Thread: Surveillance Drone Spotted Near Chicago - For NATO Summit?

This was filmed in Elgin, Illinois about 40 miles from Chicago. I assume it's for the NATO summit this week as a security measure.

Surveillance Drone Spotted Near Chicago - For NATO Summit?

NATO in Chicago This Weekend: Cell Phones May Be Shut Down

Written by Gary North on May 18, 2012

Authorities are considering a shut-down of cell phone service in Chicago this weekend. The excuse: the NATO meeting.

The Daily Beast reports that the FBI and Secret Service have standing authority to jam signals and they can also push for the shutdown of cell towers, thanks to “Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 303,” which lays out the nation’s official “Emergency Wireless Protocols.”

Without cell phones, people cannot access Facebook or Twitter unless they are at home or can get to a Starbucks, where there is free WiFi.

Without Facebook and Twitter, there won’t be a “Chicago spring” to match “Arab spring.”

According to the National Communications System, the protocol details a “shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during national crises.” It was created after the London bombings in 2005, when federal security services shut off cellular networks in New York’s tunnel, fearing a similar attack. Since then, cell phone jammers have been used in situations like President Obama’s inauguration, with the Secret Service claiming there was a bomb threat, as well as a number of other cases.

This was done in San Francisco recently. Police shut off cell phone service in the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.

What if locals had to call 911? They had better get to a land line. Or to a Starbucks.

President Obama recently signed an executive order to apply to Iran or Syria if either should block access to the Internet. But blocking cell phones is OK. That’s not authoritarian,. That is merely precautionary.

This potential development is just one of the drastic security measures Chicago law enforcement agencies are considering. They’ve also invested as much as $1 million on riot-control equipment, including at least one long-range acoustic device, or LRAD, and upgrades to shields to be worn by the police.

Be prepared. That’s the Boy Scouts’ marching song. Be prepared, as through life you march along.

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Chicago in a jam: Security services to block cell phone towers ahead of NATO summit? — RT



NATO in Chicago This Weekend: Cell Phones May Be Shut Down

American war veterans renounce the wars
and throw their medals at NATO Summit
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'Life over war': US veterans return medals at NATO summit

By Miranda Leitsinger
msnbc.com

CHICAGO -- Dozens of anti-war veterans tossed their medals onto a Chicago street Sunday near where NATO began its two-day summit, calling them �representations of hate,� �lies� and �cheap tokens,� and with some making emotional pleas for forgiveness from the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

With many dressed in military fatigues, they had filed through the streets in formation, chanting "N-A-T-O, NATO has got to go," and �No NATO, no war, we don't work for you no more,� leading about 2,000 protesters on a 2.5-mile march.

After �retiring� an American flag they carried through the streets and giving it to a woman whose soldier son committed suicide, they began hurtling their war service medals into the air -- a rare form of protest that was last done on a large scale by 900 Vietnam veterans in 1971.

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U.S. News - 'Life over war': US veterans return medals at NATO summit

Protests and the NATO Summit in Chicago


What's going on in Chicago?

As the war machine visited Chicago yesterday, American war veterans
renounced the wars they fought in and threw their medals in the
direction of the summit.

Protesters, including the children of Afghan refugees, have come
from all over the world to voice their opposition to the death and
destruction that NATO forces bring.

"We don't believe it anymore," one protester said regarding the
lies justifying NATO's continued presence in occupied nations, "the
only answer we'll take is an immediate exit and troops home now."


Video:

War is a racket: American war veterans renounce the wars and throw their medals at NATO Summit

Goodman Green
- Brasscheck

P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and
videos with friends and colleagues.

That's how we grow. Thanks.

Tuesday, 22 May 2012 01:00
NATO Chicago Summit: Protests, Bomb Plots … And Expanded NATO Missions
Written by William F. Jasper



NATO Chicago Summit: Protests, Bomb Plots … And Expanded NATO Missions

More than 40 protesters were arrested and at least four police officers were injured, as thousands of demonstrators staged street protests in Chicago on Sunday during the May 20-21 NATO Summit. Protests resumed on Monday, but were considerably smaller, with one group of demonstrators gathering outside the Boeing corporation’s headquarters to protest the aircraft company’s involvement in producing military weapons for NATO.

