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5th International Conference on Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery - 0 views

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    Conference Name: 5th International Conference on Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery Short Conference Name: Cardiac Surgery 2019 Theme: Boost up with New Challenges and Innovations in Cardiology Organizer: Meetings International Link: https://www.meetingsint.com/Conferences/cardiacsurgery Conference Dates: May 22-23, 2019 Conference Venue: Golden Tulip Berlin hotel Hamburg 317, landgrafenstae 410787, Berlin, Germany Name: Jessica Personal e-mail: jessy00363@gmail.com Conference e-mail: cardiacsurgery...
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M of A - Sistani Orders Turkey Out Of Iraq - Syria Oppo-Conference Fails - 0 views

  • After the U.S. invasion of Iraq the U.S vice consul Paul Bremer tried to install a handpicked Iraqi government.  The top Shia religious authority in Iraq, Grand Ajatollah Sistani, demanded a democratic vote. The issue was thereby decided. There was no way the U.S could have circumvented Sisitani's edict without a massive revolt by the 65% of Iraqis who are Shia and mostly follow his advice. Bremer had to fold. Now Ajatollah Sistani takes position against the Turkish invasion of Iraq: Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on the government on Friday to show "no tolerance" of any infringement of the country's sovereignty, after Turkey deployed heavily armed troops to northern Iraq. Sistani's spokesman, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi Karbala'i, did not explicitly name Turkey, but a row over the deployment has badly soured relations between Ankara and Baghdad, which denies having agreed to it. ... "The Iraqi government is responsible for protecting Iraq's sovereignty and must not tolerate and side that infringes upon on it, whatever the justifications and necessities," Karbalai'i said in a weekly sermon. The issue is thereby decided. Turkish troops will have to leave or will have to decisively defeat all Shia of Iraq (and Iran). If Erdogan were smart he would now order the Turkish troops stationed near Mosul to leave Iraq.
  • The Russian President Putin also increased pressure on Turkey: President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered Russia's armed forces to act in an "extremely tough way" in Syria to protect Russian forces striking Islamic State targets there. "Any targets threatening our (military) group or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed," Putin said, speaking at a Defence Ministry event. Note to Erdogan: Beware of funny ideas...
  • There was some Syrian opposition conference yesterday in Saudi Arabia were the Saudis tried to bribe everyone to agree on a common position. But the conference failed. Some 116 delegates took part under "international guidance" of their various sponsors. A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda aligned Ahrar al Sham, which closely cooperates with the al-Qaeda entity Jabhat al Nusra in Syria, also took part. No women were present. The conference resulted in the decision to hold another conference. The 116 delegates at the conference decided to select 33 delegates for a conference which would decide on 15 delegates to confer and maybe take part in some negotiations with the Syrian government side. The NYT's Ben Hubbard, who was there, tweeted: Ben Hubbard @NYTBen ...The meeting created yet another new opposition body, a high commission, meant to oversee negotiations. There was debate about how large it should be and what proportion should represent armed groups. Final was 32, changed after meetings to 33. Those 33 now tasked with choosing a 15 person negotiating team. So, yeah, umbrella groups making a new umbrella.
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  • The political demands the conference agreed upon include non-starters for negotiations like the demand that the Syrian President Assad would leave within 6 weeks of the negotiations start. There was also this illuminating word game: Islamist delegates objected to using the word “democracy” in the final statement, so the term “democratic mechanism” was used instead, according to a member of one such group who attended the meeting. The Ahrar al-Sham delegate at the meeting signed the deal while the Ahrar al Sham bigwigs, who took not part, damned the deal and announced they were completely against it. They demand an Islamic State in Syria that would follow their militant Salafi line of believe. Hubbard again: Ben Hubbard ‏@NYTBen Re: @Ahrar_Alsham2. It's main delegate did not walk out. Before meeting ended, members not present released statement announcing withdrawal. The session's moderator said Ahrar delegate was not aware of statement by his group until later, but did sign the final communiqué. Then Ahrar members like @aleesa71 and @a_azraeel complained on Twitter, suggesting a split between military and political leaders.
  • The Saudi and Qatari Wahhabi rulers want Ahrar al Sham to be part of any future solution in Syria. They hired "western" think tanks like Brookings Doha to propagandize that Ahrar is "moderate". But Ahrar can not be "moderate" when it is fighting together with al-Qaeda and kills civilians because they are "unbelievers". It is now in an uncomfortable position. If it takes part in a peace conference with the Syrian government its Jabhat al-Nusra ally will roast it, if it doesn't take part its Saudi and Qartari financiers will fry it. Since the start of the war on Syria no unity has been achieved in the opposition of the Syrian government. The U.S., in form of the CIA head John Brennan, teamed up (again) with al-Qaeda while the State Department tried to sponsor more "moderates". The ensuing chaos continues today. To prevent further blowback from this nonsense strategy will obviously require a change towards a position that supports the Syrian government. It is doubtful that the U.S. is capable of such foresight and flexibility.
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Netanyahu and Trump: A Shared Focus on Terrorism « LobeLog - 0 views

  • Scholars of terrorism credit a specific 1979 symposium in Jerusalem as a turning point in the U.S. and international usage of “terrorism” as we understand it today. The Jonathan Institute, founded following the death of Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan during a raid to rescue hostages from a PLO hijacking, hosted a 1979 conference in Jerusalem— and a follow up in 1984 in Washington—on “International Terrorism.” Directed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jonathan Institute maintained close ties to the Israeli government. Current and former Israeli officials across the political spectrum—including Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Ezer Weizman, Moshe Dayan, and Shimon Peres—dominated its administrative committee. Lisa Stampnitsky, in her 2013 book Disciplining Terror, discusses how the Jonathan Institute helped internationalize Israel’s use of the term to describe terrorist violence as both irrational and illegitimate in both means and ends, and as primarily targeting democracies and “the West.” Previously, she notes, terrorism referred largely to rational political violence, either state or individual, and was dealt with as an issue of criminality and law. The shift helped Israel delegitimize the political aims of certain groups, such as the Palestinian resistance to its colonization and territorial occupation. One cannot be a “freedom fighter” if one’s political aims are demonized as illegitimate or irrational. Stampnitsky argues that the shift to using terrorism to describe violence outside the law also set the stage for retaliatory strikes (such as the 1986 U.S. air strikes in Libya in response to a bombing at a Berlin disco that killed an American soldier) and eventually for the doctrine of preemptive force that has characterized the post-9/11 “War on Terror.”
  • Israel’s role in the development of a specifically anti-Muslim discourse of terrorism is deeply intertwined with the foreign policies of American politicians. As Deepa Kumar and others have pointed out, American neocons and Israel’s Likud party jointly developed a shared language around Islamic terrorism. The 1979 Jonathan Institute conference was attended by prominent American officials and political figures, including future President George H.W. Bush and representatives of the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Commentary magazine who brought the ideas, and later a follow-up conference, back to the U.S. Intended to serve as an intervention into the international discourse on terrorism, the explicit aim of the Jerusalem conference was to awaken the Western world to the problem of terrorism as defined by the conference organizers. It contributed to entrenching in the minds of American conservatives what was popularized a few years later as the “clash of civilizations,” firmly situating Israel in the category of Western democracies threatened by Soviets and Palestinians. The follow-up conference in the United States in 1984 went further by emphasizing the relationship between Islam and terror. As Netanyahu himself wrote in the book that came out of the conference: “the battle against terrorism was part of a much larger struggle, one between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism.” Then, as now, Netanyahu presented Israel as the bulwark against terrorism, a specific kind of illegitimate political violence that threatens not just Israel but all democracies and the Western world.
  • Echoes of this framing of the debate on terrorism can be found in how Western politicians, including Netanyahu and Trump, discuss the issue. Terrorism, which has no single agreed-upon definition in U.S. or international law, now serves as a moniker applied to all violence that established states deem illegitimate. Most often these days, Western democracies use “terrorism” to describe violence committed by Muslims. As journalist Glenn Greenwald writes, “In other words, any violence by Muslims against the West is inherently ‘terrorism,’ even if targeted only at soldiers at war and/or designed to resist invasion and occupation.” The term functions not as a descriptive tool but an ideological one. It doesn’t merely identify a particular kind of violence. It justifies and even requires a particular kind of forceful response by the state. Israel today presents itself as the world’s expert on counterterrorism. It maintains a profitable security industry predicated on selling expertise and technology tested in its interactions with Palestinians. American tax dollars have been funneled into this industry through U.S. military aid, over 25% of which Israel was allowed to spend domestically (the new military aid deal signed by the Obama White House will phase out this allowance over the next 10 years, sending the rest of the $3.8 billion per year to U.S. defense contractors). The United States and Israel collaborate on counterterrorism initiatives, including joint military exercises and police exchange programs. Here tactics and skills are developed and exchanged for surveillance and violent repression of protests that primarily impact Muslims and people of color in the U.S. and Palestinians and Black Jews in Israel.
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  • In this context, Trump’s framing of his anti-Muslim immigration policies as a national security priority to keep out terrorists is nothing new. What is new in this political moment is the extent to which the U.S. public is seeing straight through this discourse and rallying against discrimination and bigotry. Ahead of Trump and Netanyahu’s meeting this week, there’s an opportunity to pay attention to how these discourses have enabled Israel to justify decades of military occupation and human rights abuses with the discourse of national security and counterterrorism. As the Trump administration goes back to the drawing board to devise restrictive immigration policies that will hold up in court, Netanyahu and Israel’s example shouldn’t be far from mind.
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Netanyahu 'spat in our face,' White House officials said to say | The Times of Israel - 0 views

