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Paul Merrell

The US government doesn't want you to know the cops are tracking you | Trevor Timm | Co... - 0 views

  • All across America, from Florida to Colorado and back again, the country's increasingly militarized local police forces are using a secretive technology to vacuum up cellphone data from entire neighborhoods – including from people inside their own homes – almost always without a warrant. This week, numerous investigations by major news agencies revealed the US government is now taking unbelievable measures to make sure you never find out about it. But a landmark court ruling for privacy could soon force the cops to stop, even as the Obama administration fights to keep its latest tool for mass surveillance a secret.So-called International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers – more often called their popular brand name, "Stingray" – have long been the talk of the civil liberties crowd, for the indiscriminate and invasive way these roving devices conduct surveillance. Essentially, Stingrays act as fake cellphone towers (usually mounted in a mobile police truck) that police can point toward any given area and force every phone in the area to connect to it. So even if you're not making a call, police can find out who you've been calling, and for how long, as well as your precise location. As Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU explained on Thursday, "In one Florida case, a police officer explained in court that he 'quite literally stood in front of every door and window' with his stingray to track the phones inside a large apartment complex."
  • Yet these mass surveillance devices have largely stayed out of the public eye, thanks to the federal government and local police refusing to disclose they're using them in the first place – sometimes, shockingly, even to judges. As the Associated Press reported this week, the Obama administration has been telling local cops to keep information on Stingrays secret from members of the news media, even when it seems like local public records laws would mandate their disclosure. The AP noted:Federal involvement in local open records proceedings is unusual. It comes at a time when President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance and called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified federal surveillance programs.
  • Some of the government's tactics to hide Stingray from journalists and the public have been downright disturbing. After the ACLU had filed a records request for information on Stingrays, the local police force initially told them that, yes, they had the documents and to come on down to the station to look at them. But just before an ACLU rep was due to arrive, US Marshals seized the records and hid them away at another location, in what Wessler describes as "a blatant violation of state open-records laws".The federal government has used various other tactics around the country to prevent disclosure of similar information.USA Today also published a significant nationwide investigation about the Stingray problem, as well as what are known as "cellphone tower dumps". When police agencies don't have Stingrays at their disposal, they can go to cell phone providers to get the cellphone location information of everyone who has connected to a specific cell tower (which inevitably includes thousands of innocent people). The paper's John Kelly reported that one Colorado case shows cellphone tower dumps got police "'cellular telephone numbers, including the date, time and duration of any calls,' as well as numbers and location data for all phones that connected to the towers searched, whether calls were being made or not."
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  • It's scary enough to think that the NSA is collecting so much information, but this mass location and metadata tracking at the local level all may be about to change. This week, the ACLU won a historic victory in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (serving Florida, Alabama and Georgia), which ruled that police need to get a warrant from a judge before extracting from your cellphone the location data obtained by way of a cell tower. This ruling will apply whether cops are going after one person, the whole tower and, one can assume, Stingrays. (The case was also argued by the aforementioned Wessler, who clearly is this month’s civil liberties Most Valuable Player.)This case has huge implications, and not just for the Stingrays secretly being used in Florida. It virtually guarantees the US supreme court will soon have to tackle the larger cellphone location question in some form – and whether police across the country have to finally start getting a warrant to find out where your precise location for days or weeks at a time. But as Stanford law professor Jennifer Granick wrote on Friday, it could also have an impact on NSA spying, which relies on the theory that indiscriminately collecting metadata is fair game until a court says otherwise.
  • You may be asking: how, exactly, are the local cops getting their hands on such advanced military technology? Well, the feds are, in many cases, giving away the technology for free. When the US government is not loaning police agencies their own Stingrays, the Defense Department and Homeland Security are giving federal grants to cops, which allow departments to purchase the gear at the cost of $400,000 a pop from defense contractors like Harris Corporation, which makes the Stingray brand.
  • Like Stingrays, and the NSA's phone dragnet before them, the militarization of America's local cops is a phenomenon that's only now getting widespread attention. As journalist Radley Balko, who wrote a seminal book on the subject two years ago, said this week, the Obama administration could easily limit these tactics to "cases of legitimate national security" – but has clearly chosen not to.No matter how much President Obama talks about how he has "maintained a healthy skepticism toward our surveillance programs", it seems the Most Transparent Administration in American History™ remains much more interested in maintaining a healthy, top-secret surveillance state.
Paul Merrell

Venezuelan Opposition Leaders call for Regime Change and "National Transition Agreement... - 0 views

  • Three leading figures of the Venezuelan opposition have released a statement amounting to a demand for regime change and the establishment of a transitional government in the country. Entitled “The Call for a National Transition Agreement,” the statement was circulated this Wednesday and appeals to Venezuelans to unite behind a national plan aimed at supplanting the current socialist administration of President Nicolas Maduro, elected on April 14th 2013 with approximately 51% of the vote.
  • Its signatories include currently jailed leader of the Popular Will Party, Leopoldo Lopez, former National Assembly Legislator, Maria Corina Machado and current Mayor of the Metropolitan Capital District of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma. All of the signatories are linked to the violent guarimbas or barricades which began in February 2014, when violent protestors and paramilitaries blocked the streets for several months in response to calls by Lopez and Machado to force the “exit” of the Maduro government.
  • “Our call is to construct an agreement to take the lead in the transition to peace. It is the obligation of all democrats to help resolve the current crisis, defend the cause of liberty, and prevent the unavoidable fall of the regime from disrupting the peace and constitutionality of the country, to make the transition, that’s to say, the change from one failed system to another which is full of hope,” reads the text. The publication of the statement comes just a day before the first anniversary of the barricades and represents a clear violation of the country’s Bolivarian Constitution, which only allows for the removal of the elected President of the Republic via a national referendum or indictment by the Supreme Court of Justice. In the text, the current government is described as a “failed” “corrupt” and “inefficient” regime, made up of an “elite of no more 100 people” who have pilfered public funds “which could have been used for the benefit of all”. It also states that Venezuela is on the brink of a “humanitarian crisis” whilst the Maduro government is “delegitimised” and in its “terminal phase”. The move comes amidst a mounting economic war against the country’s socialist revolution which has seen private businesses hoarding essential goods in order to cause public unrest, as well as a fresh round of US sanctions imposed on Venezuelan officials earlier in February.
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  • The economic plan of the would-be transitional government is detailed in the last section of the agendas, where the signatories state their intention to designate a new management body for Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, and reinsert Venezuela into “international financial organisations, and to secure from them the funds needed to overcome short term difficulties”. The economic agenda also suggests that the future of Venezuela under an opposition government would include a liberalised economy and a reversal of State nationalisations. This would include “reaching an agreement for just reparations for damages caused by arbitrary expropriations, revising the real condition of all non-oil enterprises which ended up in the hands of the State due to the greed of the regime, and deciding on the forms of property and management which they can take on in order to assure their productive recovery”. “It is necessary to dismantle the tangled mess of controls which are strangling the economy and rebuild the juridic and economic bases which are necessary to attract productive investment with guarantees stable growth into the future,” continues the text.
  • All three of the politicians to have signed the document participated in the 2002 attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez.
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    Privatization of Venezuela's oil seems to be the big driving force. 
Paul Merrell

State department designates German rapper turned Islamic State 'operative' - The Long W... - 0 views

  • The State Department announced today that Denis Cuspert, a German member of the Islamic State, has been added to the US government's list of specially designated global terrorists. Cuspert previously performed as a rapper, going by the name of Deso Dogg, and even briefly toured with the popular American performer known as DMX. Some of Cuspert's music is still available for purchase in the US and elsewhere online. However, State explains that as a result of his designation as a terrorist "all property subject to US jurisdiction in which Cuspert has any interest is blocked and US persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with him or to his benefit." US citizens cannot, therefore, legally purchase his rap songs online if he receives proceeds from the sale. According to State, Cuspert is "a foreign terrorist fighter and operative for ISIL," or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. (The group calls itself the Islamic State, but the US government refers to it by the acronym of its previous name, or ISIL.) "Cuspert joined ISIL in 2012 and has appeared in numerous videos on its behalf, the most recent dating from early November, in which he appears holding a severed head he claims belongs to a man executed for opposing ISIL." Cuspert, who is 39 years old, "spent time in jail for various offensives" in Germany before traveling to Syria. He is still "wanted by the German government on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities in his home country."
  • There has been some controversy over whether or not Cuspert is really alive. He has been reported dead in the past. Some of the confusion is owed to Cuspert's nom de guerre, Abu Talha al Almani, which has been used by other Islamic State jihadists, including one who was killed in Syria last year.
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    There are some obvious first amendment issues with banning the purchase of music, magnified when the music carries a political message. Where, as here, the purpose is not to regulate speech but has an incidental effect on speech, the restriction will be upheld only "if it is within the constitutional power of the Government; if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and if the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest." United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377 (U.S. 1968).  There is a strong argument here that the State Department is not using the least restrictive means of blocking Cuspert's income from sale of his music, i.e., the government could instead leavy against Cuspert's share of the revenue from the recording studio.  I presume that either the studio or citizens who wish to purchase Cuspert's music would have standing to mount such a legal challenge. The argument would basically be that the statute and regulation are overbroad as applied to activity protected by the First Amended. A First Amendment "as applied" challenge leaves the court with discretition to leave the statute and regualtion unchanged, but judicially create an exception. 
Paul Merrell

