible for whistleblower protection. CDR Strickland alleged that he became an unlawful target of the very investigations which stemmed from his report of a sexual assault and filed a formal complaint which was accepted for investigation by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General and pends administrative review by the Board for Correction of Military Records.
~2013, David Weber, an attorney and Certified Fraud Examiner, was the assistant inspector general of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He learned of misconduct in the Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford investigations, and of suspected hacking by a unit of the Chinese military.
He insisted that agency management report the misconduct and hacking to Congressional Oversight Committees, but instead was terminated for supposedly unrelated reasons. Shortly after his lawsuit became public, news stories broke that the People's Liberation Army compromised information technology at 160 U.S. corporations and government agencies.
~ 2012, Captain Joshua Wilson and Major Jeremy Gordon (USAF) exposed the malfunctioning oxygen system on board the F-22 Raptor systems that were causing pilots to become disoriented, first to superior officers and then to CBS 60 Minutes. As a result, Wilson's superiors cancelled his promotion to Major, took him off flying duty and threatened to take away his wings. Wilson was also forced out of his desk job at Air Combat Command. No such actions faced Major Gordon
~2012, Carmen Segarra discovered that Goldman Sachs did not have a conflict of interest policy when it advised El Paso Corp. on selling itself to Kinder Morgan, a company which Goldman Sachs owned a $4 billion stake. She was forced by her superiors at the Federal Reserve to falsify her report, but stated that her professional view of the situation had not changed. She was shortly thereafter fired.
The New York Federal Reserve disputes that she was fired in retaliation.
~ 2011, Blake Percival filed a Qui Tam Whistleblower claim under seal in 7/2011 alleging that USIS had defrauded the U.S. Government by submitting unfinished background investigations to the government for payment. USIS has been under scrutiny since it was revealed that they had performed the background investigation of Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis.
~ 2008, GUANTANAMO COVER-UP: A veteran of US Army intelligence, Lt. Col. Abraham served from September 2004 to March 2005 as part of OARDEC (the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants), the organization responsible for conducting the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) at Guantánamo, as well as compiling the information used by those tribunals. The CSRTs, which began shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, that the prisoners at Guantánamo had statutory habeas corpus rights, were introduced as a deliberate attempt to subvert the Supreme Court ruling, and were widely criticized for preventing the prisoners from having legal representation and for relying on secret evidence that was withheld from the prisoners.
However, it was not until Lt. Col. Abraham filed a statement in connection with one of the Guantánamo cases that a former insider confirmed that the gathering of materials for use in the tribunals was severely flawed, consisting of intelligence “of a generalized nature — often outdated, often ‘generic,’ rarely specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to those individuals’ status,” that “what purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,” and that the whole system was geared towards rubber-stamping the detainees’ prior designation as “enemy combatants.” In a subsequent statement, Abraham also pointed out that, because the tribunals had little or no access to the intelligence agencies, “Most of the information collected … consisted … of information obtained during interrogations of other detainees” (and may, therefore, have been made through the use of torture, coercion or bribery).
~ 2003, Retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Karen Kwiatkowski who worked as a desk officer in The Pentagon and in a number of roles in the National Security Agency. She has written a number of essays on corrupting political influences of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has said that she was the anonymous source for Seymour Hersh and Warren Strobel on their exposés of pre-war intelligence.
~ 2002, Glenn Walp and Steven L. Doran were hired to investigate allegations of fraud at the University of California's Los Alamos National Laboratory. They were fired after they exposed breaches of security as well as fraud and mismanagement to the Department of Energy. Their investigation resulted in congressional hearings. Walpo received a $930,000 settlement from the University of California (UC) for wrongful termination.
Doran accepted UC's offer of a position as security consultant.
~ 2002, Former FBI translator naturalized American citizen of Turkish descent who was fired in 2002 by the FBI for attempting to report coverups of security issues, potential espionage, and incompetence. She has been gagged by the State Secrets Privilege in her efforts to go to court on these issues, including a rejection recently by the Supreme Court of the United States to hear her case without comment. She is now founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) that is looking to lobby congress and help other whistleblowers with legal and other forms of assistance.
~ 2001, Joseph Nacchio, chairperson and CEO of Qwest when it refused to participate in NSA spying on its customers in February 2001. Qwest was the only telecommunications company to require FISA court orders. Nacchio claims that in retaliation, Qwest subsequently was denied government contracts.
~ Kathryn Bolkavac, Originally hired by the U.S. company DynCorp as part of a $15 million UN contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia. She eventually reported that such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking. Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia.
Bolkovac filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on August 2, 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor.
~ Stefan Kruszewski is a whistleblower, with settlements from suits brought against Southwood Psychiatric Hospital, Pfizer, Inc., and AstraZeneca.
Kruszewski became aware of inadequate care and the exploiting of state-committed mentally ill children through overmedication and physical and chemical restraints while working for the Department of Public Welfare, Bureau of Program Integrity for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. When he refused to keep silent about his discoveries, he was fired from his position at the state.
Kruszewski won settlements for both a First Amendment case against the state of Pennsylvania as well as his first Qui tam lawsuit against the hospital.
In the cases against pharmaceutical giants, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, Kruszewski highlighted clinical science that was misrepresented by the defendants in their marketing and promotion of certain drugs. He also demonstrated problems with off-label marketing (marketing that promotes uses, patients or doses that are not approved by the US FDA) which resulted in heightened, but often non-transparent, risk to the health of patients and exceptional costs to taxpayers and state and federal governments.
~ Jesselyn Radack, a DEPT. OF JUSTICE lawyer, told Newsweek that the DOJ both lied about and destroyed documents regarding accused 'American Taliban' Qala-i-Jangi fortress detainee John Walker Lindh's interrogation and his parent's attempts to get him a lawyer. The DOJ retaliated by pushing her out of the Department, getting her fired from her next job, trying to get her law licence revoked, & other means.
~ Coleen Rowley, FBI employee, outlined the FBI's slow action before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Jointly named Time's People of the Year in 2002.
NSWBC - National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (official website)
//WW
PART OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF AMERICA'S FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, SAME AS THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT, THE 'INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY' HAS ADMITTED TO SPYING ON THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH (CONGRESS) AND WAS RECENTLY BUSTED SPYING ON THE JUDICIAL BRANCH, ON ALMOST 200 JUDGES....OH, AND ON ALMOST ALL THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES.
IT'S HAPPENED OVER AND OVER AGAIN THROUGH THE YEARS...BUT THEN, IT HAPPENS AGAIN.
THOUGH CAUGHT RED-HANDED, NOBODY GOES TO JAIL.
IF YOU OR I WERE CAUGHT DOING WHAT TH CIA, FBI, NSA HAS DONE, WE'D BE IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR LIFE!
CIA admits to spying on Senate staffers | World news | The Guardian
CIA spokesman Dean Boyd acknowledged that agency staff had improperly monitored the computers of committee staff members, who were using a network the agency had set up, called RDINet. “Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between [the committee] and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet,” he said.
Democrat Mark Udall of Colorado, said Brennan should go. “I have no choice but to call for the resignation of CIA director John Brennan,” Udall said after a briefing on the inspector general’s findings.
“The CIA unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking into Senate intelligence committee computers. This grave misconduct is not only illegal, but it violates the US constitution’s requirement of separation of powers. These offenses, along with other errors in judgment by some at the CIA, demonstrate a tremendous failure of leadership, and there must be consequences.
Senators Okay With Spying On Citizens, But Outraged It Happened To Congress
NO, THE SENATORS AND ALL THE REST IN PUBLIC OFFICE ARE SCARED OUT OF THEIR USELESS MINDS, SCARED THAT MAYBE THIS TIME THE 'INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY' HAS ALL THE DIRT ON THEM IT NEEDS TO BLACKMAIL THEM AND 'OWN' THEM FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.AND EVEN MORE AFRAID THAT SOMEONE, SOME NEW WHISTLEBLOWER WILL LEAK WHATEVER THAT DIRT IS TO THE PRESS, OR TO JULIAN ASSANGE.
“This is Richard Nixon stuff,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters.
“This is dangerous to the democracy. Heads should roll, people should go to jail if it’s true.
If it is, the legislative branch should declare war on the CIA.”
THE TEA ROOM WOULD PAY A BUNDLE TO SEE LINDSEY'S FILE, OR TO SEE HIM TRY TO GO TO WAR WITH THE CIA, NOW THAT THEY OWN HIM.
MAR.11, 2014, HUFFINGTON POST
"Edward Snowden said Tuesday it was hypocritical for some lawmakers to finally express anger when the privacy of elected officials was breached.
“It’s clear the CIA was trying to play ‘keep away’ with documents relevant to an investigation by their overseers in Congress, and that’s a serious constitutional concern,” Snowden said in a statement to NBC News. “But it’s equally if not more concerning that we’re seeing another ‘Merkel Effect,’ where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it’s a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them.”
THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA, LONG-TIME TOOL OF THE CIA, BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION.
IT IS THE LATE 1940s...
Operation MOCKINGBIRD — The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort is headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham.
Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player.
Eventually, the CIA’s media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more.
By the CIA’s own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.
A declassified CIA document outlined the project.
1966, The Ramparts Affair —When the C.I.A. Duped College Students - The New Yorker
The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars to hire "professors" to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveals that the National Students’ Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including draft deferments.
1964, FBI BLACKMAILS MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
NOV. 11, 2014
"When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received this letter, nearly 50 years ago, he quietly informed friends that someone wanted him to kill himself — and he thought he knew who that someone was. Despite its half-baked prose, self-conscious amateurism and other attempts at misdirection, King was certain the letter had come from the F.B.I.
Its infamous director, J. Edgar Hoover, made no secret of his desire to see King discredited.
A little more than a decade later, the Senate’s Church Committee on intelligence overreach confirmed King’s suspicion."
FOR MORE ON FBI BLACKMAIL SEE FBI Director Hoover's Dirty Files .
1968, Operation CHAOS — The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.
OPERATION CHAOS IS LISTED IN SALON'S ARTICLE, Mar 20, 2014.
8 times the CIA used American spies to spy on Americans - Salon.com
Sept. 11, 2001
A CIA inspector general’s report published in 2013 found that for a decade after the Twin Towers fell, four CIA officers were embedded in the New York Police Department. The NYPD itself was in trouble at the time, facing allegations of unconstitutional surveillance of Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey.
