"THE GRAY STATE"

An Eastern proverb says: "If something happens once, it is an accident; if it happens twice, it is a coincidence, but if it happens a third time, it is already a regular occurrence."

What connects four episodes that have occurred one after the other in the space of a few days? Last month the portal Investment Watch reported an amazing coincidence. In February, over a period of two days (12th and 13th) three American journalists died at the same time - Ned Colt, Bob Simon, David Carr, and Bob Hager nearly perished.

Ned Colt was an NBC journalist. He reported on the war in Iraq, where he was also a prisoner for a time. He died of a brain haemorrhage. The well-known CBS investigative journalist Bob Simon died in a road accident on the same day. He was also kidnapped in Iraq in his time, but was later released.

A member of the "New York Times" staff David Carr died prematurely after interviewing Edward Snowden. The reason for his death has still not been clarified.

"Four dead journalists in 24 hours, not in a war zone, but here in the USA. Do they know something that we don't? What is the truth and who is trying to bury it?" the Investment Watch investigators ask.

On 17 January 2015 the body was found of David Crowley, the director of the film "The Gray State". It was found next to that of his wife and five-year-old daughter. They had all been shot dead. On the basis of evidence found at the crime scene, the conclusion was drawn that Crowley, a veteran of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, had allegedly shot dead his wife and daughter and then shot himself. It was recently stated by the district administration of the sheriff of Dakota that the deaths were "suspicious" and the investigation would be continued. Not only have the police had their doubts about the suicide version. Many experts point to the death of Crowley and his family as an act of retribution for his work. 

Over the last few years David Crowley had been working on the idea and was the director of the film "The Gray State". The film is about the process of the coming into being of the USA, of a cruel, corrupt, inquisition-like, police state. In the view of its creators the main subjects of the film represent the reality in which they are already living. "The Gray State" is conducting surveillance and keeping track of every one of its citizens, has military detachments which can raid at any time the homes of ordinary Americans who are regarded as suspect by the regime in power. Critics perceived the film as a desperate and daring challenge to "corporative totalitarianism and the dictatorship of transnational companies". This is precisely how the film's creators referred to their enemies. Before his death Crowley had got together the money he needed to begin making the film. Private individuals helped in this, and the film's trailer had already attracted the attention of millions of Americans.

A few years ago the presentation of the concept of the film "The Gray State" took place, which was attended by many eminent representatives of American society.

Chuck Baldwin, a clergyman and presidential candidate for the Constitution Party, stated: "The film is based on a staggering concept. Most of our citizens do not want to reconcile themselves to such a grey reality in which we are being immersed. This film helps us to understand what we have and what consequences await us."

Among those who openly supported "The Gray State" project was the screenwriter Guillermo Jimenez, Stewart Rhodes and Steve Hohman, the founders of the Oath Keepers Internet-portal which reflects the views on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars of veterans, who are speaking out against the war and the anti-constitutional steps taken by the government.

In their opinion, the NDAA, the National Defence Authorization Act, is nothing more than a declaration of war on the citizens of the USA. This law, signed by President [Barack] Obama in 2011, allows the police and military detachments to put in prison or deprive of life both American and foreign citizens, without trial and investigation, if there is the slightest suspicion that they are involved in terrorism. At the present time, hundreds of US citizens have been arrested in line with this act.

Crowley himself referred to his film as "being close to reality". He believed that the film should depict the gap between real patriots and the supporters of the regime.

In short, the very presentation of the film already caused sufficient controversy to understand what the response to it would have been, if it had been put on general release. The prospects of this could not but frighten some circles in the American state.

Crowley's associates insist that it is precisely the government that bears responsibility for his death aimed at preventing this film from being made. A page of remembrance titled Justice for David Crowley of Gray State has been opened. The members of the well-known hacker group Anonymous also tweeted their own convictions on Crowley's killing.

Friends, colleagues and close relatives do not support the official version of suicide. They state that Crowley had powerful support among those around him and loved his family very much, was a patriot of his country and took part in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But is Crowley the only investigative journalist to end his life in extremely strange circumstances? By no means. The list of brave Americans, who have died unexpectedly, is sufficiently long.

Aaron Russo was the author of the documentary film "America Freedom to Fascism". In the film, the US Tax Service and the Federal Reserve System, an independent federal agency for performing the functions of the central bank and conducting the centralised monitoring of the USA's commercial banking system, were subjected to criticism. The film warned of the coming of a new world order, headed by the world banks and transnational companies. Aaron Russo's revealing interview with the well-known presenter Alex Jones should not be forgotten either. Russo accused the Rockefeller family of being a party to and organising the terrorist acts of 11 September 2001.

Aaron Russo recounted that he had become acquainted with Rockefeller through a lawyer's wife whom he knew at that time and that one day she had rung him up and told him that one of the Rockefellers wanted to meet him.

I had made a video called "Mad as Hell". When he saw that video, he wanted to meet me. He knew that I was standing for the post of governor of the state of Nevada.