Protesters associated with causes ranging from opposition to the war in Afghanistan to immigration reform and Occupy Wall Street, converged on McCormick Place Convention Center where President Barack Obama hosted NATO heads of state and leaders of 13 additional “NATO partner nations.”

In comparison to the violence that has marked many other international conferences in recent years — G-8, G-20, NATO, WTO, IMF and World Bank — the protests in Chicago stayed largely peaceful, but on Sunday clashes between protesters and police escalated as protesters hurled red paint, bottles, sticks, stones, and other objects.

Even more serious drama was added to the mix with the arrest of three men on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism and possession of explosives, and the follow-up arrests of two additional activists, one of whom was charged with saying he intended to blow up an area bridge, the other who was accused of attempting to buy ingredients for pipe bombs. Information that officials have released thus far has been sketchy, but the alleged terror plots appear to be less serious than some headlines originally indicated. Attorneys for the defendants are claiming entrapment, saying that the plots would not have originated without the aid of police undercover operatives.

Arrested on Wednesday, May 16 were Brian Church, 20, of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; Jared Chase, 24, of Keene, New Hampshire; and, Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Oakland Park, Florida. They were charged May 19 on conspiracy to commit terrorism, material support for terrorism and possession of explosives. They were caught in possession of beer bottles filled with gasoline, to be used as Molotov cocktails. On May 20, activist Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, of Chicago, was charged with falsely making a terrorist threat, while Mark Neiweem, 28, of Chicago, was charged with attempted possession of explosives or incendiary devices after he allegedly sought materials to construct a pipe bomb.

Prosecutors told a judge at a court hearing on May 20 that Senakiewicz, a native of Poland and a self-proclaimed anarchist, had publicly bragged he could blow up a downtown bridge with explosives he was keeping in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book. A police search of his home yielded no explosives. Mark Neiweem allegedly wanted to build a pipe bomb and wrote up a list of ingredients, asking others to get him the materials.

With all this alleged revolutionary plotting and street protests grabbing headlines, the actual revolutionary activity by President Obama and the NATO leaders taking place inside the conference was given short shrift in the mainstream media. As The New American has pointed out in previous articles, the wars being carried out in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya under the banner of NATO are unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, counterproductive, and financially unsustainable.

NATO, which is, in effect, a subsidiary of the United Nations, is being used by U.S. gloablists as a cat’s paw to carry out foreign military designs that they know the American public would not support and Congress will not back with the constitutionally mandated formal declaration of war.

(The official list of the 28 NATO member countries is available here)

The 65-point Chicago Summit Declaration issued on May 20 amply demonstrates the NATO leaders' intentions to continue expanding the organization’s military interventions worldwide. In the Declaration, the NATO leaders congratulate themselves for the alleged success of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and their timetable to withdraw forces by the end of 2014. However, even in the unlikely eventuality that NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops have exited Afghanistan by that time, NATO’s “mission” there will continue. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, joined by Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, announced that a new NATO-led mission will focus on training, advising and assisting Afghan forces after they have assumed full security responsibility across the country. "Let me be clear: this will not be ISAF under a different name" said Rasmussen after the meeting. "It will be a new mission, with a new role for NATO" A new mission and a new role that will continually "evolve," as have the mission and role of NATO itself.

President Karzai has enjoyed the support of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama even though he has run a thoroughly corrupt regime that has enriched his family, has maintained close relations with Iran (and admitted to taking “bags of money” from the Tehran regime), and has said that his country would support Pakistan if it went to war against the United States.

Nevertheless, President Obama and his NATO confreres are comfortable with an open-ended policy that continues to spill American/NATO blood and spend American/NATO treasure for Karzai and friends through 2014 — and beyond. It was 20 years ago, during the Clinton administration, that NATO went into the Balkans; thousands of NATO troops are still stuck there.

In addition, the Chicago Summit Declaration also patted NATO on the back for its military intervention in Libya. And regarding Syria, it said: “We are following the evolution of the Syrian crisis with growing concern and we strongly support the efforts of the United Nations and the League of Arab States.” Does that mean NATO forces may soon be backing a regime change in Damascus? Many NATO moves and statements point in that direction. The declaration also limns the extensive intertwining of NATO with the United Nations, the European Union, and the enormous EU and UN bureaucracies, and cites numerous UN resolutions as authority for its various “mandates” throughout the world.