The report found that one CIA officer operated as if he were exempt from limitations — such as those prohibiting CIA officers from domestic spying — because he was on an unpaid leave of absence. Another CIA analyst had access to “unfiltered” police reports, according to The New York Times.
Project MK-ULTRA, 1950s through 1960s
While not an instance of domestic spying, this case of the CIA’s domestic meddling was much worse. The CIA dosed hundreds of unwitting Americans with psychoactive drugs in the 1950s and 1960’s as part of a program run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The agency’s experiments with LSD targeted patients in mental hospitals, prisoners, prostitutes and addicts,according to The New York Times.
"The Patriot Act, which the NSA cited as its legal basis for collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, is also cited by the CIA to collect information on international money transfers, according to a Wall Street Journal report from January.
The report cited anonymous officials familiar with a CIA program that tracked the financial transfers of millions, including American citizens. The CIA cannot collect intelligence on Americans, but reportedly gained authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to track international transactions to detect terror operations."
AMERICA'S OSS (OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES), CREATED BY FDR IN 1942, WAS ABOLISHED IN 1945 AND THE CIA WAS CREATED.
AFTER ONLY 42 YEARS IN OPERATION...
The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations.
Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."
AFTER ANOTHER 30 YEARS, DARE WE IMAGINE THAT DEATH TOLL NOW?
THE DRONE STRIKES DURING THE BUSH#2 AND OBAMA REGIMES...HANDLED BY THE CIA.
Obama's Embrace of Drone Strikes Will Be a Lasting Legacy--New York Times
Why the CIA Is Allowed to Run America's Deadliest Drone War
Four U.S. citizens killed in Obama drone strikes
WE READ "OBAMA ALLOWED..." AGAIN AND AGAIN IN THOSE REPORTS, BUT MAINSTREAM MEDIA NOW WANTS US TO BELIEVE OBAMA HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE 7AGENCIES MONITORING TRUMP TOWER?
THAT'S LUDICROUS!
OF COURSE HE KNEW, AND APPROVED.
AN ASTONISHING READ FOR ALL AMERICANS...
"The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" — Victor Marchetti and John Marks publish this whistle-blowing history of CIA crimes and abuses. Marchetti has spent 14 years in the CIA, eventually becoming an executive assistant to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Marks has spent five years as an intelligence official in the State Department.
ANOTHER REVEALING BOOK:
"Inside the Company" — Philip Agee publishes a diary of his life inside the CIA. Agee has worked in covert operations in Latin America during the 60s, and details the crimes in which he took part.
America in Turmoil: From Deep State Insurgency to Deep State Spying
"We’re learning that the Orwellian nightmare of myopic control over us as a national population is far worse than ever imagined.
In recent years during the Bush-Obama regime, U.S. citizens have witnessed their civil rights – once guaranteed under their no longer upheld Constitution, eroded away into complete oblivion. Under the nefarious pretense of national security, the powers-that-shouldn’t-be have opportunistically stolen both our legal rights as well as literally our property rights in the form of our homes, our cars, our cash, and bank account assets under the grossly unlawful civil forfeiture laws regardless of whether any crimes have been committed.
Increasing military and law enforcement “random” checkpoints are rapidly popping up all over the United States to monitor and restrict our right to navigable access. Microchipped drivers licenses, passports, credit cards as well as backdoor installed GPS monitoring and spying devices in our cell phones have illicitly, secretly been in place for years now.
Biometrics like facial and voice recognition and implanted microchips are all population control mechanisms.
But the latest CIA crimes constitute an unprecedented assault allowing deep state to infiltrate and attack us through malware embedded in our iPhones, Android computer applications as well as smart TVs in order to listen in and shockingly violate every last vestige of our decimated privacy.
Even while Samsung Smart TVs are turned off, the monitoring device is still secretly turned on and eavesdropping on our conversations. Another insidiously dangerous feature to this CIA malware is that it can extract usernames, passwords, and Wi-Fi keys expanding invasive access to the victim’s shared network and other connected devices.
As far back as a half decade ago, then CIA Director retired General David Petraeus was touting how hi tech advances facilitated a myriad of ways Americans can be spied on in a Wired article entitled “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You through Your Dishwasher.”
With the rise of the “smart home,” you’d be sending tagged, geo-located data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room’s ambiance.
Constitutional attorney John Whitehead expressed his sobering yet truthful conclusion regarding our stolen liberties:
Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves. If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.
MARCH 9,2017, FORBES REPORTED THAT JULIAN ASSANGE WAS ABOUT TO RELEASE FILES THAT SHOW THE CIA HAS ACTED ILLEGALLY BY SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS, SOMETHING IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO DO, SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLETELY ILLEGAL.
Wikileaks had recovered more than 22,000 IP addresses in the 8,000 pages of Vault 7 files that "corresponded" to the U.S, Assange said.
His comments came after the CIA released a statement Wednesday in response to the massive leak, in which it claimed it would never spy on Americans, as to do so would be illegal. "It is ... important to note that CIA is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals here at home, including our fellow Americans."
In that same statement, the CIA declined to comment on the authenticity of the leaks.
Assange said individuals should be concerned about the CIA's targeted approach to surveillance, as a comparison to the NSA's bulk passive data collection.
That's because the CIA is increasingly moving towards an automated approach, he said, pointing to the CIA's Automated Implant Branch.
According to Assange, the group develops not just viruses and other types of hacking tools, but automates how they work.
"Is the CIA interested in you? With the increasing automation of these attacks, the interest might not need to be that high. You might know someone who knows someone [who is a target]," he added.
If the CIA has spied on U.S. citizens with the myriad hacking tools in the Vault 7 leak, it wouldn't be unprecedented.
It admitted in 2014 to unconstitutionally snooping on Congress by hacking into the network used by the Senate intelligence committee during its investigation into CIA torture."
ALL OF THE ABOVE SHOULD CONVINCE EVEN THE BIGGEST DOUBTER THAT WE AMERICANS ARE UNDER ILLEGAL AND INCESSANT SURVEILLANCE, CONTRARY TO OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PRIVACY.
WE WOULDN'T KNOW MANY OF THE FACTS PRESENTED ABOVE WERE IT NOT FOR THE WHISTLEBLOWERS FROM THESE 17 AGENCIES, CONCERNED AMERICANS WHO RISKED IT ALL TO COME FORWARD TO LET US KOW THAT THINGS JUST ARE NOT AS THEY SHOULD BE.
BUT WHISTLEBLOWERS, DESPITE NEW LAWS TO PROTECT THEM, ARE STILL HATED AND PUNISHED BY THE AGENCIES THEY UNMASK AND BY OUR OWN MILITARY AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
IN MAY OF 2016, 'THE GUARDIAN' PUBLISHED AN EXTRAORDINARY ARTICLE ENTITLED " HOW THE PENTAGON PUNISHED NSA WHISTLEBLOWERS" .
MOST LIKELY, VERY FEW AMERICANS READ THAT ARTICLE, BUT EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD.
IT SHOWS THE LENGTHS THAT AMERICA'S OWN 'SPY AGENCIES' WILL GO TO TO STOP WHISTLEBLOWERS FROM REVEALING TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC JUST HOW CLOSELY AND HOW ILLEGALLY WE ARE ALL BEING MONITORED, 24 HOURS A DAY.
"By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did. He leaked top-secret documents revealing that the National Security Agency was spying on hundreds of millions of people across the world, collecting the phone calls and emails of virtually everyone on Earth who used a mobile phone or the internet.
IT ISN'T JUST THE NSA.
THE CIA, FBI, DHS (DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY), FEMA AGENTS, BORDER PATROL, STATE BUREAUS OF INVESTIGATION, LOCAL SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENTS, TO NAME A FEW, HAVE ALL MADE HEADLINES BY SPYING ON AMERICANS, ILLEGAL SEARCH AND SEIZURE OR 'PROFILING' MILLIONS OF AMERICANS
THE SAD FATES OF WHISTLEBLOWERS
If you want to know why Snowden did it, you ought to know the stories of two other men.
The first is Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblowerwho blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did.
Leaks and the Law: The Story of Thomas Drake | History | Smithsonian
Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising his concerns through official channels. And he got crushed.
Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today.
Adding insult to injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s surveillance programme were largely ignored.
But there is another man whose story has never been told before, who is speaking out publicly for the first time here. His name is John Crane, and he was a senior official in the Department of Defense who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake – until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well.
Whistle-Blower, Beware - The New York Times
According to Thomas Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), was that he practised “civil disobedience” rather than “lawful” whistleblowing. (GAP, a non-profit group in Washington, DC, that defends whistleblowers, has represented Snowden, Drake and Crane.)
“None of the lawful whistleblowers who tried to expose the government’s warrantless surveillance – and Drake was far from the only one who tried – had any success,” Devine told me.
“They came forward and made their charges, but the government just said, ‘They’re lying, they’re paranoid, we’re not doing those things.’ And the whistleblowers couldn’t prove their case because the government had classified all the evidence.
Whereas Snowden took the evidence with him, so when the government issued its usual denials, he could produce document after document showing that they were lying. That is civil disobedience whistleblowing.”
The Bush administration’s mass surveillance efforts were partly exposed in December 2005, when the New York Times published a front page article by reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, which revealed that the NSA was monitoring international phone calls and emails of some people in the U.S. without obtaining warrants.
Eight years later, that story would be dwarfed by Snowden’s revelations. But at the time, the Bush White House was furious – and they were determined to find and punish whoever had leaked the details to the New York Times.
POLICE STATE..."MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"
"We are now becoming a police state,” Diane Roark said in a 2014 television interview. Referring to herself and the other NSA whistleblowers, she added, “We are the canaries in the coal mine. We never did anything wrong. All we did was oppose this programme. And for that, they just ran over us.”
“They’re saying, ‘We’re doing this to protect you,’” Roark’s fellow whistleblower William Binney told me. “I will tell you that that’s exactly what the Nazis said in Special Order 48 in 1933 – we’re doing this to protect you. And that’s how they got rid of all of their political opponents.”
CHILLING, ISN'T IT?
