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Today is a great victory against GCHQ, the NSA and the surveillance state | Carly Nyst ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...st-gchq-nsa-surveillance-state surveillance state GCHQ NSA litigation human rights UK
shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • It is a rare thing to bring truth to bear on the most powerful and secretive arm of the state. Never before has the Investigatory Powers Tribunal – the British court tasked with reviewing complaints against the security services – ruled against the government. Not once have the spooks been taken to task for overstepping the lawful boundaries of their conduct. Not a single British spy has been held accountable for mass surveillance, unlawful spying or snooping on private emails and phone calls. Until today. Privacy International has spent the past 25 years fighting back against the ever-expanding British surveillance state. Together with our allies, we’ve resisted the snooper’s charter (multiple times), mandatory ID cards and the provision of passenger name records. Yet in June 2013 we were as shocked as everyone else to learn that GCHQ, in collaboration with the NSA, had acquired the capabilities to completely control, monitor, copy, read and analyse the world’s private communications. It was, until that point, unfathomable that the security services could have so audaciously stretched the boundaries of democratic legitimacy – and could have so severely violated the civil liberties and human rights of not only Britons, but of hundreds of millions of innocent people across the globe.
  • Thanks to Edward Snowden, we learned that GCHQ has access to emails and messages that the NSA siphons off directly and en masse from Google, Skype and Facebook. We discovered that the NSA collects 194m text messages and 5bn location records every day – and GCHQ can read them too. And, of course, we learned that GCHQ is operating a mass surveillance system that, combined with its access to the NSA’s own mass surveillance architecture, means it can read almost anyone’s communications, at any time, without judicial authorisation or any meaningful oversight. In July 2013, the Intelligence and Security Committee assured us that GCHQ access to NSA surveillance material, in particular through the Prism programme, was entirely lawful. Unsurprisingly, we did not find the reassurances of a body that has consistently and blindly backed the services that it is meant to scrutinise comforting.
  • That’s why we decided to take GCHQ to court. Alongside Liberty, Amnesty International and human rights organisations from around the world, we argued that mass surveillance is not an acceptable activity of a democratic government, and that the cosy dealings between GCHQ and the NSA, conducted under a veil of secrecy that was only lifted by a whistleblower’s bravery, had to be brought within public control and scrutiny. The evidence was overwhelming and the history of human rights law was in our favour, but the tribunal – which at that point had never before found that the surveillance activities of GCHQ broke the law – disagreed. Mass surveillance, it found in its decision of December 2014, was legitimate under British law. GCHQ’s access to NSA mass surveillance was also acceptable, it said, given that the government had disclosed details of its relationship with the US during the course of our case.
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  • The decision was a disappointing one, and we’ll soon appeal to the European court of human rights. But it left us with a small glimmer of hope. The tribunal said that it was lawful for GCHQ and the NSA to swap and share surveillance material only because GCHQ has secret internal policies that it reluctantly disclosed in response to Privacy International’s case. Now that those secret policies are no longer secret, the court reasoned, the British public know what’s going on, and that in itself must make those activities lawful. It must follow, therefore, that before those policies were public – prior to Edward Snowden’s disclosures, and our case in the IPT – GCHQ was acting outside the law. Complicated reasoning aside, this finding was a genuine – and rare – success. The tribunal agreed, and we today have a firm statement that the intelligence services were acting completely out of bounds. It is not the judgment we would have liked – that we still hope to get from the European court of human rights in Strasbourg later this year – but it is a significant victory against an arm of the state that has rarely been forced to account for its wrongdoings.
  • It is a vindication of Snowden, and all those who put their careers – and even their lives – on the line to ensure the truth was told. It is a huge encouragement to civil society organisations like Privacy International, which often spend years locked in David and Goliath battles, depleting their funds and their morale to perform the essential role of holding truth to power. In years to come we will look back on today as an essential victory against the surveillance state. Here at Privacy International, we humbly hope that perhaps we will also look back at this day as a turning of the tide; the day when the seemingly uncontrollable advancement of state intrusion into individuals’ lives was halted, and when internet users reclaimed some of the power in their fight for privacy, security and free expression.
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The academic paper that predicted the NSA scandal | War of Ideas - 0 views

