US 'permanently' denies visa to German journalist probing Argentine rights violations

From The Canadian Press

Weber has long reported for German news media, specializing in investigations of Nazi war criminals and human rights violations in South America. She is perhaps best known for her lawsuit that forced Germany's intelligence service last year to open thousands of files on top Nazi Adolf Eichmann, some of which showed that the U.S. and Germany knew he was hiding in Argentina after World War II.

...Back in Argentina, Weber then tried to apply properly for a journalism visa at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, but was denied on Jan. 26. She then appealed, and received a March 18 letter saying she remains "permanently ineligible" because she "misrepresented material facts."

Banks And Wikileaks

From The New York Times.


...Visa, MasterCard and PayPal announced in the past few weeks that they would not process any transaction intended for WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, Bank of America decided to join the group, arguing that WikiLeaks may be doing things that are “inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.”

The Federal Reserve, the banking regulator, allows this. Like other companies, banks can choose whom they do business with. Refusing to open an account for some undesirable entity is seen as reasonable risk management. The government even requires banks to keep an eye out for some shady businesses — like drug dealing and money laundering — and refuse to do business with those who engage in them.

But a bank’s ability to block payments to a legal entity raises a troubling prospect. A handful of big banks could potentially bar any organization they disliked from the payments system, essentially cutting them off from the world economy...

Bank of America says it won't process payments intended for WikiLeaks

From The Kansas City Star.

By RICK ROTHACKER
McClatchy Newspapers


Bank of America Corp. said Friday evening that it was joining other financial institutions in declining to process payments intended for WikiLeaks.

"Bank of America joins in the actions previously announced by MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others and will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks," the bank said in a statement.

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments."

Assange still committed to publishing secret documents: mother

From Reuters.


"My convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have expressed. This circumstance shall not shake them," said Assange, according to his mother who supplied the network with a written statement of her son's answer.

"If anything this process has increased my determination that they are true and correct."

WikiLeaks has provoked fury in Washington with its publications of secret U.S. cables and has vowed to make public

the 250,000 embassy documents it had obtained.

Assange is under arrest in Britain over sexual assault charges in Sweden.

Assange was also critical of the major finance companies who suspended payments to his WikiLeaks site.

"We now know that Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and others are instruments of U.S. foreign policy. It's not something we knew before," he said.

Iceland's Datacell Joins Fight On The Side Of Wikileaks, Prepares Law Suit

From The Hindu


WikiLeaks' payment processor to sue card companies



WikiLeaks’ payment processor says it is preparing to sue credit card companies Visa and MasterCard over their refusal to process donations to the secret-spilling website.

The statement by Iceland’s DataCell comes as Internet payment company PayPal says it will return the funds frozen in WikiLeaks’ account to the foundation that was fundraising for it.

It isn’t yet clear where or when such a lawsuit would be heard. DataCell CEO Andreas Fink told The Associated Press that he would seek to have his case heard in a court in London, where Visa Europe Ltd. is based.

Fink said in an e-mail that “it is simply ridiculous to think WikiLeaks has done anything criminal.” Visa and MasterCard have not immediately returned e-mails seeking comment.

Pro-Wikileaks Vigilantes Down Visa.com

They are down. Keep kicking them.

From Wired.com

Visa and Mastercard might be competitors but they share at least two things in common – they both decided to cut off donations to Wikileaks through their services, and both of their websites have been knocked off the net in retaliation.

The group responsible is the self-named group Anonymous which has marshalled Wikileaks supporters into supporting a denial of service attack on the U.S.-based credit card companies. Visa.com stopped responding early in the afternoon Wednesday Pacific time, while Mastercard.com fell at least eight hours earlier and remains unresponsive.

Visa Down!

Take all the fkers down. Take the whole establishment down. They are going down anyway...sooner or later...and you too Lieberman you little shit. And Hillary, jump off a cliff with your sandbox partner Obama. And hey guess what all of you establishment liars....everyone hates you! Yeah that's right. Did you hear me? We all hate you lying SOBs. All you corporate scum.

From The Huffington Post.

Just hours after MasterCard's website was disabled by WikiLeaks supporters, Visa.com is now down as well....

VISA, PayPal, and Amazon all Pentagon Puppets.

They have all cut off funding to Wikileaks.

