Oliver North, ex-CIA, oud-drugslord en oorlogsmisdadiger waarschijnlijk nieuwe president terreurorganisatie NRA......

Lees het volgende uitstekende artikel van Jon Schwarz, gepubliceerd op The Intercept, over Oliver North die van drugslord, nu waarschijnlijk snel zal worden gebombardeerd (deden ze dat maar letterlijk) tot president van terreurorganisatie NRA, ofwel de National Rifle Association......

Leden van de NRA snappen nog steeds niet dat alcohol één van de dodelijkste harddrugs op de wereld is, maar hebben wel de pest aan alles wat men verder illegale drugs* noemt (waar ze uiteraard ook cannabis toe rekenen......). Geen nood voor deze veelal hypocriete christenen, Oliver North wordt ondanks zijn rol als 'drugslord' en terrorist gewoon als held gezien, terwijl hij een oorlogsmisdadiger is die berecht zou moeten worden voor het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag (het ICC).....

Als North bijvoorbeeld een Colombiaan was geweest, had men hem al lang opgesloten in de VS vanwege zijn bemoeienis met de invoer van enorme hoeveelheden cocaïne (in de VS).....

Voorts heeft North de Contra's in Nicaragua, een terreurgroep die tegen de socialistische regering vocht, gesteund met wapens, die hij kocht van de winsten gemaakt met drugshandel....

Ach het voorgaande geeft ten overvloede nog eens aan waarvoor de NRA staat: grootschalige terreur op de straten, scholen en andere openbare gelegenheden van de VS.......

OLIVER NORTH WORKED WITH COCAINE TRAFFICKERS TO ARM TERRORISTS. NOW HE’LL BE PRESIDENT OF THE NRA.

     Jon Schwarz

  May 12 2018, 2:03 p.m.

THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION has always been clear about drugs: They’re terrifying.

Last year, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre darkly warned that members of drug gangs “are infiltrating law enforcement and even the military.” In 2013, LaPierre proclaimed that “Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States,” and are a key part of the “hellish world” that awaits us in the future. When Charlton Heston was president of the NRA in the 1990s, he declared that regular Americans would soon be besieged by 10,000 drug dealers freed from prison by the Clinton administration.

It seems odd, then, that the next president of the NRA will soon be Oliver North, who spent years in the 1980s working together with large-scale cocaine traffickers and protecting a notorious narco-terrorist from the rest of the U.S. government.

This reality about North has been largely covered up, first by North himself and then by Fox News and the passage of time. Thirty years later, it’s been almost totally forgotten. But the facts remain genuinely appalling.

North was an active-duty Marine when he joined the Reagan administration’s National Security Council in 1981. One of Reagan’s top priorities was organizing and funding the Contras, a guerrilla military force, to overthrow the revolutionary socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. But the Contras engaged in extensive, gruesome terrorism against Nicaraguan civilians. Congress gradually reduced and then eliminated appropriations supporting them, leading the Reagan administration to secretly search for money elsewhere.

According to the report from a later congressional investigation, North was put in charge of this operation, which participants dubbed “The Enterprise.”

"Report of the congressional committees investigating the Iran-Contra Affair,” U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran; U.S. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, 1987

North enthusiastically looked for cash wherever he could find it, and led many of the clandestine schemes that later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. The Sultan of Brunei donated $10 million (which North’s secretary Fawn Hall accidentally wired to the wrong Swiss bank account), and Saudi Arabia ponied up as well. North also pushed what he called “a neat idea”: selling U.S. military equipment to Iran, with the proceeds passed along to the Contras.

Meanwhile, the Contras had a neat idea of their own: facilitating cocaine trafficking through Central America into the U.S., with a cut going toward supporting their war against the Sandinistas. Some Contras were themselves cocaine traffickers, and others were simply happy to make alliances of convenience with drug cartels.

There’s no evidence North actively wanted cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. It was simply that he had other priorities. But was he aware of the Contras’ drug trafficking? Yes. Did he try to shield one of “his” cocaine traffickers from consequences from the other branches of the U.S. government? Yes. Did he work together with a known drug lord? Yes.

