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Gary Edwards

A First Look at the Book "The Liberty Amendments", by Mark Levin - Tea Party Command Ce... - 0 views

teapartyorg.ning.com/...show

Liberty-Amendments

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Aug 13
     
    Excellent youtube interview! "Mark Levin has just published his much-anticipated book The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic. Three of his eleven proposed Constitutional amendments appear below, and a Sean Hannity interview of Levin appears at the bottom of this post. Levin's book is centered around the Constitution's Article V (aka "Article 5″). That article specifies two methods for amending the Constitution. Just briefly - In the first method of creating amendments, Congress proposes and the States dispose. In the second method of creating amendments, the States propose and the States dispose. The second method has never been used successfully, although there have been many attempts.  It is that second method that the Founders provided as a remedy for an overreaching federal government. In the second method, neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Supreme Court have any voting or veto authority whatsoever.  The states are in full control. Period. It is, by design, the ultimate override for an over-spending, over-taxing, over-regulating, and increasingly dictatorial and lawless federal government. Clearly, its time has come. In that second method, Congress has at most a mere ministerial role.  Of course Congress is very protective of its power, and could, through delay and inaction, attempt to convert their mere ministerial role into a de facto veto power, halting any attempt for a state-driven amendment action. Apparently Congress has done exactly that many times, acting in bad faith and contrary to the Framers' spirit and intent for Article V which is clearly expressed in the Federalist Papers. Legal scholars have been trying to find a way around the federal government's intransigence, so far with little success. Now more than ever, it is time for We the People to bring the power of Article V to the center ring of American politics. That starts with awareness, and Levin's book will br
Gary Edwards

A history of the Mortgage - Housing dilemma by Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Econ... - 0 views

econlog.econlib.org/...my_fantasy_test.html

financial-crisis financial-solutions socialism mortgage-history banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Method A suffered a breakdown in the 1970's, because inflation was allowed to get out of control. The 6 percent mortgage interest rates that were commonly charged by savings and loans became untenable when inflation and interest rates soared to double-digit levels. The savings and loan industry went out of business. Whether Method B could survive a similar shock is unclear. The right lesson to learn from the 1970's was not that we should use Method B. The right lesson to learn is that we should not let inflation get out of hand.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 02 Mar 09
       
      Government inflation (thank you Jimmy Carter) as the cause of the savings and loan collapse!
  • The secondary mortgage market began in 1968, when the United States formed the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA). GNMA pooled loans originated under programs by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA) and sold these pools to investors. The purpose of this, as with the quasi-privatization of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) that took place that year, was to take Federally guaranteed mortgage loans off of the books. President Johnson, fighting an unpopular war in Vietnam, wanted to save himself the embarrassment of having to come to Congress to ask for larger and larger increases in the ceiling on the national debt. Thus, the first steps toward mortgage securitization were taken in order to disguise financial reality using accounting gimmicks. It has been the same ever since.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 02 Mar 09
       
      There it is, in all it'snaked glory. The government created the secondary mortgage market, spinning up Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie for the purpose of taking federally subsidized and guaranteed mortgages off the the official government books. hence the quasi-gov orgs. It's an accounting gimmick!!!!
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Mar 09
     
    Excellent study of how we got into this problem that the socialist are now using to kill forever the American Dream: "..... Forty years ago, depository institutions handled mortgage credit risk very differently than they do today. Back then, the depository institution, which was typically a savings and loan association, held mortgages that were underwritten by its own employees, given to borrowers and backed by homes in its own community. These were almost always 30-year, fixed-rate loans, with borrowers having made a significant down payment, often 20 percent of the price of the home. Call this approach to mortgage lending "Method A." Today, mortgage loans held by depository institutions are often in the form of securities. These securities are backed by loans originated in distant communities by unknown borrowers, underwritten by mortgage brokers or other personnel not employed by the depository institution. The loans are often not 30-year fixed-rate loans, and the borrowers have typically made down payments of 5 percent or less, including loans with no down payment at all. Call this approach to mortgage lending "Method B." If you compare the two methods using common sense, then Method B does not pass a simple sanity check. In fact, the current financial crisis consists of banks that are up to their necks in Method B......"
Gary Edwards

Google Custom Search - 0 views

www.google.com/cse

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 15
     
    " Airline whistleblower Rebecca Roth states a truth about 911 this ... Feb 3, 2015 ... Airline whistleblower Rebecca Roth states a truth about 911 this web site stated years ago: Gordon Duff is celebrating a new book by Rebecca ... theunhivedmind.com/.../airline-whistleblower-rebecca-roth-states-a-truth- about-911-this-web-site-stated-years-ago/ Episode 216 - Katherine Albrecht and Rebekah Roth Guest Media ... Jan 23, 2015 ... She researched the 9/11/2001 terror attacks using her knowledge and ... I listened to the Rebecca Roth program until the very end when she ... caravantomidnight.com/episode-216-katherine-albrecht-rebekah-roth-guest- media/ Rebekah Roth exposes another piece of the 9/11 puzzle Mar 22, 2015 ... Short answer - the "hijacked 9/11 planes" landed at Westover Air ..... named mainer posted an excellent synopsis of what Rebecca Roth is ... projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?80910...9-11... "Back in 1981 Boeing had published the... - Exposing Israel's Agenda This means that the ONLY way 911 could have happened is via remote control. ... "A new book by Rebecca Roth (Airline Stewardess) clearly states that remote ... https://www.facebook.com/.../posts/513388788801217 Methodical Illusion: Amazon.co.uk: Rebekah Roth: 9780982757130 ... It caused her to look more deeply into the questions surrounding 9/11 that never .... In my own 10 years of research, I had not heard of Rebecca Roth, but I am ... www.amazon.co.uk/Methodical-Illusion-Rebekah.../0982757131 Methodical Illusion - A real eyeopener! Mar 24, 2015 ... Listen to an excellent interview with the author Rebecca Roth. You will never look ... Rebekah Roth: Methodical Illusion-Missing Pieces of 9-11 cincinnati.craigslist.org/pol/4947591230.html Contemporary History on Pinterest | never again, firefighters and rep… Explore Rebecca Roth's board "Contemporary History" on Pinterest, a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save ... 21 Awful Truths About 9/11 https://www.pin
Paul Merrell

New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...or-cyber-battle-a-1013409.html

surveillance state war & peace cyberwar Snowden NSA-docs

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The NSA's mass surveillance is just the beginning. Documents from Edward Snowden show that the intelligence agency is arming America for future digital wars -- a struggle for control of the Internet that is already well underway.
  • The Birth of D Weapons According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money.
  • NSA Docs on Network Attacks and ExploitationExcerpt from the secret NSA budget on computer network operations / Code word GENIE Document about the expansion of the Remote Operations Center (ROC) on endpoint operations Document explaining the role of the Remote Operations Center (ROC) Interview with an employee of NSA's department for Tailored Access Operations about his field of work Supply-chain interdiction / Stealthy techniques can crack some of SIGINT's hardest targets Classification guide for computer network exploitation (CNE) NSA training course material on computer network operations Overview of methods for NSA integrated cyber operations NSA project description to recognize and process data that comes from third party attacks on computers Exploring and exploiting leaky mobile apps with BADASS Overview of projects of the TAO/ATO department such as the remote destruction of network cards iPhone target analysis and exploitation with Apple's unique device identifiers (UDID) Report of an NSA Employee about a Backdoor in the OpenSSH Daemon NSA document on QUANTUMSHOOTER, an implant to remote-control computers with good network connections from unknown third parties
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  • From a military perspective, surveillance of the Internet is merely "Phase 0" in the US digital war strategy. Internal NSA documents indicate that it is the prerequisite for everything that follows. They show that the aim of the surveillance is to detect vulnerabilities in enemy systems. Once "stealthy implants" have been placed to infiltrate enemy systems, thus allowing "permanent accesses," then Phase Three has been achieved -- a phase headed by the word "dominate" in the documents. This enables them to "control/destroy critical systems & networks at will through pre-positioned accesses (laid in Phase 0)." Critical infrastructure is considered by the agency to be anything that is important in keeping a society running: energy, communications and transportation. The internal documents state that the ultimate goal is "real time controlled escalation". One NSA presentation proclaims that "the next major conflict will start in cyberspace." To that end, the US government is currently undertaking a massive effort to digitally arm itself for network warfare. For the 2013 secret intelligence budget, the NSA projected it would need around $1 billion in order to increase the strength of its computer network attack operations. The budget included an increase of some $32 million for "unconventional solutions" alone.
  • Part 2: How the NSA Reads Over Shoulders of Other Spies
  • NSA Docs on ExfiltrationExplanation of the APEX method of combining passive with active methods to exfiltrate data from networks attacked Explanation of APEX shaping to put exfiltrating network traffic into patterns that allow plausible deniability Presentation on the FASHIONCLEFT protocol that the NSA uses to exfiltrate data from trojans and implants to the NSA Methods to exfiltrate data even from devices which are supposed to be offline Document detailing SPINALTAP, an NSA project to combine data from active operations and passive signals intelligence Technical description of the FASHIONCLEFT protocol the NSA uses to exfiltrate data from Trojans and implants to the NSA
  • NSA Docs on Malware and ImplantsCSEC document about the recognition of trojans and other "network based anomaly" The formalized process through which analysts choose their data requirement and then get to know the tools that can do the job QUANTUMTHEORY is a set of technologies allowing man-on-the-side interference attacks on TCP/IP connections (includes STRAIGHTBIZARRE and DAREDEVIL) Sample code of a malware program from the Five Eyes alliance
  • According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money. During the 20th century, scientists developed so-called ABC weapons -- atomic, biological and chemical. It took decades before their deployment could be regulated and, at least partly, outlawed. New digital weapons have now been developed for the war on the Internet. But there are almost no international conventions or supervisory authorities for these D weapons, and the only law that applies is the survival of the fittest. Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan foresaw these developments decades ago. In 1970, he wrote, "World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation." That's precisely the reality that spies are preparing for today.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Jan 15
     