N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.
  • The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.
  • The N.S.A. hacked into target computers to snare messages before they were encrypted. In some cases, companies say they were coerced by the government into handing over their master encryption keys or building in a back door. And the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards followed by hardware and software developers around the world.
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  • “For the past decade, N.S.A. has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies,” said a 2010 memo describing a briefing about N.S.A. accomplishments for employees of its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. “Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online. Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.”
  • Some of the agency’s most intensive efforts have focused on the encryption in universal use in the United States, including Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL; virtual private networks, or VPNs; and the protection used on fourth-generation, or 4G, smartphones. Many Americans, often without realizing it, rely on such protection every time they send an e-mail, buy something online, consult with colleagues via their company’s computer network, or use a phone or a tablet on a 4G network.
  • For at least three years, one document says, GCHQ, almost certainly in collaboration with the N.S.A., has been looking for ways into protected traffic of popular Internet companies: Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft’s Hotmail. By 2012, GCHQ had developed “new access opportunities” into Google’s systems, according to the document. (Google denied giving any government access and said it had no evidence its systems had been breached).
  • Paul Kocher, a leading cryptographer who helped design the SSL protocol, recalled how the N.S.A. lost the heated national debate in the 1990s about inserting into all encryption a government back door called the Clipper Chip. “And they went and did it anyway, without telling anyone,” Mr. Kocher said. He said he understood the agency’s mission but was concerned about the danger of allowing it unbridled access to private information.
  • The documents are among more than 50,000 shared by The Guardian with The New York Times and ProPublica, the nonprofit news organization. They focus on GCHQ but include thousands from or about the N.S.A. Intelligence officials asked The Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read. The news organizations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the article because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful privacy tools.
  • The files show that the agency is still stymied by some encryption, as Mr. Snowden suggested in a question-and-answer session on The Guardian’s Web site in June. “Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on,” he said, though cautioning that the N.S.A. often bypasses the encryption altogether by targeting the computers at one end or the other and grabbing text before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted.
  • Because strong encryption can be so effective, classified N.S.A. documents make clear, the agency’s success depends on working with Internet companies — by getting their voluntary collaboration, forcing their cooperation with court orders or surreptitiously stealing their encryption keys or altering their software or hardware.
  • At Microsoft, as The Guardian has reported, the N.S.A. worked with company officials to get pre-encryption access to Microsoft’s most popular services, including Outlook e-mail, Skype Internet phone calls and chats, and SkyDrive, the company’s cloud storage service.
  • Simultaneously, the N.S.A. has been deliberately weakening the international encryption standards adopted by developers. One goal in the agency’s 2013 budget request was to “influence policies, standards and specifications for commercial public key technologies,” the most common encryption method. Cryptographers have long suspected that the agency planted vulnerabilities in a standard adopted in 2006 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and later by the International Organization for Standardization, which has 163 countries as members. Classified N.S.A. memos appear to confirm that the fatal weakness, discovered by two Microsoft cryptographers in 2007, was engineered by the agency. The N.S.A. wrote the standard and aggressively pushed it on the international group, privately calling the effort “a challenge in finesse.” “Eventually, N.S.A. became the sole editor,” the memo says.
  • But the agencies’ goal was to move away from decrypting targets’ tools one by one and instead decode, in real time, all of the information flying over the world’s fiber optic cables and through its Internet hubs, only afterward searching the decrypted material for valuable intelligence. A 2010 document calls for “a new approach for opportunistic decryption, rather than targeted.” By that year, a Bullrun briefing document claims that the agency had developed “groundbreaking capabilities” against encrypted Web chats and phone calls. Its successes against Secure Sockets Layer and virtual private networks were gaining momentum.
  • Ladar Levison, the founder of Lavabit, wrote a public letter to his disappointed customers, offering an ominous warning. “Without Congressional action or a strong judicial precedent,” he wrote, “I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”
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    Lengthy article, lots of new information on NSA decryption capabilities, none of it good for those who value their data privacy.
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    Thanks Paul - nice job cutting this monster down to size :)
Paul Merrell

Putin signs "undesirable NGOs" Bill into Law | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill, enabling the designation of foreign and foreign-funded NGOs as undesirables after the bill passed both the Lower and Upper House of Parliament.
  • The bill authorizes the designation of foreign and foreign funded non-profit as well as for profit NGOs as “undesirables” on grounds of “national security. The bill passed the second reading in Russia’s Lower House of Parliament (State Duma), last week and was approved by the Upper House of Parliament, the Federation Council. The bill had been proposed by legislators of the governing United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin, The passing of the bill in both houses of parliament and the signing of the bill by Putin was no surprise since United Russia has a majority in both chambers. The bill has been heavily criticized by foreign, particularly western media, western politicians and primarily western-based or funded NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, among many others. One of the NGOs that is certain to fall under the provisions of the bill is USAID.
  • he new law follows up on a law that was adopted in 2012 that obliged foreign-funded non-governmental organizations to register as “foreign agents”. The law provides for declaring foreigners and foreign-funded NGOs as“undesirable”. Persons who are violating the newly adopted law could face a fine up to 10,000 dollar to be paid in local currency and up to six years imprisonment. Supporters of the bill are referring to the risk that foreign-funded NGOs could pose to the Russian Federation’s national security while critics maintain that the wording of the legislation and especially the term “undesirable” is ambiguous and opens the floodgates for the abuse of the law to crack down on legal and legitimate dissent.
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  • While the wording and the use of “undesirable” is ambiguous and does pose legal problems as much as it opens the floodgates for the abuse of the legislation, there may be a good reason for keeping the wording ambiguous. Internationally acting NGOs have increasingly become “weaponized”; That is, that they have increasingly been utilized as tool for everything from supporting legitimate dissent to the organization of political violence and coup d’état. Another disturbing fact is that this pattern includes UN organizations such as the UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action (Framework Team). Examples? Doctors Without Borders (MSF) played a key role in accusing the Syrian government for the use of chemical weapons, stating MSF sources. Later on the NGO had to admit that it had no staff in Damascus and exclusively relied on statements by “partners” in “rebel-held territories”.
  • Amnesty International for its part issued a report about alleged war crimes committed during NATO’s bombing of Libya in 2011. A 2012 report by Amnesty International claimed that Operation Unified Protector, authorized by UNSC Resolution 1973 has resulted in 55 documented cases of named civilian casualties, including 16 children and 14 women that were killed in air strikes in the capital Tripoli and the towns of Zliten, Majer, Sirte, and Brega. The low figure is utterly inconsistent with casualty figures provided by local NGOs as well as documented eyewitness reports. Two things are worth considering with regard to the Amnesty report. During the first night of the operation NATO forces launched over 100 cruise missiles into Tripoli alone.
  • The Director of Amnesty International at that time was Suzanne Nozzel, who also worked as adviser on U.S. government – NGO relations for the then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
  • While Human Right Watch does, indeed, engage in justified human rights advocacy, it has also been engaged in issuing strongly biased reports, in politicizing that “representatives are denied entry to e.g. Egypt”, while failing to mention that proper visa procedures had not been followed, and so forth. The most disturbing NGO may, however, be the UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action. The Framework Team is largely privately funded with George Soros as one of the primary sponsors. The NGO under UN cover is “coordinating UN, governmental and non-governmental initiatives”.
  • The UN organization could undoubtedly be useful but it has also been sharply criticized for “fanning the flames” of the inter-communal violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and for its active role in creating rather than preventing ethnic and sectarian disputes and violence in Nepal. In both the case of Myanmar and in the case of Nepal it is easy to establish ties between the Framework Team and Western or Western allied intelligence services. Criticism of the ambiguous wording of the new Russian legislation is, in other words, as justified as criticism of NGOs who prostitute themselves and the best intentions of the members at their base as pawns in geopolitical chess-games.
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    More than understandable given the long history of the U.S. weaponizing NGOs in aid of its "color revolutions" strategy to overthrow governments in secular states and left-leaning democracies. The most recent examples are the successful U.S. coup in Ukraine and the thrice-failed coup attempts in Venezuela.  U.S. NGOs have been attempting to provoke such a coup in Russia for some time but have failed thus far because of Putin's immense popularity and a perhaps better-informed Russian public. The Russian people know they are under attack and have wisely closed ranks rather than falling for a divide-and-conquer strategy. Venezuela recently enacted similar legislation.  
Paul Merrell

Ten years on, Iraq Lies in Ruins as New Evidence confirms U.S. used Death Squads to Man... - 0 views