I suggest all three should be avoided if possible. They will get what they deserve soon enough anyway though, when the whole financial system of the Western world collapses, which is just a few years away anyway.

Immigration Harassment Forces Withdrawal of Respected German Opera Director

In Europe generally a certain level of politeness and respect is expected. Europeans coming to America where the slavish population is ready to lick any boot presented in front of it's brainwashed mind are in for a rude awakening. It reminds me of when I came back from Europe and landing in JFK was greeted by a furious TSA worker screaming at us to stand still or be arrested. Welcome to Amerika, Herr Direktor.


From The New York Times

When the respected German director Peter Stein withdrew in July from a major production of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” at the Metropolitan Opera, blame was laid on the usual suspects: “personal reasons.”

Now those reasons have become clear. Mr. Stein said he had pulled out because he felt offended by his treatment at the United States Consulate in Berlin when he applied for a work visa and by a lack of sympathy from Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, over confrontations with bureaucracy...

In June he went to the consulate in Berlin for a work visa for the Met job and was forced, he said, to stand for hours in a stifling room with 50 other visa applicants. When he finally reached the consular official, “He said to me, ‘Why don’t you laugh?’ ” Mr. Stein recounted. “I said, ‘I stay here for two and a half hours standing and I am an old man.’ ”

The officer replied, “ ‘In this case you will not have a visa,’ and sent me away,” Mr. Stein said. Mr. Stein said the experience left him humiliated and deeply offended.

Several weeks later he returned and managed to gain the work visa, helped by a Met employee who had flown to Berlin. But the experience rankled, and Mr. Stein sent an e-mail to Mr. Gelb saying he was “terrified and demotivated” out of fear that a similar incident could occur in the United States.

“If anything happens in the same way, I will leave immediately your country trembling alone thinking of the entrance procedures at the airport,” he said...

You have every right to be frightened of the dumb downed and mindlessly patriotic police state "Amerika", Mr. Stein. Why come here anyway? You've got it better over there, I'm sure. For the average American, Opera is The Lion King.

Senate Intelligence/CNN Mirage Of "Lack Of Intelligence Sharing" When In Reality "Intelligence Sharing" Caused Christmas Bomber Failure

Reading a CNN article discussing the resignation of Dennis C. Blair and a Senate Intelligence Commitee report, you probably would believe a lack of intelligence sharing caused the Christmas Bomber intelligence failure. However, in reality, beyond the smokescreen of manipulation, it was the intelligence sharing itself which caused the incident. The State Department was on course to revoke the visa of Abdulmutallab until an unnamed intelligence agency requested that the State Department NOT do so. This goes unmentioned by CNN and other near useless media organizations.

It was originally reported in The Detroit News and elsewhere, but still survives here and here.

Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber
By Alex Lantier
3 February 2010
A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.

The hearing was reported in a brief article posted January 27 on the web site of the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.”

The revelation that US intelligence agencies made a deliberate decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the commercial flight, without any special airport screening, has been buried in the media. As of this writing, nearly a week after the hearing, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published no articles on the subject. Nor have the broadcast or cable media reported on it...

This is not just negligence of course. This mirage has a purpose. Corrupt elements within the establishment want, like any good mafia, more centralization and more "sharing" since it allows for more central control and thus more corruption.

Do Governments Aid Terrorists? (Yes, Mr. Pipes, Kristol, Lieberman and Cheney, We Know They Do.)

Recently the CIA links of terrorist Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of the Pakistan-based Jundullah terrorist organization, have been revealed after his capture and confirmed by a former US intelligence official. But this should come as no surprise since ABC news reported on our support of Jundallah years ago. Reports by Seymour Hersh and in the Telegraph newspaper and elsewhere also document our support of terrorist groups and CIA black ops to destabilize Iran.
But not only does our government aid terrorists to destabilize our supposed enemies, there are also many examples where agencies within our government have even aided terrorists planning attacks against our own country or our allies. Sometimes an FBI 'informant' has aided the terrorists, paid their rent, or helped them build bombs that later explode. Other times, while ordinary citizens are harassed by authorities at airports, visas have been purposely provided to known terrorists to enter our country or freely travel between countries.