ideas.foreignpolicy.com/...that_predicted_the_nsa_scandal surveillance state NSA metadata
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • If you've been following the fallout from last week's NSA surveillance revelations, you may have seen repeated reference to a certain "recent MIT study." "Unique in the Crowd: The Privacy Bounds of Human Mobility," published in Nature's Scientific Reports last year, has been cited by multiple media sources, including this one, as evidence for why -- contra Dianne Feinstein -- your metadata matters. Indeed, re-examined in light of the current headlines, the concerns raised by the study seem quite prescient. The paper's authors, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, César A. Hidalgo, Michel Verleysen, and Vincent D. Blondel of MIT and the Universite Catholique de Louvain, examined a dataset of 15 months of anonymous cell-phone data from 1.5 million people in a "small European country." (They're a bit coy about how they obtained the data.) There were no names, addresses, or phone numbers in the data, yet they argue that "if individual's patterns are unique enough, outside information can be used to link the data back to an individual." In fact, just four points of observation -- time of the call and the nearest cell-phone tower -- were enough to identify 95 percent of individuals in the database.
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Greenwald: Snowden's Files Are Out There if "Anything Happens" To Him - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...f-anything-happens-to-him.html surveillance state NSA leaked-docs Greenwald
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who Snowden first contacted in February, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published.” Greenwald added that the people in possession of these files “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords.” But, Greenwald said, “if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.” The fact that Snowden has made digital copies of the documents he accessed while working at the NSA poses a new challenge to the U.S. intelligence community that has scrambled in recent days to recover them and assess the full damage of the breach. Even if U.S. authorities catch up with Snowden and the four classified laptops the Guardian reported he brought with him to Hong Kong the secrets Snowden hopes to expose will still likely be published.
  • A former U.S. counterintelligence officer following the Snowden saga closely said his contacts inside the U.S. intelligence community “think Snowden has been planning this for years and has stashed files all over the Internet.” This source added, “At this point there is very little anyone can do about this.” The arrangement to entrust encrypted archives of his files with others also sheds light on a cryptic statement Snowden made on June 17 during a live chat with The Guardian. In the online session he said, “All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”
  • Greenwald said that he himself has thousands of documents from Snowden that he is continuing to examine. That figure is considerably higher than the 200 documents that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee, said over the weekend that she was told Snowden possessed. “I don’t know for sure whether [Snowden] has more documents than the ones he has given me,” Greenwald said. “I believe he does. He was clear he did not want to give to journalists things he did not think should be published.”
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  • However, Greenwald said that in his dealings with Snowden the 30-year-old systems administrator was adamant that he and his newspaper go through the document and only publish what served the public’s right to know. “Snowden himself was vehement from the start that we do engage in that journalistic process and we not gratuitously publish things,” Greenwald said. “I do know he was vehement about that. He was not trying to harm the U.S. government; he was trying to shine light on it.” Greenwald said Snowden for example did not wish to publicize information that gave the technical specifications or blueprints for how the NSA constructed its eavesdropping network. “He is worried that would enable other states to enhance their security systems and monitor their own citizens.” Greenwald also said Snowden did not wish to repeat the kinds of disclosures made famous a generation ago by former CIA spy, Philip Agee—who published information after defecting to Cuba that outed undercover CIA officers. “He was very insistent he does not want to publish documents to harm individuals or blow anyone’s undercover status,” Greenwald said. He added that Snowden told him, “Leaking CIA documents can actually harm people, whereas leaking NSA documents can harm systems.”
  • For now, Greenwald said he is taking extra precautions against the prospect that he is a target of U.S. surveillance. He said he began using encrypted email when he began communicating with Snowden in February after Snowden sent him a YouTube video walking him through the procedure to encrypt his email. “When I was in Hong Kong, I spoke to my partner in Rio via Skype and told him I would send an electronic encrypted copy of the documents,” Greenwald said. “I did not end up doing it. Two days later his laptop was stolen from our house and nothing else was taken. Nothing like that has happened before. I am not saying it’s connected to this, but obviously the possibility exists.” When asked if Greenwald believed his computer was being monitored by the U.S. government. “I would be shocked if the U.S. government were not trying to access the information on my computer. I carry my computers and data with me everywhere I go.”
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Paul Albaugh: Death and Hillary Clinton - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/44198 Hillary
shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Did Clinton’s emails seal this man’s fate? As National Review’s Jim Geraghty notes, “[I]t’s unnerving to see she was discussing such material on an insecure system. We don’t know for certain that the Iranians had successfully hacked into Clinton’s server — as FBI Director Comey said, hackers are good at covering their tracks — but it seems foolish to assume Tehran could not. Friendly references to Amiri in private email by Hillary and her staff would destroy his claims to his captors that he wasn’t voluntarily helping American intelligence.” More likely than Iran doing the hacking is that Russia is the culprit. The two nations are thick as thieves when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, and it’s extremely likely that Moscow has some valuable dirt on Clinton, some of which was perhaps shared with the mullahs.
  • So what of Clinton’s emails? In 2010, Jake Sullivan sent two emails about a week apart to Hillary’s private server. Neither of the emails mentioned Amiri by name, but the first email notes that the videos were a “psychological” issue and that “our friend has to be given a way out.” The second email, sent two days before CNN reported a $5 million payout, warned of “problematic news stories” to come as a cover for Amiri’s return to Iran. So while the emails didn’t mention Amiri by name, Iranian intelligence could have no doubt figured out that the person she was referring to in these emails was indeed Amiri. This is what FBI Director James Comey meant when he called Hillary “extremely careless in the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
  • There are other untimely, mysterious deaths in the last six weeks as well — all with ties to the Clintons. Last week, there were two deaths within two days. The first was a prominent Clinton critic, researcher and reporter for the American Free Press named Victor Thorn. He was found in his home, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, in what has been reported as a suicide. It was his 54th birthday. The second was a Bernie Sanders supporter named Shawn Lucas, who was serving the Democrat National Committee and former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz with a class action lawsuit for alleged fraud and rigging the primary election in favor of Hillary Clinton. He was found dead on Aug. 2, on the floor of his bathroom. There are several others who have died strange and untimely deaths with unsatisfactory explanation. But the common denominator is that they were somehow tied to or knew something about the Clintons and had either reported or were about to blow the whistle on their wrongdoings.
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  • It feels like the 1990s all over again, when Vince Foster and numerous others met an untimely and suspicious demise. This is the Hillary Clinton that the Leftmedia doesn’t want you to know about. The same woman who recently said that she may have “short circuited” her recent email explanation. Speaking of deaths and lies, the parents of two Benghazi victims — Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, and Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods — filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Clinton Monday. The two allege that Clinton’s “reckless handling” of classified information contributed to their sons' deaths. And while the circumstances surrounding the Iranian scientist or the two Americans are mysterious, we know that Clinton is responsible for the deaths of Smith, Woods and two others in Benghazi. And then she lied about it for political gain. Indeed, she lied to the public and then has the audacity to lie and say that she didn’t lie. This woman is filled with corruption and lies yet she is the “most qualified person ever” to run for president? Too few seem to know about her wrongdoings and malicious behavior. Or they don’t care.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16
     