  • Last week, the UK Guardian newspaper published the results of a 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic. Euphemistically titled ‘James Steele: America’s mystery man in Iraq‘, the video report presents fairly damning evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, the US Government and military began to assemble a 10,000 strong ‘Shia militia’ that, under US command, would be used to do three things: Kidnap, torture, murder and maim members of the Iraq resistance and those members of the Iraqi population that supported them. Plants bombs that targeted predominantly Sunni and Shia areas in an effort to divide the population and thereby any unified resistance to the US occupation. Create the impression of a ‘civil war’ in Iraq that could be used by the US and European governments and militaries to justify the continued occupation of Iraq for ‘peace-keeping’ purposes. While the 50 minute documentary is proof enough that Rumsfeld, Cheney, General Petraeus, and all the other NeoCon warhawks and CIA monsters consciously employed the services of former US Army Colonel James Steele in the organisation of death squads against the Iraqi grass-roots resistance (a tactic that he, Steele, had used against resistance movements in South America in the 1970s and 90′s), it panders to the official narrative that ‘sectarianism’ in Iraq was the root cause of the carnage that unfolded.
  • The so-called ‘Shia militia’ used by the American government (with the help and advice of British and Israeli counter-insurgency ‘experts’) were recruited directly by the CIA and people like James Steele to carry out extra-judicial murders of anyone they could loosely identify as ‘resistance’. In order to cloak this strategy, indiscriminate attacks on Iraqi civilians, Shia and Sunni alike, were carried out on a massive scale. Some of these individuals, in another setting, would be called ‘al-Qaeda’. Their usefulness in the employ of US warhawks in the Pentagon was doubly valuable because they both justified continued US occupation and provided ‘proof’ for the American War on Terror mythology, ex post facto, that the US was at war with the perpetrators of 9/11. Whereas before the invasion in 2003 there was absolutely nothing to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the creation of death squads (real) labelled ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ (fictitious) ‘made real’ the lie that America and all Western civilization was at war against hordes of irrational and violent Muslims, and became the template for instigating terrorism to suppress popular uprisings in Yemen, Mali and elsewhere. Once they have people violent, they can wear down and manage the national popular resistance, ensuring no opposition to the real strategic objectives (namely the control of Middle Eastern oil). The US forces of occupation, along with their British counterparts, had long experience in what actually happens when you militarily invade and occupy a sovereign nation: the people resist, and not just one ethnic or religious group, but more or less the whole population. There is nothing quite like a foreign occupation for uniting a country.
  • In Iraq, these US-controlled ‘Shia’ death squads have been operating in much the same way, and while the media is content to portray them as ordinary Shias motivated by religious bias, they are in fact hired thugs who value only the money they are paid by their US masters and the promise of positions of power in a future Iraqi government. Like the rank and file of the ‘Libyan rebels’ and the ‘Free Syrian Army’, these people form the dregs of Arab and Middle Eastern societies. Led by spellbinders who veil their barbaric actions with religious prose, secular leaders in the region, like Ghaddafi and Assad, and Nasser and Arafat before them, struggled in vain to keep them at bay. The reason for this is because the US, Britain, France and Israel have consistently supported – in the form of weapons, money, training and blatant lies – the extremists against the rational voices. Throughout the US occupation of Iraq, the main representative of Shias in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, has repeatedly called for unity among Shia and Sunni Iraqis in the face of foreign occupation and deception in the form of efforts to divide the resistance. These efforts included the bombing of bridges in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in an effort to prevent communication between Iraqis, the use of widespread terror tactics to force Sunni and Shia Iraqis to flee their homes, and the bombing of religious shrines, either Shia or Sunni, in an effort to create the reality of ‘sectarian strife’. Iraq today is in ruins. The country has been ripped apart socially, mainly by way of the literal ripping apart of tens of thousands of civilians, with many being first brutally and systematically tortured by US-sponsored death squads. Hundreds of thousands more have been summarily murdered, either by the bombs of US aircraft, the bullets of US soldiers, or those ubiquitous and very effective ‘car bombs‘ planted by US and British operatives and their hired thugs.
Paul Merrell

Canada Casts Global Surveillance Dragnet Over File Downloads - The Intercept - 0 views

  • Canada’s leading surveillance agency is monitoring millions of Internet users’ file downloads in a dragnet search to identify extremists, according to top-secret documents. The covert operation, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, taps into Internet cables and analyzes records of up to 15 million downloads daily from popular websites commonly used to share videos, photographs, music, and other files. The revelations about the spying initiative, codenamed LEVITATION, are the first from the trove of files provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to show that the Canadian government has launched its own globe-spanning Internet mass surveillance system. According to the documents, the LEVITATION program can monitor downloads in several countries across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and North America. It is led by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the NSA. (The Canadian agency was formerly known as “CSEC” until a recent name change.)
  • The latest disclosure sheds light on Canada’s broad existing surveillance capabilities at a time when the country’s government is pushing for a further expansion of security powers following attacks in Ottawa and Quebec last year. Ron Deibert, director of University of Toronto-based Internet security think tank Citizen Lab, said LEVITATION illustrates the “giant X-ray machine over all our digital lives.” “Every single thing that you do – in this case uploading/downloading files to these sites – that act is being archived, collected and analyzed,” Deibert said, after reviewing documents about the online spying operation for CBC News. David Christopher, a spokesman for Vancouver-based open Internet advocacy group OpenMedia.ca, said the surveillance showed “robust action” was needed to rein in the Canadian agency’s operations.
  • In a top-secret PowerPoint presentation, dated from mid-2012, an analyst from the agency jokes about how, while hunting for extremists, the LEVITATION system gets clogged with information on innocuous downloads of the musical TV series Glee. CSE finds some 350 “interesting” downloads each month, the presentation notes, a number that amounts to less than 0.0001 per cent of the total collected data. The agency stores details about downloads and uploads to and from 102 different popular file-sharing websites, according to the 2012 document, which describes the collected records as “free file upload,” or FFU, “events.” Only three of the websites are named: RapidShare, SendSpace, and the now defunct MegaUpload.
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  • “The specific uses that they talk about in this [counter-terrorism] context may not be the problem, but it’s what else they can do,” said Tamir Israel, a lawyer with the University of Ottawa’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. Picking which downloads to monitor is essentially “completely at the discretion of CSE,” Israel added. The file-sharing surveillance also raises questions about the number of Canadians whose downloading habits could have been swept up as part of LEVITATION’s dragnet. By law, CSE isn’t allowed to target Canadians. In the LEVITATION presentation, however, two Canadian IP addresses that trace back to a web server in Montreal appear on a list of suspicious downloads found across the world. The same list includes downloads that CSE monitored in closely allied countries, including the United Kingdom, United States, Spain, Brazil, Germany and Portugal. It is unclear from the document whether LEVITATION has ever prevented any terrorist attacks. The agency cites only two successes of the program in the 2012 presentation: the discovery of a hostage video through a previously unknown target, and an uploaded document that contained the hostage strategy of a terrorist organization. The hostage in the discovered video was ultimately killed, according to public reports.
  • LEVITATION does not rely on cooperation from any of the file-sharing companies. A separate secret CSE operation codenamed ATOMIC BANJO obtains the data directly from internet cables that it has tapped into, and the agency then sifts out the unique IP address of each computer that downloaded files from the targeted websites. The IP addresses are valuable pieces of information to CSE’s analysts, helping to identify people whose downloads have been flagged as suspicious. The analysts use the IP addresses as a kind of search term, entering them into other surveillance databases that they have access to, such as the vast repositories of intercepted Internet data shared with the Canadian agency by the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters. If successful, the searches will return a list of results showing other websites visited by the people downloading the files – in some cases revealing associations with Facebook or Google accounts. In turn, these accounts may reveal the names and the locations of individual downloaders, opening the door for further surveillance of their activities.
  • Canada’s leading surveillance agency is monitoring millions of Internet users’ file downloads in a dragnet search to identify extremists, according to top-secret documents. The covert operation, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, taps into Internet cables and analyzes records of up to 15 million downloads daily from popular websites commonly used to share videos, photographs, music, and other files. The revelations about the spying initiative, codenamed LEVITATION, are the first from the trove of files provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to show that the Canadian government has launched its own globe-spanning Internet mass surveillance system. According to the documents, the LEVITATION program can monitor downloads in several countries across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and North America. It is led by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the NSA. (The Canadian agency was formerly known as “CSEC” until a recent name change.)
Paul Merrell

Google will 'de-rank' RT articles to make them harder to find - Eric Schmidt - RT World... - 0 views

  • Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says the company will “engineer” specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine’s news delivery services. “We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates “Russian propaganda.”
  • “We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.”The discussion focused on the company’s popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications.
  • The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a “longtime friend,” added that the experience of “the last year” showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves.“We started with the default American view that ‘bad’ speech would be replaced with ‘good’ speech, but the problem found in the last year is that this may not be true in certain situations, especially when you have a well-funded opponent who is trying to actively spread this information,” he told the audience.
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  • RT America registered under FARA earlier this month, after being threatened by the US Department of Justice with arrests and confiscations of property if it failed to comply. The broadcaster is fighting the order in court.
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    " HomeWorld News Google will 'de-rank' RT articles to make them harder to find - Eric Schmidt Published time: 20 Nov, 2017 19:58 Edited time: 21 Nov, 2017 03:41 Get short URL   © Global Look Press Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, says the company will "engineer" specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine's news delivery services. "We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites - it's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates "Russian propaganda." Schmidt appearance begins at 1:07:00 mark, relevant question at 1:33:00 "We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don't want to ban the sites - that's not how we operate." The discussion focused on the company's popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications. Read more 'Slap at the First Amendment' - RT America forced to register as foreign agent RT has criticized the proposed move - whose timescale has not been publicized - as arbitrary and a form of censorship. "Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren't allowed if they come from RT, 'because Russia' - even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they've found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT," Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement. During the discussion, Schmidt claimed that he was "very strongly not in favor of censorship," but said that he has faith in "ranking" without ackno
Paul Merrell