  • he White House’s outrage over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to speak before Congress in March — a move he failed to coordinate with the administration — began to seep through the diplomatic cracks on Friday, with officials telling Haaretz the Israeli leader had “spat” in President Barack Obama’s face.
  • “We thought we’ve seen everything,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying. “But Bibi managed to surprise even us.
  • “There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price,” he said. Officials in Washington said that the “chickenshit” epithet — with which an anonymous administration official branded Netanyahu several months ago — was mild compared to the language used in the White House when news of Netanyahu’s planned speech came in. In his address the Israeli leader is expected to speak about stalled US-led nuclear negotiations with Iran, and to urge lawmakers to slap Tehran with a new round of tougher sanctions in order to force it to comply with international demands. The Mossad intelligence service on Thursday went to the rare length of issuing a press statement to deny claims, cited by Kerry, that its chief Tamir Pardo had told visiting US politicians that he opposed further sanctions.
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  • The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu’s apparent disrespect for the US leadership was particularly offensive to Secretary of State John Kerry, who over the past month had made frenzied efforts on Israel’s behalf on the world stage — making dozens of calls to world leaders to convince them to oppose a UN Security Council resolution which would have set a timeframe for the establishment of a Palestinian state. “The secretary’s patience is not infinite,” a source close to Kerry told the Post. “The bilateral relationship is unshakable. But playing politics with that relationship could blunt Secretary Kerry’s enthusiasm for being Israel’s primary defender.”
  • Israel is scheduled to hold elections on March 17. Netanyahu confirmed Thursday that he would address Congress in early March. He was initially slated to speak on February 11, but changed the date so he could attend the AIPAC conference.
  • “I look forward to the opportunity to express before the joint session Israel’s vision for a joint effort to deal with [Islamist terrorism and Iran’s nuclear program], and to emphasize Israel’s commitment to the special bond between our two democracies,” Netanyahu said, according to the statement.
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    Netanyahu is getting pounded in the Israeli press for offending Obama. It is hihgly significant that Netanyahu changed the date for his speech to Congress to coincide with the annual AIPAC conference.  During the AIPAC conference, hundreds of Isarel-firsters descend on Washington, D.C., get their marching orders and scripts, and fan out to descend on the offices of members of Congress. Then nearly all members of Congress will reciprocate by attending Netanyahu's speech to the AIPAC conference and giving him many standing ovations as he addresses the joint session of Congress. (24 standing ovations on his last speech to Congress). It is a sickening display of disloyalty to America but you don't get to stay in Congress if you speak out against AIPAC because AIPAC will arrange for your opponent in the next election to get very big bucks and you will be subjected to merciless rumor warfare.   But in any event, this will be an all-out effort to get Congress to enact more sanctions against Iran. Netanyu's goal will be a veto proof super-majority. If he gets that and Congress overrides Obama's veto, that will be the end of the negotiations with Iran. And Netanyahu's read is that if he can take credit for scuttling the Iran negotations, that will translate into votes in the Israeli election scheduled for two weeks after his speech to Congress. 
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http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/asp/press%20releases/press%20releases%202010/Pages/revi... - 0 views

  • On 11 June 2010, the Review Conference of the Rome Statute concluded in Kampala, Uganda, after meeting for two weeks. Around 4600 representatives of States, and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations attended the Conference.
  • The Conference adopted a resolution by which it amended the Rome Statute so as to include a definition of the crime of aggression and the conditions under which the Court could exercise jurisdiction with respect to the crime. The actual exercise of jurisdiction is subject to a decision to be taken after 1 January 2017 by the same majority of States Parties as is required for the adoption of an amendment to the Statute. The Conference based the definition of the crime of aggression on United Nations General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, and in this context agreed to qualify as aggression, a crime committed by a political or military leader which, by its character, gravity and scale constituted a manifest violation of the Charter. As regards the Court’s exercise of jurisdiction, the Conference agreed that a situation in which an act of aggression appeared to have occurred could be referred to the Court by the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, irrespective as to whether it involved States Parties or non-States Parties.
  • Moreover, while acknowledging the Security Council’s role in determining the existence of an act of aggression, the Conference agreed to authorize the Prosecutor, in the absence of such determination, to initiate an investigation on his own initiative or upon request from a State Party. In order to do so, however, the Prosecutor would have to obtain prior authorization from the Pre-Trial Division of the Court. Also, under these circumstances, the Court would not have jurisdiction in respect to crimes of aggression committed on the territory of non-States Parties or by their nationals or with regard to States Parties that had declared that they did not accept the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression.
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    WIth the caveat that these measures must stiil be approved by the signatories to the Rome Convention, the addition of aggression to the list of war crimes that the International Criminal Court takes  jurisdiction over will drastically contract the number of nations that high officials who have launched wars of aggression will dare travel to.  The Barack Obamas, George W. Bushes, Tony Blairs, and  Benyamin Netanyahus of the world will have to plan their travel much more selectively.   The measure is expected to be adopted.
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Activist Post: 5 Reasons The Latest Report On Syria War Crimes Might Not Be True - 0 views