    "For as long as the Clintons have been in the national spotlight, people linked to them have turned up dead. We're sure that's only the stuff of mythology among the "vast right-wing conspiracy," but this week brings news of more of the same. Despite FBI and Leftmedia attempts to keep Americans as uninformed as possible about Hillary Clinton's history of corruption and lies, there is new information about the death of an Iranian nuclear scientist named Shahram Amiri. Normally, the death of a foreigner wouldn't catch the attention of many Americans. But in this case, Amiri was in contact with Clinton via email, and the circumstances and timing of his death are more than suspicious. Who was this man that was just publicly hanged shortly after returning to Iran? Amiri was one of Iran's nuclear scientists, and in 2009 he disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, and he reappeared in several online videos in the United States. The timing of his disappearance was at the height of Western efforts to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. In 2010, he returned to Iran, and was greeted with a hero's welcome. Soon after, he disappeared again. This past weekend, he was publicly tried and executed. According to an Iranian judiciary spokesman, Amiri had access to Iran's secret and classified information and was linked to Iran's number one enemy (and financier), America. He was also accused of providing the U.S. with vital and secret information about Iran. So what happened between his 2010 return to Iran and this past weekend? Well, the revelations of Hillary Clinton's email scheme and the release of her emails, which contained several references to Amiri. "
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Julian Assange to be questioned inside embassy as Ecuador agrees to set date | Media | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-as-ecuador-agrees-to-set-date Assange Ecuador asylum Sweden questioning U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Julian Assange will be questioned by Swedish prosecutors inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, in a possible breakthrough to end the impasse over his case. The Ecuadorian attorney general delivered a document agreeing to a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question the founder of WikiLeaks. He is wanted for questioning over a rape allegation, which he denies. If he goes to Sweden he believes he will be taken to the US because of the activities of WikiLeaks. Assange has been living inside the embassy for more than four years and has been granted political asylum by Ecuador.
  • He has offered to be questioned inside the embassy but Swedish prosecutors have only recently agreed. A statement issued in Ecuador said: “In the coming weeks a date will be established for the proceedings to be held at the embassy of Ecuador in the United Kingdom.
  • The statement said the proceedings did not affect the recent opinion of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations, which found that Assange was being arbitrarily detained. The working group called for Assange to be released and given compensation for violation of his rights. The Ecuador statement added: “Ecuador’s foreign ministry reiterates its commitment to the asylum granted to Julian Assange in August 2012, and reaffirms that the protection afforded by the Ecuadorian state shall continue while the circumstances persist that led to the granting of asylum, namely fears of political persecution.”
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Aug 16
     