Brazil Looks to Break from U.S.-Centric Internet | TIME.com - 0 views

  • Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington’s widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments. President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company’s network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google. The leader is so angered by the espionage that on Tuesday she postponed next month’s scheduled trip to Washington, where she was to be honored with a state dinner. Internet security and policy experts say the Brazilian government’s reaction to information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is understandable, but warn it could set the Internet on a course of Balkanization.
  • “The global backlash is only beginning and will get far more severe in coming months,” said Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute at the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank. “This notion of national privacy sovereignty is going to be an increasingly salient issue around the globe.” While Brazil isn’t proposing to bar its citizens from U.S.-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians’ Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping. The danger of mandating that kind of geographic isolation, Meinrath said, is that it could render inoperable popular software applications and services and endanger the Internet’s open, interconnected structure.
  • The effort by Latin America’s biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say. In December, countries advocating greater “cyber-sovereignty” pushed for such control at an International Telecommunications Union meeting in Dubai, with Western democracies led by the United States and the European Union in opposition.
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  • Rousseff says she intends to push for international rules on privacy and security in hardware and software during the U.N. General Assembly meeting later this month. Among Snowden revelations: the NSA has created backdoors in software and Web-based services. Brazil is now pushing more aggressively than any other nation to end U.S. commercial hegemony on the Internet. More than 80 percent of online search, for example, is controlled by U.S.-based companies. Most of Brazil’s global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff’s government plans to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of U.S. eavesdropping.
  • More communications integrity protection is expected when Telebras, the state-run telecom company, works with partners to oversee the launch in 2016 of Brazil’s first communications satellite, for military and public Internet traffic. Brazil’s military currently relies on a satellite run by Embratel, which Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim controls. Rousseff is urging Brazil’s Congress to compel Facebook, Google and all companies to store data generated by Brazilians on servers physically located inside Brazil in order to shield it from the NSA. If that happens, and other nations follow suit, Silicon Valley’s bottom line could be hit by lost business and higher operating costs: Brazilians rank No. 3 on Facebook and No. 2 on Twitter and YouTube. An August study by a respected U.S. technology policy nonprofit estimated the fallout from the NSA spying scandal could cost the U.S. cloud computing industry, which stores data remotely to give users easy access from any device, as much as $35 billion by 2016 in lost business.
  • Brazil also plans to build more Internet exchange points, places where vast amounts of data are relayed, in order to route Brazilians’ traffic away from potential interception. And its postal service plans by next year to create an encrypted email service that could serve as an alternative to Gmail and Yahoo!, which according to Snowden-leaked documents are among U.S. tech giants that have collaborated closely with the NSA. “Brazil intends to increase its independent Internet connections with other countries,” Rousseff’s office said in an emailed response to questions from The Associated Press on its plans. It cited a “common understanding” between Brazil and the European Union on data privacy, and said “negotiations are underway in South America for the deployment of land connections between all nations.” It said Brazil plans to boost investment in home-grown technology and buy only software and hardware that meet government data privacy specifications.
  • While the plans’ technical details are pending, experts say they will be costly for Brazil and ultimately can be circumvented. Just as people in China and Iran defeat government censors with tools such as “proxy servers,” so could Brazilians bypass their government’s controls. International spies, not just from the United States, also will adjust, experts said. Laying cable to Europe won’t make Brazil safer, they say. The NSA has reportedly tapped into undersea telecoms cables for decades. Meinrath and others argue that what’s needed instead are strong international laws that hold nations accountable for guaranteeing online privacy.
  • “There’s nothing viable that Brazil can really do to protect its citizenry without changing what the U.S. is doing,” he said. Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins computer security expert, said Brazil won’t protect itself from intrusion by isolating itself digitally. It will also be discouraging technological innovation, he said, by encouraging the entire nation to use a state-sponsored encrypted email service. “It’s sort of like a Soviet socialism of computing,” he said, adding that the U.S. “free-for-all model works better.”
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    So both Brazil and the European Union are planning to boycott the U.S.-based cloud industry, seizing on the NSA's activities as legal grounds. Under the various GATT series of trade agreements, otherwise forbidden discriminatory actions taken that restrict trade in aid of national security are exempt from redress through the World Trade Organization Dispute Resolution Process. So the NSA voyeurs can add legalizing economic digital discrimination against the U.S. to its score card.
Paul Merrell

The U.S. effort to defeat Islamic State in Syria faces a major hurdle: Obama has no rel... - 0 views

  • The fact that the Obama administration is preparing to overhaul its approach and vet, train and equip the so-called moderate Syrian rebels attests to its lack of confidence in the only opposition fighters it has backed so far: the loosely organized Free Syrian Army, more a shifting franchise operation than a unified fighting force with a coherent central command.Analysts doubt that the White House's initial pledge of about $500 million will be sufficient to train and equip a new army to defeat the Islamists, who are flush with captured weapons and cash from oil smuggling and other illicit enterprises. Moreover, the Syrian rebels say their principal aim is to overthrow not the Islamists but the Syrian government, whose formidable military is backed by Iran and Russia.
  • In effect, this newly revamped, U.S.-backed rebel force, whenever it is ready to deploy — the buildup could take years — will be fighting a war against two powerful adversaries, Islamic State and the Syrian military. That equation hasn't generated much optimism."We spent hundreds of billions of dollars and years of effort trying to build up forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and look at what we got for it," said Joshua Landis, a Middle East expert at the University of Oklahoma. "We don't have a partner in Syria. That's the reality of the situation."
  • It's not yet clear whether Washington's purported allies in Syria are completely on board with the U.S. offensive against Islamic State. One of the administration's favored moderate rebel factions, Harakat Hazm, part of the Free Syrian Army alliance and a recipient of U.S. missiles and training, issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the "external intervention" — that is, the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Syria — as "an attack on the revolution."The group said its main goal was toppling Assad. It is demanding "unconditional arming" of the Free Syrian Army, yet its members also acknowledge fighting alongside Al Nusra Front, the official Al Qaeda force in Syria.Still, the country's motley bands of fighters labeled as moderates may well be the White House's best hope for now. It has few other options.Some analysts have urged the administration to forge a limited, conditional alliance against Islamic State with the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a kind of lesser-of-two-evils approach. Syrian warplanes have been pummeling Islamic State positions for weeks, and Assad has long presented himself as a bulwark against regional "terrorism."
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  • But Obama, who called for Assad to step down in 2011, declared in a nationally televised speech Sept. 10 that "we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people, a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost."U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all predominantly Sunni nations, have invested too much in removing Assad — a member of an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam — to turn away from that goal.Washington already faces criticism from Sunni allies that it is backing a Shiite-dominated, pro-Iran government in Baghdad. Aid from Iran and its Lebanese ally, the militant group Hezbollah, has been crucial in keeping Assad in power in the face of Syria's largely Sunni uprising.
  • Other potential U.S. partners in Syria are few.Candidates include the ethnic Kurds, who are among the most effective anti-Islamist forces in the country. However, the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the Popular Protection Force is viewed as suspect because of its close ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a Turkey-based guerrilla group labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey and the U.S. At any rate, Kurds are a minority in Syria and their movement is largely limited to the north.Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said that in both Syria and Iraq, Washington faces a dilemma in "finding partners who are not only able and willing to fight on the ground, but who will not generate political problems that could lead to even greater polarization."That fundamental challenge is an imposing one in Iraq. In Syria, it seems beyond daunting.
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    It's becoming more and more clear that the Obama Administration has no realistic plan for military operations in Syria. The only force there with a demonstrated ability to combat ISIL is the government of Syria and Obama will not partner with them because of that government's close ties with Iran Russia and because it is the end point of the planned Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline.  
Paul Merrell

Operation Jericho Airforce Officials Sentenced to 4-8 Years | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

  • Eight Venezuelan military officials charged with involvement in last year’s infamous “Operation Jericho” plot against President Nicolas Maduro have been sentenced by a military court to between four and eight years in prison.   The men were amongst 30 mostly airforce officials arrested in March and April 2014 in connection with a plan to sow rebellion in the country’s armed forces and launch a coup against the current socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro. The plot is reported to have been planned throughout a two year period but was dramatically foiled by Venezuelan authorities in March 2014 following a series of tip offs from other members of the armed forces.   “The homeland is delivering justice! Military Tribunals sentence 8 officials from “Operation Jericho” for inciting rebelling and violating military decorum”, confirmed Defence Minister, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, on his Twitter account. Although Lopez did not give details on the length of the sentences handed down to the officials, according to press reports the men received between four to eight years each. 
  • The jailed officials include Andres Thomas Martinez, the great grandson of Venezuelan twentieth century military dictator, Juan Vicente Gomez, who ruled Venezuela from 1908 until his death in 1935, and former Vice-minister for Defence Education, General Oswaldo Hernández. They are all reported to have links to the United States government, as well as to prominent members of Venezuela’s rightwing opposition, including Member of Parliament for the Justice First party, Julio Borges, who was named in a confession by Hernandez.  The sentencing of the men follows the jailing of a ninth airforce official involved in the plot, Captain Acacio Moreno Mora, who was handed a prison term of 3 years and 11 months after pleading guilty on the first day of the high profile trial in February this year. 2014’s “Operation Jericho” is just one of several attempts to oust the Bolivarian government over the last 15 years, including a partially successful coup in 2002 which saw then-president, Hugo Chavez, forcefully deposed from office for 47 hours before he was returned by a popular rebellion. Earlier this year, another plot by airforce officials against the government was also discovered by Venezuelan authorities. Dubbed “the Blue Coup,” the plan included an attempt to assassinate the president, as well as the bombing of a series of “strategic” targets in the capital city using a Toucan warplane. 
  • The Blue Coup is reported to be an offshoot of last year’s Operation Jericho, with those involved having allegedly planned to release pre-recorded footage of Operacion Jericho’s General Hernandez announcing the overthrow of the Maduro government via a military uprising in order to launch the Blue Coup. Several opposition politicians such as Leopoldo Lopez, Maria Corina Machado and Antonio Ledezma have also been linked to the Blue Coup attempt. All three signed and released a “Call for a National Transition Agreement” just twenty-four hours before the Blue Coup was scheduled to take place.  The document calls on Venezuelans to back their initiative to depose the Maduro administration and install an interim de-facto government.  Both Lopez and Ledezma are currently behind bars and awaiting trial due to their alleged involvement in the opposition street violence which erupted in 2014. Ledezma in particular is being tried for his links to paramilitary groups connected to the violence. 
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    Venezuelan co-conpirators of of of the several CIA coup attempts sentenced to prison.  
Paul Merrell