    Major dump of new Snowden NSA docs by Der Spiegel, with an article by a large team of reporters and computer security experts. Topic: Cyberwar capabilities, now and in the near future. 
Paul Merrell

WASHINGTON: CIA's use of harsh interrogation went beyond legal authority, Senate report... - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...se-of-harsh-interrogation.html

war & peace torture CIA lies Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • A still-secret Senate Intelligence Committee report calls into question the legal foundation of the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, a finding that challenges the key defense on which the agency and the Bush administration relied in arguing that the methods didn’t constitute torture.The report also found that the spy agency failed to keep an accurate account of the number of individuals it held, and that it issued erroneous claims about how many it detained and subjected to the controversial interrogation methods. The CIA has said that about 30 detainees underwent the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
  • The CIA’s claim “is BS,” said a former U.S. official familiar with evidence underpinning the report, who asked not to be identified because the matter is still classified. “They are trying to minimize the damage. They are trying to say it was a very targeted program, but that’s not the case.”The findings are among the report’s 20 main conclusions. Taken together, they paint a picture of an intelligence agency that seemed intent on evading or misleading nearly all of its oversight mechanisms throughout the program, which was launched under the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and ran until 2006.
  • Some of the report’s other conclusions, which were obtained by McClatchy, include:_ The CIA used interrogation methods that weren’t approved by the Justice Department or CIA headquarters._ The agency impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making regarding the program._ The CIA actively evaded or impeded congressional oversight of the program._ The agency hindered oversight of the program by its own Inspector General’s Office.
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  • The investigation determined that the program produced very little intelligence of value and that the CIA misled the Bush White House, the Congress and the public about the effectiveness of the interrogation techniques, committee members have said.The techniques included waterboarding, which produces a sensation of drowning, stress positions, sleep deprivation for up to 11 days at a time, confinement in a cramped box, slaps and slamming detainees into walls. The CIA held detainees in secret “black site” prisons overseas and abducted others who it turned over to foreign governments for interrogation.The CIA, which contends that it gained intelligence from the program that helped identify al Qaida terrorists and averted plots against the United States, agreed with some of the report’s findings but disputed other conclusions in an official response sent to the committee in June 2013.
  • Some current and former U.S. officials and military commanders, numerous experts and foreign governments have condemned the harsh interrogation methods as violations of international and U.S. laws against torture, a charge denied by the CIA and the Bush administration.They’ve based their defense on a series of top-secret legal opinions issued by the Justice Department beginning in August 2002. At that time, the agency sought advice on whether using the harsh techniques on Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn, a close aide to Osama bin Laden who went by the nom de guerre Abu Zubaydah, would violate U.S. law against torture.The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel found that the methods wouldn’t breach the law because those applying them didn’t have the specific intent of inflicting severe pain or suffering.The Senate report, however, concluded that the Justice Department’s legal analyses were based on flawed information provided by the CIA, which prevented a proper evaluation of the program’s legality.
  • “The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” the report found.Several human rights experts said the conclusion called into question the program’s legal foundations.“If the CIA fundamentally misrepresented what it was doing and that was what led (Justice Department) lawyers to conclude that the conduct was legal, then the legal conclusions themselves were inaccurate,” said Andrea Prasow, senior national security counsel for Human Rights Watch. “The lawyers making those assessments were relying on the facts that were laid before them.”“This just reinforces the view that everyone who has said the torture program was legal has been selling a bill of goods and it’s time to revisit the entire conventional wisdom being pushed by those who support enhanced interrogation that this program was safe, humane and lawful,” said Raha Wala, a lawyer with Human Rights First’s Law and Public Safety Program.
  • Among other findings, the report said that CIA personnel used interrogation methods that weren’t approved by the Justice Department or their headquarters.The conclusion that the CIA provided inaccurate information to the Justice Department reflects the findings of a top-secret investigation of the program by the CIA Inspector General’s Office that was triggered by allegations of abuse.The CIA inspector general’s May 7, 2004, report, which was declassified, found that in waterboarding Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, deemed the chief architect of the 9/11 attacks, the CIA went beyond the parameters it outlined to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which wrote the legal opinions.Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times, while Mohammad underwent the procedure 183 times.Those cases clashed with the CIA’s assertion _ outlined in the now-declassified top-secret August 2002 Office of Legal Counsel opinion _ that repetition of the methods “will not be substantial because the techniques generally lose their effectiveness after several repetitions.”
  • The Office of Legal Counsel opinion stated that its finding that the harsh interrogation techniques didn’t constitute torture was based on facts provided by the CIA, and that “if these facts were to change, this advice would not necessarily apply.”The CIA inspector general’s report found that the “continued applicability of the DOJ opinion” was in question because the CIA told the Justice Department that it would use waterboarding in the same way that it was used in training U.S. military personnel to evade capture and resist the enemy. In fact, the inspector general’s report continued, the CIA used waterboarding in a “manner different” from U.S. military training.The CIA also failed to keep track of the number of individuals it captured under the program, the Senate report concluded. Moreover, it said, the agency held people who didn’t meet the legal standard for detention. The report puts that number at 26, McClatchy has learned.
  • “The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention,” it found. “The CIA’s claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced interrogation techniques were inaccurate.”“The CIA’s records were hazy, inconsistent and at times inaccurate,” said the former U.S. official.
Gary Edwards

Terrorism: A Matrix of Lies and Deceit - Christopher Black - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...sm-a-matrix-of-lies-and-deceit

terrorism Christopher-Black

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 16
     
    "Terrorism: A Matrix of Lies and Deceit - Good catch of a very interesting article from Marbux! Christopher Black (NEO) : So how is your war on "terrorism" going? I'm not doing too well at it since I have no idea who the enemy is. Like the American black comedian, Dick Gregory, who, on hearing that President Johnson had declared a war on poverty, ran out onto the street with a hand grenade to throw it at some poor people, I have no idea who the real enemy is, who to throw a grenade at. That makes me think. We are told, the world over, by every government, that we are in a "war against terrorism." But terrorism is an action, a tactic, a strategy. It's a method not person, a group, a country. How can there be a war against a method of war. But they want us to fight a method and never ask the why or the who. That doesn't seem to matter anymore. They tell us not to be concerned with why something happens, only how it happens. Let's face it, the Americans, with all the creative skills of Madison Avenue, have got us all to use a phrase that George Bush first used in 2001after the strange event in New York that has all the indicia of a state attack on its own people to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. It has become a euphemism and a justification for all the wars they have waged since. The people don't need to know why "terrorists" exist, or who they are and what motivates them, or even whether they really exist, for they are just "terrorists." Sometimes the war is against a "regime" that is "terrorising" its own people according to the "responsibility to protect" mafia that act as the chorus to the principal players in this theatre, as was done to Yugoslavia and Libya; or a regime that "terrorises the world", as we saw with Iraq. Sometimes the war is a phony war against 'terrorists" who are really mercenary forces fighting for the USA and its allies. We see this in Syria. We have seen it used agai
Paul Merrell

Inside TAO: The NSA's Shadow Network - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...lobal-networks-a-940969-3.html

surveillance state NSA TAO NSA-methods parallel-internet must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The insert method and other variants of QUANTUM are closely linked to a shadow network operated by the NSA alongside the Internet, with its own, well-hidden infrastructure comprised of "covert" routers and servers. It appears the NSA also incorporates routers and servers from non-NSA networks into its covert network by infecting these networks with "implants" that then allow the government hackers to control the computers remotely. (Click here to read a related article on the NSA's "implants".) In this way, the intelligence service seeks to identify and track its targets based on their digital footprints. These identifiers could include certain email addresses or website cookies set on a person's computer. Of course, a cookie doesn't automatically identify a person, but it can if it includes additional information like an email address. In that case, a cookie becomes something like the web equivalent of a fingerprint.
  • Once TAO teams have gathered sufficient data on their targets' habits, they can shift into attack mode, programming the QUANTUM systems to perform this work in a largely automated way. If a data packet featuring the email address or cookie of a target passes through a cable or router monitored by the NSA, the system sounds the alarm. It determines what website the target person is trying to access and then activates one of the intelligence service's covert servers, known by the codename FOXACID. This NSA server coerces the user into connecting to NSA covert systems rather than the intended sites. In the case of Belgacom engineers, instead of reaching the LinkedIn page they were actually trying to visit, they were also directed to FOXACID servers housed on NSA networks. Undetected by the user, the manipulated page transferred malware already custom tailored to match security holes on the target person's computer. The technique can literally be a race between servers, one that is described in internal intelligence agency jargon with phrases like: "Wait for client to initiate new connection," "Shoot!" and "Hope to beat server-to-client response." Like any competition, at times the covert network's surveillance tools are "too slow to win the race." Often enough, though, they are effective. Implants with QUANTUMINSERT, especially when used in conjunction with LinkedIn, now have a success rate of over 50 percent, according to one internal document.
  • At the same time, it is in no way true to say that the NSA has its sights set exclusively on select individuals. Of even greater interest are entire networks and network providers, such as the fiber optic cables that direct a large share of global Internet traffic along the world's ocean floors. One document labeled "top secret" and "not for foreigners" describes the NSA's success in spying on the "SEA-ME-WE-4" cable system. This massive underwater cable bundle connects Europe with North Africa and the Gulf states and then continues on through Pakistan and India, all the way to Malaysia and Thailand. The cable system originates in southern France, near Marseille. Among the companies that hold ownership stakes in it are France Telecom, now known as Orange and still partly government-owned, and Telecom Italia Sparkle. The document proudly announces that, on Feb. 13, 2013, TAO "successfully collected network management information for the SEA-Me-We Undersea Cable Systems (SMW-4)." With the help of a "website masquerade operation," the agency was able to "gain access to the consortium's management website and collected Layer 2 network information that shows the circuit mapping for significant portions of the network."
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  • It appears the government hackers succeeded here once again using the QUANTUMINSERT method. The document states that the TAO team hacked an internal website of the operator consortium and copied documents stored there pertaining to technical infrastructure. But that was only the first step. "More operations are planned in the future to collect more information about this and other cable systems," it continues. But numerous internal announcements of successful attacks like the one against the undersea cable operator aren't the exclusive factors that make TAO stand out at the NSA. In contrast to most NSA operations, TAO's ventures often require physical access to their targets. After all, you might have to directly access a mobile network transmission station before you can begin tapping the digital information it provides.
  • To conduct those types of operations, the NSA works together with other intelligence agencies such as the CIA and FBI, which in turn maintain informants on location who are available to help with sensitive missions. This enables TAO to attack even isolated networks that aren't connected to the Internet. If necessary, the FBI can even make an agency-owned jet available to ferry the high-tech plumbers to their target. This gets them to their destination at the right time and can help them to disappear again undetected after as little as a half hour's work.
  • Sometimes it appears that the world's most modern spies are just as reliant on conventional methods of reconnaissance as their predecessors. Take, for example, when they intercept shipping deliveries. If a target person, agency or company orders a new computer or related accessories, for example, TAO can divert the shipping delivery to its own secret workshops. The NSA calls this method interdiction. At these so-called "load stations," agents carefully open the package in order to load malware onto the electronics, or even install hardware components that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence agencies. All subsequent steps can then be conducted from the comfort of a remote computer. These minor disruptions in the parcel shipping business rank among the "most productive operations" conducted by the NSA hackers, one top secret document relates in enthusiastic terms. This method, the presentation continues, allows TAO to obtain access to networks "around the world."
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 13
     