    Assange justifiably fears that if he submits to extradition to Sweden, that nation would in turn hand him over to the U.S. for prosecution under the Espionage Act. It is known that a grand jury handed down indictments in the case involving a leak of massive numbers of State Department cables by Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Wikileaks received and published those documents. Soon after, a prosecutor in Sweden began a rape investigation, despite both women involved saying that they were not raped. No rape charges have actually been filed. The British courts later granted Sweden's extradition request, despite there being no charges pending, at which point Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador and has been effectively imprisoned in that nation's London embassy ever since.
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NSA Data Will Soon Be Used By Domestic Law Enforcement - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...214734 surveillance state NSA raw-data-sharing
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • If you’re reading this, then I’m willing to bet that you’ve been called many different names throughout your life. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say they were names like kook, paranoid, conspiracy theorist, alarmist, insane, or gullible. And after this week, you can go by a new name: Vindicated. I’m of course talking about recent revelations from the NSA. Long before Edward Snowden came along, it was no secret that the NSA was spying on everyone without good cause. Anyone who believed that fact was called a conspiracy theorist, but their fears were eventually validated. These same people also understood that the NSA’s surveillance powers would never be used exclusively against terrorists and hostile governments. The power they have is just too tempting for any government. If various government agencies weren’t using the NSA’s surveillance apparatus to solve domestic crimes, it was only a matter of time before it was used for just that.
  • And again, they called us conspiracy theorists for believing that. And again, we were right all long. A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important: What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes.
  • Anybody who knows anything about how governments work, should not surprised. You can’t give them any kind of power, and expect them to use it responsibly. You can’t give them any stipulations. Eventually they’ll find a legal loophole to work around any limitations that have been placed on them. In other news, the Pentagon admitted this week that they’ve been deploying military drones over the United States for domestic surveillance purposes. Much like the NSA’s surveillance apparatus, we were assured that drones were for terrorists in faraway lands. Nothing so Orwellian would ever be used against ordinary American citizens at home. Yet here we are, with more to come.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16
     
    The Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, provides in relevant part: "(a)(4) the term "record" means any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency, including, but not limited to, his education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and that contains his name, or the identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual, such as a finger or voice print or a photograph[.] ... "(b) Conditions of Disclosure.-No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, unless disclosure of the record would be- ... "(7) to another agency or to an instrumentality of any governmental jurisdiction within or under the control of the United States for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity if the activity is authorized by law, and if the head of the agency or instrumentality has made a written request to the agency which maintains the record specifying the particular portion desired and the law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" So a separate written request for each "portion" of any individual record that describes the "law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" That doesn't sound like the contemplated unfettered access to bulk raw data. And it gets even better, with a right to sue for any violation, attorney fees and expenses, and a statutory minimum of $1,000 damages per violation just for winning the case.  
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Colombian government and Farc rebels announce ceasefire deal to end war | World news | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ent-farc-rebels-ceasefire-deal war & peace Columbia FARC Peace U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • The Colombian government and leftist Farc rebels have announced that they have reached a deal on a bilateral ceasefire that would be the last major step toward ending one of the world’s longest wars. “We have arrived with success at an agreement on the bilateral and definitive ceasefire and end to hostilities,” both sides said in a statement read to media in Havana. The accord will be signed on Thursday in Havana by President Juan Manuel Santos and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko. President Juan Manuel Santos will travel to Cuba on Thursday for the announcement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, announced he would also be present to witness the signing of the deal. The presidents of Cuba, Venezuela and Chile, the three countries sponsoring the almost four-year-old peace talks in Havana, were also expected, and the Obama administration will send its special envoy to the talks, former diplomat Bernard Aronson.
  • Colombia’s conflict has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions since 1964. But a 15-year, US-backed military offensive thinned the rebels’ ranks and forced its ageing leaders to the negotiating table in 2012.
  • In addition to announcing a framework for the ceasefire, both sides said they agreed on how the Farc’s estimated 7,000 fighters will demobilise and hand over their weapons, as well as the security guarantees that will be provided to leftist activists after the conflict ends. Negotiators in January tasked the UN with monitoring adherence to an eventual ceasefire and resolving disputes emerging from the demobilisation.
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  • With the latest advances, only a few minor pending items remain, the biggest being how the final deal will be ratified and given legal force so that it will not unravel should a more conservative government succeed Santos, who leaves office in 2018. Santos has vowed to put the deal to a referendum so Colombians can express their opinion. Opinion polls show the Farc are widely despised among conservative Colombians and frustration with the rebels has grown as the talks have dragged on, making reconciliation seem more distant. The peace talks have been bumpy and extended much longer than Santos or anyone else anticipated. But if a final deal is reached it would bring an end to Latin America’s last major insurgency, one accused of being a major supplier of cocaine to the US, though the much-smaller and more recalcitrant National Liberation Army has a toehold in some areas and could fill the void left by the Farc.
  • The group of about 8,000 combatants, down from 17,000 in its heyday, is considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union. The Farc grew out of a 1960s peasant movement demanding land reform, and has been fighting successive governments ever since.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 16
     
    That should let land reforming rebels not to go into competition with the CIA's cocaiine smuggling racket. 
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'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...-list-33-most-intriguing-cases Clinton-Body-Count
shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17
     
    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
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NONE DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY  by Gary Allen - 1 views

www.whale.to/allen_b1.html Gary-Allen Larry-Abraham NDCIC
shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 14
     