To beat ISIS, kick out US-led coalition | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • It’s been a bad time for foes of ISIS. Islamic State scored a neat hat-trick by invading strategic Ramadi in Iraq’s mainly Sunni Anbar province, occupying Syria’s historic gem Palmyra, and taking over Al-Tanf, the last remaining border crossing with Iraq. The multinational, American-led ‘Coalition’ launched last August to thwart Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) march across Syria and Iraq…did nothing.
  • The Iraqis have shot back. Key MP Hakim al-Zamili blames Ramadi’s collapse on the US’s failure to provide “good equipment, weapons and aerial support” to troops. Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq, himself a Sunni from Anbar Province, concluded that the Americans were coming up short in all areas. “The Coalition airstrikes are not enough to eliminate IS.” Furthermore, the US policy of recruiting Sunni tribes for the fight, he added, was “too late” – it is “important but not enough.” If ever there was an understatement, this is it. Washington’s long-stated objective of rallying together a vetted Sunni fighting force – or its equivalent in the form of a National Guard – has always served as a placeholder to avoid facing realities.
  • One thing we have learned from IS gains in small and large Sunni towns alike, is that the extremist group prides itself on sleeper cells and alliances inside of these areas. Sunni tribes and families, both, are divided on their support of IS. And the militants ensure that everyone else falls in line through a brutal campaign of inflicting fear and pain indiscriminately. So the likelihood of a significant, anti-IS, well-trained and equipped Sunni fighting force emerging anytime soon is just about nil. So too is the idea of a US-led Coalition air force that can cripple Islamic State. Washington has run fewer sorties over Syria and Iraq in the nine months since inception of its air campaign, than Israel ran in its entire three-week Gaza blitz in 2008-09. Where were the American bombers when Ramadi and Palmyra were being taken? And why does the US Air Force only seem to engage in earnest when their Kurdish allies are being threatened – as in Kobani (Ain al-Arab), Syria, and Erbil in Iraq?
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  • If actions speak louder than words, then Washington’s moves in the Mideast have been deafening. Forget talk of a ‘unified Iraq’ with a ‘strong central government’. And definitely forget loudly-proclaimed objectives of ‘training moderate forces’ to ‘fight off IS’ across the Jordanian and Turkish borders in Syria. That’s just talk. An objective look at US interests in the region paint an entirely different picture. The Americans seek to maintain absolute hegemony in the Mideast, even as they exit costly military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Their primary interests are 1) access to low cost oil and gas, 2) propping up Israel, and more recently, 3) undermining Russian (and Chinese) influence in the region. Clinging on to hegemony would be a whole lot easier without the presence of a powerful, independent Islamic Republic of Iran, which continues to throw a wrench in many of Washington’s regional projects. So hegemony is somewhat dependent on weakening Iran – and its supportive alliances.
  • But why ignore Sunni groups who are unreservedly opposed to IS? Aren’t they America’s natural constituents inside Iraq? The Takfiri extremist groups serve a purpose for Washington. IS has had the ability – where competing Sunni factions, with their ever-growing lists of demands from Baghdad, have not – to transform the US’ ‘buffer’ project into a physical reality. And Washington has not needed to expend blood, treasure or manpower to get the job done.
  • You only have to look at recent US actions in Iraq to see this unspoken plan in action. Washington’s most intensive airstrikes to date were when Kurdish Erbil and its environs came under threat by ISIS.Washington’s most intensive airstrikes to date were when Kurdish Erbil and its environs came under threat by ISIS. Congress has breached all international norms by ushering through legislation to directly arm Sunni and Kurdish militias and bypass the central government in Baghdad. And despite endless promises and commitments, the Americans have failed at every hurdle to train and equip the Iraqi Army and security forces to do anything useful. A weak, divided Iraq can never become a regional powerhouse allied with Iran and the Resistance Axis. Likewise a weak, divided Syria. But without US control over these central governments, the only way to achieve this is 1) through the creation of sectarian and ethnic strife that could carve out pro-US buffers inside the ‘Resistance states’ and/or 2) through the creation of a hostile ‘Sunni buffer’ to break this line from Iran to Palestine.
  • General Walid Sukariyya, a Sunni, pro-resistance member of Lebanon’s parliament, agrees. “ISIS will be better for the US and Israel than having a strong Iran, Iraq and Syria…If they succeed at this, the Sunni state in Iraq will split the resistance from Palestine.” While Washington has long sought to create a buffer in Iraq on the Syrian border, it has literally spent years trying – and failing – to find, then mold, representative Sunni Iraqi leaders who will comfortably toe a pro-American line. An example of this is the Anbar delegation US General John Allen handpicked last December for a DC tour, which excluded representatives of the two most prominent Sunni tribes fighting IS in Iraq – the Albu Alwan and Albu Nimr. A spokesman for the tribes, speaking to Al-Jarida newspaper, objected at the time: “We are fighting ISIL and getting slaughtered, while suffering from a shortage of weapons. In the meantime, others are going to Washington to get funds and will later be assigned as our leaders.”
  • With the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the US inadvertently extended Iran’s arc of influence in a direct geographic line to Palestine, leaving the Israeli colonial project vulnerable. Former President George W. Bush immediately took on the task of destroying this Resistance Axis by attempting to neuter Iranian allies Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas – and failed. The Arab Spring presented a fresh opportunity to regroup: the US and its Turkish and Persian Gulf allies swung into action to create conditions for regime-change in Syria. The goal? To break this geographic line from Iran – through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – to Palestine. When regime-change failed, the goalpost moved to the next best plan: dividing Syria into several competing chunks, which would weaken the central state and create a pro-US ‘buffer’ along the border with Israel. Weakening the central government in Iraq by dividing the state along Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite lines has also been a priority for the Americans.
  • The DIA brief makes clear that the escalation of conflict in Syria will create further sectarianism and radicalization, which will increase the likelihood of an ‘Islamic State’ on the Syrian-Iraqi border, one that would likely be manned by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). So what did Washington do when it received this information? It lied. Less than one month after the DIA report was published, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this about the Syrian opposition: “I just don’t agree that a majority are Al-Qaeda and the bad guys. That’s not true. There are about 70,000 to 100,000 oppositionists … Maybe 15 percent to 25 percent might be in one group or another who are what we would deem to be bad guys…There is a real moderate opposition that exists.” Using the fabricated storyline of ‘moderate rebels’ who need assistance to fight a ‘criminal Syrian regime’, the US government kept the Syrian conflict buzzing, knowing full well the outcome would mean the establishment of a Sunni extremist entity spanning the Syrian-Iraqi border…which could cripple, what the Americans call, “the strategic depth of the Shia expansion.”As US Council on Foreign Relations member and terrorism analyst Max Abrahms conceded on Twitter: “The August 5, 2012 DIA report confirms much of what Assad has been saying all along about his opponents both inside & outside Syria.”
  • Since last year, numerous Iraqi officials have complained about the US airdropping weapons to IS – whether deliberately or inadvertently remains disputed. Military sources, on the other hand, have made clear that the US-led Coalition ignores many of the Iraqi requests for air cover during ground operations. If the US isn’t willing to play ball in Iraq’s existential fight against IS, then why bother with the Americans at all? Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is viewed as a ‘weak’ head of state – a relatively pro-American official who will work diligently to keep a balance between US interests and those of Iraq’s powerful neighbor, Iran. But after the disastrous fall of Ramadi, and more bad news from inside Syria, Abadi has little choice but to mitigate these losses, and rapidly. The prime minister has now ordered the engagement of thousands of Hashd al-Shaabi (Shiite paramilitary groups, commonly known as the Popular Mobilization Forces) troops in the Anbar to wrest back control of Ramadi. And this – unusually – comes with the blessings of Anbar’s Sunni tribes who voted overwhelmingly to appeal to the Hashd for military assistance.
  • Joining the Hashd are a few thousand Sunni fighters, making this a politically palatable response. If the Ramadi operation goes well, this joint Sunni-Shiite effort (which also proved successful in Tikrit) could provide Iraq with a model to emulate far and wide. The recent losses in Syria and Iraq have galvanized IS’ opponents from Lebanon to Iran to Russia, with commitments pouring in for weapons, manpower and funds. If Ramadi is recovered, this grouping is unlikely to halt its march, and will make a push to the Syrian border through IS-heavy territory. There is good reason for this: the militants who took Ramadi came across the Syrian border – in full sight of US reconnaissance capabilities. A senior resistance state official told me earlier this year: “We will not allow the establishment of a big (extremist) demographic and geographic area between Syria and Iraq. We will work to push Syrian ISIS inside Syria and Iraqi ISIS inside Iraq.”
  • Right now, the key to pushing back Takfiri gains inside Syria’s eastern and northwestern theaters lies in the strengthening of the Iraqi military landscape. And an absolute priority will be in clearing the IS ‘buffer’ between the two states. Eighteen months ago, in an analysis about how to fight jihadist militants from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, I wrote that the solution for this battle will be found only within the region, specifically from within those states whose security is most compromised or under threat: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. I argued that these four states would be forced to increase their military cooperation as the battles intensified, and that they would provide the only ‘boots on the ground’ in this fight. And they will. But air cover is a necessary component of successful offensive operations, even in situations of unconventional warfare. If the US and its flimsy Coalition are unable or unwilling to provide the required reconnaissance assistance and the desired aerial coverage, as guided by a central Iraqi military command, then Iraq should look elsewhere for help.
  • Iran and Russia come to mind – and we may yet get there. Iraq and Syria need to merge their military strategies more effectively – again, an area where the Iranians and Russians can provide valuable expertise. Both states have hit a dangerous wall in the past few weeks, and the motivation for immediate and decisive action is high today. Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah is coming into play increasingly as well – its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has recently promised that Hezbollah will no longer limit itself geographically, and will go where necessary to thwart this Takfiri enemy. The non-state actors that make up the jihadist and Takfiri core cannot be beaten by conventional armies, which is why local militias accustomed to asymmetric warfare are best suited for these battles. Criticizing the US’s utterly nonexistent response to the Ramadi debacle yesterday, Iran’s elite Quds Force Commander Qassem Suleimani points out: “Today, there is nobody in confrontation with [IS] except the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as nations who are next to Iran or supported by Iran.” The Iranians have become central figures in the fight against terror, and are right next door to it – as opposed to Washington, over 6,000 miles away.
  • If the US has any real commitment to the War on Terror, it should focus on non-combat priorities that are also essential to undermine extremism: 1) securing the Turkish and Jordanian borders to prevent any further infiltration of jihadists into Syria and Iraq, 2) sanctioning countries and individuals who fund and weaponize the Takfiris, most of whom are staunch US allies, now ironically part of the ‘Coalition’ to fight IS, and 3) sharing critical intelligence about jihadist movements with those countries engaged in the battle. It is time to cut these losses and bring some heavyweights into this battle against extremism. If the US-directed Coalition will not deliver airstrikes under the explicit command of sovereign states engaged at great risk in this fight, it may be time to clear Iraqi and Syrian airspace of coalition jets, and fill those skies with committed partners instead.
  • Related documentation: DIA Doc Syria and Iraq:_ Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.
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    Woh! Things definitely coming to an inflexion point in Syria and Iraq. This is a reprint from RT.com, the Russian video and web page news service. The hint of direct and overt military action by Russia and Iran should not be ignored. The U.S. is sandbagging for ISIL and al Nusiryah. 
Gary Edwards