  • In a recently released and conveniently timed report, complete with references to Nazi Germany and concentration camps, efforts to ramp up support for a “tough line” against Syria at the upcoming Geneva II conference and even possible military intervention, are once again moving into high gear. The report, compiled by three British war crime prosecutors and three “forensic experts” claims that it has demonstrable proof that the Assad government is guilty of torturing and killing over ten thousand people. The report (accessed here) claims to show evidence of physical torture, murder, and starvation. Of course, the Syrian government denies the veracity of the claims of the report and Western media outlets repeat the claims as incontrovertible proof.
  • However, while the final determination of whether or not these claims are accurate is yet to be made, there exist ample reasons to question the assertions made in the report. 1. The Gulf State Feudal Monarchy Qatar is the sponsor of the report. Qatar is, of course, one of the major sponsors of the Syrian invasion (aka the Syrian “rebels”) and has played a massively important role in financing, training, arming, and directing the death squads currently being mopped up by the Assad government. 2. The source of the report. One would be justified in questioning the nature of the report since the sole source of the material comes by virtue of an allegedly “defected Syrian military police officer” who was apparently fine with photographing thousands of dead victims for over a year until now. Regardless of the possibility for such a “moral” conversion, taking information from a “defected” member of government forces once again returns us to the realm of the “activists say” school of journalism – a notorious method used by Western media outlets to promote the side of the death squads and only the side of the death squads as fact in popular reports.
  • 3. Past claims of Assad’s “Crimes Against Humanity.” It is important to remember past experiences with Western claims against Assad for alleged “crimes against humanity,” all of which turned out to have been committed by the death squads, not the Syrian government. From the Houla massacre to the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks, the Syrian government has been exonerated by all credible evidence. The death squads, however, have been proven guilty by virtue of their own video tapes and Youtube accounts, guilty of some of the most horrific acts imaginable. While many innocent people have no doubt been killed in the crossfire between the military and the death squads, the Western media has done everything in its power to place the blood of each and every death inside Syria in the hands of the government. Let us also not forget the other famous Codename, “Curveball,” that played a major role in the initiation of a previous and still ongoing conflict that was later admitted to be a fabrication. Being fooled by the same type of propaganda twice in ten years is indeed a humiliation too great for a country to bear.
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  • 4.) Possibility that the death squads could have killed the victims shown in the report. The victims shown in the report have clearly been abused and starved. However, before jumping to conclusions about just how these unfortunate individuals met their fate, perhaps it would be a good idea to look back at the context of the victims. As mentioned earlier, the death squads operating in Syria are no strangers to crimes against humanity, murder, and torture. In fact, they have been both the initiators of such depravity and overwhelmingly the largest proprietors of it. Furthermore, the fact that the victims were starved does not necessarily mean that they were starved by the government. Indeed, it is important to remember that, due to the siege of a number of cities by both the military and the death squads as well as due to death squad cruelty and attempted cordoning off of specific areas, food shortage has been a serious concern in some areas for some time. There is also plentiful evidence of death squad groups killing innocent people and shipping their bodies to the places where cameras are set up, waiting for the recording of the propaganda piece. The Ghouta chemical attack is just one instance in which innocent civilians were captured and killed by the death squads and used as stage props for propaganda purposes.
  • Indeed, it is also important to remember that the death squads themselves are quite adept at keeping prisoners in atrocious conditions. Only a few months back, it was reported that the Syrian military was able to free a number of captive Syrian women from the hands of the death squads who had kept them in captivity in underground tunnels for months on end for the purposes of using them as sex slaves. 5.) The report was conveniently released just two days before the Geneva II Peace Conference meeting on Syria. After the retraction of an invitation to Iran to attend the peace Conference, the Qatari-funded report was released just two days before the peace Conference was scheduled to take place. With such evidence being studied and analyzed and a report being compiled, to believe that it was only a coincidence that the information was released two days before the Conference is absurd. If this evidence was real and of such grave importance why are world leaders only learning of it now? If world leaders knew, why are we only learning of it now? Considering all of the information provided in this article, taken in conjunction with the “convenient” timing of the release of the reports (convenient, at least, for the enemies of Syria), such reports should be taken with a large grain of salt. The Western media has not only been wrong, but has lied on so many occasions in the past, that it cannot be expected to tell the truth now.
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The Daily Dot - The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple's iPhone - 0 views

  • The U.S. National Security Agency has the ability to snoop on nearly every communication sent from an Apple iPhone, according to leaked documents shared by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and German news magazine Der Spiegel.  An NSA program called DROPOUTJEEP allows the agency to intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device’s microphone and camera. 
  • According to leaked documents, the NSA claims a 100 percent success rate when it comes to implanting iOS devices with spyware. The documents suggest that the NSA needs physical access to a device to install the spyware—something the agency has achieved by rerouting shipments of devices purchased online—but a remote version of the exploit is also in the works. Appelbaum says that presents one of two possibilities: “Either [the NSA] have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce, and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves,” Appelbaum said at the Chaos Communication Conference in Hamburg, Germany. 
  • “Do you think Apple helped them with that?” Appelbaum asked. “I hope Apple will clarify that.”
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    Nice image of a very revealing NSA document and an embedded video of Appelbaum's presentation at the annual Chaos Communication Conference in Hamburg, Germany.  Much of this year's Conference was devoted to issues raised by this year's outing of the NSA's activities. 
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Stansberry's Investment Advisory - 0 views

    • Gary Edwards
       
      excerpt: THE FOLLOWING IS A FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION OF A PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ADDRESSING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, FROM THE EAST ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE Set in December 2012, this speech details what we believe The President might say on the day America's foreign creditors finally stop lending us money, and demand repayment for our country's debts. The largest debts EVER accumulated in the history of mankind. intro: Barack Obama Impersonator Records Shocking "Speech"  It may be fiction for now... But this eye-opening "speech," recently recorded by a Barack Obama impersonator, is sending shock waves through the financial community. It could forever change how you think about our country and your safety. 
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    Comment:  While researching the September 2008 financial collapse, a freind introduced me to Porter Stansberry (thanks Marux!).  I've been following Porter through the Daily Crux Report ever since, and, as extreme as his opinions appear, time and again he has proven to be drop dead right.  This latest presentation summarizes Porter's thinking and is buttressed with facts and quotes.  The first part of the presentation is a fictional press conference dated December 2012.  This about 15 minutes.  Porter then follows that with near 45 minutes of facts and quotes woven into a comprehensive summary of how we got into this mess and what the possible outcomes going forward.   The basics are simple enough: the combination of Government borrowing, spending, printing and regulating is killing the dollar.  Our currency is very special in that it's the world's reserve currency; a good fortune that has unfortunately resulted in our spending and borrowing way more than we produce.  On top of this dilemma, the financial crisis of 2008 resulted in the world's Banksters offloading their $Trillions of debt and losses onto the US Treasury; the taxpayers.  So now we have the taxpayers holding the debt of an out of control socialist government spending, borrowing, and regulating us into the dirt regulating.  And, these same taxpayers picking up all the losses of the World's most greedy and evil criminals - the Banksters.  At the center of it all is the Federal Reserve, a world Bankster cartel in control of our currency, and printing it out like there's no tomorrow.  Porter talks about that tomorrow, and what it might look like if we the people do not take back our government and our currency.   excerpt: THE FOLLOWING IS A FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION OF A PRESS conference BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ADDRESSING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, FROM THE EAST ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE Set in December 2012, this speech details what we believe The President might say on the day America's fore
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Defending Dissent » New Docs Show Army Coordinated Spy Ring - 1 views

