Orlando, FL shooting

There is this one event that has been occupying my mind since Saturday, roughly about 8 hours into event in Orlando, FL shooting.

As you probably know June is LGBTQ Pride month, across the nation on different weekends LGBTQ community celebrate and commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan.

So this weekend (June 10-June 12) was kick-off for LAPRIDE, Southern California' biggest LGBTQ celebration Music Festival & Parade in West Hollywood.

Naturally in light of Orlando tragedy which was still unfolding, the Los Angeles Pride celebration were going to be a bitter sweet event not only because the community just lost 49 of their own to what it was clearly a hate crime but also because by this time we have heard about the alleged 911 call and the possibility that this case of domestic terrorism was inspired by ISIS!!.

Right in the midst of tragedy unfolding in Orlando came a News Break which reported of authorities arresting an Indiana man with a cache of weapons, ammunition, Chemical explosive-making materials in his car with apparent plan to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood.

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks initially said on Twitter that the 20-year-old suspect told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted “to harm Gay Pride event", later on the story was changed when Lt. Saul Rodriguez said the suspect told investigators that he was going to the Pride festival but he did not make additional statements about his intentions.

In any event Federal and local law enforcement very quickly decided against canceling the annual parade. Evidently, the young man who drove all the way from Indiana with car loaded with cache of weapons, ammunition, Chemical explosive material heading to LAPRIDE event WAS NO REASON for the Federal & State law enforcement to even suspect there might be some kind of connection to the event in Orlando and they very quickly deemed it 'UNRELATED."

I have to make a personal disclaimer here before I continue. 

As much as the authorities, the government, the media have given me reasons, many reasons not to trust them, as much as I value healthy skepticism and have always encourage 'questioning' that which does not make common, logical and scientific sense.......I am far from being on an auto pilot for hypothesizing and/or theorizing.

Having said that, I can not get over how little attention were paid to James Wesley Howell of Indiana who was arrested in Santa Monica in early hours of Saturday June 11 while sitting in his Indiana registered car which contained three assault rifles, high-capacity ammunition and a 5-gallon bucket containing Tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb and other improvised explosive devices.

How can one explain the scant attention paid to James Wesley Howard as if he could not possibly be a 'terrorist', 'influenced by the terrorists,' or 'inspired by the terrorist'. As if he could only NOT POSSIBLY BE RELATED to the event in Orlando. As if he WAS NOT "part of the plan", he WAS NOT part of the "script."

He was not even considered to be your 'mainstream homophobe' ready to commit a hate crime, the changed story from his admission & intent to harm Gays and Lesbians to the story that he had harbored no ill will toward gays or lesbians, made him not even a hate-crime suspect!

I suppose James Wesley Howell drove all the way from Indiana and was just there on sightseeing mission with car full of weapons, ammunition and explosives and a license plate which included a symbol of the National Rifle Assn. on the left side and the bottom said, "Teaching Freedom." :)

What do I know right? The Federal Law enforcement knew something that I didn't, they knew that James Wesley Howell of Indiana, 20 year old White male with a long rap sheet was not part of the 'script.' ;)

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/West-Hollywood-LA-Pride-Parade-382614931.html

Link to FB post: https://www.facebook.com/susan.nevens/posts/10208740802013192

Susan Nevens - 16 June 2016

Orlando mass shooting

.

Another senseless tragedy and another concerted effort to see it as more than what it is; hate acted out and made possible by easy access to firearm which is often obtained legally as was the case in this incident.

All we are hearing, all we will be hearing and witnessing 24/7 for next few days is how this tragedy will be politicized. "Worst Mass Shooting in America," will be the banner defining this event but what the heck is parameter of 'worst' nobody will ever know.

America, the Media, and the political establishment seem to have forgotten that Racism was a motive for 21 year old white man Dylan Roof who opened fire in a historic black church, in Charleston, South Carolina almost exactly a year ago (June 15, 2015).

America, the Media, and the political establishment seem to have forgotten that how proud of himself was Robert Dear the Christian man who shot and killed 3 and injured 12 in a shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs when in courtroom he belted "I am guilty".

America, the Media, and the political establishment seem to have forgotten the mentally ill 20-year-old Jewish White American Adam Lanza of Sandyhook Elementary rampage AND the tragedy in Umpqua Community College in Oregon where 26 year old gun crazed American Christopher Harper-Mercer who had a particular animus against organized religion, and asked the victims whether they were Christians before shooting them.