    From page 3 of a 3-page article. The entire article is well worth reading. I chose this page to bookmark because of its disclosure that NSA is intercepting new computers before they are delivered and installing hardware and software backdoors, then reshipping them to their intended recipients. Although not mentioned, this implies the complicity of package shipment companies and conceivably government mail systems and original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs").  
Paul Merrell

Cuomo to Ban Fracking in New York State, Citing Health Risks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...state-citing-health-risks.html

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration announced on Wednesday that it would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State because of concerns over health risks, ending years of uncertainty over the controversial method of natural gas extraction.State officials concluded that fracking, as the method is known, could contaminate the air and water and pose inestimable dangers to public health.That conclusion was delivered during a year-end cabinet meeting convened by Mr. Cuomo in Albany. It came amid increased calls by environmentalists to ban fracking, which uses water and chemicals to release natural gas trapped in deeply buried shale deposits.
  • New York has had a de facto ban on the procedure for more than five years, predating Mr. Cuomo’s election. Over the course of his first term, Mr. Cuomo at times sent conflicting signals about how he would proceed.In 2012, Mr. Cuomo flirted with approving a limited program in several struggling Southern Tier counties along New York’s border with Pennsylvania. But later that year, Mr. Cuomo bowed to entreaties from environmental advocates, announcing instead that his administration would start the regulatory process over by beginning a new study to evaluate the health risks.
  • The question of whether to allow fracking has been one of the most divisive public policy debates in New York in years, pitting environmentalists against others who saw it as a critical way to bring jobs to economically stagnant portions of upstate.
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  • He repeatedly put off making a decision on how to proceed, most recently citing an ongoing — and seemingly never-ending — study by state health officials.On Wednesday, six weeks after Mr. Cuomo won re-election to a second term, the long-awaited health study finally materialized.In a presentation at the cabinet meeting, the acting state health commissioner, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, said the examination had found “significant public health risks” associated with fracking.Holding up scientific studies to animate his arguments, Dr. Zucker listed concerns about water contamination and air pollution, and said there was insufficient scientific evidence to affirm the long-term safety of fracking.Dr. Zucker said his review boiled down to a simple question: Would he want to live in a community that allowed fracking?He said the answer was no.
  • Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration announced on Wednesday that it would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State because of concerns over health risks, ending years of uncertainty over the controversial method of natural gas extraction.State officials concluded that fracking, as the method is known, could contaminate the air and water and pose inestimable dangers to public health.That conclusion was delivered during a year-end cabinet meeting convened by Mr. Cuomo in Albany. It came amid increased calls by environmentalists to ban fracking, which uses water and chemicals to release natural gas trapped in deeply buried shale deposits.
  • The governor’s uncertain stance on fracking also hurt his standing with some liberal activists. Pledging to ban fracking, a little-known law professor won about a third of the vote in the Democratic primary in September, a strong showing that Mr. Cuomo later attributed in part to support from fracking opponents.Complicating matters, dozens of communities across New York have passed moratoriums and bans on fracking, and in June, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled that towns could use zoning ordinances to ban fracking.Recognizing the sensitivity of the issue, Mr. Cuomo both affirmed the fracking ban on Wednesday and tried to keep some distance from it, saying that he was deferring to the expertise of his health and environmental conservation commissioners.
  • Nevertheless, environmental groups cast the governor as a hero. Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said Mr. Cuomo “set himself apart as a national political leader who stands up for people” over the energy industry.But advocates of fracking accused him of giving in to fear-mongering by environmentalists.
  • Document Health Department Report on Fracking in New York State The Cuomo administration decided to ban hydraulic fracturing after concluding that the method posed inestimable public-health risks.
Paul Merrell

ISIS Executioner Emwazi claims Harassment by MI5: Forced Recruitment Methods | nsnbc in... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...mi5-forced-recruitment-methods

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The ISIS executioner who appeared in several execution videos, speaking with British accent, has been identified as the 26-year-old Mohammed Emwazi who claims that he had been harassed and intimidated by MI5. How are Western intelligence services recruiting targeted persons? Mohammed Emwazi, a.k.a. Jihadi John” from the British capital London has, according to the guardian  been harassed by the British intelligence service MI5.
  • In an article entitled “How Mohammed Emwazi went from fresh Graduate to knife-wielding killer” the newspaper would report that his ordeal began when he traveled to Tanzania in 2009. The domestic British intelligence service MI5 was reportedly already in touch with Emwazi before he left the UK and began appearing in ISIS videos. Emwazi reportedly stated that he had been harassed to such a degree that he filed a complaint with the Independent Police Complaints Commission over his treatment.
  • What is the most common Forced Recruitment Strategy of the UK’s MI5, the German Verfassunsschutz and other Western European Intelligence Services?  One of the most common recruitment techniques among European intelligence services is to single out persons who committed minor crimes, threaten them with severe consequences or with the possibility to “set them up and let them serve major prison sentences”. After this first round of intimidation they are then approached by a domestic intelligence service who will offer them that “all problems could easily disappear if they cooperate; or else”. Especially the UK’s MI5 and the German Federal as well as State Verfassungsschutz (Constitutional Protection Police) have perfected this recruitment method. The most common “targets” for this recruitment method are individuals of special interest. During the 1960s – 70s this would typically be Communists, Socialists. Since the 1980s and after the end of the so-called cold war in the 90s, the Western European intelligence services began to focus on the new “enemy”, Muslims.
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  • British and most major corporate and State-funded Western media would focus on whether Emwazi’s claims were exaggerated or not; or whether the authorizations granted by the UK’s Counter-terrorism and Security Act violate the rights of citizens and contribute to radicalizing people rather than preventing terrorism. The questions almost all media shun are: Has MI5 used the above described or a similar method to force Emwazi into becoming cooperative? Has he been forced into the role of Jihadi John or is he a willing executioner / actor? Is he still handled by British or eventually NATO intelligence services? Are the revelations by the guardian a limited hangout to crate a new “legend” after inconsistencies in previous ISIS videos and “convenient timing” of executions had become too blatantly obvious?
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15
     
    "Is he still handled by British or eventually NATO intelligence services?" That's a very good question. How Emwazi finally managed to leave the UK despite being placed on a "no foreign travel" list remains a mystery. With MI5's assistance is a distinct possibility given the UK's collaboration with the U.S. in creating and managing ISIL 
Paul Merrell

Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, ... - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...use-chemical-weapons-august-21

war & peace Syria WMD Obama intelligence-summary must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013. We further assess that the regime used a nerve agent in the attack. These all-source assessments are based on human, signals, and geospatial intelligence as well as a significant body of open source reporting.Our classified assessments have been shared with the U.S. Congress and key international partners. To protect sources and methods, we cannot publicly release all available intelligence – but what follows is an unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s analysis of what took place.
  • We assess with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out the chemical weapons attack against opposition elements in the Damascus suburbs on August 21. We assess that the scenario in which the opposition executed the attack on August 21 is highly unlikely. The body of information used to make this assessment includes intelligence pertaining to the regime’s preparations for this attack and its means of delivery, multiple streams of intelligence about the attack itself and its effect, our post-attack observations, and the differences between the capabilities of the regime and the opposition. Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the U.S. Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation. We will continue to seek additional information to close gaps in our understanding of what took place.
  • We assess with high confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year, including in the Damascus suburbs. This assessment is based on multiple streams of information including reporting of Syrian officials planning and executing chemical weapons attacks and laboratory analysis of physiological samples obtained from a number of individuals, which revealed exposure to sarin. We assess that the opposition has not used chemical weapons.
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  • The Syrian regime has initiated an effort to rid the Damascus suburbs of opposition forces using the area as a base to stage attacks against regime targets in the capital. The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighborhoods of opposition elements, including neighborhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime’s frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on August 21
  • On August 21, a Syrian regime element prepared for a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus area, including through the utilization of gas masks. Our intelligence sources in the Damascus area did not detect any indications in the days prior to the attack that opposition affiliates were planning to use chemical weapons.
  • Multiple streams of intelligence indicate that the regime executed a rocket and artillery attack against the Damascus suburbs in the early hours of August 21. Satellite detections corroborate that attacks from a regime-controlled area struck neighborhoods where the chemical attacks reportedly occurred – including Kafr Batna, Jawbar, ‘Ayn Tarma, Darayya, and Mu’addamiyah. This includes the detection of rocket launches from regime controlled territory early in the morning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack appeared in social media. The lack of flight activity or missile launches also leads us to conclude that the regime used rockets in the attack.
  • Three hospitals in the Damascus area received approximately 3,600 patients displaying symptoms consistent with nerve agent exposure in less than three hours on the morning of August 21, according to a highly credible international humanitarian organization. The reported symptoms, and the epidemiological pattern of events – characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers – were consistent with mass exposure to a nerve agent. We also received reports from international and Syrian medical personnel on the ground.
  • We have identified one hundred videos attributed to the attack, many of which show large numbers of bodies exhibiting physical signs consistent with, but not unique to, nerve agent exposure. The reported symptoms of victims included unconsciousness, foaming from the nose and mouth, constricted pupils, rapid heartbeat, and difficulty breathing. Several of the videos show what appear to be numerous fatalities with no visible injuries, which is consistent with death from chemical weapons, and inconsistent with death from small-arms, high-explosive munitions or blister agents. At least 12 locations are portrayed in the publicly available videos, and a sampling of those videos confirmed that some were shot at the general times and locations described in the footage. We assess the Syrian opposition does not have the capability to fabricate all of the videos, physical symptoms verified by medical personnel and NGOs, and other information associated with this chemical attack. We have a body of information, including past Syrian practice, that leads us to conclude that regime officials were witting of and directed the attack on August 21. We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence. On the afternoon of August 21, we have intelligence that Syrian chemical weapons personnel were directed to cease operations.
  • To conclude, there is a substantial body of information that implicates the Syrian government’s responsibility in the chemical weapons attack that took place on August 21.As indicated, there is additional intelligence that remains classified because of sources and methods concerns that is being provided to Congress and international partners. Syria: Damascus Areas of Influence and Areas Reportedly Affected by 21 August Chemical Attack
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 13
     
    Well, here's what the public gets told, from a President and his intelligence community that have been caught in lie after lie in the NSA scandal this summer. And of course, to "protect sources and methods, we cannot publicly release all available intelligence." One thing is certain: The "high confidence" of the summary does not acknowledge the doubt about that confidence expressed by government officials speaking anonymously to the Associated Press before the report was released. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-sources-intelligence-weapons-no-slam-dunk   I'll have more later. 
Paul Merrell

Time for the Nuclear Option: Raining Money on Main Street | WEB OF DEBT BLOG - 0 views

ellenbrown.com/...n-raining-money-on-main-street

economy financial-stimulus printing-press

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Predictions are that we will soon be seeing the “nuclear option” — central bank-created money injected directly into the real economy. All other options having failed, governments will be reduced to issuing money outright to cover budget deficits. So warns a September 18 article on ZeroHedge titled “It Begins: Australia’s Largest Investment Bank Just Said ‘Helicopter Money’ Is 12-18 Months Away.” Money reformers will say it’s about time. Virtually all money today is created as bank debt, but people can no longer take on more debt. The money supply has shrunk along with people’s ability to borrow new money into existence. Quantitative easing (QE) attempts to re-inflate the money supply by giving money to banks to create more debt, but that policy has failed. It’s time to try dropping some debt-free money on Main Street. The Zerohedge prediction is based on a release from Macqurie, Australia’s largest investment bank. It notes that GDP is contracting, deflationary pressures are accelerating, public and private sectors are not driving the velocity of money higher, and central bank injections of liquidity are losing their effectiveness. Current policies are not working. As a result:
  • There are several policies that could be and probably would be considered over the next 12-18 months. If private sector lacks confidence and visibility to raise velocity of money, then (arguably) public sector could. In other words, instead of acting via bond markets and banking sector, why shouldn’t public sector bypass markets altogether and inject stimulus directly into the ‘blood stream’? Whilst it might or might not be called QE, it would have a much stronger impact and unlike the last seven years, the recovery could actually mimic a conventional business cycle and investors would soon start discussing multiplier effects and positioning in areas of greatest investment.  Willem Buiter, chief global economist at Citigroup, is also recommending “helicopter money drops” to avoid an imminent global recession, stating: A global recession starting in 2016 led by China is now our Global Economics team’s main scenario. Uncertainty remains, but the likelihood of a timely and effective policy response seems to be diminishing. . . . Helicopter money drops in China, the euro area, the UK, and the U.S. and debt restructuring . . . can mitigate and, if implemented immediately, prevent a recession during the next two years without raising the risk of a deeper and longer recession later.
  • In the UK, something akin to a helicopter money drop was just put on the table by Jeremy Corbyn, the newly-elected Labor leader. He proposes to give the Bank of England a new mandate to upgrade the economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects. He calls it “quantitative easing for people instead of banks” (PQE). The investments would be made through a National Investment Bank set up to invest in new infrastructure and in the hi-tech innovative industries of the future. Australian blogger Prof. Bill Mitchell agrees that PQE is economically sound. But he says it should not be called “quantitative easing.” QE is just an asset swap – cash for federal securities or mortgage-backed securities on bank balance sheets. What Corbyn is proposing is actually Overt Money Financing (OMF) – injecting money directly into the economy. Mitchell acknowledges that OMF is a taboo concept in mainstream economics. Allegedly, this is because it would lead to hyperinflation. But the real reasons, he says, are that: It cuts out the private sector bond traders from their dose of corporate welfare which unlike other forms of welfare like sickness and unemployment benefits etc. has made the recipients rich in the extreme. . . . It takes away the ‘debt monkey’ that is used to clobber governments that seek to run larger fiscal deficits.
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  • Tim Worstall, writing in the UK Register, objects to Corbyn’s PQE (or OMF) on the ground that it cannot be “sterilized” the way QE can. When inflation hits, the process cannot be reversed. If the money is spent on infrastructure, it will be out there circulating in the economy and will not be retrievable. Worstall writes: QE is designed to be temporary, . . . because once people’s spending rates recover we need a way of taking all that extra money out of the economy. So we do it by using printed money to buy bonds, which injects the money into the economy, and then sell those bonds back once we need to withdraw the money from the economy, and simply destroy the money we’ve raised. . . . If we don’t have any bonds to sell, it’s not clear how we can reduce [the money supply] if large-scale inflation hits.
  • The problem today, however, is not inflation but deflation of the money supply. Some consumer prices may be up, but this can happen although the money supply is shrinking. Food prices, for example, are up; but it’s because of increased costs, including drought in California, climate change, and mergers and acquisitions by big corporations that eliminate competition. Adding money to the economy will not drive up prices until demand is saturated and production has hit full capacity; and we’re a long way from full capacity now. Before that, increasing “demand” will increase “supply.” Producers will create more goods and services. Supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable. In the US, the output gap – the difference between actual output and potential output – is estimated at about $1 trillion annually. That means the money supply could be increased by at least $1 trillion annually without driving up prices.
  • If PQE does go beyond full productive capacity, the government does not need to rely on the central bank to pull the money back. It can do this with taxes. Just as loans increase the money supply and repaying them shrinks it again, so taxes and other payments to the government will shrink a money supply augmented with money issued by the government. Using 2012 figures (drawing from an earlier article by this author), the velocity of M1 (the coins, dollar bills and demand deposits spent by ordinary consumers) was then 7. That means M1 changed hands seven times during 2012 – from housewife to grocer to farmer, etc. Since each recipient owed taxes on this money, increasing M1 by one dollar increased the tax base by seven dollars. Total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP in 2012 was 24.3%. Extrapolating from those figures, $1.00 changing hands seven times could increase tax revenue by $7.00 x 24.3% = $1.70. That means the government could, in theory, get more back in taxes than it paid out. Even with some leakage in those figures and deductions for costs, all or most of the new money spent into the economy might be taxed back to the government. New money could be pumped out every year and the money supply would increase little if at all.
  • Besides taxes, other ways to get money back into the Treasury include closing tax loopholes, taxing the $21 trillion or more hidden in offshore tax havens, and setting up a system of public banks that would return the interest on loans to the government. Net interest collected by U.S. banks in 2014 was $423 billion. At its high in 2007, it was $725 billion. Thus there are many ways to recycle an issue of new money back to the government. The same money could be spent and collected back year after year, without creating price inflation or hyperinflating the money supply. This not only could be done; it needs to be done. Conventional monetary policy has failed. Central banks have exhausted their existing toolboxes and need to explore some innovative alternatives.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 15
     
    Debt having failed as a method of money creation leads us back to the printing press method. But on whom are those helicopters to drop their new money? And how to we ensure that the banksters are not among them?
Paul Merrell