NATO Chicago Summit: Protests, Bomb Plots … And Expanded NATO Missions

Thursday, 24 May 2012 16:12
The NATO/UN Army: Perpetual War … and Bankruptcy for U.S.
Written by William F. Jasper


The NATO/UN Army: Perpetual War … and Bankruptcy for U.S.

Pretending to have achieved some kind of victory in Afghanistan, President Obama and the NATO leaders have pushed ahead on the globalist agenda to transform NATO more fully into the global military arm of the United Nations.

“We’re now unified behind a plan to responsibly wind down the war in Afghanistan,” declared President Obama, at the conclusion of the May 20-21 NATO Summit in Chicago.

But don’t pop the champagne corks just yet; America’s longest war, now over a decade in duration, is not ending any time soon. What does “responsibly wind down the war” mean? According to President Obama and the other NATO leaders, it means NATO “combat troops” will have left Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Which is another way of spinning the grim fact that they intend to keep NATO forces (primarily U.S. forces) fighting in Afghanistan for another two-and-a-half years. And after 2014, an unspecified number of NATO/US forces will remain for “training” purposes for an indefinite period.

The Afghanistan War, which has already cost half a trillion dollars (and over 12,000 American casualties), has succeeded in establishing Hamid Karzai and his clan in a ruling regime that is universally recognized as thoroughly corrupt and anti-American. It is also a regime without popular support that is sure to collapse after our withdrawal — if not before. And when the country breaks down into a bloody civil war? Well, in order to prevent that, President Obama says someone must come up with $4.1 billion per year to finance the equipping and training of the Afghan army and police force.

The Washington Post reported:

The United States spent $12 billion last year, 95 percent of the total cost, to train and equip an Afghan army and police force that is expected to total 352,000 by this fall. With a gross domestic product of about $17 billion, Afghanistan is incapable of funding a force that size.

As it looks for a way to cut future costs and assumes an eventual political solution to the war among the Afghans themselves, the administration has projected that Afghanistan’s security needs could be met even if the force were cut by up to one-third. It estimates the cost of sustaining the reduced force at about $4.1 billion a year, half of which the United States would provide. Afghanistan would pay about $500,000.

President Obama, always generous with the taxpayers’ money, offered to cover half the costs of the “transition.” However, the other NATO partners failed to put any money on the table at Chicago. France said it was pulling its troops out.

NATO, impressive on paper, with its 28 member states and an additional 22 countries in its Partnership for Peace, is totally dependent on U.S. funding and U.S. military equipment and manpower. America’s foreign policy elites, as exemplified most especially by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), have been laboring for decades to empower the United Nations with its own global military, one that could carry out UN mandates without having to seek ad hoc military coalitions from often-reluctant member states. For the past two decades, NATO has increasingly filled this role: in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf of Aden, Libya.

The one-worlders at the CFR want to go further. Anne-Marie Slaughter is a professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and a former director of policy planning in the Obama/Clinton State Department (2009-2011). Besides being a member of the CFR, she has served on its board of directors. She is one of the big guns in the CFR opinion cartel and can be counted on to push relentlessly for treaties and arrangements that will ever erode American sovereignty and increasingly subject the United States to “international law” and international institutions. In her syndicated column of May 19 (timed for the opening of the NATO Summit the next day) entitled, “Globalizing NATO,” Professor Slaughter signified that the globalist dream to arm the UN with its own military is still alive, and NATO is the vehicle to achieve it. She declared:

Even skeptics of NATO expansion and operations like the intervention in Libya now recognize that joint operations by member countries, operating under a UN mandate and in conjunction with regional partners, is likely to be a model for the future. As General Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser for President George H.W. Bush, observed recently, the UN Charter originally envisioned a standing military force to enforce Security Council resolutions – a vision that the NATO partner model might ultimately realize.

On May 22, Charles A. Kupchan, the CFR’s Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow (and a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University) wrote in his blog on the CFR web site that:

NATO's Chicago summit went more or less according to plan. The allies agreed upon a timetable and strategy for winding down the war in Afghanistan…. And the presence at the summit of more than thirty non-NATO leaders advanced the alliance's commitment to developing new partnerships and deepening its global engagement.