  • Army illegally supplied  intelligence on nonviolent antiwar protesters to FBI and police in multiple states Tacoma, WA – Recently obtained public records confirm an Army-led, multi-agency spy network that targeted “leftists/anarchists” as domestic terrorists. The Army used illegal infiltration to gather information on nonviolent antiwar protesters, disseminate it to the FBI and police departments in multiple states, and in some cases used it to disrupt planned protests by preemptively and falsely arresting activists. Public records obtained last month by Olympia activist Paul French reveal new evidence in the widely-watched Army spying case Panagacos v. Towery. An email from November 2007, in particular, shows that intelligence analyst John J. Towery was paid by the Army to infiltrate political groups and share unlawfully obtained intelligence with a growing network of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, and police departments in Los Angeles, Portland, Eugene, Everett, and Spokane. The Towery email not only represents a broader spying program than previously thought, it also confirms the program was led by the Army, a fact contradicted by Towery’s 2009 sworn statements.
  • “The latest revelations show how the Army not only engaged in illegal spying on political dissidents, it led the charge and tried to expand the counterintelligence network targeting leftists and anarchists,” said Larry Hildes, a National Lawyers Guild attorney who filed the Panagacos lawsuit in 2010. “By targeting activists without probable cause, based on their ideology and the perceived political threat they represent, the Army clearly broke the law and must be held accountable.” Previously obtained public records indicate that absent such accountability, the Army will continue to spy on and target protesters, which it did until at least 2010, long after Towery’s identity was exposed. Public records previously obtained in 2009 already established that over a two-year period beginning in 2006, Towery (under the alias “John Jacob”) spied on the Olympia antiwar group Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) as well as several other organizations, including Students for a Democratic Society, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Iraq Veterans Against the War. It has also already been established that Towery’s intelligence was passed on to the Washington State Fusion Center, a communications hub of  local, state and federal law enforcement, and then used by local police to target activists for repeated harassment, preemptive and false arrest, excessive use of force, and malicious prosecution
  • The recently disclosed Towery email was a follow-up to a 2007 Domestic Terrorism Conference he attended in Spokane, during which “domestic terrorist” dossiers on some of the Panagacos plaintiffs were distributed. The Towery email shows the development of a multi-agency spying apparatus in intimate detail. “I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro,” wrote the Army analyst to several law enforcement officials. Towery references books, “zines and pamphlets,” and a “comprehensive web list” as source material, but cautions the officials on file sharing “because it might tip off groups that we are studying their techniques, tactics and procedures.” Towery, who worked at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, not only coordinated his actions with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, many of whom are named defendants in the Panagacos case, he also admitted to eavesdropping on a confidential, privileged attorney-client email listserv of criminal defendants and their legal counsel. Such conduct is considered a constitutional violation, but Towery also took sensitive information from the listserv vital to a pending criminal trial in 2007 and passed it on to fusion center officials who then transmitted it to prosecutors, forcing a mistrial in a case the defense was winning handily. The case was later dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct.
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  • The public records disclosure comes as government spying and criticism of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program has reached a fever pitch. However, a little-known and rarely, if ever, enforced law from 1878 distinguishes the spying under Panagacos from that of the NSA. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from enforcing domestic laws on U.S. soil by making such actions a Gross Misdemeanor, yet to-date no official has been prosecuted under the Act. Instead of conceding to the violations, the Army is currently using the Panagacos case to try to seal nearly 10,000 pages of documents, many of which are incriminating and embarrassing to the government. The legal effort to unseal those documents will play out over the next few weeks. The Obama Administration tried to dismiss the Panagacos lawsuit, but in a Ninth Circuit decision from December 2012 the court rejected the government’s arguments, ruling that allegations of First and Fourth Amendment violations were “plausible,” and ordered the case to proceed to trial. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of seven PMR members who sought to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through nonviolent civil disobedience and is being heard by U.S. District Court Judge Ronald B. Leighton. In addition to Towery, named defendants in Panagacos include Thomas Rudd, one of Towery’s superiors at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Coast Guard, as well as certain officials within its ranks, the City of Olympia and its police department, the City of Tacoma and its police department, Pierce County, and various personnel from those jurisdictions.
  • Panagacos v. Towery is currently in the discovery stage and is scheduled to go to trial in June 2014. Further information: Recently disclosed Towery email Panagacos lawsuit complaint Domestic terrorism dossiers on plaintiffs
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    One I had missed from February, 2014. I believe I had bookmarked something about this before the lawsuit was filed. Now not only has the case been filed but the alleged grounds for the lawsuit have been greenlighted by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If you click through the link to the court's opinion, you'll find one of the Ninth Circuit's shorter opinions, less than five pages, which does not even mention that the defendants were employed by the U.S. Army or any branch of government, while still rejecting their claim of government officials' qualified immunity from suit for the alleged First and Fourth Amendment violations. The third amended complaint sufficiently alleged facts to support claims that had been clearly established as violative of the First and Fourth Amendments.   It's clear that the plaintiffs have smoking gun evidence and that the National Lawyers' Guild is all over this one. Trial is scheduled next month, according to the article. It's just under 300 miles from here to Seattle, but I just might make the trip to watch a few days of this trial. Strong First Amendment cases for damages that survive appellate review of the qualified immunity nearly always settle before trial. But this one smells like it is going to trial for publicity purposes even if not for the vindication of rights, considering the nature of the organizations involved both as targets of the surveillance and their lawyers. It's great entertainment watching government guys and gals squirm on the witness stand when they've been caught violating civil rights. In criminal cases, invoking the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination cannot be taken as evidence of guilt. But in a federal civil rights case, that entitles the plaintiffs to have the jury instructed that it can infer liability from the resort to the Fifth Amendment to refuse answering questions.  Better back in the day when I was the lawyer asking the questions. But it's still great fun just to watch
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Obama's "Catastrophic Defeat" in Ukraine » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Nam... - 0 views