All in all, North’s connections to drug trafficking were so egregious that in 1989 he was banned from entering Nicaragua’s neighbor Costa Rica by Oscar Arias, the country’s president and 1987 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

This may seem shocking to the easily shocked. But it’s all been documented in various government investigations. All you need in order to learn about it is curiosity and an internet connection. For instance, here’s a screenshot from the CIA’s website about the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance, or ADREN by its Spanish acronym, which was later folded into the Contras:

"Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States,” CIA, 1998

The full extent of North’s complicity in cocaine trafficking will never be known. When the Iran-Contra scandal story broke in November 1986, he ordered Hall to destroy so many documents that the shredder malfunctioned, and she had to ask White House maintenance to come and fix it. Moreover, when North was removed from his National Security Council (NSC) job, he took with him 2,848 pages of daily notes — which legally belonged to the federal government. By the time a congressional investigation was finally able to examine the notes, North and his lawyers had redacted huge amounts of information.

Nonetheless, 543 of the pages mentioned drugs or drug trafficking, with the probe finding that “in many of these cases, material in the Notebooks adjacent to the narcotics references has been deleted.”

"Drugs, Law Enforcement And Foreign Policy,” U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1989

But despite North’s cover-up, what we do know for sure is incredibly damning.

Perhaps most significantly, according to North’s own notes he met with Panama’s then-dictator Manuel Noriega in London in September 1986 to collaborate on a plan for Noriega to support the Contras in return for American money and arms. They discussed sabotaging a Nicaraguan airport and oil refinery, as well as creating a program to train Contra and Afghan mujahedeen commandos in Panama with Israeli help. (It’s not completely clear, but North appears to have written that “Rabin” – i.e., Yitzhak Rabin, who was then Israel’s minister of defense – “approves.”)

North was clearly enthusiastic about the potential partnership with Noriega. In an earlier email selling the proposal to one of his superiors, he wrote that “we might have available a very effective, very secure means of doing some of the things which must be done if the Nicaragua project is going to succeed. … I believe we could make the appropriate arrangements w/ reasonable OPSEC and deniability.”

Email, Oliver North to John Poindexter, May 8, 1986 (neem aan dat het niet om een email ging destijds....)

But of course, Noriega was himself a powerful drug trafficker. Knowing this didn’t require a top-secret clearance: It was published on the front page of the New York Times three months before North met with him. According to the Times article, “A White House official said the most significant drug-running in Panama was being directed by General Noriega.”

The North-Noriega operation ultimately didn’t come to fruition; the Iran-Contra affair was exposed just two months after they met. But the planning that did occur is conclusive evidence that North eagerly worked with drug dealers operating on the largest scale imaginable.

“Panama Strongman Said to Trade In Drugs, Arms and Illicit Money,” New York Times, June 11, 1986

North also went to great lengths to protect an ally who was a key participant in what the Justice Department called “the most significant case of narco-terrorism yet discovered.”

In 1984, José Bueso Rosa, a Honduran general, plotted with several others to assassinate the president of Honduras. They planned to fund the hit with the proceeds from selling 760 pounds of cocaine in the U.S.

The FBI, however, had the participants under surveillance, intercepted the shipment when it arrived at a small airfield in Florida, and arrested everyone involved.

But Bueso had played a key role in Honduran support for the Contras. So North went to work to get him off as lightly as possible. (Bueso had not himself been charged with drug trafficking, but wiretaps made it obvious he participated in that part of the project.)

In email, North explained his plans to “cabal quietly” with other Reagan administration officials “to look at options: pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence.” Eventually, North planned to have the case’s judge informed “in camera” — that is, secretly — about “our equities in this matter,” in order to push for leniency. Then, North wrote, it would be necessary to quietly brief Bueso, so that he wouldn’t “start singing songs nobody wants to hear.”