BUT THAT ISN'T REALLY EVEN THE TIP OF THE PROVERBIAL ICEBERG.
THE MOST RECENT CIA/NSA WHISTLE-BLOWER, FORMER CONTRACTOR DENNIS MONTGOMERY, WENT TO CONGRESS TWO YEARS AGO WITH 47 HARD DRIVES AND OVER 600 MILLION PAGES OF EVIDENCE THAT INCLUDED PROOF THAT DONALD TRUMP WAS BEING MONITORED.
THEY SENT HIM AWAY.
THEY ALSO KEPT QUIET ABOUT WHAT HE REVEALED TO THEM.
TWO YEARS AGO.
WAS WHAT HE TOOK AWAY FROM THE CIA/NSA PART OF THAT MASSIVE WIKILEAKS DUMP IN EARLY MARCH?
OR WAS THAT MORE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY INSIDER AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMER WHOM JULIAN ASSANGE INSINUATED LEAKED THE PODESTA FILES... THE MURDERED SETH RICH?
MARCH 8, 2017
"With the WikiLeaks document dump yesterday, it is now virtually certain that the intelligence agencies, despite court rulings by the Honorable Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, are continuing to violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by engaging in massive spying on the American people.
Specifically, the WikiLeaks documents revealed that "our" intelligence agencies have the power to turn on our smart televisions and cellphones and eavesdrop on a 24/7 basis.
The key to getting to the bottom of all of this does not lie with congressional committees, but with the court of Judge Leon.
The Senate and House intelligence committees have outrageously known about this massive spying for many years, and covered it up.
So too has the FBI, at its highest levels, which is supposed to be investigating this illegal spying, thanks to the information and documentation provided to them under grant of immunity by my client, whistleblower Dennis Montgomery. Montgomery, under grant of immunity to produce classified documents he had taken from the agencies, has even testified under oath to FBI Special Agents William Giardina and William Barnett, working under the authority and direction of FBI Director Comey and his General Counsel James Baker. Importantly, much of what was revealed by WikiLeaks yesterday, Montgomery already had informed the FBI about, including but not limited to the software which allows for this massive spying."
"When Montgomery came forward as a whistleblower to congressional intelligence committees and various other congressmen and senators, including Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, like Comey, once had a reputation for integrity, he was “blown off;” no one wanted to even hear what he had to say.
As a result, Montgomery went to attorney [former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice] and Freedom Watch and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman - who then approached the FBI:
Under grants of immunity, which I (KLAYMAN) obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia. There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration."
THIS IS THE REALITY OF LIFE IN AMERICA TODAY.
WE LIVE IN A POLICE STATE BECAUSE OUR OWN GOVERNMENT, LIKE ANCIENT ROME, IS AFRAID OF ITS OWN CITIZENS AND MILITARY.
WE ARE UNDER 24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE AND THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION BEING COLLECTED ON ALL OF US IS BEYOND COMPREHENSION.
READ THE OFFICIAL LETTER SENT TO NUNES IN FULL, IN PDF FORM <HERE>.
[NOTE: THAT IS AN INSTANT DOWNLOAD FILE.]
AS KLAYMAN EXPLAINS:
"During my meeting with House Intelligence Committee counsel Allen R. Sousa I politely warned him that if Chairman Nunes, who himself had that same day undercut President Trump by also claiming that there is no evidence of surveillance by the Obama administration, I would go public with what would appear to be the House Intelligence Committee’s complicity in keeping the truth from the American people and allowing the FBI to continue its apparent cover-up of the Montgomery “investigation.”
And, that is where it stands today. The big question: will House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes do his job and hold FBI Director Comey’s feet to the fire about the Montgomery investigation?
[NOTE: Klayman has detailed all of this in a NewsMax article,]
WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST TWO DAYS IS BECAUSE OF THAT AGENT COMING FORWARD AND BECAUSE THE MAN WHOM HE WAS ABLE TO CONVINCE TO LOOK AT ALL THAT EVIDENCE SENT A LETTER TO CONGRESS SAYING IF THEY DIDN'T REVEAL THE FACTS, HE WOULD.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.
"Montgomery is in poor health. He suffered a brain aneurysm and a related multi-infarct stroke on May 12, 2014. He suffered both a hemorrhagic stroke (caused by ruptured blood vessels that cause brain bleeding) and ischemic stroke (loss of blood flow).
This type of stroke has a 70-80% death rate in the first 28 days, which miraculously Montgomery survived.
He was in the hospital for two months, through July 2014. He has been left permanently disabled and partially paralyzed."
MAYBE THAT'S WHY THE FBI AND CONGRESS ARE DRAGGING THEIR FEET AND POSTPONING THE INEVITABLE...MAKING IT PUBLICLY KNOWN WHAT WAS IN THOSE FILES?
DO THEY HOPE THIS WITNESS WILL DIE BEFORE REVEALING MORE?
THESE RECENT EVENTS UNFOLDED BACK IN FEBRUARY.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA DID NOT MENTION IT AT ALL.
THAT'S BECAUSE MSM IS COMPLICIT WITH THE "DEEP STATE" THAT RUNS THIS SHOW WE CALL AMERICA.
THE FBI OBVIOUSLY LIED TO CONGRESS WHEN COMEY SAID THERE HAD BEEN NO SURVEILLANCE ON TRUMP DURING THE CAMPAIGN.
DENNIS MONTGOMERY SUPPIED HIM WITH THE PROOF OF THAT.
TRUMP TOWER WAS UNDER "WIDESPREAD" SURVEILLANCE, AS OTHER EX-AGENTS AND CONTRACTORS HAVE TOLD THE BBC AND ABC NEWS, BUT, SUPPOSEDLY, AND AS WE ARE BEING TOLD, THE SPYING WAS "ONLY BECAUSE OF RUSSIAN BUSINESSMEN AND RUSSIAN MAFIA MEMBERS IN 4 TO 6 UNITS INSIDE THE TOWER".
HOW BLOODY DAMNED CONVENIENT, YES?
HILLARY CLINTON'S TEAM, ESPECIALLY JOHN PODESTA, HAD BUSINESS DEALINGS WITH THOSE SAME RUSSIAN BANKS, AND EVEN NANCY PELOSI MET WITH THE SAME RUSSIANS THAT THE TRUMP TEAM IS ACCUSED OF MEETING WITH.
CLINTON HERSELF HAD MADE A DEAL WITH RUSSIA TO SELL 20% OF AMEREICA'S DEPLETED URANIUM TO RUSSIAN STATE-OWNED COMPANIES.
BOTH TEAMS ALSO MET WITH SAUDI OFFICIALS, GERMAN OFFICIALS, JAPANESE AND CHINESE OFFICIALS, MANY OFFICIALS FROM MANY NATIONS.
WHY IS MEETING WITH RUSSIANS SO DIFFERENT?
AFTER ALL, RUSSIA WAS OUR ALLY IN BOTH WORLD WARS...GERMANY AND JAPAN WERE NOT.
CHINA HAS THREATENED THE U.S. WITH MILITARY RETALIATION FOR YEARS OVER THAT SOUTH CHINA SEA FIASCO.
CHINA HAS HACKED INTO AMERICAN AGENCIES, COMPANIES, EVEN TRIED TO DISABLE OUR POWER GRID FOR YEARS NOW.
IT WAS SAUDI ARABIANS, FOR THE MOST PART, WHO ATTACKED AMERICA ON 9-11.
WHY IS RUSSIA SEEN AS WORSE THAN THOSE?
AFTER READING THE ABOVE, I HAD TO ASK MYSELF HOW WE CAN HONESTLY SAY THAT RUSSIA COULD DO MORE HARM TO THE USA THAN OUT OWN SPY AGENCIES HAVE.
THIS WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY IF ALL THOSE HARD DRIVES AND DOCUMENTS ARE PUBLICLY REVEALED AND THE LID IS BLOWN OFF THE TRUTH OF HOW CLOSELY AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE WATCHED, HOW DEEPLY THE FBI, NSA, HOMELAND SECURITY, THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, ET AL, INVADE OUR PRIVACY.
It boils down to this: Larry Klayman has seen things we have not, knows more than he is disclosing, but has lit a fire under some Congressional butts and we just may see the old 'deep state" cookie crumble...at least a little, if Klayman and Montgomery live to tell the WHOLE tale.
Klayman served as a trial lawyer and prosecutor in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Reagan administration and was on the trial team that succeeded in breaking up the AT&T monopoly in the communications industry.
HE KNOWS HOW THEY OPERATE.
He also knows what gets their attention.
He now has their attention and most in Congress are losing it.
After all, the Obama administration also spied on Congressmen.
One of the audio tapes made public by Federal Judge G. Murray Snow revealed that Brennan and Clapper particularly targeted and wiretapped Donald Trump a “zillion times.”
The audio tapes were released by Judge Snow in Maricopa County, Arizona in the Justice Department’s civil contempt case against Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio. The tapes also reveal that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court (FISA), Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, 156 other judges, members of Congress, and Donald J. Trump were targeted by a computer program designed by Montgomery and named "the HAMMER". This program accessed the phone calls, emails and bank accounts of millions of ordinary Americans.
After Montgomery produced his documentation, the FBI gave him two immunity agreements: one in the area of “production” and the other regarding “testimony.”
The FBI then took possession of Montgomery’s documentation.
Attorney Klayman asserts that this information precipitated James Clapper’s resignation.
How it ALL falls into place...
Clapper had gone before Congress to testify under oath that the NSA, and other intelligence agencies including the CIA,” were NOT collecting massive amounts of telephonic and Internet metadata on hundreds of millions of innocent American citizens” according to Klayman.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations proved otherwise.
Clapper was subsequently found to be untruthful and resigned on November 17, 2016, effective January 20, 2017, the day Donald Trump was sworn in.
Clapper has not been prosecuted for perjury.
Again, the easiest access to the audio tapes released by Judge Snow are at a "questionably reliable" website at http://theamericanreport.org/2017/03/17/whistleblower-tapes-trump-wiretapped-zillion-times-hammer-brennans-clappers-secret-computer-system/
But those tapes WERE evidence against Arapaio, they are REAL, and they are REVEALING, to say the least.
As Montgomery stated, "I Hacked Into All Of America For Brennan & Clapper."