 I said that naturally I would be pleased to meet him. I met him and I liked him. He was a very, very clever person. We had a conversation and exchanged ideas and thoughts. He was the one who told me 11 months before 9/11 that "an event was to happen", but he never said what that event would be. An event was to happen owing to which we would invade Afghanistan, we would invade Iraq, in order to take control of the oilfields, to set up a base in the Middle East and to make all of that part of a new world order, and we would begin to hunt down Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. 

And, the event of 9/11 did indeed happen later. And I remember what he had told me, how we would see soldiers searching for people in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and all these places. And there would be "a war on terror" in which there is no real enemy, and all these things are a gigantic deception, but this would be a way for the government to capture the American people, Aaron Russo said in the interview.

In 2007, the journalist and film-maker died of cancer. Suggestions were widely discussed on the social networking sites that the cancer was deliberately caused by contact with certain chemical substances. There have been no official confirmations of this, but his opponents do not dispute it either. 

Whereas there is some doubt as to whether the previous death may have been assisted by outside forces, then the "suicide" of the journalist and independent investigator Gary Webb simply looks like a tragi-comedy. The author of the reportage "The Dark Alliance", which features a series of articles recounting the links between the CIA and the Nicaraguan "contras", the funding of the latter and the organisation of the smuggling and marketing of cocaine in the US southern states, committed suicide, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Moreover, although he was left-handed, he was holding the weapon in his right hand.

Another investigator, Philip Marshall, who was a CIA civilian pilot, became the author of a bestseller titled "False Flag 911: How Bush, Cheney and the Saudis created the post-911 World". In this book he revealed the involvement of the US Administration in the organisation of the terrorist acts of 11 September. Marshall managed to finish writing his last book: "The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror", on which he had worked for 10 years and in which he proved the link between George Bush Jnr and the Saudi intelligence service. Marshall advocated giving it some thought: "The official version about some ghost (Usama bin Laden) in some cave on the other side of the world defeating our entire military establishment on U.S. soil, is absolutely preposterous."

Not long before Marshall's death, he told his friends that he had compromising evidence against members of the government. According to the official version, in February 2013 Philip Marshall killed his teenage children, his dog and then shot himself.

Andrew Breitbart, a well-known American journalist, the author of the internet-portal www.breitbart.com, still remains famous even after his death. He officially died of a heart attack. But those close to him assert that he was in good health. Poignancy is added to this situation by the fact that on the day when they were to publish the cause of Breitbart's death, Michael Cormier, the California coroner who had conducted the autopsy, died from arsenic poisoning.

In the book "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon", making a case against celebrity culture, co-written with Mark Ebner, Breitbart sarcastically describes the atmosphere in Hollywood and its inhabitants. The book condemns the celebrities' whims, their immorality, as well as the satanic sects, the adherents of which are many well-known people. The day before his mysterious death, Breitbart told his friends about certain materials that could destroy the political career of US President Barack Obama himself.

The frightening part is that all the people mentioned in this article were well-known. At all events, the practice in the USA of undesirable people, those who are opposed to the regime and dissidents, "being taken out" has long existed. Experts believe that the era of independent journalism in that country is over. It has been replaced by the times of corporative dictatorship. Correspondents and journalists whose opinion does not coincide with the official line of the transnational corporation, can easily be fired, persecuted, killed, or, as is the fashion of late, simply be declared failures, conspiracy theorists.

A great deal of evidence and many examples exist, but one of them is quite typical. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that, when she worked as a national security adviser under President George Bush, she had summoned to the White House the editor of the "New York Times" newspaper, whom she ordered not to publish an article about the failure of the CIA operation to restrain Iran's nuclear programme.

In order to avoid such "insistent requests" on the part of the leadership of the cradle of democracy, many free-thinking American journalists have gone onto the Internet, creating their own websites and portals on which to continue their activity. But how frank can they be in expressing their opinion? The US Administration is preparing to censor the Internet as well.

At the end of last year, a representative of the Republican Party, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Lee E. Goodman, came out with the statement that the country's parliament would be looking into creating a "Government Council to Monitor Media Organization", which would monitor the film footage on the YouTube portal. Fox News reports that Goodman also stated that the commission headed by him is seriously looking into the possibility of introducing state monitoring of publications on the Internet.

What is it that transnational companies are so afraid of, why do they want to monitor even the last area of free thinking? The Internet is not the traditional media, which can be firmly kept in one and the same hands. It is sufficient to recall that, whereas in 1983, 90 per cent of the US media space was in the hands of 50 companies, while today this control is exercised by just six corporations (General Electric, New Corporation, Walt Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS),

All the above-mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg of the real situation in "The Gray State", which keeps on instructing the world with respect to freedom of speech and other "democratic values". But, alas, investigators and journalists in other countries, have still not learned to put two bullets into their head with their right hand, when they are left-handed.