North didn’t get everything he wanted, but did succeed in having Bueso transferred to a “Club Fed” minimum security prison. Bueso was released on parole after 40 months.

THERE ARE ALSO numerous documented examples of North being informed that members of the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, with no signs that North took any action.

For instance, after meeting with a key assistant, North wrote in his notebooks about a plane being used by the brother of a top Contra leader to ferry supplies from the U.S. to Central America. “Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans,” North jotted down, “is probably being used for drug runs into U.S.”

North testified in front of Congress that he’d passed this information along to the Drug Enforcement Administration. When later questioned by the Washington Post, the DEA, the State Department, and the U.S. Customs Service all stated that there was no evidence North ever said anything about the matter to them.

Oliver North, notes, August 9, 1985

The same aide who told North about the plane also informed him about the “potential involvement with drug running” of one Contra official and that another was “now involved in drug running out of Panama.” And after a call from another subordinate, North noted that the Contras were planning to buy weapons from a Honduran warehouse — and “14 M to finance came from drugs.”

North was getting similar reports from outside the government as well. Dennis Ainsworth, a Republican real estate investor who’d volunteered to help the Contra cause, informed a U.S. attorney that the top Contra commander “was involved in drug trafficking,” but that the Nicaraguan community was frightened to come forward because “they could be blown away by Colombia hit squads.” Ainsworth said he’d tried to inform the White House about this but “we were put off by Ollie North,” and “I was even physically threatened by one of Ollie North’s associates.” (The U.S. attorney later wrote a memo with Ainsworth’s statements and transmitted it to the FBI.)

“Regarding Dennis Madden Ainsworth, Information Concerning,” FBI, January 6, 1987

North and the NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this history. When North ran for Senate in 1994, his campaign spokesperson said his involvement with the Bueso case was “old news and garbage and nobody cares about it.” In a 2004 appearance on Fox News, North called a congressional investigation that focused on the Contra-cocaine connection “a witch hunt” with witnesses “who clearly had a political agenda.”

But the extraordinarily sordid nature of North’s past will be clear to anyone who appraises it honestly. In announcing North’s appointment, Wayne LaPierre said there’s “no one better suited to serve as our President,” and he’s correct. Oscar Arias wrote Thursday that the NRA “finds in Oliver North a leader worthy of its mission.” Peter Kornbluh, who was co-director of the Iran-Contra documentation project at the National Security Archive, is even more straightforward: North, he says, is “the perfect pick to further the NRA’s reputation for favoring bloodshed and criminality over responsible gun control and ownership.”

Top photo: Former U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North gives the Invocation at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Dallas on May 4, 2018.

Join Our Newsletter

Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.

I’m in
==============================

* Let wel: in het Engels zijn drugs ook de medicijnen tegen ziekte enz. Het gebruik van opiaten als pijnbestrijder is één van de redenen waarom er nu zoveel ophef is in de VS over verslaafden aan die opiaten, ofwel synthetische opium zoals Oxycontin. Bij velen wordt de werking van deze opiaten in de loop van de jaren steeds zwakker, waarna ze hun toevlucht nemen tot echte, niet synthetische opiaten als heroïne.....

PS: in de kop staat dat North ex-CIA werknemer is, in feite was dit zo gezien zijn handelen met de CIA, echter officieel heeft hij nooit op de CIA loonlijst gestaan.

Reagan middels manipulaties tot president gekozen; waarom de gijzelaars in Iran moesten wachten op hun vrijheid....

Gisteren was het 37 jaar geleden dat Ronald Reagan een 'c-acteur' en d-politicus president werd van de VS. Diezelfde dag liet Iran de VS gijzelaars vrij die 444 dagen vast hadden gezeten in de VS ambassade van Teheran.

Nog steeds spreekt men over het succes dat Reagan boekte met de vrijlating van de gijzelaars. Zoals veel 'gekozen-presidenten' bemoeide het team van Reagan zich na de verkiezingsoverwinning, maar voor de inauguratie van Reagan (als president), met de gaande politiek en in dit geval o.a. met de onderhandelingen die president Carters administratie voerde met de Iraniërs. Dat is te zeggen, buiten medeweten van die administratie (en reken maar met de hulp van de CIA...).......