REVEALING QUOTES ON THE GOALS OF PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY - 0 views

  • Psychiatry's Views on Conservatives "In August 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million taxpayer-funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed. Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives, in particular, suffer from ‘mental rigidity,’ ‘dogmatism,’ and ‘uncertainty avoidance,’ together with associated indicators for mental illness."
  • Psychiatry's Views on Education "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future"
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
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  • "This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Unites (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes.
  • The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influences of the home are 'obstructive' and verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective ..
  • When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
  • "…through schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government – one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people."
  • "Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know – it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave." 
  • You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don’t feel like it. You don’t have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable."
  • "I regard myself as one of the most dangerous enemies of religion" Sigmund Freud
  • "Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?"
  • "Despite rapid progress in the right direction, the program of the average elementary school has been primarily devoted to teaching the fundamental subjects, the three R’s, and closely related disciplines… Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value. Nearly every subject is enlarged unwisely to satisfy the academic ideal of thoroughness… Elimination of the unessential by scientific study, then, is one step in improving the curriculum."
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • "...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong"
  • "A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student's fixed beliefs.  …a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings."  
  • "The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection."
  • Psychiatry's Views on Religion "Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis." Sigmund Freud, defining spiritual belief
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • "The soul or consciousness, which played the leading part in the past, now is of very little importance; in any case both are deprived of their main functions and glory to such an extent that only the names remain. Behaviorism sang their funeral dirge while materialism – the smiling heir – arranges a suitable funeral for them.
  • "…humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith." "
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas..."
  • Psychiatry's Views on Creating a Slave Society "We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood."
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
  • "It will of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common wheel." Edward Thorndike, Key Psychology Theorist, member of the "Eugenics Committee of the USA"
  • "We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.
  • The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. . . Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. . . . We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electronic stimulation of the brain." 
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • "Those of us who work in this field see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances. What we can produce with our science now will affect the entire society." A "utopia" could be found – providing "a sense of stability and certainty, whether realistic or not."
  • We shall not solve the problems of alcoholism and juvenile delinquency by increasing a sense of responsibility. It is the environment which is 'responsible' for the objectionable behavior, and it is the environment, not some attribute of the individual, which must be changed.
  • "If all else fails, punishable behavior may be made less likely by changing physiological conditions. Hormones may be used to change sexual behavior, surgery (as in lobotomy) to control violence, tranquilizers to control aggression, and appetite depressants to control overeating." Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner in "Beyond Freedom and Dignity"
  • "The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State." Hegel (who influenced Karl Marx)
  • Psychiatry's Views on America "America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless." Sigmund Freud America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. Sigmund Freud
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas...
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • Freud on Marxism "The strength of Marxism obviously does not lie in its view of history or in the prophecies about the future which it bases upon that view, but in its clear insight into the determining influence which is exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual, ethical and artistic reactions." Sigmund Freud
  • Basically, all that is necessary to revoke all the constitutional rights of any citizen is to accuse him of being mentally-ill."
  • John A. Stormer, "None Dare Call it Treason"
  • "Old conventions, customs and values… to be challenged… The aim should be to control not only nature, but human nature." He recommended two slogans for "spreading world-wide the gospel of mental hygiene": "To learn to think internationally" and "The necessity to disarm the mind." Dr. J.R. Lord, psychiatrist
  • "Public life, politics and industry should all of them be within our sphere of influence…. If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!  If better ideas on mental health are to progress and spread we, as the salesmen, must lose our identity… Let us all, therefore, very secretly be ‘fifth columnists.’"
  • The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on school children.
  • These include emotional shock and desensitization, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual’s underlying moral values by psychological rather than rational means. These techniques are not confined to separate courses or programs...they are not isolated idiosyncracies of particular teachers. They are products of numerous books and other educational materials in programs packaged by organizations that sell such curricula to administrators and teach the techniques to teachers.
  • Some packages even include instructions on how to deal with parents and others who object. Stripping away psychological defenses can be done through assignments to keep diaries to be discussed in group sessions, and through role-playing assignments, both techniques used in the original brainwashing programs in China under Mao. Thomas Sowell, writing in Forbes, 1991
  • We must learn to recognize them for what they are - possessors of no special knowledge of the human psyche, who have, nonetheless, chosen to earn their living from the dissemination of the myth that they do indeed know how the mind works". Psychiatrist Garth Wood, M.D., in "The Myth of Neurosis", 1986
  • These terms indicate only approval or disapproval of some aspect of a person's mentality (thinking, emotions, or behavior). Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, in "The Death of Psychiatry", 1974
  • "The very term ['mental disease'] is nonsensical, a semantic mistake. The two words cannot go together except metaphorically; you can no more have a mental 'disease' than you can have a purple idea or a wise space". Similarly, there can no more be a "mental illness" than there can be a "moral illness." The words "mental" and "illness" do not go together logically. Mental "illness" does not exist, and neither does mental "health."
  • By calling the harmless 'insane', (who statistics prove to be no more violence-prone than the average citizen, unless hopelessly deranged by damaging psychiatric 'treatment'), dangerous and justifying their own existence by the 'need' to deal with that inflated 'danger', the mad-doctors themselves pose the greatest threat to liberty, property and democracy in our times."
  • Citizens for Higher Ethical Standards in Medicine
  • "Mental illness is often used as an ad homonym to discredit the individual. This has been a common use of psychiatric diagnosis in psychiatry in Russia. " ... there are two main groups [of schizophrenia patients] ... 1) people admitted to the mental hospital long before they had been political dissenters ... 2. others who ... have put forward complex social and economic theories as alternatives to orthodox Marxism..."  Wing, cited in "Pseudoscience in Psychology", by Dr. Szasz, p. 126
  • "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.." J. Krishnamurti
  • "...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology.... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician’s paradise."   The Impact of Science on Society by Bertrand Russell
  • "A Trojan horse full of dangerous psycho-fantasies has been professionally prepared for us by Christian psychiatrists and psychologists...  At the base, such therapies stand upon dogma, not scientific observations, and the dogma is the odious one of Freud and his followers who were some of the century's most anti-Christ teachers.  No amount of well-intentioned refinement of deadly doctrines will make them clean for Christians." Dr. Hilton P. Terrell, M.D
  • "Advocates of psychiatric drugs often claim that the medications improve learning and the ability to benefit from psychotherapy, but the contrary is true.  There are no drugs that improve mental function, self-understanding, or human relations.  Any drug that affects mental processes does so by impairing them."
  • "Psychotherapy may be known in the future as the greatest hoax of the twentieth century."
  • "Nearly half a century has passed since Watson proclaimed his manifesto. Today, apart from a few minor reservations, the vast majority of psychologists, both in this country and in America, still follow his lead. The result, as a cynical onlooker might be tempted to say, is that psychology, having first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now, as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness." 
  • "Contrary to the popular public conception, this happenstance is NOT a form of health care, but the result of a fraudulent system being granted police powers by the State.
  • "In the 14-year period between 1950 and 1964, more American deaths occurred in state and county mental institutions than in all of the nation's armed conflicts beginning with the Revolutionary War and ending with the Persian Gulf War.  Between 1965 and 1990, the total number of mental-hospital inpatient deaths exceeded the number of battle deaths in the same wars by 70 percent.  Inpatient deaths topped out at 1,103,000 during this 25-year period, compared with 650,563 recorded deaths in battles."
  • Kelly Patricia O’Meara: "The Forgotten Dead of St. Elizabeth's", Insight Magazine, June 16, 2001
  • "The similarities between street drug abuse and psychotropic prescription drug use are disturbing. Both types are toxic. Both can cause psychosis, damage the brain and other organs, and even cause death. And neither type of mind-altering drugs, legal or illegal, treats disease. It's important to recognize that the only significant difference between many prescription psychotropic drugs and street drugs such as "speed" and "downers" is that prescription drugs are legal."
  • Neuro-psychiatrist Sydney Walker in "Dose of Sanity"
  • "Clearly this business of treating minds, particularly this big business of treating young minds, has not policed itself, and has no incentive to put a stop to the kinds of fraudulent and unethical practices that are going on."
Paul Merrell

Even as Clinton opposes sanctions over Israeli settlements, new poll shows her Democrat... - 0 views

