In 1988, in a column for the San Francisco Examiner, ex-Ramparts editor Warren Hinckle alleged that, according to his intelligence sources, Al Sharpton had been "a CIA contract agent who was involved in destabilizing the Manley regime in Jamaica."
Sharpton's role as an FBI informant in the '80s is of course widely known and well-documented. In 2014, The Smoking Gun released several files relating to his snitching on the mob, which you can read here. thesmokinggun.com/documents/inve…
Al Sharpton's FBI involvement almost certainly wasn't limited to getting drug trafficking mafia guys locked up. According to police and activist sources, he also tried to help the feds capture Black Panther member Assata Shakur while she was on the run. web.archive.org/web/2000091918…
The police source further said that Al Sharpton was trying to help the feds nab other black radicals, like Mutulu Shakur, who was eventually apprehended. web.archive.org/web/2000091918…
As to whether Hinckle's allegation that Sharpton was CIA, there's nothing proving it. But Sharpton does have some interesting (and very early) connections in Jamaica.
Sharpton, a boy wonder ordained at the age of nine. At age 10, Sharpton took a tour of the Caribbean with his mentor, Bishop F.D. Washington. They traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, where Sharpton met Marcus Garvey's widow, with whom he would keep up a correspondence.
According to David P. Rowe, Sharpton traveled to Jamaica in 1974 with Muhammad Ali as part of a delegation of the Nation of Islam that also included Louis Farrakhan. As part of the trip, Ali met with then PM Michael Manley. caribjournal.com/2016/06/14/muh…
I will note that I can't corroborate Sharpton being on this trip in any other source. The NOI's newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, has extensive coverage and doesn't mention Sharpton, though that's not definitive given that it's covered as an official NOI trip. voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BASMUSP…
Michael Manley's government was most certainly destabilized by the CIA, which backed the cocaine-trafficking "Shower Posse" that put the anti-communist Edward Seaga in power and helped establish Jamaica as an important node in the CIA's global drug trade. counterpunch.org/2019/06/14/edw…
Sharpton would later be photographed with Seaga (amusingly misidentified as "Edward Seahawks") in 1987, when Sharpton, Ali, and more went down to Kingston for a big soiree in honor of Don King (whom Sharpton snitched on btw).
But this isn't really dispositive of a relationship with Seaga, as Sharpton was also photographed at the same event with Seaga's antagonist, Michael Manley. books.google.com/books?id=-7MDA…
*misidentified as "Ed Seahawks," rather
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The pagers Israel exploded were made by Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. The pagers were reportedly imported 5 months ago (mid-April 2024), which lines up closely with a Knesset delegation visit to Taiwan during which Tsai pledged to "deepen" partnership between the 2 countries.
Gold Apollo denies involvement in the attacks, claiming sales & manufacturing of AR-924 pagers are handled by a Hungarian company, BAC Consulting. Gold Apollo president Hsu Ching-kuang further notes "strange" remittances that came through the Middle East. reuters.com/world/middle-e…
Hungary now denying that the pagers were ever in the country. The Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs says BAC is only a middleman and has no manufacturing site in Hungary.
🧵Interesting moment from the Covid Select Subcommittee's interrogation of Peter Daszak I'd like to unpack.
Daszak claims DARPA didn't reject DEFUSE due to safety concerns but rather over its cost. (He's previously made this claim to The Intercept, but now does so under oath.)
Daszak says "the only information we received from DARPA about the reasons for turning us down" came during an exit interview. Daszak previously described this interview as an apparently voluntary process for those who didn't receive funding. theintercept.com/2022/03/11/cov…
This begs the question (previously raised by @Rossana38510044) as to whether the unsigned, undated DARPA rejection letter released by DRASTIC is completely authentic. And, if authentic, was it ever sent to EcoHealth or was it only a draft?
The talking point from lab-leak proponents is that DARPA rejected EcoHealth's DEFUSE proposal because it was too risky. (If you read the letter closely, it's not clear this is true.) However, in a March 2, 2018 meeting, DARPA reviewer Jim Gimlett did not raise any risk concerns.
Gimlett did, however, note that DARPA was not able to fund all proposals and may partially fund proposals or fund later stages of proposals. This gibes with the letter written (though not signed) by Gimlett which noted "several components" of DEFUSE were "potentially fundable."
Gimlett also noted in his 3/2/18 meeting with Daszak that one of the primary issues with DEFUSE was validation. Lack of validation was one of the reasons cited for rejecting DEFUSE.
Last month, @emilyakopp of @USRightToKnow published an article about the infamous DEFUSE proposal based on documents obtained from USGS, a DEFUSE partner. However, USRTK uploaded only a portion of those records.
@emilyakopp @USRightToKnow Scientist and natural-origin proponent @flodebarre also appears to have obtained the same cache of documents. She too has refused to publish the full batch, instead plucking out small excerpts in support of this thread:
I do not in any way agree with GoFundMe taking down the Grayzone's fundraiser, but, since I've yet to see anyone else mention it, I do think it's worth putting on the record that Max Blumenthal has reportedly agitated for such takedowns in the past. observer.com/2016/01/its-on…
The Observer article reports that Max "pressured" GoFundMe to remove a fundraiser by (virulently pro-Israel pseudo-rabbi) Shmuley Boteach to buy a NYT ad tying then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to Max via his dad, long-time Clinton consigliere Sidney Blumenthal.
However, the Observer's only apparent source is Boteach himself who merely said he "believes" Max contacted GoFundMe directly, just as he had written to Huffington Post editor Ryan Grim to decry an op-ed attacking him written by Boteach.
Two months after dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US military began drafting a secret plan to nuke 20 Soviet Cities in a "prevenative" surprise attack without provocation or warning. https://t.co/0glssyr2Jparchive.org/details/isbn_0…
This plan, known as JIC 329 (or "Strategic Vulnerability of the USSR to a Limited Air Attack") acknowledged that the Soviets posed no immediate threat to the US. Decimated by WWII and lacking a navy, the USSR was in a dire position relative to the largely unscathed US military.
Knowing this, JIC 329 recommended a surprise barrage of nuclear strikes if it appeared that the Soviets "would eventually gain the capability of either attacking the US or rebuffing a US attack." (Kaku/Axelrod)