America, the Media, and the political establishment seem to have forgotten the Virginia Tech shooting by mentally disturbed 20 year old South Korean Seung-Hui Cho who has been permanent resident of US since he was 8 years old and killed 32 people.

There is no discussion in the US MSM about the 172 mass shootings which produced 228 victims JUST IN 2016.**
The US Media outlets are just in competition with one another trying to outdo each other with their erroneous reports connecting this heinous and bigoted hate crime to International Terrorism.

Donald Trump the twit on the Twitter who acknowledged “congrats” for “being right” on terrorism IS AS SHAMELESS as the MSM who see this tragedy as everything but the epidemic of gun violence and hate crime, AND AS SHAMELESS as the ISIS idiot leadership whom are so bloody desperate for notoriety that would gladly take credit for any violence done by any creep who decides in mid-act to pledge his allegiance to ISIS.

So once again the ills of American society, the bigotry, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, confluence of gun culture, rage and violence, epidemic of gun violence, and un-addressed mental illness is neglected/overlooked while the Afghani heritage and Muslim background of the shooter takes the center stage.

Hysteria and festival of fear once again and we are to believe that a US citizen of Afghan descent who has worked for 9 years as a Security Officer at a very significant London based G4S Security Service Company and has been on FBI radar for 3 years !! turns into a one-man killing machine and making sure that we know he's affiliated with ISIS.

** Click here for the Mass shooting archives in 2016, as of June 11, there were 13,700+ mass shootings in 2015.

Susan Nevens - 12 June 2016

The humble Queen feels that her birthday deserves 2nd round of celebration

The humble Queen feels that her birthday deserves 2nd round of celebration :)

"Britain is celebrating their 'Queens' birthday for the second time this year. A woman who decorated Derek Wilford of the Parachute Regiment shortly after the Bloody Sunday massacre in British occupied Ireland. The same woman who knighted the ethnic cleanser of Palestine, Shimon Peres.

Of course she didn't leave out US war criminals from receiving honors; Colin Powell who covered up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, Norman Schwarzkopf who proclaimed "Iraq's dead weren't worth counting", Ronald Reagan who shot down an Iranian civilian airliner killing 290 and Tommy Franks for his "inspirational leadership" in Iraq were all rewarded with knighthoods.


Royal handshakes often seal the deal for arms sales, the British 'Queen' herself proudly met with Suharto to assist the British Labor governments weapons peddling.

She talked of the need to "promote common values" with Britain's junior partner Saudi Arabia in an address to the Saudi King.

She awarded the colonial police force the RUC with a 'George Cross'.

And instead of Mike Jackson being prosecuted for his role in the Bloody Sunday massacre she rewarded him with honors." 

(Extract From the Crimes of Britain FB page)

Susan Nevens -- 10 June 2016

America's IQ test: Presidential Election

I had shared this meme about a year ago and at the beginning of the 'Primary' circus which inferred that what is seen as Presidential Election by American is seen as America's IQ test by the rest of the world.

The meme held true and last night we have learned that America's IQ test which has been competing with the room temperature is even lower than the room temperature ;)

Bernie Sanders who has been campaigning in California for about 2 weeks and had over 250 rallies up and down the State was expected to win in 'landslide' :P but that didn't happen at all.

Was Sanders loss a shocking surprise? It depends who you'd ask that question. I imagine for his supporters who lacked ability to do the math it was rather shocking, after all it was believed by them that California is a progressive state, with rather informed electorates whose demography was believed to contribute to Sander's victory.

The young & educated were expected to flock to the polls and transfer their bravado, their enthusiasm, and their energy & excitement at the polls, but that didn't happen.

Was it a shocker to me? No, it wasn't, or I should say his loss was not a shock, the spread by which he lost was sort of surprising.

The reason for my not being surprised has a lot to do with my understanding of the State of California which I have been residing in for over 3 decades, understanding and acknowledging California's pseudo faux progressive image that is often presented to the nation.

Being a Californian not only gives one a bragging rights but it also gives one criticizing rights, so perhaps if I share my views of this 'sunny' but not so 'bright' state with you, you too would agree that Uncle Bernie and his people made a wrong 'strategic decision' to put all his eggs in California's basket. One more wrong 'strategic decision' on top of the myriads of wrong 'strategic decisions' that is :)

California my friends might be a "Blue State" but its political characters and those at helm, if are not Zionist shills and war mongers they are incompetent.