  • Last weekend Hillary Clinton joined the Republican candidates in coming down hard against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Speaking to her financial sponsor Haim Saban as well as a D.C. audience, she described the campaign as anti-semitic and wrong, and meantime offered vague opposition to Israeli settlements. Well there’s a good reason Clinton doesn’t want the issue politicized. If the matter were actually debated openly between Republicans and Democrats, her own base would be against her. A new poll of American attitudes on the conflict from Shibley Telhami at the Brookings Institution says that Democrats favor sanctions to counter Israeli settlement construction. Telhami reports: It is notable that among Democrats, more people (49%) recommend either imposing economic sanctions or taking more serious action [re settlements], than those recommending doing nothing or limiting U.S. opposition towards (46%)
  • The poll also shows broad support for a one-state outcome among Americans. The poll at Telhami’s academic site defines one state as “a single democratic state in which both Jews and Arabs are full and equal citizens, covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories.” Those who advocate a one-state solution, 31%, are now comparable to those who advocate a two-state solution, 35%. The most notable change is that Republicans this year equally support a two-state solution vs. one-state solution (29% each). This shows that Democrats support a two-state-solution over one state by 45 to 33. Still: a third of Dem voters are for a single democratic state with equal citizenship. Dems don’t like the Israel lobby either. The poll shows that by more than a three-to-one ratio, Democrats feel that Israel has too much influence in American politics. And Americans generally also are turned off:
  • Overall, twice as many Americans say the Israeli government has too much influence (37%) than say too little influence (18%), while a plurality (44 %) say it’s the right level. The story once again is more pronounced in the partisan views: Among Democrats, about half (49%) say Israel has too much influence, compared with 14% who say Israel has too little influence, and 36 % who say it’s the right level. Netanyahu’s popularity has crashed among Dems, though he’s a heroic figure to Republicans. Notice that Democratic attitudes on blame for the recent “escalation in violence” actually track attitudes on our site. Democrats understand the Palestinian violence as a response to lack of freedom: A plurality of Democrats, 37%, blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, followed by 35% who blame the absence of serious peace diplomacy, while 15% blame Palestinian extremists. In contrast, 40% of Republicans blame Palestinian extremists first…
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  • And again, Americans are for a secular democracy there. Where did we ever get that idea? Strong American majorities continue to favor Israel’s democracy over its Jewishness in the absence of a two-state solution (72% in 2015, compared with 71% in 2014). Hillary Clinton has very different attitudes. She calls Israel “a thriving raucous democracy” and a “light unto the nations,” and is fundamentally opposed to the idea of any pressure on Israel. She said: Some proponents of BDS may hope that pressuring Israel may lead to peace. Well that’s wrong too. No outside force is going to resolve the conflict between Israeli’s and Palestinian’s.
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    "Negotiations" for a two-state solution has never been anything more than an excuse for prolonging an apartheid government across all of Palestine. The fact that public support is building in the U.S. for a single-state, secular government for all of Palestine including Israel has to be keeping Israel's right-wing leadership up at night. Israel is losing the BDS battle for U.S. hearts and minds. Hillary risks eroding her support by continuing to push for the increasingly unpopular two-state solution.
Gary Edwards

Obama's Taqqiya Unravels - Nonie Darwish - 0 views

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    Perhaps the clearest and most direct explanation yet concerning the Benghazi Massacre and the once strapping young Muslim-Socialist in the White House.   excerpt: "I have never entertained the idea that Obama was a Muslim and always believed he was a socialist. But Obama's behavior over the last four years regarding Islam has convinced me that Obama has a Socialist/Islamic centered worldview -- a combination that is not uncommon in many parts of the Muslim world. Having been a journalist in Egypt for six years in the seventies, I have witnessed socialism with an Islamic twist to be a popular political ideology, especially amongst Arab journalists and intellectuals. Socialism, and even communism, have managed to survive in the ruthless Islamic political system as an alternative to full-fledged Sharia. The two ideologies have blended together in cases including the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq and socialist regimes in Egypt and Yemen. One major difference between the two ideologies is that Islam uses Allah, while socialism uses atheism, to fight the God of Christianity. Free democracies, such as the United States, are alien to Islam and socialism both because they regard government as a servant of the people and hold that human rights are granted by God and not by government or the code of Sharia. Both Sharia and socialism are united in their envy of Western society and need to change it. That is why Obama has become the savior of both Islam and socialism. He embodies both ideologies. The claim that Obama is a Christian was a silly joke, but a necessary lie for the greater cause of changing America to fit the goals of both creeds. Obama became the One, the savior of both Islam and socialists. To do that, Obama had to deny who he really was, which explains why his actions and words have never added up. At the recent Alfred E. Smith Catholic Charity dinner speech, Obama did not seem to be just kidding when he said that Romney uses his middle name Mitt and "I wish I c
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    I can't see Obama as a Muslim, a Christian, or a Socialist. He is simply too corrupt to honestly subscribe to any ideology other than Corruption.
Paul Merrell

Venezuela's Opposition Calls Protests Against Recall Postponement, Appeals to Military ... - 0 views

  • Venezuela’s political opposition vowed Friday to stage renewed protests against the administration of President Nicolas Maduro, after the country’s electoral authority heeded a court order postponing the next phase of preparations for a presidential recall referendum.
  • On Thursday, state-level courts in Aragua, Bolivar, Carabobo, and Monagas issued injunctions halting the opposition’s collection of signatures from 20 percent of voters in each state, scheduled for October 26, 27, and 28. The court orders come in response to revelations of widespread fraud in the opposition’s prior collection of signatures from 1 percent of voters in each state as a condition to begin the recall process earlier this year. In addition to 307,747 signatures lacking essential identifying information, 53,658 signatures presented irregularities, including 10,995 deceased persons, 9,333 nonexistent persons, 3,003 minors, and 1,335 felons. State courts have warned that the 1 percent of signatures collected in their states could be invalid due to the fraudulent signatures, preventing the opposition from going ahead with the next stage on a national level.
  • In 2014, Popular Will leader Leopoldo Lopez led months of violent anti-government protests, demanding the ouster of President Maduro. Over 40 people were killed, the majority of whom  government supporters, state security forces, and innocent bystanders.
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  • Meanwhile, Venezuela’s Supreme Court has upheld the regional court decisions, prompting the CNE to likewise suspend next week’s collection drive on Thursday. The move could mean the MUD will have to restart the entire process in the four states where fraud allegations surface. Such an outcome would be a major setback for the MUD, which has been aiming to organise the referendum before the end of the year. This goal has long been dismissed as unrealistic by the CNE, which announced last month that the plebiscite could be held no sooner than April. The ultimate timing of the referendum is critical for the opposition. If Maduro loses a vote before January 10, snap elections will be held, and the socialists would face the prospect of losing the office of president for the first time in 14 years. The last time the right-wing took power was during a short lived, US backed coup in 2002. However, if the referendum takes place after January 10, Maduro will simply be replaced by his vice-president until regular elections are held in 2018.
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    The U.S.-backed efforts to unseat the leftist government in Venezuela continues via propaganda, opposition-created shortages of living essentials, and the electorate, after 3 violent coup attempts failed.
muskanjain3768

government jobs - 1 views

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    Government sector is the most popular job sector in India. It is considered as the safe mode of job for an individual. In India it is the most competitive sector for which huge population is preparing and giving entrance exams. It is the job which is controlled by the higher government authorities.
Paul Merrell

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The Whit... - 0 views

  • Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations General Assembly Hall New York City, New York 10:13 A.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen:  We come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope. Around the globe, there are signposts of progress.  The shadow of World War that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted, and the prospect of war between major powers reduced.  The ranks of member states has more than tripled, and more people live under governments they elected. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been freed from the prison of poverty, with the proportion of those living in extreme poverty cut in half.  And the world economy continues to strengthen after the worst financial crisis of our lives. 
  • And yet there is a pervasive unease in our world -- a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces.  As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa and threatens to move rapidly across borders.  Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.  The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.
  • First, all of us -- big nations and small -- must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.  We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. 
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  • Recently, Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order.  Here are the facts.  After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled.  Against the will of the government in Kyiv, Crimea was annexed.  Russia poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands.  When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days.  When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border. This is a vision of the world in which might makes right -- a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for something different.  We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to choose their own future.
  • nd these are simple truths, but they must be defended. America and our allies will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy.  We will reinforce our NATO Allies and uphold our commitment to collective self-defense.  We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and we will counter falsehoods with the truth.  And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history -- for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions. Moreover, a different path is available -- the path of diplomacy and peace, and the ideals this institution is designed to uphold.  The recent cease-fire agreement in Ukraine offers an opening to achieve those objectives.  If Russia takes that path -- a path that for stretches of the post-Cold War period resulted in prosperity for the Russian people -- then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia’s role in addressing common challenges.  After all, that’s what the United States and Russia have been able to do in past years -- from reducing our nuclear stockpiles to meeting our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to cooperating to remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons.  And that’s the kind of cooperation we are prepared to pursue again -- if Russia changes course. 
  • This speaks to a central question of our global age -- whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, or whether we descend into the destructive rivalries of the past.  When nations find common ground, not simply based on power, but on principle, then we can make enormous progress.  And I stand before you today committed to investing American strength to working with all nations to address the problems we face in the 21st century.
  • America is pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue, as part of our commitment to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and pursue the peace and security of a world without them.  And this can only take place if Iran seizes this historic opportunity.  My message to Iran’s leaders and people has been simple and consistent:  Do not let this opportunity pass.  We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.  America is and will continue to be a Pacific power, promoting peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce among nations.  But we will insist that all nations abide by the rules of the road, and resolve their territorial disputes peacefully, consistent with international law. 
  • In other words, on issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule book written for a different century.  If we lift our eyes beyond our borders -- if we think globally and if we act cooperatively -- we can shape the course of this century, as our predecessors shaped the post-World War II age.  But as we look to the future, one issue risks a cycle of conflict that could derail so much progress, and that is the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world. Of course, terrorism is not new.  Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well:  “Terror is not a new weapon,” he said.  “Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example.”  In the 20th century, terror was used by all manner of groups who failed to come to power through public support.  But in this century, we have faced a more lethal and ideological brand of terrorists who have perverted one of the world’s great religions.  With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels -- killing as many innocent civilians as possible, employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities.
  • I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism.  Instead, we’ve waged a focused campaign against al Qaeda and its associated forces -- taking out their leaders, denying them the safe havens they rely on.  At the same time, we have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.  Islam teaches peace.  Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice.  And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us -- because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country. So we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations. Belief in permanent religious war is the misguided refuge of extremists who cannot build or create anything, and therefore peddle only fanaticism and hate.  And it is no exaggeration to say that humanity’s future depends on us uniting against those who would divide us along the fault lines of tribe or sect, race or religion.
  • But this is not simply a matter of words.  Collectively, we must take concrete steps to address the danger posed by religiously motivated fanatics, and the trends that fuel their recruitment.  Moreover, this campaign against extremism goes beyond a narrow security challenge.  For while we’ve degraded methodically core al Qaeda and supported a transition to a sovereign Afghan government, extremist ideology has shifted to other places -- particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where a quarter of young people have no job, where food and water could grow scarce, where corruption is rampant and sectarian conflicts have become increasingly hard to contain.   As an international community, we must meet this challenge with a focus on four areas.  First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded and ultimately destroyed.
  • The second:  It is time for the world -- especially Muslim communities -- to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of organizations like al Qaeda and ISIL.
  • Later today, the Security Council will adopt a resolution that underscores the responsibility of states to counter violent extremism.  But resolutions must be followed by tangible commitments, so we’re accountable when we fall short.  Next year, we should all be prepared to announce the concrete steps that we have taken to counter extremist ideologies in our own countries -- by getting intolerance out of schools, stopping radicalization before it spreads, and promoting institutions and programs that build new bridges of understanding.
  • Third, we must address the cycle of conflict -- especially sectarian conflict -- that creates the conditions that terrorists prey upon.
  • The good news is we also see signs that this tide could be reversed.  We have a new, inclusive government in Baghdad; a new Iraqi Prime Minister welcomed by his neighbors; Lebanese factions rejecting those who try to provoke war.  And these steps must be followed by a broader truce.  Nowhere is this more necessary than Syria.  Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime.  But the only lasting solution to Syria’s civil war is political -- an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of creed.
  • My fourth and final point is a simple one:  The countries of the Arab and Muslim world must focus on the extraordinary potential of their people -- especially the youth.
  • We recognize as well that leadership will be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.  As bleak as the landscape appears, America will not give up on the pursuit of peace.  Understand, the situation in Iraq and Syria and Libya should cure anybody of the illusion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of problems in the region.  For far too long, that's been used as an excuse to distract people from problems at home.  The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace.  And that's something worthy of reflection within Israel.
  • Because let’s be clear:  The status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable.  We cannot afford to turn away from this effort -- not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region and the world will be more just and more safe with two states living side by side, in peace and security. So this is what America is prepared to do:  Taking action against immediate threats, while pursuing a world in which the need for such action is diminished.  The United States will never shy away from defending our interests, but we will also not shy away from the promise of this institution and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- the notion that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of a better life. 
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    Epic hypocrisy. He bows to international law while waging multiple wars in direct defiance of it. And that's just in the first few paragraphs. It gets worse the farther he gets in his speech.
Paul Merrell