    "NONE DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY" - Web Version Copyright © 1971 by Gary Allen with Larry Abraham  ISBN: 0899666612 Sourced INTRODUCTION 1. DON'T CONFUSE ME WITH FACTS 2. SOCIALISM - ROYAL ROAD TO POWER FOR THE SUPER-RICH 3. THE MONEY MANIPULATORS 4. BANKROLLING THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION 5. ESTABLISHING THE ESTABLISHMENT 6. THE ROCKEFELLERS AND THE REDS 7. PRESSURE FROM ABOVE AND PRESSURE FROM BELOW 8. YOU ARE THE ANSWER     FOURTEEN SIGNPOSTS TO SLAVERY     WHAT WILL YOU DO?     MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS NOMINATED AND APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT NIXON TO GOVERNMENT POSTS     OPERATION COUNTERATTACK WHAT THOSE "IN THE KNOW" SAY I wish that every citizen of every country in the free world and every slave behind the Iron Curtain might read this book. Ezra Taft Benson - Former Secretary of Agriculture NDCC is an admirable job of amassing information to prove that communism is socialism and socialism (a plot to enslave the world) is not a movement of the downtrodden but a scheme supported and directed by the wealthiest of people. If enough Americans read and act upon NDCC, they really can save the Republic from the conspirators - whose plans for the destruction of our country are galloping fast toward completion. Dan Smoot - Former Assistant to J. Edgar Hoover Now that NDCC is available, I no longer need to answer "no" to the question which is often put to me, namely: "Mr. Dodd, is there a book which I can read so I can know what you know?" No higher praise is possible for this book. Norman Dodd - Chief Investigator Reece Committee to Investigate Foundations This book concerns the way in which our nation and other nations are actually governed. As Benjamin Disaeli said, this is not the way in which most people think nations are governed. The whole subject of the Insiders who so largely control our political and economic lives is a fascinating mystery. For the reader who is intelligent but uninitiated in the literature of super
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EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...168135 Syria
shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Sep 13
     
    "Ghouta, Syria - As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week's chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit. ........ continued ............... Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much. The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad's guilt was "a judgment … already clear to the world." However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack. "My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry," said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a "tube-like structure" while others were like a "huge gas bottle." Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels. A
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Chaos - not Victory - is the Empire's "Name of the Game" | Global Research - Centre for... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5447540 war & peace banksters U.S.-foreign-policy military chaos instability
shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 15 - No Cached
  • “Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.” Global Research.  This could be anyone of the countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission. This is precisely the point: The Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assures the west a continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.
  • That’s the name of the game – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya…. you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS / ISIL / IS / DAISH / DAESH / Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just tags to confuse. You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 May 15
     