Met wapens in ruil voor het vasthouden van de gijzelaars tot na de verkiezingen, stal opperploert Reagan de verkiezingen. Deze schoft liet de gijzelaars zelfs vastzitten tot zijn inauguratie op 20 januari, waar zijn administratie later bij verzon, dat de Iraniërs Carter een softie vonden en bang waren voor Reagan en daarom de gijzelaars vrij hebben gelaten op de dag dat hij werkelijk president werd..........

Echter de waarheid is heel anders: Iran was de hele gijzelingskwestie meer dan zat en begon de onderhandelingen met het team van president Carter.

Over manipulaties van verkiezingen gesproken: daar heeft men in de VS de Russen in het geheel niet voor nodig..........

Hier het bericht van Brasscheck TV met video's over deze zaak:

THE OCTOBER SURPRISE

On January 20, 1980, just minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, Iran released US hostages it had held for 444 days.

The timing was weird to say the least.

What did this strange timing mean?

How Reagan became president

A FRAUD FROM DAY ONE

The Secret Government, The treasonous Bush family

We’re reviewing a crucial decade in American history…

The 1980s.

This was the decade that federal government criminality went into high gear.

Ad it all started with an act of fraud and high treason, a kind of bloodless coup.

Gary Sick, a retired Naval Captain wrote “All Fall Down,” and claimed that in October 1980 Ronald Reagan made a deal with Iran to prevent American hostages from being released until after Election Day. As payback, the US arranged for Israel to give arms to Iran.

=======================

Zie ook hoe de VS nu bezig is met  pogingen om een oorlog tegen Iran te beginnen, alles overgoten met de gebruikelijke leugens van de VS, de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde:

      'Rubio wrongly credits Reagan for 1981 release of hostages from Iran'

en: 'With Veiled Regime Change Threats, Trump and NeoCons Blasted for Exploiting Iran Protests'

en: 'US Empire Is Running The Same Script With Iran That It Ran With Libya, Syria'  

en: 'Nikki Haley (VS ambassadeur in de VN) bedreigt sjiitisch Iran met militair ingrijpen......' (klik ook de links onder dat bericht)

en: 'VS liegt schaamteloos om het westen verder op te zetten tegen Iran........'

en: 'Protesten Iran opgezet door de VS en Israël'

en: 'Iran, de protesten en wat de media je niet vertellen.........'

en: 'Iraanse protesten allesbehalve compleet spontaan (zoals VS ambassadeur bij de VN Haley durfde te stellen...)....'

Mensen, dit was het voor vandaag, morgen meer berichten, maak er een mooie dag van!

Oprah Winfrey als president, is de VS compleet gek geworden?

Op de Intercept publiceerde Mehdi Hasan afgelopen maandag een artikel waarin hij zich al in de kop afvraagt of we helemaal gek zijn geworden, door nu Oprah Winfrey, u weet wel o.a. notoire belastingontduiker en presentator van een praatprogramma, als toekomstig president van te VS te zien......

Hasan vergelijkt een aantal presidenten en stelt dan dat Winfrey, die o.a. wel stabiel is i.t.t. Trump, een grote verademing zou zijn op Trump al leg je daarmee de lat wel erg laag...... Bovendien is ze geen seksist, of een fascist en wordt ze niet verdacht van het heulen met 'de vijand', zoals in het geval van Trump en Rusland...... Dat laatste had Hasan niet moeten zeggen, hij zou moeten weten dat dit gelul is van de democraten in samenwerking met een paar geheime diensten....... Het was zeker na de val van de Sovjet-Unie bijna gebruikelijk voor de komende administratie, als met Israël ook te overleggen met Rusland; dit had Hasan kunnen weten.