Paul Offers NDAA Amendment to Drive Release of 28 Pages | 28Pages.org - 0 views

28pages.org/...t-to-drive-release-of-28-pages

war & peace 9-11-Truth 28-pages legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Following through on intentions he announced earlier this week, Senator Rand Paul today offered an amendment to the pending National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the president to declassify 28 pages on foreign government links to the 9/11 hijackers. The language is identical to S.1471, the bill Paul introduced on Monday with Senators Ron Wyden and Kirsten Gillibrand. In a story on Paul’s new move, The Hill’s Julian Hattem said the proposed amendment “heightens the profile of the fight and may increase the stakes for the opponents.”
  • While there are a growing number of vocal champions of the declassification of the 28 pages, those who want the 28 pages kept under wraps have worked quietly and effectively out of public view. As we wrote earlier this year, “It’s likely that among the most powerful of those unseen opponents of 9/11 transparency are two strange bedfellows: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—which has fueled the growth of terror, and the U.S. intelligence community—which is charged with thwarting terror.” Paul’s amendment to the must-pass NDAA could force some of those opponents—and, more specifically, their Senate allies—out of the shadows.
  • However, the language may also offer President Obama an opportunity to continue his administration’s refusal to release the 28 pages, as it says he is not required to declassify sources and methods if that release would “result in imminent lawless action or comprise presently on-going national security operations.”
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  • In 2003, Bush invoked “sources and methods” when defending his decision to classify the pages, saying “Declassification of that part of a 900-page document would reveal sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror. … It would help the enemy if they knew our sources and methods.” Among many who have read the 28 pages, Congressman Walter Jones denies that declassification would harm national security in any way, pointing to other motives for the secrecy. “There’s nothing in it about national security. It’s about the Bush administration and its relationship with the Saudis,” Jones told The New Yorker.
Paul Merrell

Cracking The "Conspiracy Theories'" Psycholinguistic Code: The Witch Hunt against Indep... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5383108

propaganda conspiracy-theorists

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 May 14 - No Cached
  • A new crusade appears to be underway to target independent research and analysis available via alternative news media. This March saw the release of “cognitive infiltration” advocate Cass Sunstein’s new book, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas. In April, the confirmed federal intelligence-gathering arm, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), released a new report, “Agenda 21: The UN, Sustainability, and Right Wing Conspiracy Theory.” Most recently, Newsweek magazine carried a cover story, titled, “The Plots to Destroy America: Conspiracy Theories Are a Clear and Present Danger.” As its discourse suggests, this propaganda campaign is using the now familiar “conspiracy theory” label, as outlined in Central Intelligence Agency Document 1035-960, the 1967 memo laying out a strategy for CIA “media assets” to counter criticism of the Warren Commission and attack independent investigators of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. At that time the targets included attorney Mark Lane and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who were routinely defamed and lampooned in major US news outlets.
  • Declassified government documents have proven Lane and Garrison’s allegations of CIA-involvement in the assassination largely accurate. Nevertheless, the prospect of being subject to the conspiracy theorist smear remains a potent weapon for intimidating authors, journalists, and scholars from interrogating complex events, policies, and other potentially controversial subject matter.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 May 14
     
    Sunstein was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, a long-time buddy of Obama's who taught law at the University of Chicago. He's also the husband of neocon U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. He now teaches law at Harvard.  I haven't read Sunstein's book, but did read a paper he had previously published, as I recall on SSRN, along the same theme. It was a comical read, seemingly the winner of some sort of contest to see who could stuff the most logical fallacies into a set number of pages. And of course the premises of the fallacies had no citations. Sunstein simply assumes that the official version of events is invariably the only true version and that any version that conflicts is a dangerous "conspiracy theory."  So then he proposes some asinine, truly juvenile propaganda methods that the government might use to destroy the reputations of the "conspiracy theorists." Having been a professional, trained propagandist for the U.S. Army in Viet Nam, I can say with some confidence that no one need fear Sunstein's proposed methods.  Short story, Sunstein is a "good ole' boy" from the Chicago Democratic Machine who in truth lacks the skills and abilities to be even a good academic, let alone a good propagandist. That isn't to suggest that ad hominem attacks can never destroy reputations. But "conspiracy theorist" just isn't strong enough to instill fear. Call us "terrorists" instead and maybe you'd get some traction. 
Gary Edwards

Rebekah Roth: Methodical Illusion-Missing Pieces of 9-11 - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

911 Rebecca-Roth Methodical-Illusion

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 15
     
    "Rebekah Roth: Methodical Illusion-Missing Pieces of 9-11". YouTube Interview
Gary Edwards

The Golden Calf of Increased Tax Rates | RedState - 0 views

www.redstate.com/...en-calf-of-increased-tax-rates

Don-Bongino Taxes Tax-&-Spend Property-Seizure-AND-Redistribution-of-Wealth

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Economics and a degree of common sense also tells us that we will always be more cautious in spending our money than a third party will be.
  • Milton Friedman used this brief explanation to drive home the point. There are four ways to spend money.
  • You can spend your money on yourself, and when you do both the cost of the product and the quality matters.
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  • Finally, the most inefficient method to spend money of the four is other people, spending other people’s money, on other people. Cost doesn’t matter because it is not your money and quality doesn’t matter because it is not your product or service either.
  • Other people can spend other people’s money on themselves, in this case cost doesn’t matter, as it is not your money, but quality does as you are buying the product or service for yourself.
  • You can spend your money on someone else, in this case cost matters but quality is not as important.
  • In the final case, I just described to you government spending. And, to be clear, government spending is
  • taxation, while deficit spending is future taxation plus interest. It cannot be any other way.
  • Finally, we are frequently rhetorically assaulted by the “fair share” moralists on the left.
  • The paradoxical truth is that the tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Nov 12
     
    Good argument explaining the relationship between tax rates and tax receipts. excerpt: Economics and a degree of common sense also tells us that we will always be more cautious in spending our money than a third party will be. Milton Friedman used this brief explanation to drive home the point. There are four ways to spend money. You can spend your money on yourself, and when you do both the cost of the product and the quality matters. You can spend your money on someone else, in this case cost matters but quality is not as important. Other people can spend other people's money on themselves, in this case cost doesn't matter, as it is not your money, but quality does as you are buying the product or service for yourself. Finally, the most inefficient method to spend money of the four is other people, spending other people's money, on other people. Cost doesn't matter because it is not your money and quality doesn't matter because it is not your product or service either. In the final case, I just described to you government spending. And, to be clear, government spending is taxation, while deficit spending is future taxation plus interest. It cannot be any other way. Arguing that accumulating debt on your personal credit card is not going to require you to take money from your account in the future to pay the debt is foolish, therefore, why would you think that the national credit card would obey a different set of economic rules? Finally, we are frequently rhetorically assaulted by the "fair share" moralists on the left. ....................... This is an argument where they are correct on principle and completely devoid of substance regarding evidence...........
Paul Merrell

Mass Surveillance and the Right to Privacy: Adding Nuance to the Schrems Case | Just Se... - 0 views

www.justsecurity.org/...t-max-schrems-case-safe-harbor

surveillance state EU ECJ Schrems litigation data privacy

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Last week’s post by Megan Graham is certainly a welcome contribution in explaining the implications of the Max Schrems case by the European Union Court of Justice, and specifically how it relates to the Safe Harbor arrangement between the US and the EU. Let me add a different perspective: Irrespective of its consequences for Safe Harbor, last week’s ruling is hugely important on a more general level, namely for the understanding of what the right to privacy entails in Europe and what this means for mass surveillance. Through its ruling in Max Schrems the EU’s highest court has established that: Mere access by public authorities to confidential or group-specific communications data constitutes an intrusion into the right to privacy, even without any further processing of that data; and While indiscriminate intrusion into “metadata” may constitute a particularly serious intrusion into the right to privacy, access to “content” data will affect the essence of the right to privacy.
  • These findings were made under Article 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, a broad provision on the right to respect for one’s private life. This provision of the EU Charter, which is a part of the foundational treaty framework of the European Union, is almost identical to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty legally binding for broader Europe and routinely a part of domestic legal orders. It remains to be seen whether the guardian of the latter framework, the European Court of Human Rights, will also be courageous enough to determine that indiscriminate mass surveillance that provides access to “content” data breaches the essential core of the right to privacy. The highest EU court already took that bold step. One of the most important implications of identifying government access to content as breaching the essence of the right to privacy, is that it negates the need for a proportionality assessment. Measures that compromise the essence of privacy have already crossed a red line, and there is no need for any further “balancing” between privacy and security. Therefore, the Max Schrems ruling is a huge blow to many of the current methods of electronic mass surveillance, including those practiced by the US and several European countries (including the United Kingdom).
  • Several additional points from my earlier post in Verfassungsblog about this case are also worth noting. First, the EU court did not really dwell on the separate Article 8 provision of the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights, concerning the right to the protection of personal data. This was perhaps because that provision is triggered by the “processing” of data, while the general privacy (Article 7) impact comes into play through mere “access.” Another point is that while it was easy to establish the jurisdiction of the EU court over data transfers from Europe to Facebook’s servers in the US, it may be much harder to bring a case before that court concerning “upstream” methods of mass surveillance, such as the NSA’s tapping of transatlantic fiber optic telecommunications cables. Perhaps most importantly, the substantive ruling in the Schrems case is formulated in a way that it would apply to any method of mass surveillance that gives public authorities access to the content of ordinary people’s private communications, including communications intended for a group of people but not for the authorities. Hence, the ruling is a major contribution as to what the right to privacy substantively means in Europe.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Libertarianism, Anarchism and the Truth of Austrian... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...he-Truth-of-Austrian-Economics

Richard-Ebeling Libertarian banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • These are at least two conceivable methods of compelling the government to stop, or limit, its abuse of the monetary printing press.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12
       