    More and more writers are beginning to recognize that victory is no longer the goal of U.S. military and foreign policy, that ongoing instability and chaos is. A tip of the hat is due Pepe Escobar, who years ago dubbed the U.S. the "Empire of Chaos." 
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Citizenfour's Laura Poitras suing US government over 'harassment' | Film | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-us-harassment-edward-snowden surveillance state DHS FOIA litigation Poitras
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The Oscar-winning documentary film-maker Laura Poitras is suing the US government demanding to know why she has repeatedly been subjected to “Kafkaesque harassment” at airports across the world. Poitras, 51, said she had been held at borders more than 50 times between 2006 and 2012, often for hours at a time. At various times she alleges being told by officials that she was on a “no fly” list, having her electronic equipment confiscated and not returned for 41 days, and being threatened with handcuffs for taking notes. The latter incident took place when she was working on a film about the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Poitras said she was launching the legal action, which demands the release of all documentation held on her tracking, targeting and questioning by agencies over the six year period, following the failure of a 2013 freedom of information request.
  • “I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the US border to bypass the rule of law,” said the film-maker in a statement, The Intercept reported. “This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy. I am also filing this suit in support of the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders. We have a right to know how this system works and why we are targeted.” Poitras has previously said she was placed on the Department of Homeland Security’s watch list in 2006 after returning home to the US following work on My Country, My Country. She says airport security told her officials had assigned her the highest “threat rating” possible, even though she had never been charged with a crime. She was repeatedly stopped until 2012, when the journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about her experiences.
  • Poitras’s reporting on the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, along with work by Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman contributed to the Pulitzer prize for public service won jointly by the Washington Post and the Guardian in 2014. Her film on Snowden, Citizenfour, won the 2015 Oscar for best documentary. The director is being represented by lawyers from digital-rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The well-documented difficulties Ms Poitras experienced while traveling strongly suggest that she was improperly targeted by federal agencies as a result of her journalistic activities,” senior counsel David Sobel told the Intercept. “Those agencies are now attempting to conceal information that would shed light on tactics that appear to have been illegal. We are confident that the court will not condone the government’s attempt to hide its misconduct under a veil of ‘national security.’”
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NSA tapped German Chancellery for decades, WikiLeaks claims | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ecades-wikileaks-claims-merkel surveillance state NSA NSA-targets Germany
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The US National Security Agency tapped phone calls involving German chancellor Angela Merkel and her closest advisers for years and spied on the staff of her predecessors, according to WikiLeaks. A report released by the group on Wednesday suggested NSA spying on Merkel and her staff had gone on far longer and more widely than previously realised. WikiLeaks said the NSA targeted 125 phone numbers of top German officials for long-term surveillance . The release risks renewing tensions between Germany and the US a month after they sought to put a row over spying behind them, with Barack Obama declaring in Bavaria that the two nations were “inseparable allies”. WikiLeaks published what it said were three NSA intercepts of Merkel’s conversations, and data it said listed telephone numbers for the chancellor, her aides, her office and even her fax machine. “The names associated with some of the targets indicate that spying on the Chancellery predates Angela Merkel as it includes staff of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (in office 1998-2002), and his predecessor Helmut Kohl,” WikiLeaks added in a statement.
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US-trained Syrian rebels refuse to fight ​al-Qaida group after kidnappings | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...usra-front-al-qaida-kidnapping war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy flop Division30
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • A group of Syrian rebels that includes fighters trained by the United States have declared their refusal to fight al-Qaida’s affiliate in the country, the Nusra Front, following a series of kidnappings by the militant group. A source in Division 30, which has endured a campaign of kidnappings by the Nusra Front, said they also oppose the American air strikes carried out in the last few days against the al-Qaida-linked fighters. The statements complicate the American strategy in Syria, which has suffered a string of setbacks and delays, deploying just over 50 fighters dedicated to fighting the terror group Islamic State in the year since its programme to train and equip rebels began. “With all the immense military power the US has at its disposal, the start to the mission is nothing short of an embarrassment and if it has any hope of succeeding, it needs to show results fast,” said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and an expert on Syrian insurgent groups. The Nusra Front launched a campaign of kidnappings and attacks against Division 30 shortly after the arrival of the first contingent of 50 to 60 US-trained fighters from Turkey, accusing the group of seeking to spread American influence.
  • The Qaida affiliate, whose fighters have pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, kidnapped Division 30’s overall commander last week along with six others as they planned an offensive against Isis positions in northern Aleppo. Nusra then attacked Division 30’s headquarters, killing five fighters and wounding 18 others, as the US-backed rebel group appealed for peace. The American-led coalition that has been assembled to fight Isis bombed Nusra positions in Syria in apparent retaliation. The US had previously targeted a Nusra-affiliated faction known as the Khorasan Group, which the Americans say is planning attacks against the west from inside Syria. Nusra’s leader has denied the group exists. Nusra’s campaign against the US-backed rebel unit continued this week, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring network with wide contacts inside Syria, saying Nusra kidnapped five more members of Division 30. A source in the US-backed group said those captured were actually families of the fighters.
  • It is unclear how many of the rebels actually trained by the US have been incapacitated in the campaign, with conflicting reports from activists and the rebel group itself, which says only one of its US-trained fighters has “disappeared”. In a new statement after the latest spate of kidnappings, Division 30 pledged never to fight Nusra and said it was focused on fighting Isis and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “Division 30 was formed by the honorable sons of Syria to free their nation from Assad’s gangs and Daesh [Isis],” the statement said. “Division 30 pledges before the Syrian people to commit to the principles under which it was formed and to not be dragged into any side battle with any faction, and that it has not fought and will not fight the Nusra Front or any other faction regardless of name or ideology.” A source in Division 30 told the Guardian the group still has members training with the US and that they opposed American airstrikes against Nusra. “We have nothing to do with the coalition strikes, that is the truth and we are opposed to strikes against the Nusra Front’s facilities to this day,” the source said. “Our goal is clear – Daesh followed by the regime.” The latest declarations raise questions about the ability of the US to influence the rebels it has trained on the ground, and the viability of such an effort within Syria’s complex web of insurgent politics and alliances, where Isis and Nusra have emerged as two of the most powerful groups fighting on the ground.
  • “The group almost certainly does not believe some of the things it has said lately, including protesting at US strikes on Nusra, but you can hardly blame them for such attempts at rescuing their credibility on the ground,” said Lister. “It’s quite telling in fact that a majority of the mainstream opposition now views Division 30 and the train and equip mission with intense suspicion – not only for the lack of regime focus, but for the disastrous start the 54 fighters have had.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15
     
    So the U.S. was planning on training 5,000 "moderate" Syrian rebels a year to first fight ISIL and then Assad. But after months of delay, they could only come up with 60 trainees. Now that "Division 60" is chewed up, leaderless, and refuses to fight. U.S. foreign poiicy seems to have issues in its implementation in the Mideast.
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Land Destroyer: Naming Names: Your Real Government - 1 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.com/...ames-your-real-government.html New-World-Order Globalist Banksters
shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Sep 11
     