  • “We are currently witnessing an epic and historic event. The Ukrainian regular army and the punitive battalions are suffering a catastrophic defeat to the south of Donetsk…..It still is not quite clear how the Junta intends to avoid a complete defeat here…. By squandering the most combat-capable brigades in systematic offensive operations, the Junta sustained enormous losses and at the same time suffered a crushing, purely military defeat. The southern front has collapsed.” – The Southern Front Catastrophe – August 27, 2014″, Colonel Cassad, Military Briefing, Novorossiya, Ukraine “The reports out of Novorussia (New Russia) are nothing short of incredible… sources are reporting that Novorussian forces have bypassed Mariupol from the north and have entered the Zaporozhie region!” – News from the Front, Vineyard of the Saker Barack Obama has pushed Ukraine to the brink of political, economic and social collapse. Now he wants to blame Russia for the damage he’s done. It’s absurd. Moscow is in no way responsible for Ukraine’s descent into anarchy. That’s all Washington’s doing, just as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria were Washington’s doing. If you want to blame someone, blame Obama.
  • “We are currently witnessing an epic and historic event. The Ukrainian regular army and the punitive battalions are suffering a catastrophic defeat to the south of Donetsk…..It still is not quite clear how the Junta intends to avoid a complete defeat here…. By squandering the most combat-capable brigades in systematic offensive operations, the Junta sustained enormous losses and at the same time suffered a crushing, purely military defeat. The southern front has collapsed.” – The Southern Front Catastrophe – August 27, 2014″, Colonel Cassad, Military Briefing, Novorossiya, Ukraine “The reports out of Novorussia (New Russia) are nothing short of incredible… sources are reporting that Novorussian forces have bypassed Mariupol from the north and have entered the Zaporozhie region!” – News from the Front, Vineyard of the Saker Barack Obama has pushed Ukraine to the brink of political, economic and social collapse. Now he wants to blame Russia for the damage he’s done. It’s absurd. Moscow is in no way responsible for Ukraine’s descent into anarchy. That’s all Washington’s doing, just as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria were Washington’s doing. If you want to blame someone, blame Obama.
  • Ukraine’s troubles began when the US State Department toppled the elected president in February and replaced him with a compliant stooge who agreed to follow Washington’s directives. The new “junta” government quickly launched a full-blown war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east which split the civilian population and drove the country to ruin. The plan “pacify” the East was concocted in Washington, not Kiev and certainly not Moscow.
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  • Donetsk and Lugansk have formed militias and taken the war to the enemy. They’ve engaged Obama’s proxy-army on the battlefield and pounded it into mincemeat. That’s why Obama deployed his propagandists to lie about the fictitious “Russian invasion”. The administration needs a diversion because the Novorussia forces (aka-the “pro Russia separatists”) are kicking the holy crap out of Obama’s legions. That’s why Washington and Kiev are in full panic-mode, because none of this was supposed to happen. Obama figured the army would put down the insurrection, crush the resistance, and move him one step closer to his goal of establishing NATO bases and missile defense systems on Russia’s western flank. Well, guess what? It’s not playing out that way and it probably never will. The Novorussia fighters are too tough, too smart and too motivated to be one-upped by Obama’s feckless troopers. (Check out this short video and you’ll see why the rebels are winning: Vineyard of the Saker)
  • Putin hasn’t sent tanks and artillery into Ukraine. He doesn’t need to. The militias are loaded with battle-hardened veterans who know how to fight and who are quite good at it. Just ask Poroshenko whose army has been taking it in the shorts for the last couple of weeks. Check out this blurb in Thursday’s Itar Tass: “Over the week of August 16-23, the self-defense fighters of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics seized 14 T-64 tanks, 25 infantry fighting vehicles, 18 armored personnel carriers, one armored reconnaissance and patrol vehicle, one Uragan multiple launch rocket system, two Gvozdika self-propelled artillery guns, four D-30 howitzers, four mortars, one ZU-23-2 air defense system and 33 vehicles.” (East Ukraine militias seize large amount of Ukrainian armor, Itar Tass) Get the picture? The Ukrainian army is getting beaten to a pulp, which means that Obama’s glorious “pivot strategy” just slammed into a brick wall.
  • Bottom line: Russia has not invaded Ukraine. The propagandists in the media are just trying to hide the fact that the Novorussia Army Forces (NAF; aka-the pro Russia separatists) are kicking ass and taking names. That’s what’s really going on. That’s why Obama and his gaggle of miscreant neocons are in a furor. It’s because they don’t know what to do next, so they’ve returned to their default position on every issue; lie like hell until they settle on a plan.
  • So, who do you believe; Kerry or the facts? And who are you going to believe this time; “Aluminum tubes” Gordie or Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitor Andrey Kelin who said yesterday: “We have said that no Russian involvement has been spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment present.” “Accusations relating to convoys of armored personnel carriers have been heard during the past week and the week before that. All of them were proven false back then, and are being proven false again now.” (RT) Repeat: “No Russian involvement”. All the accusations “were proven false.” “False” as in fake, phony, propaganda, bunkum, lies which, by the way, appears to be Gordon’s area of expertise.
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    Don't miss the video at http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/08/watershed-press-conference-by-top.html It's a press conference by Alexander V. Zakharchenko, Chairman of The Council of Ministers of The Donetsk National Republic, describing the rout of coup government forces and the reconstitution of the Novorussia militias into a national army. Russian with English subtitle translation.  According to him the DNR army has killed thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, but the coup government is notifying family members that they are "missing in action," even when the DNR transfers the bodies to Ukraine. He also describes encountering coup government soldiers wearing the insignia of the Galacia SS Division, a Ukraine collaborators' division of the Nazi World War II Waffen SS. (The coup government includes in its leadership neo-Nazis, and neo-Nazi militias are fighting on the side of the coup government.)  
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Kerry & Lavrov announce new Plan for Syria, sideline Damascus with de facto No Fly Zone... - 0 views

  • Following their meeting on the situation in Syria, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed on the preparation of several documents for the resumption of the Geneva talks on Syria. Largely omitting the invasion of Syria by NATO member Turkey, Kerry and Lavrov agreed that the Syrian Air Force should completely halt its air strikes.
  • Following the latest rounds of talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Syria in Geneva, Switzerland, the two diplomats held a joint press conference. Kerry initiated the conference, thanking reports for their patience. Kerry presented his view of the meeting, saying:
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    Long quotations from Kerry, Lavrov, and the U.N. envoy at their press conference following their reaching of agreement, with the concurrence of the Syrian government. One giant weak point in the agreement is the requirement that all Syrian opposition groups that want protection from aerial bombardment distance themselves geographically from ISIL and al-Nusrah. This is a burden that falls on the U.S. to arrange. And it's likely that ISIL and al-Nusrah will simply expand their territory to include the new geographic locations of the separating fighting groups, most likely with the U.S.'s active collaboration. Thus, the U.S. ability to deliver what it has committed to do will be an upstream swim at best. An important caveat was added by the article's author at the end: "It is worth noting that any U.S. - Russian agreement to the effect that Syria entirely ends its aerial bombings of insurgents is inconsistent with the Syrian Arab Republic's sovereignty, and Syria's right to self-defense, especially in the light of the Turkish military invasion supported by so-called Free Syrian Army units and so-called Turkmen rebels. Any U.S. - Russian attempt to enforce this de facto no-fly-zone, even if its should be based on a unanimous UN Security Council Resolution, would still violate Syrian sovereignty and be questionable, considering that both Russia and the US are belligerent parties whose interests do not necessarily concur with those of the legal and sovereign government of the Syrian Arab Republic."
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The End Of The Obama World Order - 0 views

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    "For the past eight years, Barack Obama has been using the power of the U.S. presidency to impose his vision of a progressive world order on the entire globe.  As a result, much of the planet will greatly celebrate once the Obama era officially ends on Friday.  The Obama years brought us the Arab Spring, Benghazi, ISIS, civil war in Syria, civil war in Ukraine and the Iran nuclear deal.  On the home front, we have had to deal with Obamacare, "Fast and Furious", IRS targeting of conservative groups, Solyndra, the VA scandal, NSA spying and the worst "economic recovery" since the end of World War II.  And right at the end of his presidency, Barack Obama has committed the greatest betrayal of Israel in U.S. history and has brought us dangerously close to war with Russia. So is the end of the Obama world order worth celebrating? You better believe it is. Of course Obama and his minions are in a great deal of distress that much of their hard work over the past eight years is about to be undone by Donald Trump.  On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden warned the elitists gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos that their "liberal world order" is in danger of collapsing…     Vice President Joe Biden delivered an epic final speech Wednesday to the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.   The gist of his speech was simple: At a time of "uncertainty" we must double down on the values that made Western democracies great, and not allow the "liberal world order" to be torn apart by destructive forces. And without a doubt, we definitely want it to collapse. During his time in the White House, Barack Obama has used the full diplomatic power of the government to promote "abortion rights", "gay rights" and other "liberal values" to the farthest corners of the globe.  Here at home, the appointment of two new Supreme Court justices under Obama paved the way for the Supreme Court decision that forced all 50 state
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Gold Price "Manipulated For A Decade", Repeatedly Slammed Lower, Bloomberg Reports | Ze... - 0 views