      Ebeling proposes two methods of reining in out of control government printing of paper money.  There is a third method; one used by Lincoln and Kennedy.  This is the issuance of gold/silver/oil backed reserve notes.  The notes represent gold or silver being held on deposit, and are fully redeemable.   The value of the gold/silver or another commodity represented floats in the marketplace against goods and services.  Nor is there a fixed exchange rate for converting fiat (paper) dollars.  The market will figure those things out if left free to do so.  And that's one big big "if".
  • So the normal market pressures of downward price and wage adjustments in the recession are partly counter-acted by a new monetary expansion that is delaying the necessary re-coordination of market activities. Thus, given these two pressures, prices do not fall as much as a post-recession adjustment may require and they do not rise as much or as fast as might otherwise occur due to the renewed monetary expansion.
  • At the same time, as you correctly ask, the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a relatively low rate of interest to keep large excessive reserves in their accounts at the Federal Reserve, rather than to fully lend those excessive reserves to private borrowers. And given the low market rates of interest that Federal Reserve policy has generated, even the low rate of interest on unlent excess reserves offered to banks by the Federal Reserve appears the relatively more profitable way to use their available funds.
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  • Why has the Federal Reserve done this? They infused these two trillion dollars into the financial markets back in 2008-2010 because they feared that an economy-wide bank collapse was possible. They are afraid to reverse this monetary expansion because to do so would reduce potential bank-lending capacity and put upward pressure on interest rates at a time when the Federal Reserve wants to prevent the sluggish recovery from slowing down even more and also raise the cost of the US government's financing of its trillion dollar a year deficits. So, instead, they leave this excess bank lending power sloshing around in the system, while keeping it off the market and from causing significant new price inflationary pressures, by paying banks not to lend those vast sums.
  • Austrians argue that economics is fundamentally a science and study of "human action." It attempts to trace out the logic and implications of man's intentional conduct in selecting among ends desired and applying perceived means to try to attain them. Austrians emphasize that all human action and the social and market interactions among men occur in a setting of imperfect knowledge, inescapable degrees of uncertainty and always through the passage of time.
  • They try to explain the market processes by which men discover mutual gains from trade.
  • They emphasize that the networks of social institutions in which and through which men discover ways to coordinate their interdependent actions in complex systems of division of labor are not the creations of government edict or command; but are most often among those unintended consequences of multitudes of self-interested individual actions and interactions.
  • They have developed theories of market competition and the role of the entrepreneur as the individuals always alert to market opportunities, and whose actions tend to bring about coordination between market supplies and demands.
  • The Austrian analysis of markets, competition and prices, led them to devastating critiques of the unworkability of all forms of socialist central planning, the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies in virtually all forms of government intervention and regulation, and a theory of money and the business cycle that points the finger of responsibility for inflations and recessions at the doorstep of government monetary and fiscal policies.
  • The philosophy of liberty proclaims that each individual is unique and possessing inherent rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
  • It is not surprising that classical liberal and libertarian ideas are often attacked. After all they are the ideas that consistently oppose the current political systems of plunder, privilege and power lusting.
  • That government, if it is to exist, is to serve as the protector and guardian of our distinct individual rights, and not the master of men who are obligated to sacrifice themselves for some asserted "national interest," "general welfare," or "common good."
  • The only reasonable meaning to the "common good" or the "general welfare" is when each individual is free to peacefully live his life as he chooses and is at liberty to voluntarily associate and interact with his fellow men for mutually beneficial improvements to their lives.
  • It is virtually inevitable that those who use political power for their own gain at their neighbor's expense will vehemently resist and oppose any attempt to stop them from feeding at the government trough.
  • there is everywhere a class of plundering peoples – politicians, bureaucrats, special interest groups – receiving tax-based income redistributions and subsidies and benefiting from anti-competitive regulations and protections against and at the expense of their fellow human beings.
  • This is the great battle of the twenty-first century;
  • Austrian Economics, not surprisingly, has been attacked precisely because of its insightful and cogent analysis of how it was government intervention and central bank monetary manipulation that generated the unsustainable boom in the last decade that set the stage for the inescapable bust, which the world is still suffering from.
  • There are "natural rights" libertarians
  • "utilitarian" or "consequentialist" libertarians.
  • most convincing case for human liberty
  • Because libertarians have not agreed about this among themselves, nor have they been able to persuade enough others in society to move the world further away from the collectivist premises and the interventionist-welfare state policies that guide so much that goes on in the world.
  • I happen to have been most strongly influenced by the "natural rights" defense of liberty, and especially as formulated by Ayn Rand in her philosophy of Objectivism.
  • First, it is argued that if one believes that the use of any and all forms of coercion are morally unacceptable in human relationships, then this should also imply that any compulsory taxation, even when for the funding of defense and legal justice, is unjustifiable. And, second, it is argued that the private sector could provide such admittedly essential services far more efficiently and cost-effectively than the monopoly agency of government. Murray Rothbard and David Friedman probably have been among the most well-known and articulate proponents of the anarcho-capitalist position over the last 50 years.
  • Others like the Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick and Ludwig von Mises have made the case for constitutionally limited government. Their counter arguments have centered on the ideas that conflicts over jurisdiction, disputes among private defense agencies contracted by different individuals who have disagreements, and the likelihood that "defense" would turn out to be a "natural monopoly" anyway – that is, a tendency for one agency to end up being the single provider of defense and judicial services over a wide geographical area – raise questions about the long-run workability and sustainability of competing defense companies in society.
  • From a moral perspective, I am in sympathy with the anarcho-capitalist position, in that I find the compulsory taking of people's income and wealth without their consent for whatever reason to be ethically repugnant.
  • We should focus on what we all agree upon:
  • This means that the Supreme Court has said that you are the slave of "society" and the government that represents "the people," since, in principle, anything that you do or not do can be argued to have some affect, positive or negative, on others.
  • Think about this Court decision. It is saying that if you do not buy health insurance the government will tax you to pay for it. If you refuse to pay the tax, the government will end up attempting to seize financial assets or real property you own in lieu of failure to pay. If you try to prevent this taking of your property, you are subject to arrest and imprisonment. If you resist arrest or imprisonment, the police have the authority to force you to comply – up to and including lethal force to subdue you into obedience.
  • the freedom and dignity of the individual human being; and the attempt whenever and wherever on our part to reduce, repeal and abolish all forms of regulation, control, restriction, prohibition on the peaceful and honest affairs of our fellow men.
  • Once you accept this premise, there is no end to the minutest detail and content of your life and actions the government cannot claim jurisdiction over to regulate, control or prohibit.
  • Here is that end-of-the-road of the notion of unlimited democratic rule by "the people" and those who claim to speak for "the people" and rule on their behalf.
  • Ayn Rand, of course, rejected any connection or compatibility with libertarianism. She argued this on two grounds. First, she felt that too frequently libertarians spoke of individual freedom, free markets and limited government, but failed to explicitly and clearly ground their political-economic ideas in a demonstrable philosophy of man, nature and society.
  • Government control of money is the potentially most dangerous and damaging form of government power short of outright socialism.
  • Rand's political philosophy arises out of the "natural rights" tradition, that rights are inherent in the nature of man and precede government.
  • Mises believed that rights were, in a sense, "social conventions" that had evolved out of the discovery that certain social institutional arrangements were more conducive to the mutual betterment of all members of society for achieving their individual goals and values
  • What they did agree upon was that, given their respective conceptions of the basis of individual rights, there was no social and economic system more consistent with the protection of those rights and more likely to generate the material and cultural achievements that are potentially possible than laissez-faire capitalism.
  • And in the twentieth century, Rand and Mises were two of the most principled and uncompromising advocates for the completely free market society
  • Second, she rejected the anarchist elements in the libertarian movement, believing that any reasonable analysis of the reality of man and the human condition strongly suggested the inescapable need for a single legal standard for defining and enforcing individual rights and a single authority to as impartially and "objectively" as possible enforce laws defending each individual's rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
  • "Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the state assumed control of the monetary system . . .
  • A 'free' capitalism with government responsibility for money and credit has lost its innocence.
  • From that point on it is no longer a matter of principle but one of expediency how far one wishes or permits government interference to go.
  • Money control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all governmental controls short of expropriation."
  • Government basically has three ways to acquire the income and wealth of its citizens: taxation, borrowing and printing money
  • So, governments throughout history have turned to the monetary printing press to fund the expenditures not covered by taxes or borrowed money
  • This "non-neutral," or uneven, impact on prices and wages in the economy during the inflationary process brings in its wake distorted profit margins, misallocations of resources and labor and various mal-investments of capital. Here are the seeds for the artificial and unsustainable "booms" that invariably come crashing down in the "bust" once the monetary expansion that has set it all in motion is stopped or slowed down.
  • I believe that the choice and use of money should be left to the market, that is, to the free and voluntary interactive decisions of those buying and selling in the market.
  • I consider a private, competitive free banking system to be the only one consistent with a truly free market society.
Paul Merrell

How the NSA Plans to Infect 'Millions' of Computers with Malware - The Intercept - 0 views

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surveillance state NSA GCHQ NSA-methods malware