Voorts stelt Hasan dat we (in de VS. Ap) niet nog een president nodig hebben die een niet gekozen generaal en Goldman Sachs een deel van het werk laat doen........ Hasan moet toch weten dat Trump bepaald niet de eerste president is, die ofwel het leger min of meer liet beslissen wat te doen (waarna het werd gebracht als was het een plan van de president) en de banken de vrije hand gaf....

Maakt verder niet uit Hasan schreef een uiterst informatief stuk, waarin hij filosofeert en uiteindelijk stelt dat de VS echt geen tweede nitwit als Trump nodig heeft, een tweede steenrijke figuur, die deels het eigenbelang zal laten prevaleren........

Lees en oordeel zelf:

Oprah Winfrey for President: Have We All Gone Bonkers?

Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Mehdi Hasan contact: Twitter @mehdirhasan

January 8, 2018

HAVE WE ALL gone bonkers?

On Sunday evening, #Oprah2020 began trending on social media after Oprah Winfrey delivered a rousing speech against misogyny and racism at the Golden Globe Awards. While Oprah has in the past ruled out running for public office, her longtime partner Stedman Graham just told the Los Angeles Times that “she would absolutely do it,” and CNN is reporting that Oprah is “actively thinking” about running for president.

Is #Oprah2020 really a serious thing?

Do people honestly consider the talk-show-host-turned-media-mogul to be a viable or appropriate candidate to run against fellow celebrity billionaire Donald Trump in three years? “I have no idea if Oprah would be a good candidate or president,” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau wrote on Twitter, “but dismissing her out of hand because Trump is a celebrity seems short-sighted.”

Really? I’m old enough to remember when liberals gave a damn about experience, qualifications, and judgement; when Democrats mocked the idea of Trump — a former reality TV star and property developer who struggled to tell the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah — running for the presidency.

On the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama blasted Trump as “uniquely unqualified,” lacking in “basic knowledge” and “woefully unprepared” to do the job of commander-in-chief. In stark contrast, he argued, there had “never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”

President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Oprah Winfrey in the East Room at the White House on Nov. 20, 2013 in Washington. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Clinton called Trump “totally unqualified,” while an op-ed from the New York Times editorial board, headlined “Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President,” pointed out that the GOP candidate “has no experience in national security.” Three days after the election, Vox ran a piece headlined, “Donald Trump is the only U.S. president ever with no political or military experience.”

Well, dear liberals and Democrats, guess what? President Winfrey would be the second such president. Is this really what most Americans want or what the United States government needs? Another clueless celebrity in possession of the nuclear codes? Another billionaire mogul who doesn’t like paying taxes in charge of the economy? And how would it be anything other than sheer hypocrisy for Democrats to offer an unqualified, inexperienced presidential candidate to the American electorate in 2020, given all that they said about Trump in 2016?

Granted, Oprah isn’t a raging narcissist or a racist bigot; she doesn’t have ties to white nationalists, isn’t accused of colluding with a foreign government, and hasn’t been caught on tape admitting to sexual assault.

Oprah would be a far superior, smarter, and more stable president than Trump in every imaginable way. But that, of course, is a low, low bar.

As CNBC’s Christina Wilkie, in a rare dissent on Twitter, put it: “I love to watch Oprah saying inspirational things on television. But also I love to watch people who have political experience being elected to national office.”

What about former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, some Oprah supporters might say? The Gipper, however, was also a former two-term governor from California. Obama, also accused of being a political lightweight when he ran for president, was a sitting senator, former constitutional law professor, and author of two acclaimed books on politics and policy. Even the know-nothing George W. Bush had won two gubernatorial elections in Texas before throwing his hat in the presidential ring in 2000.

Prior to Trump, the only presidents to never have served in public office prior to being elected to the White House were Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower. The first won the Mexican-American War; the second, the Civil War; and the third, the Second World War.

Does Oprah have anything on her resume to compare with that? Is emoting on TV and handing out free cars — even if it is, admittedly, part of building an impressive multi-billion-dollar media empire from scratch — really an acceptable substitute for political or military experience? Is that how debased the political culture has become?