Take its two Senators for example; Dianne Feinstein, the senile old hack who is as old as San Francisco and whose loyalty lies with Tel Aviv first and foremost.

Or California's Jr. Senator Barbara Boxer, another Zionist shill whose lips were magically stuck to Mrs. Clinton's behind from the get go but thankfully we don't have to endure seeing her any longer as she is retiring.

Or one of California's Congressional Representatives, a man from my district, a creature called Brad Sherman who holds his Town Halls in various Temples around San Fernando Valley and his guest speakers are often just happen to have arrived from Israel !

California is the state which has given us Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, a dimwit, incompetent, impotent, waxed mannequin who once was a third in line of presidency, never mind that her incoherent speech patterns indicated mental impairment and incompetence.

California is the state whose K-12 quality of education is ranked 47 out of 50 in the nation and whose rate of high school graduates in its LA Unified School District (2nd largest in the nation) is hovering around 58%. The future 'informed voters' :P whose state does not have enough room in its community colleges and universities to educate them but has plenty of room to incarcerate them ;)

California is the state that pretends to be the icon of 'health consciousness', where it is incumbent upon its [worthwhile] residents to drink their Green power booster glass of slush every morning and workout a good sweat, burning out that half an organic carrot and a sauteed Zucchini and grilled beets they consumed for lunch. 

Alas when it came to voting on a measure that one would think it should have been of some importance to them, such as a mere 'labeling' of the GMO products, their Organically fed minds failed to see through the scare tactic used by GMO lobbyists that 'of poison' means increased in price of that poison :) a tactic that worked which resulted in subsequent failure of the proposition.

California is the state whose farmlands are turning to dust-bowls, it only takes a few hours of drive through its central valley to see the devastation that water rationing has brought upon a state whose bloodline is agribusiness. Alas while the water to crops are rationed and while the Californians are penalized for watering their lawns more than twice a week, its so called 'informed/progressive' electorates are oblivious to their State's fraking industry which uses about 140 million gallons of water as part of fraking process in one year.

California is the state whose Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky whose obnoxious ruling to sentence a former Stanford University swim team member convicted of sexual assault to just six months in county jail caused an outrage, WAS VOTED INTO A NEW 6 YEAR TERM LAST NIGHT by the so called 'informed' California Voters!

So stating that 'informed voters' in California are as endangered of a species as voters of any other State in this nation is not an exaggeration. Progressiveness, being a revolutionary, a reformist, or being considered broad-minded? I don't know, California is certainly NOT what it used to be.

Susan Nevens - 8 June 2016

Link to Facebook Post

Hillary Clinton - the Goldman Sachs Candidate

One of the downside of 'Information overload' is that we get bombarded by so much news/material that we can't make sense out of it and somehow we become paralyzed in putting two and two together. Perhaps that is the mission to saturate us with so much news that we either become cynical of every piece of information or just tune out.

Below is one of many questionable subjects surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton which I have been researching for a little while ever since the subject of transcript of Hillary Clinton's speech to Goldman Sachs has came up.

Often I mentally and physically bookmark a news that strikes me as odd, plausible, interesting and quite often culmination of various news completes a puzzle, the big question.

The following novelette :) is an example of that which makes the attainment of the so called Transcript of her speech unnecessary, because in light of all we have come to know that speech was just a small part of the web.

In late 2011, Marc Mezvinsky (best known as the husband of Chelsea Clinton) who was working at Goldman Sachs for prior 8 years left Goldman Sachs to co-found a New York-based private equity macro-focused hedge fund firm Eaglevale Partners with two longtime Goldman partners, Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon, and with financial backing from one of the biggest names on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein.

Blankfein not only personally invested in the fund, but also allowed his association with it to be used in the fund’s marketing by letting let Eaglevale to use his name in marketing the flagship fund. Ironically this is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Goldman paid to Marc's mother-in-law, best known as Hillary Clinton. One almost wonders whose "benefits" Goldman was seeking to get out of this particular relationship.

By 2013, Institutional Investor proclaimed Mezvinsky "a hedge fund rising star,” alas
he was anything but, and instead of having a real grasp of macroeconomic events, or “how to hedge,” he decided to dump millions in Greece just before the country entered a death spiral that culminated with its third bailout, capital controls, insolvent banks and a terminally crippled economy.

Things of course went from terrible to abysmal for both the clueless hedge fund manager and his LPs, and in 2014 Hillary Clinton's son-in-law in a letter to the investors fessed-up to have been “incorrect” on Greece, generating staggering losses for the firm’s main Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity fund, a/k/a the "Greek recovery" fund.