SEVENTEEN AGENCIES SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS AND ON ENLISTED AND VETERAN MILITARY MEMBERS FOR NO JUST CAUSE, WITHOUT WARRANTS, AND STORING OUR MOST PRIVATE INFORMATION FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.
IT COULD BE OUR NAMES BROUGHT UP IN THAT ULTRA-SECRET FISA COURT TOMORROW, LIKE DONALD TRUMP'S NAME CAME UP IN 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016.
THAT TRUMP TEAM MEMBERS HAVE BEEN "UNMASKED" BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ITSELF IS AN OUTRAGE AND SHOWS WHAT WE CAN EXPECT FROM THOSE WITH TOO MUCH INVASIVE POWER OVER THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
THE TERM "UNMASKED" MEANS THAT THE IDENTITY OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHO WAS PART OF AN 'INTELLIGENCE AGENCY'S' SURVEILLANCE WAS ILLEGALLY REVEALED.
ACCORDING TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES:
"Trump presidential transition officials had their communications monitored and “unmasked” by the intelligence community, the chairman of the House intelligence committee said Wednesday, offering the first major piece of evidence of possible illegal activity by Obama officials against Donald Trump as president-elect.
But at some point U.S. intelligence officials unmasked some Trump figures — a process that involves attaching their names to the private conversations.
That information was then circulated within the intelligence community, Mr. Nunes said.
“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated in what appears to be intelligence reporting channels,” said Mr. Nunes,
Mr. Nunes said several dozen examples of surveillance reports were brought to him after he issued an open call for any evidence of illegal behavior. He said the material he saw appeared to have been gathered during the transition, from November to January."
UNMASKED.
WE SAW THE SAME THING HAPPEN BACK DURING THE GEORGE W. BUSH REGIME.
Bush admits administration leaked agent name - CIA operative Valerie Plame | NBC News
WE ARE SIMPLY NOT SAFE FROM THOSE 'SWORN TO PROTECT'.
FROM ABC NEWS 6, NOV. 20, 2014:
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation has 115.7 million files going back to it's start in 1908.
The FBI has a section on it's website explaining how you can see if you have a file.
“For all Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI performs an automated search of the indexes for 115.7 million files contained in the FBI's Central Records System. The search covers the files at all FBI locations. For a search based on a name, the search uses variations of the name- including initials and the order of the words, as well as any additional information provided by the requester,” said an FBI spokesman.You can start the process of requesting your own file or looking at some high profile documents already made public at: http://www.fbi.gov/foia/ ."
WERE YOU EVER CONSIDERED AN ACTIVIST, A 'POLITICAL DISSENTER'?
HAVE YOU PUBLICLY SPOKEN OUT AGAINST ABORTION, IN FAVOR OF ENDING ALL U.S. FOREIGN "INTERVENTIONS" AND UNDECLARED WARS, OR ARE YOU A MILITARY VETERAN, SOMEONE WHO DOES BUSINESS OVERSEAS, TRAVELS OUT OF THE COUNTRY FREQUENTLY, SOMEONE WHO COLLECTS FIREARMS, SOMEONE WHO HAS VOICED THE OPINION THAT GOVERNMENT IS JUST TOO BIG, TOO INVASIVE IN PRIVATE LIVES?
THESE AND MANY OTHER STATEMENTS/CIRCUMSTANCES PROBABLY MEAN THE FBI HAS A FILE ON YOU.
"The Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee that investigated COINTELPRO in the 1970s, found that a combination of factors led law enforcers to become law breakers, resulting in "the unrestrained collection of domestic intelligence."
The Church Committee's exposure of the FBI's COINTELPRO abuses led to a series of reforms, including laws designed to regulate government surveillance and internal guidelines (Attorney General's Guidelines) which limited the FBI's investigative authority and spelled out the rules that govern law enforcement operations.
These reasonable limits have been either abandoned or ignored since 9/11.
With the enactment of the USA Patriot Act Congress expanded the FBI's authority to make secret demands for personal information and records about not just suspected terrorists or spies but about anyone the FBI deemed merely "relevant" to an FBI investigation. Not surprisingly, a series of five audits by the Department of Justice Inspector General confirmed widespread FBI mismanagement, misuse and abuse of this unchecked authority, which is now used, more often than not, to target Americans."
SURPRISED?
YOU SHOULDN'T BE.
IT'S BEEN GOING ON FOR DECADES, WELL OVER 60 YEARS.
AMERICANS HAVE SIMPLY TOLERATED IT, PRETENDED NOT TO NOTICE, OR DECIDED NOT TO CARE.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR CITIZENS TO DEMAND ANEND TO THIS?
I HONESTLY DON'T BELIEVE ENOUGH PEOPLE WILL GIVE A BIG ENOUGH DAMN TO EVER CHANGE IT.
HOPE I'M WRONG, BUT I'VE WATCHED APATHY AND COMPLACENCY GROW IN AMERICA ALL MY 70 YEARS OF LIFE.
AMERICANS ARE RIDING A RUNAWAY TRAIN.
SEEMS WE HAVE NO BRAKEMEN OR ENGINEERS ABOARD.
______________________________________________
OTHER RECENT WHISTLEBLOWERS YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF, A VERY SHORT LIST:
~ 2015 to present day, DCAA J. Kirk McGill was the Auditor-in-Charge of a 2013 audit of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) conducted on behalf of the Office of the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The audit concluded that NEON and the NSF had conspired to evade the prohibition against payment of certain costs to Government grantees including lobbying, parties, luxury foreign travel, and alcohol. The audit was later overruled by top DCAA management. McGill reported the improper overruling of the audit, which violated Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards, to the Office of the Inspector General, United States Department of Defense and DCAA's Internal Review Directorate (later the DCAA Inspector General). Neither watchdog took any action to address McGill's concerns, despite being notified as early as January 2014 of the problem. McGill then reported the findings and the alleged cover up to Congress. On December 11, 2015, NEON was fired from the multibillion-dollar project.
McGill's primary disclosure was published online on January 5, 2015. McGill's allegations of retaliation remain under investigation by the United States Office of Special Counsel.
~ 2014, Former State Department official John Tye released an editorial in The Washington Post in July 2014, highlighting concerns over data collection under Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12333. While Tye's concerns are rooted in classified material he had access to through the State Department, he has not publicly released any classified materials.
~ 2014, Commander (CDR) Ben Strickland, alleged multiple acts of retaliation in violation of the Military Whistleblower Protection Act by Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) and senior Coast Guard Officials after he reported a sexual assault onboard USCGC Munro in May 2013. The Coast Guard denied retaliation on their part and claimed he was not eligible for whistleblower protection. CDR Strickland alleged that he became an unlawful target of the very investigations which stemmed from his report of a sexual assault and filed a formal complaint which was accepted for investigation by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General and pends administrative review by the Board for Correction of Military Records.
~2013, David Weber, an attorney and Certified Fraud Examiner, was the assistant inspector general of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He learned of misconduct in the Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford investigations, and of suspected hacking by a unit of the Chinese military.
He insisted that agency management report the misconduct and hacking to Congressional Oversight Committees, but instead was terminated for supposedly unrelated reasons. Shortly after his lawsuit became public, news stories broke that the People's Liberation Army compromised information technology at 160 U.S. corporations and government agencies.
~ 2012, Captain Joshua Wilson and Major Jeremy Gordon (USAF) exposed the malfunctioning oxygen system on board the F-22 Raptor systems that were causing pilots to become disoriented, first to superior officers and then to CBS 60 Minutes. As a result, Wilson's superiors cancelled his promotion to Major, took him off flying duty and threatened to take away his wings. Wilson was also forced out of his desk job at Air Combat Command. No such actions faced Major Gordon
~2012, Carmen Segarra discovered that Goldman Sachs did not have a conflict of interest policy when it advised El Paso Corp. on selling itself to Kinder Morgan, a company which Goldman Sachs owned a $4 billion stake. She was forced by her superiors at the Federal Reserve to falsify her report, but stated that her professional view of the situation had not changed. She was shortly thereafter fired.
The New York Federal Reserve disputes that she was fired in retaliation.
~ 2011, Blake Percival filed a Qui Tam Whistleblower claim under seal in 7/2011 alleging that USIS had defrauded the U.S. Government by submitting unfinished background investigations to the government for payment. USIS has been under scrutiny since it was revealed that they had performed the background investigation of Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis.
~ 2008, GUANTANAMO COVER-UP: A veteran of US Army intelligence, Lt. Col. Abraham served from September 2004 to March 2005 as part of OARDEC (the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants), the organization responsible for conducting the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) at Guantánamo, as well as compiling the information used by those tribunals. The CSRTs, which began shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, that the prisoners at Guantánamo had statutory habeas corpus rights, were introduced as a deliberate attempt to subvert the Supreme Court ruling, and were widely criticized for preventing the prisoners from having legal representation and for relying on secret evidence that was withheld from the prisoners.
However, it was not until Lt. Col. Abraham filed a statement in connection with one of the Guantánamo cases that a former insider confirmed that the gathering of materials for use in the tribunals was severely flawed, consisting of intelligence “of a generalized nature — often outdated, often ‘generic,’ rarely specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to those individuals’ status,” that “what purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,” and that the whole system was geared towards rubber-stamping the detainees’ prior designation as “enemy combatants.” In a subsequent statement, Abraham also pointed out that, because the tribunals had little or no access to the intelligence agencies, “Most of the information collected … consisted … of information obtained during interrogations of other detainees” (and may, therefore, have been made through the use of torture, coercion or bribery).
~ 2003, Retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Karen Kwiatkowski who worked as a desk officer in The Pentagon and in a number of roles in the National Security Agency. She has written a number of essays on corrupting political influences of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has said that she was the anonymous source for Seymour Hersh and Warren Strobel on their exposés of pre-war intelligence.
~ 2002, Glenn Walp and Steven L. Doran were hired to investigate allegations of fraud at the University of California's Los Alamos National Laboratory. They were fired after they exposed breaches of security as well as fraud and mismanagement to the Department of Energy. Their investigation resulted in congressional hearings. Walpo received a $930,000 settlement from the University of California (UC) for wrongful termination.
Doran accepted UC's offer of a position as security consultant.