Canadian Government Says Free Speech is for Offending Muslims - Not Opposing Israel - T... - 0 views

  • Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, January 8, 2015, on Charlie Hebdo shootings: “When a trio of hooded men struck at some of our most cherished democratic principles, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, they assaulted democracy everywhere . . . They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly as they wish they would think and act . . . . they have declared war on any country, like ourselves, that values freedom, openness and tolerance.”
  • CBC, today: “Ottawa threatening hate charges against those who boycott Israel” The Harper government is signaling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel. Such a move could target a range of civil society organizations, from the United Church of Canada and the Canadian Quakers to campus protest groups and labour unions. If carried out, it would be a remarkably aggressive tactic, and another measure of the Conservative government’s lockstep support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. . . . The government’s intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a “zero tolerance” approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations.
  • Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada’s updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws “anywhere in the world.”
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  • Has a #JeSuisBDS hashtag started trending yet on Twitter? Under the new Charlie Hebdo standard — it’s not enough to defend free speech; one must praise and even express the speech targeted with suppression — have all of the newfound free speech crusaders begun organizing pro-Israel-boycott rallies in order to defy these suppression efforts? In a zillion years, could anyone imagine the popularity-craving officials who run PEN America bestowing one of their glamorous awards on advocates of the Israel-targeted Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions movement? The answer to all of those questions is and will remain “no,” because (as I discussed last week here with Bob Wright) the Charlie Hebdo ritual (for most, not all) was about many agendas having nothing to do with the free expression banner under which it paraded. In that regard, Stephen Harper is the perfect Poster Boy for how free expression is tribalistically manipulated and exploited in the West. When the views being suppressed are ones amenable to those in power (e.g., cartoons mocking Islam), free speech is venerated; attempts to suppress those kinds of ideas show that “they have declared war on any country, like ourselves, that values freedom, openness and tolerance.” We get to celebrate ourselves as superior and progressive and victimized, and how good that feels. But when ideas are advocated that upset those in power (e.g. speech by Muslims critical of Western nations and their allies), the very same people acquiesce to, or expressly endorse, full-scale suppression. Thus can the Canadian Prime Minister pompously parade around as some sort of Guardian of Enlightenment Ideals only, three months later, to act like the classic tyrant.
  • As I’ve argued many times — most comprehensively here — all applications of hate speech laws are inherently tyrannical, dangerous and wrong, and it’s truly mystifying (and scary) that people convince themselves that their judgment is so unerring and their beliefs so sacrosanct that it should be illegal to question or dissent from them. But independent of that, what we see here again is the utter foolishness of endorsing such laws on pragmatic grounds: they will inevitably be used against not just the ideas you hate but the ones you like, and when that happens, if you cheered when such laws were used to suppress the ideas you hate, then you will have no valid ground to object.
  • UPDATE: Various Israel devotees such as David Frum spent the morning insisting the CBC story is false, and now the Canadian government has followed suit, issuing a statement denouncing it. Unfortunately for them, the full email exchange between the CBC reporter, Neil Macdonald, and a spokesman for the Public Safety Department can be read here, and it proves that the CBC story is 100% accurate.
Paul Merrell

Emails to Hillary contradict French tale on Libya war - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Mi... - 0 views

  • French spies secretly organized and funded the Libyan rebels who defeated Moammar Gadhafi, according to confidential emails to Hillary Clinton that were made public on June 22.
  • “In return for their assistance,” the memo states, “the DGSE officers indicated that they expected the new government of Libya to favor French firms and national interests, particularly regarding the oil industry in Libya.” The email goes on to state that Jalil and Younis “accepted this offer” and “have maintained contact with the DGSE officers in Cairo.” The memo is titled, “How the French created the National Libyan Council, ou l’argent parle.” Another memo dated May 5 asserts that individuals close to the council stated “in strictest confidence” that as early as mid-April 2011 French humanitarian flights also included “executives from the French company TOTAL, the large construction from VINCI and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company N.V. (EADS).” Subsequent flights have allegedly carried representatives “from the conglomerate THALYS and other large French firms, all with close ties to [Sarkozy].” “After meeting with the [council] these French business executives leave discreetly by road, via Tobruk to Egypt,” the memo states. “These convoys are organized and protected by para-military officers [from the DGSE].” The memo adds that Levy himself came up with the idea and obtained the council’s signature on an agreement to give French firms “favorable consideration” in business matters. He is said to have used “his status as a journalist to provide cover for his activities.”
  • The memos from Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal contradict the popular French narrative about its intervention in Libya, raising fresh questions about a war that toppled a dictator but left chaos and radicalism in his stead. They were allegedly written by retired CIA operative Tyler Drumheller and released by a special congressional panel investigating the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi. The oft-repeated media tale in France holds that then-President Nicolas Sarkozy was outraged by Gadhafi’s crackdown on protesters in February 2011 but had no clear idea who to support. Enter a swash-buckling “intellectual,” Bernard-Henri Levy, who met with Transitional National Council leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil on March 4, immediately called Sarkozy, and had the French president invite Jalil to the Elysee Palace — and recognize the council as the country’s official government by March 10. The emails to Clinton tell a distinctly less heroic story. According to one entry from March 22, 2011, “officers” with the General Directorate for External Security — the French intelligence service — “began a series of secret meetings” with Jalil and Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis in Benghazi in late February and gave them “money and guidance” to set up the council, whose formation was announced Feb. 27. The officers, “speaking under orders from [Sarkozy] promised that as soon as the [council] was organized France would recognize [it] as the new government of Libya.”
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  • A later memo, from September 2011, asserts that Sarkozy urged the Libyans to reserve 35% of their oil industry for French firms — Total in particular — when he traveled to Tripoli that month. In the end, however, Italy’s Eni came out ahead with Russian and Chinese firms biding their time, even as the Libyan oil production plummeted because of the civil war. The veracity of the memos’ content is difficult if not impossible to ascertain. While Levy has long been a controversial figure in France, the council was riven by internal rivalries. Younis himself was assassinated in July 2011 — at Jalil’s urging according to an Aug. 8 memo to Clinton. And Drumheller himself has courted controversy for his role in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, with liberals celebrating him as a truth-teller and conservatives saying he helped concoct some of the false information he later debunked.
  • French spymasters’ role in Libya has been alluded to before, most notably in the 2012 book “The Truth About our War in Libya” by French historian Jean-Christophe Notin. That book said Henry-Levy’s role in the French decision to go to war had been overblown. “All has not been said about this war, because it has only had one narrator: Bernard-Henri Levy,” Notin told L’Express magazine. “Yes, he was one of the Libyans’ interlocutors. But his telling glosses over not only the coalition’s military exploits, but also the underground work of diplomatic and military officials on the ground, sometimes for quite some time, in Libya.” Other memos released June 22 give credence to the notion that Sarkozy was determined from the start of the uprising to get rid of Gadhafi, despite earlier efforts to court him after he abandoned his weapons program and sought closer ties with the West. A March 20 memo, for instance, states that Sarkozy “plans to have France lead the attacks on [Gadhafi] over an extended period of time” and “sees this situation as an opportunity for France to reassert itself as a military power.”
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