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process. The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks. The covert infrastructure that supports the hacking efforts operates from the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from eavesdropping bases in the United Kingdom and Japan. GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, appears to have played an integral role in helping to develop the implants tactic.
  • The NSA began rapidly escalating its hacking efforts a decade ago. In 2004, according to secret internal records, the agency was managing a small network of only 100 to 150 implants. But over the next six to eight years, as an elite unit called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) recruited new hackers and developed new malware tools, the number of implants soared to tens of thousands. To penetrate foreign computer networks and monitor communications that it did not have access to through other means, the NSA wanted to go beyond the limits of traditional signals intelligence, or SIGINT, the agency’s term for the interception of electronic communications. Instead, it sought to broaden “active” surveillance methods – tactics designed to directly infiltrate a target’s computers or network devices. In the documents, the agency describes such techniques as “a more aggressive approach to SIGINT” and says that the TAO unit’s mission is to “aggressively scale” these operations. But the NSA recognized that managing a massive network of implants is too big a job for humans alone.
  • “One of the greatest challenges for active SIGINT/attack is scale,” explains the top-secret presentation from 2009. “Human ‘drivers’ limit ability for large-scale exploitation (humans tend to operate within their own environment, not taking into account the bigger picture).” The agency’s solution was TURBINE. Developed as part of TAO unit, it is described in the leaked documents as an “intelligent command and control capability” that enables “industrial-scale exploitation.”
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  • TURBINE was designed to make deploying malware much easier for the NSA’s hackers by reducing their role in overseeing its functions. The system would “relieve the user from needing to know/care about the details,” the NSA’s Technology Directorate notes in one secret document from 2009. “For example, a user should be able to ask for ‘all details about application X’ and not need to know how and where the application keeps files, registry entries, user application data, etc.” In practice, this meant that TURBINE would automate crucial processes that previously had to be performed manually – including the configuration of the implants as well as surveillance collection, or “tasking,” of data from infected systems. But automating these processes was about much more than a simple technicality. The move represented a major tactical shift within the NSA that was expected to have a profound impact – allowing the agency to push forward into a new frontier of surveillance operations. The ramifications are starkly illustrated in one undated top-secret NSA document, which describes how the agency planned for TURBINE to “increase the current capability to deploy and manage hundreds of Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) and Computer Network Attack (CNA) implants to potentially millions of implants.” (CNE mines intelligence from computers and networks; CNA seeks to disrupt, damage or destroy them.)
  • But not all of the NSA’s implants are used to gather intelligence, the secret files show. Sometimes, the agency’s aim is disruption rather than surveillance. QUANTUMSKY, a piece of NSA malware developed in 2004, is used to block targets from accessing certain websites. QUANTUMCOPPER, first tested in 2008, corrupts a target’s file downloads. These two “attack” techniques are revealed on a classified list that features nine NSA hacking tools, six of which are used for intelligence gathering. Just one is used for “defensive” purposes – to protect U.S. government networks against intrusions.
  • The NSA has a diverse arsenal of malware tools, each highly sophisticated and customizable for different purposes. One implant, codenamed UNITEDRAKE, can be used with a variety of “plug-ins” that enable the agency to gain total control of an infected computer. An implant plug-in named CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE, for example, is used to take over a targeted computer’s microphone and record conversations taking place near the device. Another, GUMFISH, can covertly take over a computer’s webcam and snap photographs. FOGGYBOTTOM records logs of Internet browsing histories and collects login details and passwords used to access websites and email accounts. GROK is used to log keystrokes. And SALVAGERABBIT exfiltrates data from removable flash drives that connect to an infected computer. The implants can enable the NSA to circumvent privacy-enhancing encryption tools that are used to browse the Internet anonymously or scramble the contents of emails as they are being sent across networks. That’s because the NSA’s malware gives the agency unfettered access to a target’s computer before the user protects their communications with encryption. It is unclear how many of the implants are being deployed on an annual basis or which variants of them are currently active in computer systems across the world.
  • Infiltrating cellphone networks, however, is not all that the malware can be used to accomplish. The NSA has specifically tailored some of its implants to infect large-scale network routers used by Internet service providers in foreign countries. By compromising routers – the devices that connect computer networks and transport data packets across the Internet – the agency can gain covert access to monitor Internet traffic, record the browsing sessions of users, and intercept communications. Two implants the NSA injects into network routers, HAMMERCHANT and HAMMERSTEIN, help the agency to intercept and perform “exploitation attacks” against data that is sent through a Virtual Private Network, a tool that uses encrypted “tunnels” to enhance the security and privacy of an Internet session.
  • Eventually, the secret files indicate, the NSA’s plans for TURBINE came to fruition. The system has been operational in some capacity since at least July 2010, and its role has become increasingly central to NSA hacking operations. Earlier reports based on the Snowden files indicate that the NSA has already deployed between 85,000 and 100,000 of its implants against computers and networks across the world, with plans to keep on scaling up those numbers. The intelligence community’s top-secret “Black Budget” for 2013, obtained by Snowden, lists TURBINE as part of a broader NSA surveillance initiative named “Owning the Net.” The agency sought $67.6 million in taxpayer funding for its Owning the Net program last year. Some of the money was earmarked for TURBINE, expanding the system to encompass “a wider variety” of networks and “enabling greater automation of computer network exploitation.”
  • Before it can extract data from an implant or use it to attack a system, the NSA must first install the malware on a targeted computer or network. According to one top-secret document from 2012, the agency can deploy malware by sending out spam emails that trick targets into clicking a malicious link. Once activated, a “back-door implant” infects their computers within eight seconds. There’s only one problem with this tactic, codenamed WILLOWVIXEN: According to the documents, the spam method has become less successful in recent years, as Internet users have become wary of unsolicited emails and less likely to click on anything that looks suspicious. Consequently, the NSA has turned to new and more advanced hacking techniques. These include performing so-called “man-in-the-middle” and “man-on-the-side” attacks, which covertly force a user’s internet browser to route to NSA computer servers that try to infect them with an implant.
  • To perform a man-on-the-side attack, the NSA observes a target’s Internet traffic using its global network of covert “accesses” to data as it flows over fiber optic cables or satellites. When the target visits a website that the NSA is able to exploit, the agency’s surveillance sensors alert the TURBINE system, which then “shoots” data packets at the targeted computer’s IP address within a fraction of a second. In one man-on-the-side technique, codenamed QUANTUMHAND, the agency disguises itself as a fake Facebook server. When a target attempts to log in to the social media site, the NSA transmits malicious data packets that trick the target’s computer into thinking they are being sent from the real Facebook. By concealing its malware within what looks like an ordinary Facebook page, the NSA is able to hack into the targeted computer and covertly siphon out data from its hard drive. A top-secret animation demonstrates the tactic in action.
  • The TURBINE implants system does not operate in isolation. It is linked to, and relies upon, a large network of clandestine surveillance “sensors” that the agency has installed at locations across the world.
  • The NSA’s headquarters in Maryland are part of this network, as are eavesdropping bases used by the agency in Misawa, Japan and Menwith Hill, England. The sensors, codenamed TURMOIL, operate as a sort of high-tech surveillance dragnet, monitoring packets of data as they are sent across the Internet. When TURBINE implants exfiltrate data from infected computer systems, the TURMOIL sensors automatically identify the data and return it to the NSA for analysis. And when targets are communicating, the TURMOIL system can be used to send alerts or “tips” to TURBINE, enabling the initiation of a malware attack. The NSA identifies surveillance targets based on a series of data “selectors” as they flow across Internet cables. These selectors, according to internal documents, can include email addresses, IP addresses, or the unique “cookies” containing a username or other identifying information that are sent to a user’s computer by websites such as Google, Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Twitter. Other selectors the NSA uses can be gleaned from unique Google advertising cookies that track browsing habits, unique encryption key fingerprints that can be traced to a specific user, and computer IDs that are sent across the Internet when a Windows computer crashes or updates.
  • Documents published with this article: Menwith Hill Station Leverages XKeyscore for Quantum Against Yahoo and Hotmail Five Eyes Hacking Large Routers NSA Technology Directorate Analysis of Converged Data Selector Types There Is More Than One Way to Quantum NSA Phishing Tactics and Man in the Middle Attacks Quantum Insert Diagrams The NSA and GCHQ’s QUANTUMTHEORY Hacking Tactics TURBINE and TURMOIL VPN and VOIP Exploitation With HAMMERCHANT and HAMMERSTEIN Industrial-Scale Exploitation Thousands of Implants
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 14
     
    *Very* long article. Only small portions quoted.
Paul Merrell

CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html

war & peace CIA torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques. The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.
  • “The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”
  • Several officials who have read the document said some of its most troubling sections deal not with detainee abuse but with discrepancies between the statements of senior CIA officials in Washington and the details revealed in the written communications of lower-level employees directly involved.Officials said millions of records make clear that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence against al-Qaeda — including tips that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques.”The report is divided into three volumes — one that traces the chronology of interrogation operations, another that assesses intelligence officials’ claims and a third that contains case studies on virtually every prisoner held in CIA custody since the program began in 2001. Officials said the report was stripped of certain details, including the locations of CIA prisons and the names of agency employees who did not hold ­supervisor-level positions.One official said that almost all of the critical threat-related information from Abu Zubaida was obtained during the period when he was questioned by Soufan at a hospital in Pakistan, well before he was interrogated by the CIA and waterboarded 83 times.Information obtained by Soufan, however, was passed up through the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community, the Justice Department and Congress as though it were part of what CIA interrogators had obtained, according to the committee report.
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  • The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to vote Thursday to send an executive summary of the report to Obama for declassification. U.S. officials said it could be months before that section, which contains roughly 20 conclusions and spans about 400 pages, is released to the public. The report’s release also could resurrect a long-standing feud between the CIA and the FBI, where many officials were dismayed by the agency’s use of methods that Obama and others later labeled torture. CIA veterans have expressed concern that the report reflects FBI biases. One of its principal authors is a former FBI analyst,
  • “The CIA conflated what was gotten when, which led them to misrepresent the effectiveness of the program,” said a second U.S. official who has reviewed the report. The official described the persistence of such misstatements as among “the most damaging” of the committee’s conclusions.Detainees’ credentials also were exaggerated, officials said. Agency officials described Abu Zubaida as a senior al-Qaeda operative — and, therefore, someone who warranted coercive techniques — although experts later determined that he was essentially a facilitator who helped guide recruits to al-Qaeda training camps.The CIA also oversold the role of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. CIA officials claimed he was the “mastermind.” The committee described a similar sequence in the interrogation of Hassan Ghul, an al-Qaeda operative who provided a critical lead in the search for bin Laden: the fact that the al-Qaeda leader’s most trusted courier used the moniker “al-Kuwaiti.” But Ghul disclosed that detail while being interrogated by Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq who posed questions scripted by CIA analysts. The information from that period was subsequently conflated with lesser intelligence gathered from Ghul at a secret CIA prison in Romania, officials said. Ghul was later turned over to authorities in Pakistan, where he was subsequently released. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in 2012.
  • Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has previously indicated that harsh CIA interrogation measures were of little value in the bin Laden hunt. “The CIA detainee who provided the most significant information about the courier provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques,” Feinstein said in a 2013 statement, responding in part to scenes in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” that depict a detainee’s slip under duress as a breakthrough moment.
  • As with Abu Zubaida and even Nashiri, officials said, CIA interrogators continued the harsh treatment even after it appeared that Baluchi was cooperating. On Sept. 22, 2003, he was flown from Kabul to a CIA black site in Romania. In 2006, he was taken to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His attorneys contend that he suffered head trauma while in CIA custody. Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Baluchi’s attorneys for information about his medical condition, but military prosecutors opposed the request. A U.S. official said the request was not based solely on the committee’s investigation of the CIA program.
  • Officials said a former CIA interrogator named Charlie Wise was forced to retire in 2003 after being suspected of abusing Abu Zubaida using a broomstick as a ballast while he was forced to kneel in a stress position. Wise was also implicated in the abuse at Salt Pit. He died of a heart attack shortly after retiring from the CIA, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
Paul Merrell