By ‘incorrect,’ Mr. Chelsea Clinton meant the $25 million Eaglevale Greek fund had lost a stunning 48% and he ultimately had shut down the Greece-focused fund, after losing nearly 90% of its value backing Greece Recovery.

http://www.nytimes.com/…/clinton-son-in-laws-firm-is-said-t…

It is not at all clear why Eaglevale waited until this year (2016) to close the Hellenic fund, which already had lost about 40% of its value by early 2015! Perhaps it was just hope that the Greek people would simply pick up and rebuild the devastated economy from scratch, ideally without getting paid, thereby miraculously rescuing his investment.

There has been minimal reporting on the Goldman sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein investment in Eaglevale Partners, which is a private fund that faces few disclosure requirements. Hillary Clinton repeatedly dodged to answer if she knew the amount that Blankfein invested in her son-in-law’s fund.

The decision for Blankfein to invest in Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law’s company is just one of many ways Goldman Sachs has used its wealth to forge a tight bond with the Clinton family. The company paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 in personal speaking fees, paid Bill Clinton $1,550,000 in personal speaking fees, and donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. At a time when Goldman Sachs directly lobbied Hillary Clinton’s State Department, the company routinely partnered with the Clinton Foundation for events, even convening a donor meeting for the foundation at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan.

http://www.cnn.com/…/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-spe…/

To understand the significance of these dealings/connections between Goldman CEO, his investment in Clinton’s son-in-law equity firm and Clinton Foundation, we have to bring together two strands of history. One concerns Bill and Hillary Clinton’s long-running connections to Goldman, among their closest with any US corporation. The second concerns Goldman’s activities leading up to and during the Wall Street crash of 2007–2008, including its deceptive marketing of contaminated mortgage derivatives.

It suffices to say that the long-running ties with Goldman have paid off for the Clintons. According to a July 2014 analysis in the Wall Street Journal, from 1992 to the present Goldman has been the Clintons’ #1 Wall Street contributor, based on speaking fees, charitable donations, and campaign contributions. As early as 2000, Goldman was the 2nd most generous funder—after Citigroup—of Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, with a contribution of $711,000.

By the winter of 2006–2007, however, Goldman and its CEO Lloyd Blankfein were becoming deeply involved in the collapsing housing bubble—and engaging in the practices that have since resulted in years of investigations and lawsuits.

Data gathered mostly from the Corporate Research Project, a public interest website, show that on thirteen occasions between 2009 and 2016, Goldman was penalized by US courts or government agencies for fraudulent or deceptive practices that were committed mostly between 2006 and 2009. Four of these penalties amounted to $300 million or more.

In July 2010 the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Goldman $550 million for the fraudulent marketing.

In July 2012 Goldman agreed to pay $25.6 million to settle a suit brought by the Public Employees Retirement System of Mississippi accusing the bank of defrauding investors in a 2006.

In January 2013, the Federal Reserve announced that Goldman would pay $330 million to settle allegations of foreclosure abuse by its mortgage loan servicing operations. Finally, in January of this year, Goldman announced that it would pay $5 billion to settle multiple lawsuits brought by official agencies against the bank, mainly for fraudulent marketing of CDOs; the final terms of the settlement were released on April 11.

How have the Clintons responded to these revelations about Goldman Sachs, and their legal repercussions for the bank?

Since we do not have the transcripts of Clinton’s 2013 speeches, it is impossible fully to answer this question. But we do know that Clinton received $675,000 from the bank for the speeches and all indications are that the Clinton-Goldman connections continued much as they had before the crash.

Eyewitness accounts of Hillary Clinton’s 2013 Goldman speeches give some idea of their tone. One Goldman executive told Politico in early February that Clinton sounded “like a Goldman Sachs managing director,” while a report in The Wall Street Journal on February 11 quoted another unnamed source who said Clinton’s greetings toward her Goldman audiences “bordered on ‘gushy.’

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/…/clinton-speeches-218969

http://www.wsj.com/…/hillary-clintons-wall-street-talks-wer…

A third indication of Hillary Clinton’s recent approach to Goldman executives, however, is more substantial. This is a speech Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman executives, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein, on September 23, 2014, that is available on YouTube in which she held up Goldman as an outstanding corporate citizen.