Oprah Winfrey poses at the inaugural graduation of the class of 2011 at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls on Jan. 14, 2012 in Henley on Klip, South Africa.
 Photo: Michelly Rall/Getty Images

DO I SOUND elitist? Perhaps. But what’s wrong with wanting people with intellect, experience, and qualifications to fill the most important jobs? As Oprah’s fellow celebrity liberal Jon Stewart once said: “Not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who’s embarrassingly superior to me, somebody who speaks 16 languages and sleeps two hours a night hanging upside down in a chamber they themselves designed.”

Well, the Oprah fans might argue, she could surround herself with big brains. But isn’t that the argument that Trump supporters make, too? Do we really want another president deferring to unelected generals and Goldman Sachs? And do we think a talk-show host who promoted the careers of hucksters Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, while also giving a platform to the anti-science lunacy of actresses Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers, is capable of constructing a Lincoln-esque “Team of Rivals”? A political and economic “Justice League?” Come. Off. It.

To be clear: I am not saying that Oprah can’t, or won’t, be president. Predictions are for fools, and Trump has proved that anything is possible.

Oprah’s supporters — rightly — might point to her strong record on standing up to racism and misogyny, not to mention her inspirational oratory and backstory. Her record on Iraq is better than Clinton’s; she once even hosted a show on universal health care with Michael Moore. It might also seem like an act of divine justice if Trump, hero to white nationalists and neo-Nazis, was replaced by a strong black woman.

Oprah’s critics — also rightly — might point to her fronting for global corporations and her role as “one of the world’s best neoliberal capitalist thinkers.” They might ask: What is Oprah’s position on drone strikes in Pakistan? On supporting the Saudi war in Yemen? On cap and trade? Single-payer? Tax reform? Does she have a plan for Middle East peace? Could a person who once seemed surprised that Indian people still “eat with their hands” really defuse a nuclear crisis on the Indian subcontinent?

But we have to go beyond the pros and cons of an Oprah presidency — I can’t believe I just typed that line — and consider some broader questions: How much damage is U.S. celebrity culture doing to U.S. politics? Why don’t ideologies, or even ideas, seem to matter anymore? Shouldn’t progressives be making the case for the virtues of government and collective action and, therefore, the importance of electing people of ability, experience, and expertise to high office? Shouldn’t they be arguing that billionaire TV stars have no business running for the most powerful job on planet Earth, regardless of whether they are an orange man called Trump or a black woman called Oprah?

Some pundits have suggested that the Democrats can’t win without a celebrity candidate like Oprah in 2020. “If you need to set a thief to catch a thief,” neoconservative John Podhoretz wrote in a New York Post op-ed in September 2017 that was retweeted by Oprah herself, “you need a star — a grand, outsized, fearless star whom Trump can neither intimidate nor outshine — to catch a star.”

This simply isn’t true. In August 2017, Public Policy Polling found Trump trailed Joe Biden (by 15 points), Bernie Sanders (14 points), Elizabeth Warren (7 points), Cory Booker (5 points), and Kamala Harris (1 point) in potential 2020 match-ups. Last month, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found Trump would lose to a “Generic Democrat” in 2020 by a whopping 16 points.

If five different senators plus a Generic Democrat can beat this Republican president, then why the liberal excitement over a talk-show host? And why draw the line at Oprah? What about Mark Zuckerberg? Mark Cuban? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Kanye? Where, oh where, does it end?

The liberal response to the rise of Trump cannot and should not be “let’s find our own bigger, better version of The Donald.” As columnist Emily Arrowood wrote in May 2016: “That Trump is acutely unqualified would be true even if he were Mr. Congeniality, a champion of the people with the aspirations of Jimmy Stewart in ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’”

The irony is that Oprah may, in fact, be Ms. Congeniality. But she is still as “acutely unqualified” as Trump. Let’s get a grip, folks.

Top photo: In this handout photo provided by NBCUniversal, Oprah Winfrey speaks onstage during the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Jan. 7, 2018 in Beverly Hills, Calif.