    This is your real government; they transcend elected administrations, they permeate every political party, and they are responsible for nearly every aspect of the average American and European's way of life. When the "left" is carrying the torch for two "Neo-Con" wars, starting yet another based on the same lies, peddled by the same media outlets that told of Iraqi WMD's, the world has no choice, beyond profound cognitive dissonance, but to realize something is wrong. What's wrong is a system completely controlled by a corporate-financier oligarchy with financial, media, and industrial empires that span the globe. If we do not change the fact that we are helplessly dependent on these corporations that regulate every aspect of our nation politically, and every aspect of our lives personally, nothing else will ever change. The following list, however extensive, is by far not all-inclusive. However after these examples, a pattern should become self-evident with the same names and corporations being listed again and again. It should be self-evident to readers of how dangerously pervasive these corporations have become in our daily lives. Finally, it should be self-evident as to how necessary it is to excise these corporations from our lives, our communities, and ultimately our nations, with the utmost expediency.
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Report: Verizon Claimed Public Utility Status To Get Government Perks - Slashdot - 0 views

news.slashdot.org/...status-to-get-government-perks net-neutrality FCC Verizon banksters
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 14 - No Cached
  • Research for the Public Utility Law Project (PULP) has been released which details 'how Verizon deliberately moves back and forth between regulatory regimes, classifying its infrastructure either like a heavily regulated telephone network or a deregulated information service depending on its needs. The chicanery has allowed Verizon to raise telephone rates, all the while missing commitments for high-speed internet deployment' (PDF). In short, Verizon pushed for the government to give it common carrier privileges under Title II in order to build out its fiber network with tax-payer money. Result: increased service rates on telephone users to subsidize Verizon's 'infrastructure investment.' When it comes to regulations on Verizon's fiber network, however, Verizon has been pushing the government to classify its services as that of information only — i.e., beyond Title II. Verizon has made about $4.4 billion in additional revenue in New York City alone, 'money that's funneled directly from a Title II service to an array of services that currently lie beyond Title II's reach.' And it's all legal. An attorney at advocacy group Public Knowledge said it best: 'To expect that you can come in and use public infrastructure and funds to build a network and then be free of any regulation is absurd....When Verizon itself is describing these activities as a Title II common carrier, how can the FCC look at broadband internet and continue acting as though it's not a telecommunication network?'"
  • Paul Merrell on 29 May 14
     
    Let's also not forget that what is now named "Verizon" used to be named Bell Atlantic, one of the seven Baby Bells that were spun off by AT&T by government order during antitrust proceedings.  In other words, this is one of the companies rate-payers financed through a heavily-regulated analog telephony absolute monopoly. But Verizon wants to spread its wings and escape the chains of regulation as a telecommunications carrier. While having its cake and eating it to, according to this article. The FCC has poised itself through a proposed rule with the flexibility to postpone a decision on net neutrality.  AT&T famously was allowed to keep its R&D arm while being freed of the expense of upgrading the U.S. telephony network from analog to digital and from copper wire to fibre optic.  And pay for those Baby Bells to make that transition we did. I remember monthly bills for a two person office running as high as $1,100 a month for calls all carried from Baby Bell to AT&T and back to another Baby Bell. All at state-regulated rates with FCC looking the other way. But now Verizon, Comcast (the originally munipally regulated cable television monopolies) and the few other "competing" survivors of that broadband rollout, having had their infrastructure paid for by the ratepayers, want to fly off and begin charging us at the other end of the pipe,via charges to content providers that will be passed on to us. Leading to the squeezing out of Mom and Pop internet businesses by the big content providers that can afford the charges and pass them on to us. This is looking more and more like another massive rip-off of the customers who already paid for that infrasture. Is that banksters I smell, privatizing a enormous public utility in the name of free markets?      
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America's Real National Security Budget - A Trillion Dollars a Year - War Is ... - 0 views