Here are just a few examples. Feel free to comment if you can think of some examples that I have missed. (i'm going for public knowledge examples here, real out in the open stuff)

Visas:

1. Christmas bomber – visa intentionally not revoked
2. David Coleman Headley – ‘easily’ optained a visa to enter India
3. Mohammed Atta – visa for U.S. ‘not scrutinized’
4. 9/11 Hijackers – 15 of the 19 received visas from CIA run Jeddah consulate.

FBI (or other agency) Aided Terrorists:

1. 93 WTC Bomb Making Aided By FBI Informant
2. Oklahoma City Bombing ‘directed’ by FBI Official
3. 9/11 Hijackers lived with FBI Informant
4. FBI operative Ali Mohamed trained Al Qaida Terrorists
5. Saeed Sheikh, terrorist “originally recruited by British intelligence agency, MI6”

BREAKING NEWS: COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIALS ASKED STATE DEPARTMENT SPECIFICALLY NOT TO REVOKE ABDULMUTALLAB'S VISA

This should be a front page story everywhere if it is true. The Detroit News* is reporting that during testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Patrick F. Kennedy, undersecretary for management at the State Department said that intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation. *

This along with previous admissions by authorities that a man helped the Christmas Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, "change planes," a man who, according to witness Kurt Haskell, asked the ticket agent to let Abdulmutallab board without a passport because "we do this all the time," raise serious questions about the event.

In an intervew on prisonplanet.tv (3 minutes in) Haskell also claims that he has received an email from a dutch woman who collaborates his story of Abdulmutallab being escorted by a 'sharp dressed man.'

If Haskell's evidence were somehow false and Abdulmutallab did board with a visa (not revoked by the State Department on request by counterterrorism officials) then we would be perhaps dealing with a dangerous sting operation. A scandal in its own right.

But Kurt Haskell claims on Prison Planet that he witnessed Abdulmutallab trying to board the plane as a Sudanese refugee without a passport and with the help of a U.S. government agent.

It is theoretically possible that the second scenario which Haskell describes still represents only an elaborate sting operation and not necessarily an intentional false flag operation, but the difference between the two seems to be narrowing as the government in all scenarios went out of its way to help, or at least not to impede, Abdulmutallab in his actions.

Do you really believe this is not related to a desire to increase military aid to yemen, tighten airport security, and install body scanners?

If it turns out to be the case that the whole thing from start to finish was an organized false flag event created by individuals within as well as outside the government for the reasons above or other reasons, why should anyone be surprised? The government and corporate media lied to us about WMDs to start unnecessary wars. They have menaced us with apparently fake or misleading Bin Laden videos. They have deceived us about swine flu so Big Pharma can get rich, and they have lied to us about the economic bailout to enrich their friends. Their credibility is zero. They operate with a methodology reminiscent of organized crime or fascism.

"... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."

-Goering at the Nuremberg Trials


*UPDATE: Because the Detroit News Article referred to at the top has been removed, I am reprinting below a version of the article I found which had been copied by someone else.

The Detroit News:
Last Updated: January 27. 2010 4:32PM


Terror suspect kept visa to avoid tipping off larger investigation


Nathan Hurst / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Washington --The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

"Revocation action would've disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, "rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort."


The committee's hearing continues a series across Capitol Hill that started last week, all looking into the events leading up to and after the attempted bombing of Flight 253 over Detroit. Law enforcement officials say Abdulmutallab tried to detonate an explosive hidden in his underwear on board the flight from Amsterdam shortly before its landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus on Christmas Day.


Since the failed attack, criticism has swirled around leaders of the U.S. intelligence community who have indicated they were warned by the suspect's father about a month before the flight of a potential terror threat, but failed to stop Abdmutallab, despite other warning signs like the fact that he purchased a one-way ticket to Detroit with cash.


Politicians have also criticized the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian after the arrest in Michigan, with Miranda rights being read to him after less than an hour of interrogation and without input from the intelligence community.

Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, the only Michigan House member on the Homeland Security Committee, said in a Tuesday statement that she planned to question officials on that matter at today's hearing.

nhurst@detnews.com (313) 222-2300

Alhaji in Visa Land

Here's a thought for you. A runaway 23 year old on a terror watch list, traveling through several third world nations, with explosives in his underwear and reportedly trying to board as a sudanese refugee without a passport can travel to the U.S. His father however, former chairman of the FIrst Bank of Nigeria, was denied a visa to find his son in Yemen when he believed he had gone astray or 'became radicalized.'

Here is the article.