Prof. Kupchan did not expound in detail in his blog about the referenced “new partnerships” and “deepening global engagement.” However, in his recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for its hearing on “NATO: Chicago and Beyond,” he asserted that “NATO should intensify and expand the numerous programs it already maintains” and initiate new ones. Here are some of the details he provided at the hearing:

Some of the most important security institutions of the 21st century are likely to be regional ones – such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asia States, and the Union of South American Nations. NATO should be investing in the efficacy of these regional bodies.

In pursuit of this objective, NATO should intensify and expand the numerous programs it already maintains to advance these goals, including:

• Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and Partnership for Peace: engages 22 European partner countries in multilateral and bilateral relations with NATO.

• Mediterranean Dialogue: engages Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia in NATO activities.

• Istanbul Cooperation Initiative: provides training and exchanges with Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

• NATO Partners: engages non-NATO members in NATO operations, including Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Mongolia.

• Support for African Union: provides NATO assistance to the AU mission in Somalia and to AU peacekeeping capacity.

• Training Mission in Iraq (2004-2011): trained Iraq’s armed forces.

In similar vein, CFR Fellow James M. Goldgeier authored a Special Report for the Council in 2010 entitled, The Future of NATO (a pdf of the report can be downloaded here).

Goldgeier, who is Dean of the School of International Service at American University, regularly writes columns favoring greater empowerment of NATO and the United Nations. He has teamed up in the past with Ivo Daalder (CFR) to co-author some of these columns. Mr. Daalder now, of course, is President Obama’s U.S. Permanent Representative on the Council of NATO, a position more commonly referred to as our “NATO Ambassador.” Before assuming this post, Daalder was on the staff of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and served as an International Affairs Fellow at the CFR.

The internationalists at the Council on Foreign Relations have been pushing for providing NATO with its own independent, permanent military assets, so that national politicians responding to war-weary voters will not be able to stifle the globalist agenda. That has been partially achieved with adoption at the Chicago summit of the “smart defense” advocated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

CFR globalists like Slaughter, Scowcroft, Kupchan, Daalder and Goldgeier are deliriously happy that NATO has gone “out of area,” that is, that it no longer restricts itself to the North Atlantic (European) area it was formed, ostensibly, to protect against Soviet aggression. This is part of NATO’s “evolution,” of “reinventing itself,” of “finding a new purpose.” So where does this evolution end? Where does it take us?

Elmo Roper (CFR) explicitly spelled out the globalist vision in a 1960 speech to the Atlantic Union Committee entitled “The Goal is Government of All the World,” which was subsequently published as a pamphlet under the same title. Roper, who was then treasurer of the AUC, declared:

But the Atlantic Pact (NATO) need not be our last effort toward greater unity. It can be converted into one more sound and important step working toward world peace. It can be one of the most positive moves in the direction of One World.

Roper continued:

For it becomes clear that the first step toward world government cannot be completed until we have advanced on the four fronts: the economic, the military, the political, and the social.

Few of the one-worlders speak as candidly as Mr. Roper did in that speech. Vice President Joe Biden, however, comes close, vigorously championing the transformation of NATO’s armed might into the operational arm of the United Nations. During the Senate confirmation hearing for Warren Christopher (CFR), the nominee of President Bill Clinton (CFR) for Secretary of State, on January 13, 1993, then-Senator Biden stated:

[O]rganizing for collective security — means strengthening the U.N. by assigning to the Security Council certain predesignated

military forces and facilities: a conception unanimously endorsed by this committee last October. It also means converting NATO into a military instrument for peacekeeping, and peacemaking, under U.N. or CSCE auspices. (Emphasis added.)

Sen. Biden went on to invoke Woodrow Wilson and to endorse Wilson’s radical vision of “world order” under a League of Nations with its own global army and navy. Said Biden:

Collective security, a multinational commitment to repel aggression and defend the peace, was the central precept of Woodrow Wilson's vision. Wilson recognized it as a principle so essential to world order that he would not yield it in the fight over the ratification of the Versailles Treaty. It is the principle that the Senate finally accepted in 1949 with the advent of NATO, though it took the carnage of the Second World War to prove Wilson right. And it is that principle we must now extend, by empowering the U.N. and transforming the Atlantic alliance.