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    "While the FT promptly retracted an article on precisely the topic of gold manipulation from earlier this week (recorded for posterity here), Bloomberg appears to not have had the same "editorial" concerns and pressures, and today released an article once again slamming the final conspiracy theory that while every other asset class is manipulated, gold is in a pristine class of its own, untouched by close-banging, price fixing traders or central bankers, and reports that "the London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say." Of course, over the past 5 years we have reported time and again how official gold manipulation started in earnest some time in the 1960s (who can forget the "reshuffle club") but we will start with a decade. Here is what BBG finds: Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University's Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody's Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper.   "The structure of the benchmark is certainly conducive to collusion and manipulation, and the empirical data are consistent with price artificiality," they say in the report, which hasn't yet been submitted for publication. "It is likely that co-operation between participants may be occurring."   The paper is the first to raise the possibility that the five banks overseeing the century-old rate -- Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Nova Scotia, HSBC Holdings Plc and Societe Generale SA -- may have been actively working together to manipulate the benchmark. It also adds to pressure on the firms to overhaul the way the rate is calculated. Authorities around the world, already inv
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LAPD scopes out Israeli drones, 'Big Data' solutions | Nation | Jewish Journal - 0 views

  • For the first nine days of February, eight of the Los Angeles Police Department’s top brass were 7,500 miles away from home, being shuttled around Israel in a minibus.
  • LAPD Deputy Chief Jose Perez, a good-natured 30-year veteran of the department who oversees its central bureau, tweeted updates at nearly every stop. On Feb. 2, he shared a group photo of the Los Angeles delegation visiting the corporate headquarters of Nice Systems, an Israeli security and cyber intelligence company that can intercept and instantly analyze video, audio and text-based communications. (A seemingly tongue-in-cheek inspirational poster on the wall behind them reads: “Every voice deserves to be heard.”)
  • The group visited private security firms and drone manufacturers, as well as the terror-prone Ashdod Port, a museum in Sderot full of old rockets shot from nearby Gaza (the same one United States President Barack Obama visited on his 2008 campaign trip to Israel), and a “safe city” underground control center in the large suburb of Rishon LeZion, which receives live streams from more than 1,000 cameras with license plate recognition installed throughout the city.
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  • Frank was joined by seven of his fellow command staff at the Big Data Intelligence Conference hosted by i-HLS in the beach town of Herzliya, Israel, on Feb. 6. “On behalf of my chief of police, Chief Charlie Beck, and the 13,000-plus sworn and non-sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department, a very heartfelt thanks to all of you for having me here,” Frank said in an opening statement for the Conference, which brought together some of Israel’s — and the world’s — top cyber security and intelligence experts.
  • Frank said he was especially impressed by what he saw while visiting Israeli companies Nice Systems (as tweeted by Perez) and Verint, one of the companies whose services the National Security Administration (NSA) reportedly used in the infamous United States wiretapping scandal. Both companies already count the LAPD as a client. But, Frank said, “we’re looking at some of their additional solutions … They have a lot of new technologies that we are very much interested in.” Nice System’s  president of security, Yaron Tchwella, spoke at the conference about the company’s ability to help government agencies capture and store the billions of calls, emails, messages and social media posts that their populations generate each day, then analyze it in real time to detect potential threats.
  • Perez said he hoped the LAPD, too, would eventually be able to “use technology to incorporate all the systems that we have. That’s the wave of the future. We’re definitely looking at the ability to get that information out to the officers on the beat with a handheld. Something happens, and you’re looking at the handheld — almost like ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ — here’s a picture of the guy you’re looking for.”
  • Also in Khan’s crosshairs is Special Order 1, an LAPD policy that allows officers to document any otherwise lawful activity that they, or other members of the community, deem suspicious. (Including, for example, the photographing of certain government sites.) And new LAPD intel collection methods or surveillance drones, said Khan, would only be “adding more to their toolbox of being highly militarized in counterinsurgency forces” against protesters and movements such as Occupy. “Yet it is wrapped in this whole language of community policing.” Two separate L.A. Weekly investigations in 2012 found that the LAPD uses expensive StingRay devices, which can locate cellphones (and their users) by acting like cellphone towers, and license-plate recognition cameras that track millions of drivers. Although both devices technically require a warrant to be used in a police investigation, there is little way to know whether police are always complying with the rules.
  • Surveillance drones manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Sky Sapience were also hot items on the LAPD tour. Both Frank and Perez lit up when talking about the HoverMast, a new tethered drone from Sky Sapience that was just released to the IDF late last year. “There are several things on the wish list, but we did like Sky Sapience — that was incredible,” Perez said. “For me personally, just for my command, which is five stations, and all the special events that I have, crowd control and being able to see everything would be some technology that is needed immediately.” However, Frank added, the HoverMast “has its challenges: from a political standpoint, convincing our political leaders, and from a community standpoint, convincing the community that it’s not Big Brother watching over you.”
  • A spokeswoman for Sky Sapience said the HoverMast can intercept wireless communications, and its cameras are capable of facial recognition. A spokeswoman for IAI said that while showing LAPD officers their drones, the company “wanted to emphasize the fact that drones can be very helpful in giving intelligence in urban scenarios… you need it now, you need it quick, you need to see what’s inside a window, and what’s behind this building.”
  • Many of the companies attracting LAPD interest have one thing in common: They were formed by veterans of the IDF’s elite, top-secret 8200 Unit, better known as Israel’s version of the NSA.
  • Perez emphasized that as a local police agency, the LAPD has much tighter legal constraints than federal agencies to adhere to when adopting army-born surveillance and “big data” technologies.
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World must act to stop Syria's chemical weapons use, Cameron says - CNN.com - 0 views

  • (CNN) -- [Breaking news alert, 5:23 p.m. ET] A closed-door meeting of the U.N. Security Council ended Thursday with no agreement on a resolution to address the crisis in Syria, a Western diplomat told CNN's Nick Paton Walsh on condition of anonymity. "It was clear there was no meeting of minds, and no agreement on the text. It is clear that our approaches are very different and we are taking stock (of the next steps)," the diplomat said. The members of the Security Council expect U.N. weapons inspectors to brief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon shortly after they depart Syria on Saturday. Ban, in turn, will swiftly brief the Security Council on the findings, the diplomat said.
  • Obama and his top advisers are holding extensive talks with American allies as they ponder their options. But the president is facing doubts at home as well: More than 160 members of Congress, including 63 Democrats, have now signed letters calling for either a vote or at least a "full debate" before any U.S. action.
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    The drive for a US/UK military strike on Syria is beginning to bog down. The UN Security Council could not reach agreement on a resolution to authorize the strike; resistance in Congress is rising with a call for full debate before launching such a strike, and I just watched the UK House of Commons forbid UK participation in the strike. ("Heated moments in the UK debate" video is on the linked page.) Unsurprising in the U.S. because last weekend's Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that public resistance to U.S. military action against Syria is actually stiffening, with only 9 percent supporting military action. Obama has scheduled a telephone conference with key members of Congress to encourage them not to interfere, but reportedly the phone conference will use non-secure connections so classified information will not be discussed.  Personally, I want the raw intelligence data on the alleged use of sarin by the Syrian government to be publicly released, including audio recordings, so that it can be subjected to debate by the public. Based on my monitoring of news on the Syrian conflict for more than a year, it seems clear that the Syrian foreign "rebels" have the ability to manufacture Sarin and have used it repeatedly in Syria. And the Syrian government has very strong incentives not to use Sarin, particularly at the moment the gas attack occurred. A UN team had just arrived, at Syria invitation, to investigate prior incidents involving alleged gas attacks in which both sides blamed the other. Not a good time for the Syrian government to launch such an attack but a great time for the rebels to stage a false flag attack, blaming the Syrian government.  So I want to see the evidence Obama claims to be relying upon. Supposedly, it is an intercept of a panicked conversation between a Syrian commander and a lower officer in the field. But that too could have been staged. Making it public would go a long way toward resolving the authenticity issue and determining whether it w
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U.S. accuses China of cyber spying on American companies | Reuters - 0 views