medium.com/...on-dollars-a-year-42c2a2362e16 war & peace national-security-spending US
shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • On Feb. 2, the White House rolled out its military and intelligence budget proposal for 2016—and it’s a doozy. The administration wants $534 billion for the Pentagon’s normal “base” budget plus another $51 billion for combat operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East.That’s $585 billion combined, $25 billion more than Congress approved last year. Washington conceals spending on the country’s 16 spy agencies—as much as $80 billion—largely inside the main Pentagon budget.But the official numbers don’t reflect the true cost of America’s wars and national defense. In reality, the United States spends closer to trillion dollars a year on its current and former soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, intel agents and their equipment—and also the paramilitary “homeland security” personnel whose equivalents in many other countries are uniformed troops.The U.S. Coast Guard, for instance.
  • Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information—part of the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C.—has helpfully crunched some of the numbers.Smithberger counts $1.003 trillion in national security spending in the administration’s 2016 budget proposal. That includes the Pentagon’s $534-billion base budget and the $51-billion war fund, which Smithberger points out “is traditionally used as a slush fund to pay for [Defense Department] priorities that couldn’t make it into the base budget.”
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South Africa spied on own government to get facts on joint project with Russia | World ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...nt-facts-joint-russian-project surveillance state South-Africa spy-on-spy satellite
shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Read the leaked document here
  • South Africa’s intelligence service relied on a spy “with direct access to the Russian government” to find out details of its own government’s involvement in a $100m (£65m) joint satellite surveillance programme with Russia, the leaked spy cables obtained by al-Jazeera and shared with the Guardian reveal. The satellite system, known as Project Condor, which was launched into orbit by Russia in December last year, provides surveillance coverage of the entire African continent. The project has been shrouded in secrecy, with Russia originally refusing to reveal who its client was. Those in the dark appear to have included South Africa’s intelligence agency. But a South African agent with access to Russian military intelligence was able to help, according to a leaked espionage report marked “top secret” and dated 28 August 2012.
  • The intelligence report records a briefing from an agent codenamed “Agent Africanist”, who is identified as having direct links with the government in Moscow and Russian intelligence officers, including those closely involved in the joint satellite project. Project Condor would, the agent reported, place “South Africa in a position to conduct its own aerial surveillance in Africa, potentially right up to Israel for strategic military purposes”. The satellite system, which is reported to be costing Pretoria $100m, has been the focus of criticism in South Africa since some details emerged in local media. The scheme, first proposed eight years ago, has been reported as being the pet project of General Moretti Motau, former head of South African military intelligence, who has now retired and sits on the board of the weapons firm Armscorp.
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If you thought the Isis war couldn't get any worse, just wait for more of the CIA | Tre... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...is-war-cia-arming-rebels-syria war & peace CIA Obama blunders
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • As the war against the Islamic State in Syria has fallen into even more chaos – partially due to the United States government’s increasing involvement there – the White House’s bright new idea seems to be to ramping up the involvement of the intelligence agency that is notorious for making bad situations worse. As the Washington Post reported late Friday, “The Obama administration has been weighing plans to escalate the CIA’s role in arming and training fighters in Syria, a move aimed at accelerating covert U.S. support to moderate rebel factions while the Pentagon is preparing to establish its own training bases.” Put aside for a minute that the Central Intelligence Agency has been secretly arming Syrian rebels with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and antitank weapons since at least 2012 – and with almost nothing to show for it. Somehow the Post neglected to cite a front-page New York Times article from just one month ago alerting the public to the existence of a still-classified internal CIA study admitting that arming rebels with weapons has rarely – if ever – worked
  • Even America’s top spies know that arming rebels is ‘doomed to failure’ – but that can’t stop Obama’s gun-running operation
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Nov 14
     
    Masterful Obama takedown by Trevor Timm.
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FBI monitored and critiqued African American writers for decades | Books | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...merican-writers-j-edgar-hoover surveillance state FBI Hoover black-American-writers
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Newly declassified documents from the FBI reveal how the US federal agency under J Edgar Hoover monitored the activities of dozens of prominent African American writers for decades, devoting thousands of pages to detailing their activities and critiquing their work. Academic William Maxwell first stumbled upon the extent of the surveillance when he submitted a freedom of information request for the FBI file of Claude McKay. The Jamaican-born writer was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, author of the sonnet If We Must Die, supposedly recited by Winston Churchill, and Maxwell was preparing an edition of his complete poems. When the file came through from the FBI, it stretched to 193 pages and, said Maxwell, revealed “that the bureau had closely read and aggressively chased McKay” – describing him as a “notorious negro revolutionary” – “all across the Atlantic world, and into Moscow”.
  • Maxwell, associate professor of English and African American studies at Washington University in St Louis, decided to investigate further, knowing that other scholars had already found files on well-known black writers such as Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. He made 106 freedom of information requests about what he describes as “noteworthy Afro-modernists” to the FBI; 51 of those writers had files, ranging from three to 1,884 pages each. “I suspected there would be more than a few,” said Maxwell. “I knew Hoover was especially impressed and worried by the busy crossroads of black protest, leftwing politics, and literary potential. But I was surprised to learn that the FBI had read, monitored, and ‘filed’ nearly half of the nationally prominent African American authors working from 1919 (Hoover’s first year at the Bureau, and the first year of the Harlem Renaissance) to 1972 (the year of Hoover’s death and the peak of the nationalist Black Arts movement). In this, I realised, the FBI had outdone most every other major institution of US literary study, only fitfully concerned with black writing.”
  • Maxwell’s book about his discovery, FB Eyes: How J Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature, is out on 18 February from Princeton University Press. It argues that the FBI’s attention was fuelled by Hoover’s “personal fascination with black culture”, that “the FBI is perhaps the most dedicated and influential forgotten critic of African American literature”, and that “African American literature is characterised by a deep awareness of FBI ghostreading”.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Digital copies of 49 of the FBI files have been made available to the public online. “The collected files of the entire set of authors comprise 13,892 pages, or the rough equivalent of 46 300-page PhD theses,” Maxwell writes in the book. “FBI ghostreaders genuinely rivalled the productivity of their academic counterparts.” The academic told the Guardian that he believes the FBI monitoring stems from the fact that “from the beginning of his tenure at the FBI ... Hoover was exercised by what he saw as an emerging alliance between black literacy and black radicalism”.
  • The files show how the travel arrangements of black writers were closely scrutinised by the FBI, with the passport records of a long list of authors “combed for scraps of criminal behaviour and ‘derogatory information’”, writes Maxwell. Some writers were threatened by “‘stops’, instructions to advise and defer to the Bureau if a suspect tried to pass through a designated point of entry” to the US.
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