~ 2002, Former FBI translator naturalized American citizen of Turkish descent who was fired in 2002 by the FBI for attempting to report coverups of security issues, potential espionage, and incompetence. She has been gagged by the State Secrets Privilege in her efforts to go to court on these issues, including a rejection recently by the Supreme Court of the United States to hear her case without comment. She is now founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) that is looking to lobby congress and help other whistleblowers with legal and other forms of assistance.
~ 2001, Joseph Nacchio, chairperson and CEO of Qwest when it refused to participate in NSA spying on its customers in February 2001. Qwest was the only telecommunications company to require FISA court orders. Nacchio claims that in retaliation, Qwest subsequently was denied government contracts.
~ Kathryn Bolkavac, Originally hired by the U.S. company DynCorp as part of a $15 million UN contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia. She eventually reported that such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking. Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia.
Bolkovac filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on August 2, 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor.
~ Stefan Kruszewski is a whistleblower, with settlements from suits brought against Southwood Psychiatric Hospital, Pfizer, Inc., and AstraZeneca.
Kruszewski became aware of inadequate care and the exploiting of state-committed mentally ill children through overmedication and physical and chemical restraints while working for the Department of Public Welfare, Bureau of Program Integrity for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. When he refused to keep silent about his discoveries, he was fired from his position at the state.
Kruszewski won settlements for both a First Amendment case against the state of Pennsylvania as well as his first Qui tam lawsuit against the hospital.
In the cases against pharmaceutical giants, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, Kruszewski highlighted clinical science that was misrepresented by the defendants in their marketing and promotion of certain drugs. He also demonstrated problems with off-label marketing (marketing that promotes uses, patients or doses that are not approved by the US FDA) which resulted in heightened, but often non-transparent, risk to the health of patients and exceptional costs to taxpayers and state and federal governments.
~ Jesselyn Radack, a DEPT. OF JUSTICE lawyer, told Newsweek that the DOJ both lied about and destroyed documents regarding accused 'American Taliban' Qala-i-Jangi fortress detainee John Walker Lindh's interrogation and his parent's attempts to get him a lawyer. The DOJ retaliated by pushing her out of the Department, getting her fired from her next job, trying to get her law licence revoked, & other means.
~ Coleen Rowley, FBI employee, outlined the FBI's slow action before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Jointly named Time's People of the Year in 2002.
NSWBC - National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (official website)
//WW
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
HUMPBACK WHALES DIE IN RECORD NUMBERS, NOT MIGRATING AS USUAL
This giant humpback whale was photographed leaping out of the water off the coast of South Africa in 2014 in an amazing display of strength.
In winter breeding grounds like Hawai‘i and Mexico, migrating humpback whales arrived later, left earlier, and showed up in fewer numbers than normal. Especially notable was the decline in females and calves.
Observers in the Philippines and Japan also recorded a similarly low whale count in those places.
A humpback calf is lifted out of the water on its mother's head during an attack by killer whales.
Orca and sharks are the humpback's only natural predators and both those species have also declined in number in the past 5 years.
The normally solitary creatures have been gathering in "supergroups" since 2011 off the southwestern coast of South Africa, puzzling researchers.
ABOVE: A 'supergroup' of 200 humpbacks.
"The gatherings occurred in the Benguela Upwelling System, ocean currents off the southwestern tip of South Africa between St. Helena Bay and Cape Point.
The groups were not only surprising for their size, which ranged from 20 to 200, but also the time of year in which they were spotted.
Scientists recorded their presence off the African coast in October and November (late summer in South Africa) when they typically migrate to Antarctic waters to feed.
The whales were clearly feeding, according to the new study published in the journal PLOS One. The researchers observed the whales diving vertically, turning tightly and performing other maneuvers that indicated they were feeding. The color of their poop and a fishy odor while clearing their blowholes also suggested that they were mid hunt.
[NOTE: An adult humpback will eat an average of about 1 to 1.5 tons of krill and small fish per day during the summer months in the cold, nutrient rich waters of Alaska.]
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ken Findlay lead author of the study from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa tells Locklear.
The researchers hope to continue their study the whale parties and figure out what types and concentrations of prey are drawing the whales to Benguela."
[NOTE: This article states that humpback numbers may have reached have around 150,000 individuals, something many see as impossible given the number of females capable of reproduction and the gestation period of 11 months and that calves remain dependent for a year at least.
60,000 HUMPBACKS WORLDWIDE IS A MORE ACCEPTABLE NUMBER.
Humpback whales do not become sexually mature until the age of 4-8.years. A female gives birth every 2-3 three years.]
1,000 HUMPBACKS FILMED IN JUST ONE 'SUPERGROUP' OFF AFRICA IN 2014.
WHILE THESE HUGE GATHERINGS OF HUMPBACKS LOOKS PROMISING FOR THE SPECIES,
IN 2015-2016 THE DEATHS OF 14 HUMPBACKS, 11 FIN WHALES, 1 GRAY WHALE AND 4 'UNIDENTIFIED' WERE REPORTED, CAUSING NOAA TO DECLARE AN "UNUSUAL MORTALITY EVENT".
THAT ADDS UP TO 30 DEATHS, BUT THEIR CHART FOR THE EVENT SHOWS 45 DEATHS.
IN 2015 AND 25 IN 2016.
NOAA MATH, IT'S SPECIAL.
2015-2016 Large Whale Unusual Mortality Event in the Western Gulf of Alaska
The marine mammal UME program was established in 1991. From 1991 to the present, there have been 62 formally recognized UMEs in the U.S., involving a variety of species and dozens to hundreds of individual marine mammals per event.
FOR A LIST OF UMEs, GO TO <THIS NOAA WEBSITE> AND BE SURE TO LOOK AT THEIR CHARTS THERE.
THE FOLLOWING ARE NEWS ARTICLES ABOUT ONLY HUMPBACK WHALE DEATHS, ALL OF WHICH ARE FROM JUST 2016 AND I ONLY LIST A FEW. THERE WERE MANY MORE.
Scientists Seek Cause of Whale Death, New Hampshire, July 4, 2016 -
Cause of humpback whale's death remains a mystery on Oregon coast
Humpback Whale Found Dead in Amagansett, Long Island
Dead whale towed off Los Angeles beach ahead of holiday
Humpback whale dies in Seattle's Fauntleroy Cove
Dead Humpback Whale That Washed Ashore Near Southhampton
Sad News: Washed Up Humpback Whale in New Jersey Shore Died
Dead humpback whale washes up in same area of Nova Scotia coast where a mass die-off of fish and crustaceans appeared
The death of a humpback whale found under a Navy dock Wednesday in Sinclair Bay, Washington has stumped researchers.
Humpback Whale dies in Waters Off the Coast of Belize
LIKE I SAID, THAT IS BY NO MEANS ALL THE REPORTS FROM 2016, ONLY 10 LISTED HERE, BUT ADD THE 30-70 TOTAL IN/NEAR ALASKA AND OFF THE COAST OF CANADA AND THE FOLLOWING SIX FROM HAWAII AND IT IS MOST DISTURBING HOW MANY HUMPBACKS HAVE RECENTLY DIED.
A record number of six humpbacks washed ashore in Hawaii last season, following another record in of 5 dead in 2013.
That’s double the number typically found in a season, which runs from November to May. In winter, humpback whales travel from Alaska to breed and give birth in Hawaii waters.
The six whale carcasses were too decomposed for biologists to do necropsies.
THEIR AMAZING YEARLY JOURNEYS
Humpback whales travel just over 3,000 miles from their Alaskan feeding grounds to their Hawaiian breeding grounds. The round trip is about 6,000 miles and they travel approximately 3-7 miles per hour.
Humpback whales breed, calve and nurse in Hawai'i in the winter (November-May), then migrate to the Gulf of Alaska and other areas in the North Pacific to feed primarily in the summer (May-November).
While in the Hawaiian Islands, they’re there for two reasons and two reasons alone: to mate and to give birth. While near the islands they are not known to feed much, if at all.
That means they get all of their nutrition while they’re in Alaska. They pack on the pounds while in the nutrient rich and productive Alaskan waters and then rely on those fat stores to support them on the journey to Hawaii, during the mating season, and on the return journey.
[One theory for more deaths is that, with their population up worldwide] more whales [means] increased competition for already dwindling prey availability in Alaska.
Also notable, the 2015-16 season, saw the fewest total number of whales that made the journey in five years, as reported on Hawaii News Now.
Hakai Magazine, May 25, 2016
“It almost seemed as if the females didn’t bother to show up."
The density of cows and calves was especially low.
Only 8 percent of whale groups included a calf this year, compared to 33 percent in a normal year, says Chris Gabriele, a researcher with the non profit Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, also saw fewer whales than normal says Oscar Frey, an oceanographer and the chief researcher for the nonprofit Deep Blue Conservancy.
“Normally, we see more than 1,000 humpbacks in a season, and this year we saw less than 400. The count was 378.” Frey adds that he observed “the least number of mothers with babies that I have ever seen.”
ONE OF MY LEAST FAVORITE "SCIENTISTS" ADMITTED SOMETHING I NEVER THOUGHT HE WOULD, BUT IT WAS NOT STATED IN CONCERN OF THE HIGH MORTALITY RATE AND 'DISAPPEARANCE' OF FEMALE HUMPBACKS AND CALVES. IT WAS, PERHAPS, UNINTENTIONALLY MENTIONED IN AN INTERVIEW TO ASSUAGE THE FEARS OF SOME THAT RADIATION HAD REACHED DANGEROUS LEVELS NEAR HAWAII AND THE WEST COAST.
AS ALWAYS, KENNY DOES DAMAGE CONTROL FOR THE BIG NUKE BOYS:
Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Jan 7, 2017:
“We know there can be health effects from exposure to any amount of radiation… the highest level we’ve seen north of Hawaii is 10 Becquerels per cubic meter.
Swimming through that for eight hours a day for an entire year could have possible health effects."
EIGHT HOURS A DAY, KENNY?
WHALES ARE IN THAT WATER FOR 24 HOURS A DAY!
DO THE MATH!
DO YOU THINK THEY CAN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE FOR 16 HOURS A DAY?
THEY SWIM EVERY MINUTE, ALL THEIR LIVES!