Finally, Sen. Biden called for a Wilsonian “new world order” with “sweeping, visionary change”:

Today we stand at the threshold of this new world order. I believe the people and governments, in growing numbers worldwide, recognize what needs to be done. And I believe the American people are prepared to see the United States take the lead in engineering sweeping, visionary change.

As a Senator and as Vice President, Joe Biden has helped propel that “sweeping, visionary change” forward. He was visibly elated when NATO went “out of area” to effect regime change in Libya. "NATO got it right," he declared. "In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."

This “prescription” which he enthusiastically endorses (along with President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and much of the political establishment) is a prescription for endless illegal wars, fought without the constitutionally required declaration of war by Congress, that would drain America of her blood, treasure, and her liberty.

Related articles:

NATO Chicago Summit: Protests, Bomb Plots … And Expanded NATO Missions

Chicago Prepares for NATO Summit

NATO Summit in Chicago: Putin, Afghanistan, and Convergence

New NATO Chief Outlines Priorities

The NATO/UN Army: Perpetual War … and Bankruptcy for U.S.

Laws, Loyalty and Lies – A Soldier, President Clinton and the United Nations
posted on May 25, 2012 by Giacomo


michael g newShould a member of the United States military be forced to wear a United Nations emblem or patch on their uniform?

When Bill Clinton was president back in the 1990s, I knew a man who was fiercely loyal to the United States. He was an Air Force officer with an exemplary record serving his county. At the time I knew him, he had been in the Air Force for just over 18 years, held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was looking forward to retiring in less than two years.

All that changed one day when he received orders that his squadron was being deployed under a UN action. Included in his orders were the instructions to replace his United States insignia with one belonging to the United Nations. Tom refused to wear the UN patch, stating that he had sworn allegiance to the US and not the UN. He was informed that if he refused, he would be court martialed and receive a dishonorable discharge. With less than two years to go for retirement, he felt he had no choice but to resign his commission and leave the Air Force.

A similar thing happened to US Army Specialist Michael G New who served as a medic in the Third Infantry Division. Again, when Clinton was president, the Third Infantry Division was ordered to prepare for deployment to Macedonia as part of the United Nations’ action. New and the rest of his division were ordered to wear United Nations patches and insignias on their helmets.

New, like my friend Tom, said that he had sworn an oath to uphold the US Constitution and not that of any other country or entity. When he refused to wear the UN insignia, he was charged with disobeying orders and mustered out of the Army with a Bad Conduct Discharge.

All through his trial and subsequent appeals, New and his attorneys argued that to place US military forces under the command of a foreign power without the permission of Congress was illegal. The prosecution used a copy of an executive order to justify the deployment and convict New. The defense demanded to see a fully unedited copy of the executive order, Presidential Decision Directive 25, but was told that the 10 page copy they had was the entire document.

That Presidential Decision Directive 25 has now been declassified and New and his attorneys have obtained a copy and found it to be 30 pages long, not 10 pages as the prosecution had asserted. Contained in the other 20 pages was information that revealed that the deployment of US troops under UN authority and leadership was in fact illegal in the way Clinton went about it.

With the new information at hand, New and his attorneys are filing a new appeal and hope to completely exonerate him and clear his Bad Conduct Discharge that has plagued him for over 15 years.

My question to all of you is this: should US military personnel be forced to wear the Insignia of the United Nations or any other power instead of the US insignia and should they be forced to swear allegiance to the United Nations or any other foreign power?

The way President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have climbed into bed with the United Nations, I can see a repeat of what took place under Bill Clinton’s regime.

The best way to stop this from happening again would be to expel the entire United Nations off of American soil and withdraw our membership from the organization that is striving so hard to form the one world government. If we did this, it would save hundreds of billions of dollars since the US pays more to the UN than anyone else does. It would also rid our nation of many of the spies that operate under the guise of UN diplomats.

By no longer belonging to the United Nations it would also mean that anti-American liberals like Obama and Hillary Clinton would no longer be able to try to place the United States and its citizens under UN law. The US Constitution is sufficient for America and we do not need or want UN laws or treaties to overrule our own laws.

Then US service men and woman will be allowed to wear the US flag and any other appropriate identifications on their uniforms without fear of having to ruin or end their careers protecting you and me.

Read more: Laws, Loyalty and Lies