  • The United States on Monday charged five Chinese military officers and accused them of hacking into American nuclear, metal and solar companies to steal trade secrets, ratcheting up tensions between the two world powers over cyber espionage. China immediately denied the charges, saying in a strongly worded Foreign Ministry statement the U.S. grand jury indictment was "made up" and would damage trust between the two nations.Officials in Washington have argued for years that cyber espionage is a top national security concern. The indictment was the first criminal hacking charge that the United States has filed against specific foreign officials, and follows a steady increase in public criticism and private confrontation, including at a summit last year between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
  • Federal prosecutors said the suspects targeted companies including Alcoa Inc, Allegheny Technologies Inc, United States Steel Corp, Toshiba Corp unit Westinghouse Electric Co, the U.S. subsidiaries of SolarWorld AG, and a steel workers' union.
  • According to the indictment, Chinese state-owned companies "hired" Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army "to provide information technology services" including assembling a database of corporate intelligence. The Chinese companies were not named.The Shanghai-based Unit 61398 was identified last year by cybersecurity firm Mandiant as the source of a large number of espionage operations. All five defendants worked with 61398, according to the indictment.
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  • U.S. officials have maintained that they do not steal secrets to give an advantage to U.S. companies, but in China, Lewis said, the line between military and business prowess is unclear.Unit 61398 has hundreds of active spies and is just one of dozens of such bodies in China, said Jen Weedon, an analyst at Mandiant, now owned by global network security company FireEye Inc. She said the group is not among the most sophisticated.
  • Washington announced the charges as new claims emerged last week about the scope of overseas spying by the United States. Documents leaked by Snowden showed the agency intercepted and modified equipment made by Cisco Systems Inc that was headed overseas.Cisco responded by asking Obama to curtail U.S. surveillance programs, underscoring the vulnerability of multinationals to a whipsaw of competing government interests.
  • Skeptics said U.S. authorities would not be able to arrest those indicted because Beijing would not hand them over. Still, the move would prevent the individuals from traveling to the United States or other countries that have an extradition agreement with the United States.
  • In an indictment filed in the Western District of Pennsylvania, prosecutors said the officers hacked into computers starting in 2006, often by infecting machines with tainted "spear phishing" emails to employees that purport to be from colleagues.Prosecutors alleged that one hacker, for example, stole cost and pricing information in 2012 from an Oregon-based solar panel production unit of SolarWorld. The company was losing market share at the time to Chinese competitors who were systematically pricing exports below production costs, according to the indictment.Another officer is accused of stealing technical and design specifications about pipes for nuclear plants from Westinghouse Electric as the company was negotiating with a Chinese company to build four power plants in China, prosecutors said.
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    Yesterday I watched the DoJ press conference announcing charges. This article does not capture its spirit. AG Ben Holder faced stiff questions directed by attending reporters. One of the first questions went something like this: "Is it true that the U.S. has extradition treaty with China and these defendants will never be actually prosecuted, and if so, what's the real reason for the charges?" Others raised the hypocrisy of the U.S. move in light of what the NSA has been doing. Holder ducked the tough questions  The press conference was a farce and too many of the reporters realized it. Recall that Obama was days away from traveling to China with the announced purpose of chastising its leader for waging cyberesionage against the U.S. when the first Edward Snowden pulled the moral high ground from beneath Obama's feet. This stunt looks more like it was designed to lesson the government pain by promoting Obama's "everyone does it" meme.   Also not mentioned in this article, at the press confernence the five defendants were identified as generals in the Chinese Army. Might we see China respond by charging a few former and present NSA generals with cyber-espionage? Fun and games on the Beltway. 
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Profiting from Your Thirst as Global Elite Rush to Control Water Worldwide :: The Marke... - 0 views

  • A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” --- the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires --- are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water. Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world. The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective:
  • Billionaire T. Boone Pickens owned more water rights than any other individuals in America, with rights over enough of the Ogallala Aquifer to drain approximately 200,000 acre-feet (or 65 billion gallons of water) a year. But ordinary citizen Gary Harrington cannot collect rainwater runoff on 170 acres of his private land. It’s a strange New World Order in which multibillionaires and elitist banks can own aquifers and lakes, but ordinary citizens cannot even collect rainwater and snow runoff in their own backyards and private lands.
  • In 2008, Goldman Sachs called water “the petroleum for the next century” and those investors who know how to play the infrastructure boom will reap huge rewards, during its annual “Top Five Risks” conference. Water is a U.S.$425 billion industry, and a calamitous water shortage could be a more serious threat to humanity in the 21st century than food and energy shortages, according to Goldman Sachs’s conference panel. Goldman Sachs has convened numerous conferences and also published lengthy, insightful analyses of water and other critical sectors (food, energy). Goldman Sachs is positioning itself to gobble up water utilities, water engineering companies, and water resources worldwide. Since 2006, Goldman Sachs has become one of the largest infrastructure investment fund managers and has amassed a $10 billion capital for infrastructure, including water.
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  • Citigroup’s top economist Willem Buitler said in 2011 that the water market will soon be hotter the oil market (for example, see this and this): “Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.” In its recent 2012 Water Investment Conference, Citigroup has identified top 10 trends in the water sector, as follows:
  • Specifically, a lucrative opportunity in water is in hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), as it generates massive demand for water and water services. Each oil well developed requires 3 to 5 million gallons of water, and 80% of this water cannot be reused because it’s three to 10 times saltier than seawater. Citigroup recommends water-rights owners sell water to fracking companies instead of to farmers because water for fracking can be sold for as much as $3,000 per acre-foot instead of only $50 per acre/foot to farmers.
  • One of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase has aggressively pursued water and infrastructure worldwide. In October 2007, it beat out rivals Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to buy U.K.’s water utility Southern Water with partners Swiss-based UBS and Australia’s Challenger Infrastructure Fund. This banking empire is controlled by the Rockefeller family; the family patriarch David Rockefeller is a member of the elite and secretive Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission.
  • Barclays PLC is a U.K.-based major global financial services provider operating in all over the world with roots in London since 1690; it operates through its subsidiary Barclays Bank PLC and its investment bank called Barclays Capital. Barclays Bank’s unit Barclays Global Investors manages an exchange-traded fund (ETF) called iShares S&P Global Water, which is listed on the London Stock Exchanges and can be purchased like any ordinary share through a broker. Touting the iShares S&P Global Water as offering “a broad based exposure to shares of the world’s largest water companies, including water utilities and water equipment stocks” of water companies around the world, this fund as of March 31, 2007 was valued at U.S.$33.8 million.
  • Deutsche Bank is one of the major players in the water sector worldwide. Its Deutsche Bank Advisors have identified water as a part of the climate investment strategies. In its presentation, “Global Warming: Implications for Investors,” they have identified the four following major areas for water investment: § Distribution and management: (1) Supply and recycling, (2) water distribution and sewage, (3) water management and engineering. § Water purification: (1) Sewage purification, (2) disinfection, (3) desalination, (4) monitoring. § Water efficiency (demand): (1) Home installation, (2) gray-water recycling, (3) water meters. § Water and nutrition: (1) Irrigation, (2) bottled water.
  • Moreover, Deutsche Bank has channeled €6 billion (U.S.$8.55 billion) into climate change funds, which will target companies with products that cut greenhouse gases or help people adapt to a warmer world, in sectors from agriculture to power and construction (Reuters, October 18, 2007). In addition to SCM, Deutsche Bank also has the RREEF Infrastructure, part of RREEF Alternative Investments, headquartered in New York with main hubs in Sydney, Singapore, and London. RREEF Infrastructure has more than €6.7 billion in assets under management. One of its main targets is utilities, including electricity networks, water-treatment or distribution operations, and natural-gas networks. In October 2007, RREEF partnered with Goldman Sachs, GE, Prudential, and Babcok & Brown Ltd. to bid unsuccessfully for U.K.’s water utility Southern Water. § Crediting the boom in European infrastructure investment, the RREEF fund by August 2007 had raised €2 billion (U.S.$2.8 billion); Europe’s infrastructure market is valued at between U.S.$4 trillion to U.S.$6 trillion (DowJones Financial News Online, August 7, 2007). § Bulgaria --- Deutsche Bank Bulgaria is planning to participate in large infrastructure projects, including public-private partnership projects in water and sewage worth up to €1 billion (Sofia Echo Media, February 26, 2008). § Middle East --- Along with Ithmaar Bank B.S.C. (an private-equity investment bank in Bahrain), Deutsche Bank co-managed a U.S.$2 billion Shari'a-compliant Infrastructure and Growth Capital Fund and plans to target U.S.$630 billion in regional infrastructure.
  • In my 2008 article, I overlooked the astonishingly large land purchases (298,840 acres, to be exact) by the Bush family in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, while on a trip to Paraguay for the United Nation’s children’s group UNICEF, Jenna Bush (daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush) reportedly bought 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay). This land is said to be near the 200,000 acres purchased by her grandfather, George H.W. Bush, in 2005. The lands purchased by the Bush family sit over not only South America’s largest aquifer --- but the world’s as well --- Acuifero Guaraní, which runs beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This aquifer is larger than Texas and California combined. Online political magazine Counterpunch quoted Argentinean pacifist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the winner of 1981 Nobel Peace Prize, who “warned that the real war will be fought not for oil, but for water, and recalled that Acuifero Guaraní is one of the largest underground water reserves in South America….”
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     Like the land rush for Arctic lands soon to be bared of ice by global warming, banksters are also moving to capitalize on looming water shortages, aided by IMF privatization loan conditions the the dwindling of potable water supplies globally via pollution, deforestation, and aquifer depletion. All trace to the common problem over human overpopulation of the planet.  
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Obama on CIA's post-9/11 tactics: 'We tortured some folks' - RT USA - 0 views