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS QUITE INFORMATIVE AS TO THE BEHAVIOR OF ARCTIC WHALES WHO COME TO FEED AFTER THEIR LONG JOURNEY BACK FROM SOUTHERN WATERS AND BREEDING AND CALVING GROUNDS THERE.
THE TINY LABORATORY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA RECORDS WHALE SONGS 24/7.
Cetacea Lab—a 24/7 lab dedicated to researching whales—is perched on Whale Point, at the southern end of Gil Island off the coast of British Columbia.
AMAZING DISPLAY OF CARING FOR OTHER SPECIES
BOSTON GLOBE, AUG. 18, 2016
"In 2009, Robert Pitman saw something remarkable. From aboard a research vessel off Antarctica, he watched as a pod of killer whales knocked a seal from an ice floe and closed in for the kill. But before they could, a pair of humpback whales swooped in and rescued the seal, with one of the humpbacks rolling over and lifting the seal out of the water onto its chest, out of harm’s way.
Later, when Pitman and the other researchers reviewed film of the event, they were astounded to see just how deliberately the humpback seemed to be protecting the seal.
“In slow motion, you can see the seal starts to slide off, and the humpback takes its 15-foot flipper that weighs about a ton and nudges the seal back onto its chest,” says Pitman, a marine ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Seven years later, he has a new study in the journal Marine Mammal Science that concludes it is indeed. The paper draws on 115 observed interactions between humpbacks and killer whales — many submitted by “citizen scientists” who saw the interplay from recreational whale-watching boats — and concludes that humpbacks do in fact engage in what Pitman calls “inadvertent altruism” toward marine species like seals, sea lions, ocean sunfish, and even the calves of other whale species being attacked by killer whales.
“People who study whales have been working in an environment that’s been largely empty of whales,” says Pitman. “Now that they’re coming back, we’re going to see some things we didn’t know about whales.”
THESE ARE NOT "DUMB ANIMALS".
THEY COMMUNICATE, HELP EACH OTHER AND HAVE BEEN DOCUMENTED HELPING OTHER SPECIES IN DISTRESS, INCLUDING MAN, AND THEY EXHIBIT STRONG EMOTIONS.
AS NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC REPORTED, Whales Mourn Their Dead, Just Like Us.
WE ARE OFTEN TOLD THAT "Biologists are investigating to see if the whales starved or if there’s a problem with the ocean’s health", BUT AS I HAVE STATED BEFORE, WE NEVER GET A FINAL NECROPSY RESULT, EVEN AFTER 3 YEARS ON SOME.
ALGAE TOXICITY HAS BEEN RULED OUT.
WE'RE ALSO OFTEN TOLD THAT SCIENTISTS JUST COULDN'T GET TO A DEAD WHALE TO TAKE TISSUE SAMPLES.
THAT'S BS...THERE ARE PLENTY OF WAYS TO REACH THE CARCASSES.
IF A WHALE WASHED ASHORE, WHAT WOULD PREVENT COLLECTING SAMPLES ON A BEACH?
IF THEY LIE FAR OFFSHORE, AREN'T THEIR VESSELS THAT CAN SURELY REACH THOSE?
IF THEY LIE IN LAGOONS, OR NEAR ROCKY OUTCROPPINGS, PACIFIC ISLANDERS AND THE INDIGENOUS PACIFIC COASTAL TRIBES HAVE DEMONSTRATED FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS HOW EASILY A KAYAK OR SIMILAR "PRIMITIVE' VESSELS CAN MANEUVER IN CLOSE QUARTERS TO RETRIEVE MARINE MAMMALS THAT THEY HUNT, INCLUDING WHALES.
MAYBE THE PEOPLE WITH NOAA JUST DON'T WANT TO REACH THEM?
THE INUIT, PACIFIC FISHERMEN, CANADIAN SCIENTISTS, AS WELL AS OTHERS ALL ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST, FROM ALASKA TO THE TIP OF CHILE, REPORT THAT MARINE MAMMALS AND SEA BIRDS ARE DYING FROM STARVATION.
THE FISH AND OTHER FOOD THEY COUNT ON TO SURVIVE JUST AREN'T AVAILABLE ANYMORE AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY, OR NO ONE IS SAYING WHY.
Southern Resident Killer Whales are Dying of Starvation
As salmon dwindle, whales die – Sept. 13, 2016- National Geographic Society
Mass deaths of Alaska seabirds linked to starvation IN 2015 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC WROTE:
Number of Starving Sea Lions in California 'Unprecedented'
Collapse of kelp forest imperils North Coast ocean ecosystem
ALSO FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:
Mass Death of Seabirds in Western U.S. Is 'Unprecedented'
WHAT IS KILLING THE FISH, THE CRABS, THE OYSTERS AND SCALLOPS, SEA URCHINS, THE SARDINES, MACKEREL, ALMOST ALL FOOD SOURCES IN THE PACIFIC?
WHAT IS KILLING THE MARINE MAMMALS, THE GREAT WHALES, THE SEA BIRDS, THE PLANKTON?
WHY CAN'T WE GET VALID ANSWERS AFTER THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR AT LEAST THE PAST DECADE?
AFTER THAT LONG A PERIOD OF TIME, WHAT HAS 'SCIENCE' FOUND OUT?
THEY HAVE TO HAVE FOUND CAUSES! GLOBAL RESEARCH WROTE
“The Ocean is Dying”
According to Ocean Health:
"The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below […] clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded.
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP IT?
THE TEA ROOM HAS BEEN REPORTING FOR OVER 6 YEARS NOW THAT THE PACIFIC IS BECOMING A DESERT, A WASTELAND, AS HAVE A FEW IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA, BUT THERE ARE NO CONCRETE REASONS WHY.
SHOULD WE RESIGN OURSELVES TO THE THOUGHT THAT NOTHING CAN BE DONE TO STOP THIS?
WILL WE JUST KEEP ACCEPTING THAT THIS IS ALL DUE TO "CLIMATE CHANGE"?
NO!
THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED!
SO MUCH DEATH IN OUR OCEANS HAS NEVER OCCURRED IN WRITTEN HISTORY, SO WE MUST NOT ACCEPT THAT NO ONE KNOWS WHY.
WE MUST DEMAND ANSWERS, ACTION FROM THOSE "SCIENTISTS" TO DETERMINE WHAT'S WRONG AND TELL US.
WE ARE BUT A LINK IN A GREAT CHAIN OF LIFE.
WHEN ONE LINK BREAKS, WE CAN EXPECT TO SEE THE WHOLE CHAIN FALL APART.
WE CAN'T 'BUILD' A HUMPBACK WHALE, A FISH, A BIRD, A SEA TURTLE AND WE CANNOT REPLACE AN OCEAN.
IF WE DON'T RESCUE THEM NOW, THEY'RE GONE FOREVER.
WITHOUT THEM, WITHOUT ALL ALL THAT SEA LIFE (MANY THAT SO MANY MILLIONS OF HUMANS DEPEND ON FOR FOOD), WE WILL SURELY BE NEXT.
____________________
FURTHER READING:
FOR A FEW OF MY PAST ARTICLES ON DEATH OF THE PACIFIC, SEE <THIS>
<THIS>, <THIS>, <THIS> AND <THIS>.
WHALE FACTS 1
WHALE FACTS 2
Whales are air-breathing mammals, NOT FISH, so, on average, adult humpbacks surface every 7-15 minutes to breathe but can remain submerged for up to 45 minutes, though a few 1-hour dives have been recorded.
Calves must rise to the surface every 3-5 minutes.
Adult male humpback whales measure 38-42 feet in length and females are slightly larger, measuring 40-45 feet. For comparison, an average school bus is about 45 feet long.
Humpbacks have baleen plates instead of teeth. A baleen whale has a series of 270-400 fringed overlapping plates that hang from each side of the upper jaw. These plates consist of fingernail like material that frays out into fine hairs on the ends. When the whale feeds, it takes in large volumes of water that passes through the baleen plates and strains its food from the water.
Each humpback whale has a unique pattern on its fluke (tail). The underside of the tail fluke can be from all white to all black and is unique to each humpback. In addition to the pattern, the serrated edge of the fluke is also unique to each whale. Through careful study, the fluke pattern can be used to identify individual whales.
Humpback whales are found in most of the world's oceans. Most of them follow a regular migration route, spending their summers in temperate and polar waters for feeding and spending their winters in tropical waters for mating and calving.
The one exception is in the Arabian Sea where a year-round, non-migratory population lives.
Humpback whales were plentiful in oceans worldwide before the global population was depleted by commercial whaling at the start of the 20th century. In 1993 it was estimated that there were 6,000 whales in the North Pacific Ocean, and that 4,000 of those came to Hawaiʻi.
Today, the population of humpback whales that uses Hawaiʻi's waters as their principle wintering ground is likely more than 10,000 animals.
This number is based on a comprehensive research effort that occurred between 2004 and 2006 that estimated the population at approximately 10,000 animals, and the likelihood that the population is still increasing at some unknown rate.
Unique to baleen whales such as the humpback is the presence of two blowholes which are located on top of its head.
Humpback whales have a pretty diverse diet when it comes to the baleen whale suborder and are known for eating small fish, krill, salmon, herring, mackerel and capelin among other small prey.
During the humpbacks feeding season these whales hunt using a technique known as bubble net fishing which involves a group of humpback whales swimming around their prey in a circle and blowing bubbles around their prey in order to herd the fish into a tight ball.
The whales will also create loud vocal sounds to scare the fish to the surface of the water and slap their fins against the water to stun the fish and immobilize them.
Once the fish are unable to move the whales will swim up and lunge at the fish with an open mouth and engulf hundreds or thousands of small fish in a single gulp while using their baleen bristles to separate the water and debris from their prey.
During their migration these whales are known to travel as far as 16,000 miles making them one of the furthest migrating species in the world.
Interestingly male humpbacks in the North Atlantic can be found singing the same song in unison even when they are miles apart from one another while males in the North Pacific can be heard singing a different song.
A single song may last as long as 20 minutes but male humpback whales may be heard singing for more than 24 hours at a time.
When these marine mammals lose a friend/family member, feel lonely or are sad they may produce loud moans or whines, which can be confused for a whale song, however these moans are more akin to morning the loss of a loved one or loneliness rather than singing for mating purposes.