Revealed: Senate report contains new details on CIA black sites | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...senate-cia-torture.html

war & peace torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report black-sites CIA-lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • A Senate Intelligence Committee report provides the first official confirmation that the CIA secretly operated a black site prison out of Guantánamo Bay, two U.S. officials who have read portions of the report have told Al Jazeera. The officials — who spoke on condition of anonymity because the 6,600-page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program remains classified — said top-secret agency documents reveal that at least 10 high-value targets were secretly held and interrogated at Guantánamo’s Camp Echo at various times from late 2003 to 2004. They were then flown to Rabat, Morocco, before being officially sent to the U.S. military’s detention facility at Guantánamo in September 2006. In September 2006, President George W. Bush formally announced that 14 CIA captives had been transferred to Guantánamo and would be prosecuted before military tribunals. He then acknowledged for the first time that the CIA had been operating a secret network of prisons overseas to detain and interrogate high-value targets.
  • The Senate report, according to Al Jazeera’s sources, says that the CIA detained some high-value suspects on Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island controlled by the United Kingdom and leased to the United States. The classified CIA documents say the black site arrangement at Diego Garcia was made with the “full cooperation” of the British government. That would confirm long-standing claims by human rights investigators and journalists, whose allegations — based on flight logs and unnamed government sources — have routinely been denied by the CIA. The CIA and State Department declined Al Jazeera’s requests for comment. The Intelligence Committee last week voted 11 to 3 to declassify the report’s 480-page executive summary and 20 conclusions and findings, which incorporate responses from Republican members of the committee and from the CIA. The executive summary will undergo a declassification review, led by the CIA, with input from the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. officials said. The panel’s chairwoman, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said in a statement last Thursday that the full 6,600-page report, with 37,000 footnotes, “will be held for declassification at a later time.”
  • Leaked details of the committee’s report have caused waves in countries like Poland, where the CIA is known to have operated a black site prison — which Polish officials continue to deny having known about. The U.S. officials who spoke to Al Jazeera said that the Senate report reveals 20 prisoners were secretly detained in Poland from 2002 to 2005. They added that Polish officials recently sought assurances from diplomats and visiting U.S. officials that the Senate report would conceal details about Poland’s role in allowing the CIA black site to be operated on Polish soil. Al Jazeera’s sources said U.S. officials reassured their Polish counterparts last year that it was almost certain that the declassified version of the report would not identify the countries that cooperated with the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.
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  • According to the Senate report, Al Jazeera’s sources said, a majority of the more than 100 detainees held in CIA custody were detained in secret prisons in Afghanistan and Morocco, where they were subject to torture methods not sanctioned by the Justice Department. Those methods are recalled by the report in vivid narratives lifted from daily logs of the detention and interrogation of about 34 high-value prisoners. The report allegedly notes that about 85 detainees deemed low-value passed through the black sites and were later dumped at Guantánamo or handed off to foreign intelligence services. More than 10 of those handed over to foreign intelligence agencies “to face terrorism charges” are now “unaccounted for” and presumed dead, the U.S. officials said. The Senate report says more than two dozen of these men designated low-value had, in fact, been wrongfully detained and rendered to other countries on the basis of intelligence obtained from CIA captives under torture and from information shared with CIA officials by other governments, both of which turned out to be false. The report allegedly singles out a top CIA official for botching a handful of renditions and outlines agency efforts to cover up the mistakes. The Senate report allegedly accuses “senior CIA officials” of lying during multiple closed-session briefings to members of Congress from 2003 to 2005 about the use of certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The report says an agency official lied to Congress in 2005 when he insisted the U.S. was adhering to international treaties barring cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners, the U.S. officials told Al Jazeera.
  • The report not only accuses certain CIA officials of deliberately misleading Congress; Al Jazeera’s sources say it also suggests that the agency sanctioned leaks to selected journalists about phantom plots supposedly disrupted as a result of information gained through the program in order to craft a narrative of success. The Senate report, like a 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee report (PDF), says Air Force psychologists under contract to the CIA reverse-engineered a decades-old resistance-training program taught to U.S. airmen known as survival evasion resistance escape (SERE). According to a SERE training document obtained by Al Jazeera titled “Coercive Exploitation Techniques,” Air Force personnel were taught that communist regimes used “deprivations” of “food, water, sleep and medical care” as well as “the use of threats” in order to weaken a captive’s mental and physical ability to resist interrogation. “Isolation” would be used, according to the SERE program, to deprive the “recipient of all social support” so that he develops a “dependency” on his interrogator. And “physical duress, violence and torture” are used to weaken “mental and physical ability to resist exploitation.” Ironically, perhaps, the SERE document (displayed below) notes that such techniques were used by the Soviet Union, China and North Korea to obtain false confessions.
  • Senate investigators allegedly obtained from the CIA a 2003 “business plan,” written by Air Force psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, that contained erroneous details about the positive aspects of the enhanced interrogation program and the veracity of the intelligence its extracted from detainees. The “business plan” states that Al-Qaeda captives were “resistant” to “standard” interrogation techniques, an argument the Senate report found lacked merit because torture techniques were used before they were even questioned. Neither Jessen, who lives in Spokane, Wash., nor Mitchell, who resides in Land o’ Lakes, Fla., responded to phone calls or emails for comment. Both men are featured prominently in the Senate’s report, according to U.S. officials.
  • According to Al Jazeera’s sources, Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah was the only captive subjected to all 10 torture techniques identified in an August 2002 Justice Department memo. But the U.S. officials said the Senate report concludes that the methods applied to Abu Zubaydah went above and beyond the guidelines outlined in that memo and were used before the memo establishing their legality was written. The Senate report allegedly adopts part of a narrative from former FBI special agent Ali Soufan, who first interrogated Abu Zubaydah at the black site and wrote in his book “The Black Banners” that Mitchell was conducting an “experiment” on Abu Zubaydah. For example, the August 2002 Justice Department legal memo authorized sleep deprivation for Abu Zubaydah for 11 consecutive days, but Mitchell kept him awake far longer, the U.S. officials said, citing classified CIA cables. Abu Zubaydah was stripped naked, strapped into a chair and doused with cold water to keep him awake. He was then interrogated and asked what he knew, at which point, his attorney told Al Jazeera, Abu Zubaydah was “psychotic” and would have admitted to anything.
  • Additionally, the report allegedly says that Abu Zubaydah was stuffed into a pet crate (the type used to transport dogs on airplanes) over the course of two weeks and routinely passed out, was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of his cell and subjected to an endless loop of loud music. One former interrogator briefed about Abu Zubaydah’s interrogations from May to July 2002 told Al Jazeera that the music used to batter the detainee’s senses was by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Abu Zubaydah’s attorney, Brent Mickum, hopes the Senate report’s executive summary will vindicate what he has been saying for years. “My client was tortured brutally well before any legal memo was issued,” Mickum said. He expects the report to “show that my client was a nonmember of Al-Qaeda, contrary to all of the earlier reports by the Bush administration. I am also confident that the report will show that, after he was deemed to be compliant while he was held in Thailand, that he continued to be tortured on explicit orders from the Bush administration.” The Senate report, according to Al Jazeera’s sources, says that CIA interrogators were under an enormous pressure from top agency officials, themselves under pressure from the White House, to use “enhanced” interrogation techniques to obtain information from detainees connecting Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
  • One interrogator who worked for the CIA and the U.S. military during Bush’s tenure and participated in the interrogations of two high-value CIA prisoners told Al Jazeera — speaking on condition of anonymity because he is still employed by the U.S. government — that the “enhanced” interrogation program was “nothing more than the Stanford Prison Experiment writ large.” (The 1971 Stanford University study shocked the public by demonstrating how easily people placed in authority over more vulnerable others resorted to cruelty.) “Interrogators were being pressured — You have to get info from these people,’” the interrogator told Al Jazeera. “There was no consideration that the person we were interrogating may not know. That was always seen as a resistance technique. ‘They [the detainees] must be lying!’ There was pressure on us from above to produce what they wanted. Not a single person I worked with knew how to conduct an interrogation or [had] ever conducted an interrogation.”
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