  • President Barack Obama made a rare acknowledgment during a Friday press briefing concerning the United States’ past use of enhanced interrogation tactics in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did things that were contrary to our values,” Pres. Obama said near the end of a nearly hour-long press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC.
  • Earlier this week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told The Daily Beast that “The American people will be profoundly disturbed about what will be revealed in this report.”
  • The word “torture” to describe the tactics used by the CIA is rarely used by government officials, but Pres. Obama has indeed condemned the agency’s past abuses before. During an address last year at the National Defense University, Obama said that, in some cases, “I believe we compromised our basic values -- by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.” “So after I took office, we stepped up the war against Al-Qaeda but we also sought to change its course. We relentlessly targeted Al-Qaeda’s leadership. We ended the war in Iraq, and brought nearly 150,000 troops home. We pursued a new strategy in Afghanistan, and increased our training of Afghan forces. We unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law and expanded our consultations with Congress,” Obama said in that address from last May.
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    The transcript of the Obama press conference is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/01/press-conference-president
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Baker Creating J Street Challenge for Jeb - Commentary Magazine Commentary Magazine - 0 views

  • The announcement that former Secretary of State James Baker was one of the advisors to Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign created a minor stir a few weeks ago. As our Michael Rubin noted at the time, Baker’s long record of hostility to Israel and consistent backing for engagement with rogue regimes ought to make him radioactive for a candidate seeking to brand himself as a supporter of the Jewish state and a critic of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. But Baker’s status as a faithful family retainer for the Bush family might have given Jeb a pass, especially since, as Michael wrote, another far wiser former secretary of state — George P. Schultz — is considered to be Jeb’s top foreign policy advisor. But the news that Baker will serve as a keynote speaker at the upcoming annual conference of the left-wing J Street lobby ought to change the conversation about this topic. Coming as it does hard on the heels of the president’s open threats to isolate Israel, having someone so closely associated with his campaign serve in that role at an event dedicated to support for Obama’s hostile attitude toward Israel obligates Jeb to not let this happen without saying or doing something to disassociate himself from Baker.
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    The neocons are howling about former Reagan Secretary of State James Baker being one of Jeb Bush's advisors. Baker has never been forgiven by the neocons since he barred the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister -- Benjamin Netanyahu -- from being allowed into the State Dept. building because of his outrageous public statements. Now Baker is doubly hated because he is scheduled to be a keynote.  speaker at a conference of the liberal pro-Israel J Street lobbying group. J Street is "left-leaning" in neocon eyes because it actully supports a 2-state solution in Palestine, rather than using the 2-state solution as a political fig leaf while Israel completes its colonization of Palestine and then annexes it. But while screaming that only AIPAC represents Israel's real interests and acknowledging that Baker is closely tied to the Bush family, they're not addressing the political reality that Baker is the global oil industry's top lobbyist nor the fact that it was Baker who put the kibosh on the neocons' goal of privatizing all the oil in Iraq and flooding the market with cheap oil to break the OPEC Cartel. The western oil companies are profoundly against privately owned oil in the Mideast and even less enthused about breaking the OPEC Cartel, which normally keep crude oil prices high, enabling higher oil company profits. Apparently the oil industry also wants the 2-state solution to actually happen in order to obtain a more stable Middle East. And that is anathema to Netanyahu, AIPAC, and the neocons..   
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Riyadh invites 65 Syrian opposition figures ahead of peace talks -paper | GulfNews.com - 0 views

  • Saudi Arabia has issued invitations to 65 Syrian opposition figures to attend a conference in Riyadh to try to unify their positions ahead of proposed Syrian peace talks, Saudi newspapers reported on Tuesday.Asharq Al Awsat and Al Hayat said no date has yet been set for the Riyadh meeting, but quoted unnamed sources as saying it could take place next week.Asharq Al Awsat quoted Ahmad Ramadan, a member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) opposition group, as saying that the Saudi foreign ministry had “invited 65 figures to attend the conference in Riyadh”.He said 20 members of the coalition, which is based outside Syria, had been invited, along with seven from the National Coordination Body, an internal opposition group.Another 10 to 15 places were allocated to rebel leaders and 20 to 25 to independents, business leaders and religious figures, the paper quoted Ramadan as saying.
  • Saudi Arabia, a main supporter of opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar Al Assad, has said it was in contact with them about the conference, which comes after an international agreement to launch talks between the government and the opposition by January 1.The Riyadh meeting marks an attempt to bring together groups whose disunity has been a long-standing obstacle in seeking a peaceful solution to the nearly five-year conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions.US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks in Abu Dhabi with UAE officials and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir last week to discuss ways of bringing the opposition together.Al Hayat newspaper quoted NCB co-chairman, Hassan Abdul Azim, as saying he had sent a list of 22 nominees, including the head of the Kurdish Democratic Union, Saleh Muslim.Muslim had said earlier last month that Syrian Kurds need political and military representation at the opposition conference in Riyadh.
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