During feeding season these whales are known to make completely different sounds when communicating or searching for food, which further hints at the whale SONG being used for mating purposes only.
Humpback calves can drink as much as 600 litres of milk per day.
In terms of lifespan a healthy humpback whale is believed to have a lifespan of up to 50 years.
A DIFFERENT ESTIMATE OF WORLDWIDE HUMPBACK POPULATION, SHOWING, ONCE AGAIN, THAT THERE IS NO WAY TO DETERMINE THE REAL NUMBERS.
Today there are at least 80,000 humpback whales world-wide, however at one point these marine mammals were considered highly endangered due to excessive hunting and commercial whaling.
It is estimated that as much as 90% of the humpback whales population was eliminated during the whaling era.
FOR MUCH MORE ON WHALE MIGRATION, <SEE THIS WEBSITE>.
[If you see a dead or stranded whale, please call and report the sighting to the Marine Mammal Hotline at 888-256-9840. All ocean users, including swimmers, snorkelers, divers, kayakers, jet skiers, boaters, windsurfers, or surfers should not approach a humpback whale closer than 100 yards, or 90 meters. Do not chase, closely approach, surround, swim with, or attempt to touch humpback whales. To report an approach violation or other incidences of humpback whale disturbance, please call the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement's 24-hour hotline at 1-800-853-1964.]
//WW
In winter breeding grounds like Hawai‘i and Mexico, migrating humpback whales arrived later, left earlier, and showed up in fewer numbers than normal. Especially notable was the decline in females and calves.
Observers in the Philippines and Japan also recorded a similarly low whale count in those places.
A humpback calf is lifted out of the water on its mother's head during an attack by killer whales.
Orca and sharks are the humpback's only natural predators and both those species have also declined in number in the past 5 years.
The normally solitary creatures have been gathering in "supergroups" since 2011 off the southwestern coast of South Africa, puzzling researchers.
ABOVE: A 'supergroup' of 200 humpbacks.
"The gatherings occurred in the Benguela Upwelling System, ocean currents off the southwestern tip of South Africa between St. Helena Bay and Cape Point.
The groups were not only surprising for their size, which ranged from 20 to 200, but also the time of year in which they were spotted.
Scientists recorded their presence off the African coast in October and November (late summer in South Africa) when they typically migrate to Antarctic waters to feed.
The whales were clearly feeding, according to the new study published in the journal PLOS One. The researchers observed the whales diving vertically, turning tightly and performing other maneuvers that indicated they were feeding. The color of their poop and a fishy odor while clearing their blowholes also suggested that they were mid hunt.
[NOTE: An adult humpback will eat an average of about 1 to 1.5 tons of krill and small fish per day during the summer months in the cold, nutrient rich waters of Alaska.]
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ken Findlay lead author of the study from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa tells Locklear.
The researchers hope to continue their study the whale parties and figure out what types and concentrations of prey are drawing the whales to Benguela."
[NOTE: This article states that humpback numbers may have reached have around 150,000 individuals, something many see as impossible given the number of females capable of reproduction and the gestation period of 11 months and that calves remain dependent for a year at least.
60,000 HUMPBACKS WORLDWIDE IS A MORE ACCEPTABLE NUMBER.
Humpback whales do not become sexually mature until the age of 4-8.years. A female gives birth every 2-3 three years.]
1,000 HUMPBACKS FILMED IN JUST ONE 'SUPERGROUP' OFF AFRICA IN 2014.
WHILE THESE HUGE GATHERINGS OF HUMPBACKS LOOKS PROMISING FOR THE SPECIES,
IN 2015-2016 THE DEATHS OF 14 HUMPBACKS, 11 FIN WHALES, 1 GRAY WHALE AND 4 'UNIDENTIFIED' WERE REPORTED, CAUSING NOAA TO DECLARE AN "UNUSUAL MORTALITY EVENT".
THAT ADDS UP TO 30 DEATHS, BUT THEIR CHART FOR THE EVENT SHOWS 45 DEATHS.
IN 2015 AND 25 IN 2016.
NOAA MATH, IT'S SPECIAL.
2015-2016 Large Whale Unusual Mortality Event in the Western Gulf of Alaska
The marine mammal UME program was established in 1991. From 1991 to the present, there have been 62 formally recognized UMEs in the U.S., involving a variety of species and dozens to hundreds of individual marine mammals per event.
FOR A LIST OF UMEs, GO TO <THIS NOAA WEBSITE> AND BE SURE TO LOOK AT THEIR CHARTS THERE.
THE FOLLOWING ARE NEWS ARTICLES ABOUT ONLY HUMPBACK WHALE DEATHS, ALL OF WHICH ARE FROM JUST 2016 AND I ONLY LIST A FEW. THERE WERE MANY MORE.
Scientists Seek Cause of Whale Death, New Hampshire, July 4, 2016 -
Cause of humpback whale's death remains a mystery on Oregon coast
Humpback Whale Found Dead in Amagansett, Long Island
Dead whale towed off Los Angeles beach ahead of holiday
Humpback whale dies in Seattle's Fauntleroy Cove
Dead Humpback Whale That Washed Ashore Near Southhampton
Sad News: Washed Up Humpback Whale in New Jersey Shore Died
Dead humpback whale washes up in same area of Nova Scotia coast where a mass die-off of fish and crustaceans appeared
The death of a humpback whale found under a Navy dock Wednesday in Sinclair Bay, Washington has stumped researchers.
Humpback Whale dies in Waters Off the Coast of Belize
LIKE I SAID, THAT IS BY NO MEANS ALL THE REPORTS FROM 2016, ONLY 10 LISTED HERE, BUT ADD THE 30-70 TOTAL IN/NEAR ALASKA AND OFF THE COAST OF CANADA AND THE FOLLOWING SIX FROM HAWAII AND IT IS MOST DISTURBING HOW MANY HUMPBACKS HAVE RECENTLY DIED.
A record number of six humpbacks washed ashore in Hawaii last season, following another record in of 5 dead in 2013.
That’s double the number typically found in a season, which runs from November to May. In winter, humpback whales travel from Alaska to breed and give birth in Hawaii waters.
The six whale carcasses were too decomposed for biologists to do necropsies.
THEIR AMAZING YEARLY JOURNEYS
Humpback whales travel just over 3,000 miles from their Alaskan feeding grounds to their Hawaiian breeding grounds. The round trip is about 6,000 miles and they travel approximately 3-7 miles per hour.
Humpback whales breed, calve and nurse in Hawai'i in the winter (November-May), then migrate to the Gulf of Alaska and other areas in the North Pacific to feed primarily in the summer (May-November).
While in the Hawaiian Islands, they’re there for two reasons and two reasons alone: to mate and to give birth. While near the islands they are not known to feed much, if at all.
That means they get all of their nutrition while they’re in Alaska. They pack on the pounds while in the nutrient rich and productive Alaskan waters and then rely on those fat stores to support them on the journey to Hawaii, during the mating season, and on the return journey.
[One theory for more deaths is that, with their population up worldwide] more whales [means] increased competition for already dwindling prey availability in Alaska.
Also notable, the 2015-16 season, saw the fewest total number of whales that made the journey in five years, as reported on Hawaii News Now.
Hakai Magazine, May 25, 2016
“It almost seemed as if the females didn’t bother to show up."
The density of cows and calves was especially low.
Only 8 percent of whale groups included a calf this year, compared to 33 percent in a normal year, says Chris Gabriele, a researcher with the non profit Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, also saw fewer whales than normal says Oscar Frey, an oceanographer and the chief researcher for the nonprofit Deep Blue Conservancy.
“Normally, we see more than 1,000 humpbacks in a season, and this year we saw less than 400. The count was 378.” Frey adds that he observed “the least number of mothers with babies that I have ever seen.”
ONE OF MY LEAST FAVORITE "SCIENTISTS" ADMITTED SOMETHING I NEVER THOUGHT HE WOULD, BUT IT WAS NOT STATED IN CONCERN OF THE HIGH MORTALITY RATE AND 'DISAPPEARANCE' OF FEMALE HUMPBACKS AND CALVES. IT WAS, PERHAPS, UNINTENTIONALLY MENTIONED IN AN INTERVIEW TO ASSUAGE THE FEARS OF SOME THAT RADIATION HAD REACHED DANGEROUS LEVELS NEAR HAWAII AND THE WEST COAST.
AS ALWAYS, KENNY DOES DAMAGE CONTROL FOR THE BIG NUKE BOYS:
Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Jan 7, 2017:
“We know there can be health effects from exposure to any amount of radiation… the highest level we’ve seen north of Hawaii is 10 Becquerels per cubic meter.
Swimming through that for eight hours a day for an entire year could have possible health effects."
EIGHT HOURS A DAY, KENNY?
WHALES ARE IN THAT WATER FOR 24 HOURS A DAY!
DO THE MATH!
DO YOU THINK THEY CAN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE FOR 16 HOURS A DAY?
THEY SWIM EVERY MINUTE, ALL THEIR LIVES!
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS QUITE INFORMATIVE AS TO THE BEHAVIOR OF ARCTIC WHALES WHO COME TO FEED AFTER THEIR LONG JOURNEY BACK FROM SOUTHERN WATERS AND BREEDING AND CALVING GROUNDS THERE.
THE TINY LABORATORY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA RECORDS WHALE SONGS 24/7.
Cetacea Lab—a 24/7 lab dedicated to researching whales—is perched on Whale Point, at the southern end of Gil Island off the coast of British Columbia.
AMAZING DISPLAY OF CARING FOR OTHER SPECIES
BOSTON GLOBE, AUG. 18, 2016
"In 2009, Robert Pitman saw something remarkable. From aboard a research vessel off Antarctica, he watched as a pod of killer whales knocked a seal from an ice floe and closed in for the kill. But before they could, a pair of humpback whales swooped in and rescued the seal, with one of the humpbacks rolling over and lifting the seal out of the water onto its chest, out of harm’s way.
Later, when Pitman and the other researchers reviewed film of the event, they were astounded to see just how deliberately the humpback seemed to be protecting the seal.