Note that this unbridled support of Goldman Sachs happened just at the very time Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law Eaglevale Greek fund One had lost 90% of its values and Blankfein (Goldman CEO) who financially backed her son-in-laws firm personally lost a lot of money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lKlJ3Ed4fQ

As the primary season reaches the crucial contests in the northeast and in California that will likely decide the ultimate victor, the dual history linking Goldman and the Clintons poses many questions that still need to be answered.

First, should Lloyd Blankfein remain CEO of Goldman Sachs in view of the bank’s central involvement in the deceptive marketing of securities during the crash?

Does cozy association between Goldman Sachs and Clintons in which both Clintons receiving inflated speaking fees from Goldman, and with Hillary Clinton performing what amounts to a high-end public relations effort for the bank, even as she styles herself as a reformer of the financial industry questionable?

As long as Clinton refuses to reveal the content of her Goldman speeches, as long as there is a grossly questionable triangle between Goldman Sachs, Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s Son-in-Law private equity firm whose financial backer is Goldman Sachs CEO, believing in Hillary Clinton’s campaign pledge to “rein in Wall Street” is utter naiveté if not an abject stupidity.

Susan Nevens - 7 June 2016

Link to FB Post

Israeli MK: burning Palestinian boys is not act of terror

Pathology of sick society which believes it has a place in this world though for 67 years it has shown that it is incompatible with humanity.

The vermin Bezalel Smotrich who is a member of Israeli Knesset - that abhorrent body of sub-humans - considered on Thursday (June 2, 2016) that burning Palestinian children is not an act of terror.

Smotrich published a column in the B’Sheva weekly newspaper, saying that the attacks carried out by extremist Israeli settlers, including “price tag” attacks are not classified as terrorism.

Smotrich wrote: “Terrorism is only violence carried out by an enemy within the framework of war against us, and only that justifies taking severe steps who are out of place in normal situations, all the rest are serious crimes, abominable crime, nationalist crime, but not terrorism.”

Now does this cretin and many like him who make-up the Israeli society have a right to exist? HELL NO.

- See more at: http://www.daysofpalestine.com/news/israeli-mk-burning-pal-boys-act-terror/

Susan Nevens - 4 June 2016

A Tribute to Muhammad Ali

A video obituary and a tribute to Muhammad Ali by the Guardian. [https://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2016/jun/04/muhammad-ali-video-obituary ]





June 4, 2016

Parkinson was of course Muhammad Ali's greatest battle, at the end Parkinson won but not by a knock out, Ali put out a valiant fight.

Muhammad Ali was more than the sport he played, the influence of his larger than life personality was felt far beyond the ring.

Ali was stripped of his championship title after he refused to serve in Vietnam, subsequently he was convicted of draft evasion and was sentenced to five years in prison.

He was later on released on appeal, but was unable to fight or leave the country so he did the next best thing, he traveled the country and spoke against the war and for civil rights.

His message that people of color should resist white supremacy, imperialism and colonialism gave him A TITLE that could never be stripped. He became a champion for the right cause.

Ali passed away at the age of 74, RIP.

Susan Nevens

Silencing America as It Prepares for War by JOHN PILGER

[Silencing America as It Prepares for War | by JOHN PILGER | http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/27/silencing-america-as-it-prepares-for-war/ ]

Not only John Pilger is brilliant, he has impeccable timing. This fantastic piece could not come at more apt time than the Memorial Day, the time of a year when blind patriotism is celebrated around the BBQ grills of America.

The time of a year when a mere mention of the US military adventures around the globe is considered un-American and un-patriotic.

The time of a year when 'sobriety' on any level is not sought alas Pilger delivers in this article the mother of all 'Patriot Missiles', THE TRUTH, he writes for those who don't give the TRUTH a day off for 'Memorial Day".

Now if the function of a "memorial' is to preserve memory/memories, then perhaps on this day we should remember all aspects of US wars, perhaps we should remember the tragic impacts of US wars not only on our own soldiers but the innocent victims in all the other countries which have been affected and impacted by US aggression.

Perhaps we should remember that while the US lost 7,000 of his own she caused as many as million death in Iraq and Afghanistan, a ratio of 1:143, most of whom innocent civilians.

Just a brief samples of what Pilger delivers in this article;

“We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don’t you forget it.” So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, “Which side did you fight on?”

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called “The Price of Freedom” at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa’s grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved “a million lives”; Iraq was “liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision”. The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington’s boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it “never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. It didn’t matter … “. Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called “a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Read the rest here..... http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/27/silencing-america-as-it-prepares-for-war/

Susan Nevens - 1 June 2016