“In slow motion, you can see the seal starts to slide off, and the humpback takes its 15-foot flipper that weighs about a ton and nudges the seal back onto its chest,” says Pitman, a marine ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Seven years later, he has a new study in the journal Marine Mammal Science that concludes it is indeed. The paper draws on 115 observed interactions between humpbacks and killer whales — many submitted by “citizen scientists” who saw the interplay from recreational whale-watching boats — and concludes that humpbacks do in fact engage in what Pitman calls “inadvertent altruism” toward marine species like seals, sea lions, ocean sunfish, and even the calves of other whale species being attacked by killer whales.
“People who study whales have been working in an environment that’s been largely empty of whales,” says Pitman. “Now that they’re coming back, we’re going to see some things we didn’t know about whales.”
THESE ARE NOT "DUMB ANIMALS".
THEY COMMUNICATE, HELP EACH OTHER AND HAVE BEEN DOCUMENTED HELPING OTHER SPECIES IN DISTRESS, INCLUDING MAN, AND THEY EXHIBIT STRONG EMOTIONS.
AS NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC REPORTED, Whales Mourn Their Dead, Just Like Us.
WE ARE OFTEN TOLD THAT "Biologists are investigating to see if the whales starved or if there’s a problem with the ocean’s health", BUT AS I HAVE STATED BEFORE, WE NEVER GET A FINAL NECROPSY RESULT, EVEN AFTER 3 YEARS ON SOME.
ALGAE TOXICITY HAS BEEN RULED OUT.
WE'RE ALSO OFTEN TOLD THAT SCIENTISTS JUST COULDN'T GET TO A DEAD WHALE TO TAKE TISSUE SAMPLES.
THAT'S BS...THERE ARE PLENTY OF WAYS TO REACH THE CARCASSES.
IF A WHALE WASHED ASHORE, WHAT WOULD PREVENT COLLECTING SAMPLES ON A BEACH?
IF THEY LIE FAR OFFSHORE, AREN'T THEIR VESSELS THAT CAN SURELY REACH THOSE?
IF THEY LIE IN LAGOONS, OR NEAR ROCKY OUTCROPPINGS, PACIFIC ISLANDERS AND THE INDIGENOUS PACIFIC COASTAL TRIBES HAVE DEMONSTRATED FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS HOW EASILY A KAYAK OR SIMILAR "PRIMITIVE' VESSELS CAN MANEUVER IN CLOSE QUARTERS TO RETRIEVE MARINE MAMMALS THAT THEY HUNT, INCLUDING WHALES.
MAYBE THE PEOPLE WITH NOAA JUST DON'T WANT TO REACH THEM?
THE INUIT, PACIFIC FISHERMEN, CANADIAN SCIENTISTS, AS WELL AS OTHERS ALL ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST, FROM ALASKA TO THE TIP OF CHILE, REPORT THAT MARINE MAMMALS AND SEA BIRDS ARE DYING FROM STARVATION.
THE FISH AND OTHER FOOD THEY COUNT ON TO SURVIVE JUST AREN'T AVAILABLE ANYMORE AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY, OR NO ONE IS SAYING WHY.
Southern Resident Killer Whales are Dying of Starvation
As salmon dwindle, whales die – Sept. 13, 2016- National Geographic Society
Mass deaths of Alaska seabirds linked to starvation IN 2015 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC WROTE:
Number of Starving Sea Lions in California 'Unprecedented'
Collapse of kelp forest imperils North Coast ocean ecosystem
ALSO FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:
Mass Death of Seabirds in Western U.S. Is 'Unprecedented'
WHAT IS KILLING THE FISH, THE CRABS, THE OYSTERS AND SCALLOPS, SEA URCHINS, THE SARDINES, MACKEREL, ALMOST ALL FOOD SOURCES IN THE PACIFIC?
WHAT IS KILLING THE MARINE MAMMALS, THE GREAT WHALES, THE SEA BIRDS, THE PLANKTON?
WHY CAN'T WE GET VALID ANSWERS AFTER THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR AT LEAST THE PAST DECADE?
AFTER THAT LONG A PERIOD OF TIME, WHAT HAS 'SCIENCE' FOUND OUT?
THEY HAVE TO HAVE FOUND CAUSES! GLOBAL RESEARCH WROTE
“The Ocean is Dying”
According to Ocean Health:
"The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below […] clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded.
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP IT?
THE TEA ROOM HAS BEEN REPORTING FOR OVER 6 YEARS NOW THAT THE PACIFIC IS BECOMING A DESERT, A WASTELAND, AS HAVE A FEW IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA, BUT THERE ARE NO CONCRETE REASONS WHY.
SHOULD WE RESIGN OURSELVES TO THE THOUGHT THAT NOTHING CAN BE DONE TO STOP THIS?
WILL WE JUST KEEP ACCEPTING THAT THIS IS ALL DUE TO "CLIMATE CHANGE"?
NO!
THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED!
SO MUCH DEATH IN OUR OCEANS HAS NEVER OCCURRED IN WRITTEN HISTORY, SO WE MUST NOT ACCEPT THAT NO ONE KNOWS WHY.
WE MUST DEMAND ANSWERS, ACTION FROM THOSE "SCIENTISTS" TO DETERMINE WHAT'S WRONG AND TELL US.
WE ARE BUT A LINK IN A GREAT CHAIN OF LIFE.
WHEN ONE LINK BREAKS, WE CAN EXPECT TO SEE THE WHOLE CHAIN FALL APART.
WE CAN'T 'BUILD' A HUMPBACK WHALE, A FISH, A BIRD, A SEA TURTLE AND WE CANNOT REPLACE AN OCEAN.
IF WE DON'T RESCUE THEM NOW, THEY'RE GONE FOREVER.
WITHOUT THEM, WITHOUT ALL ALL THAT SEA LIFE (MANY THAT SO MANY MILLIONS OF HUMANS DEPEND ON FOR FOOD), WE WILL SURELY BE NEXT.
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FURTHER READING:
FOR A FEW OF MY PAST ARTICLES ON DEATH OF THE PACIFIC, SEE <THIS>
<THIS>, <THIS>, <THIS> AND <THIS>.
WHALE FACTS 1
WHALE FACTS 2
Whales are air-breathing mammals, NOT FISH, so, on average, adult humpbacks surface every 7-15 minutes to breathe but can remain submerged for up to 45 minutes, though a few 1-hour dives have been recorded.
Calves must rise to the surface every 3-5 minutes.
Adult male humpback whales measure 38-42 feet in length and females are slightly larger, measuring 40-45 feet. For comparison, an average school bus is about 45 feet long.
Humpbacks have baleen plates instead of teeth. A baleen whale has a series of 270-400 fringed overlapping plates that hang from each side of the upper jaw. These plates consist of fingernail like material that frays out into fine hairs on the ends. When the whale feeds, it takes in large volumes of water that passes through the baleen plates and strains its food from the water.
Each humpback whale has a unique pattern on its fluke (tail). The underside of the tail fluke can be from all white to all black and is unique to each humpback. In addition to the pattern, the serrated edge of the fluke is also unique to each whale. Through careful study, the fluke pattern can be used to identify individual whales.
Humpback whales are found in most of the world's oceans. Most of them follow a regular migration route, spending their summers in temperate and polar waters for feeding and spending their winters in tropical waters for mating and calving.
The one exception is in the Arabian Sea where a year-round, non-migratory population lives.
Humpback whales were plentiful in oceans worldwide before the global population was depleted by commercial whaling at the start of the 20th century. In 1993 it was estimated that there were 6,000 whales in the North Pacific Ocean, and that 4,000 of those came to Hawaiʻi.
Today, the population of humpback whales that uses Hawaiʻi's waters as their principle wintering ground is likely more than 10,000 animals.
This number is based on a comprehensive research effort that occurred between 2004 and 2006 that estimated the population at approximately 10,000 animals, and the likelihood that the population is still increasing at some unknown rate.
Unique to baleen whales such as the humpback is the presence of two blowholes which are located on top of its head.
Humpback whales have a pretty diverse diet when it comes to the baleen whale suborder and are known for eating small fish, krill, salmon, herring, mackerel and capelin among other small prey.
During the humpbacks feeding season these whales hunt using a technique known as bubble net fishing which involves a group of humpback whales swimming around their prey in a circle and blowing bubbles around their prey in order to herd the fish into a tight ball.
The whales will also create loud vocal sounds to scare the fish to the surface of the water and slap their fins against the water to stun the fish and immobilize them.
Once the fish are unable to move the whales will swim up and lunge at the fish with an open mouth and engulf hundreds or thousands of small fish in a single gulp while using their baleen bristles to separate the water and debris from their prey.
During their migration these whales are known to travel as far as 16,000 miles making them one of the furthest migrating species in the world.
Interestingly male humpbacks in the North Atlantic can be found singing the same song in unison even when they are miles apart from one another while males in the North Pacific can be heard singing a different song.
A single song may last as long as 20 minutes but male humpback whales may be heard singing for more than 24 hours at a time.
When these marine mammals lose a friend/family member, feel lonely or are sad they may produce loud moans or whines, which can be confused for a whale song, however these moans are more akin to morning the loss of a loved one or loneliness rather than singing for mating purposes.
During feeding season these whales are known to make completely different sounds when communicating or searching for food, which further hints at the whale SONG being used for mating purposes only.
Humpback calves can drink as much as 600 litres of milk per day.
In terms of lifespan a healthy humpback whale is believed to have a lifespan of up to 50 years.
A DIFFERENT ESTIMATE OF WORLDWIDE HUMPBACK POPULATION, SHOWING, ONCE AGAIN, THAT THERE IS NO WAY TO DETERMINE THE REAL NUMBERS.
Today there are at least 80,000 humpback whales world-wide, however at one point these marine mammals were considered highly endangered due to excessive hunting and commercial whaling.
It is estimated that as much as 90% of the humpback whales population was eliminated during the whaling era.
FOR MUCH MORE ON WHALE MIGRATION, <SEE THIS WEBSITE>.
[If you see a dead or stranded whale, please call and report the sighting to the Marine Mammal Hotline at 888-256-9840. All ocean users, including swimmers, snorkelers, divers, kayakers, jet skiers, boaters, windsurfers, or surfers should not approach a humpback whale closer than 100 yards, or 90 meters. Do not chase, closely approach, surround, swim with, or attempt to touch humpback whales. To report an approach violation or other incidences of humpback whale disturbance, please call the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement's 24-hour hotline at 1-800-853-1964.]
//WW