Is there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States?
Arguably, the best place to start is by examining put options, which occurred around Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to an abnormal extent, and at the beginning via software that played a key role: the Prosecutor’s Management Information System, abbreviated as PROMIS. [i]
PROMIS is a software program that seems to be fitted with almost “magical” abilities. Furthermore, it is the subject of a decades-long dispute between its inventor, Bill Hamilton, and various people/institutions associated with intelligence agencies, military and security consultancy firms. [1]
One of the “magical” capabilities of PROMIS, one has to assume, is that it is equipped with artificial intelligence and was apparently from the outset “able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or databases, regardless of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating systems and platforms on which that database was then currently installed.” [2]
And then it becomes really interesting:
What would you do if you possessed software that could think, understand every major language in the world, that provided peep-holes into everyone else’s computer “dressing rooms”, that could insert data into computers without people’s knowledge, that could fill in blanks beyond human reasoning, and also predict what people do – before they did it? You would probably use it, wouldn’t you? [3]
Granted, these capabilities sound hardly believable. In fact, the whole story of PROMIS, which Mike Ruppert develops in the course of his book Crossing the Rubicon in all its bizarre facets and turns, seems as if someone had developed a novel in the style of Philip K Dick and William Gibson. However, what Ruppert has collected about PROMIS is based on reputable sources as well as on results of personal investigations, which await a jury to take a first critical look at.
This seems all the more urgent if you add to the PROMIS capabilities “that it was a given that PROMIS was used for a wide variety of purposes by intelligence agencies, including the real-time monitoring of stock transactions on all the world´s major financial markets”. [4]
We are therefore dealing with a software that
a) Infiltrates computer and communication systems without being noticed.
b) Can manipulate data.
c) Is capable to track the global stock market trade in real time.
Point c is relevant to all that happened in connection with the never completely cleared up transactions that occurred just before September 11, [5] and of which the former chairman of the Deutsche Bundesbank Ernst Weltke said “could not have been planned and carried out without a certain knowledge”. [6]
I specifically asked financial journalist Max Keiser, who for years had worked on Wall Street as a stock and options trader, about the put option trades. Keiser pointed out in this context that he “had spoken with many brokers in the towers of the World Trade Center around that time. I heard firsthand about the airline put trade from brokers at Cantor Fitzgerald days before.” He then talked with me about an explosive issue, on which Ruppert elaborated in detail in Crossing the Rubicon.
Max Keiser: There are many aspects concerning these option purchases that have not been disclosed yet. I also worked at Alex Brown & Sons (ABS). Deutsche Bank bought Alex Brown & Sons in 1999. When the attacks occurred, ABS was owned by Deutsche Bank. An important person at ABS was Buzzy Krongard. I have met him several times at the offices in Baltimore. Krongard had transferred to become executive director at the CIA. The option purchases, in which ABS was involved, occurred in the offices of ABS in Baltimore. The noise which occurred between Baltimore, New York City and Langley was interesting, as you can imagine, to say the least.
Under consideration here is the fact that Alex Brown, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank (where many of the alleged 9/11 hijackers handled their banking transactions – for example Mohammed Atta) traded massive put options purchases on United Airlines Company UAL through the Chicago Board Option Exchange (CBOE) – “to the embarrassment of investigators”, as British newspaper The Independent reported. [7]
On September 12, the chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, Mayo A Shattuck III, suddenly and quietly renounced his post, although he still had a three-year contract with an annual salary of several million US dollars. One could perceive that as somehow strange.
A few weeks later, the press spokesperson of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at that time, Tom Crispell, declined all comments, when he was contacted for a report for Ruppert´s website From the Wilderness, and had being asked “whether the Treasury Department or FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] had questioned CIA executive director and former Deutsche Bank-Alex Brown CEO [chief executive officer], A B ‘Buzzy’ Krongard, about CIA monitoring of financial markets using PROMIS and his former position as overseer of Brown’s ‘private client’ relations.” [8]
Just before he was recruited personally by former CIA chief George Tenet for the CIA, Krongard supervised mainly private client banking at Alex Brown. [9]
In any case, after 9/11 on the first trading day, when the US stock markets were open again, the stock price of UAL declined by 43%. (The four aircraft hijacked on September 11 were American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and UAL flights 175 and 93.)
With his background as a former options trader, Keiser explained an important issue to me in that regard.
Max Keiser: Put options are, if they are employed in a speculative trade, basically bets that stock prices will drop abruptly. The purchaser, who enters a time-specific contract with a seller, does not have to own the stock at the time when the contract is purchased.
Related to the issue of insider trading via (put or call) options there is also a noteworthy definition by the Swiss economists Remo Crameri, Marc Chesney and Loriano Mancini, notably that an option trade may be “identified as informed” – but is not yet (legally) proven – “when it is characterized by an unusual large increment in open interest and volume, induces large gains, and is not hedged in the stock market”. [10]
Open interest describes contracts which have not been settled (been exercised) by the end of the trading session, but are still open. Not hedged in the stock market means that the buyer of a (put or call) option holds no shares of the underlying asset, by which he might be able to mitigate or compensate losses if his trade doesn’t work out, or phrased differently: one does not hedge, because it is unnecessary, since one knows that the bet is one, pardon, “dead sure thing.” (In this respect it is thus not really a bet, because the result is not uncertain, but a foregone conclusion.)
In this case, the vehicle of the calculation was “ridiculously cheap put options which give the holder the ‘right’ for a period of time to sell certain shares at a price which is far below the current market price – which is a highly risky bet, because you lose money if at maturity the market price is still higher than the price agreed in the option. However, when these shares fell much deeper after the terrorist attacks, these options multiplied their value several hundred times because by now the selling price specified in the option was much higher than the market price. These risky games with short options are a sure indication for investors who knew that within a few days something would happen that would drastically reduce the market price of those shares.” [11]
Software such as PROMIS in turn is used with the precise intent to monitor the stock markets in real time to track price movements that appear suspicious. Therefore, the US intelligence services must have received clear warnings from the singular, never before sighted transactions prior to 9/11.
Of great importance with regard to the track, which should lead to the perpetrators if you were seriously contemplating to go after them, is this:
Max Keiser: The Options Clearing Corporation has a duty to handle the transactions, and does so rather anonymously – whereas the bank that executes the transaction as a broker can determine the identity of both parties.
But that may have hardly ever been the intention of the regulatory authorities when the track led to, amongst others, Alvin Bernard “Buzzy” Krongard, Alex Brown & Sons and the CIA. Ruppert, however, describes this case in Crossing the Rubicon in full length as far as possible. [12]
In addition, there are also ways and means for insiders to veil their tracks. In order to be less obvious, “the insiders could trade small numbers of contracts. These could be traded under multiple accounts to avoid drawing attention to large trading volumes going through one single large account. They could also trade small volumes in each contract but trade more contracts to avoid drawing attention. As open interest increases, non-insiders may detect a perceived signal and increase their trading activity. Insiders can then come back to enter into more transactions based on a seemingly significant trade signal from the market. In this regard, it would be difficult for the CBOE to ferret out the insiders from the non-insiders, because both are trading heavily.” [13]
The matter which needs clarification here is generally judged by Keiser as follows:
Max Keiser: My thought is that many (not all) of those who died on 9/11 were financial mercenaries – and we should feel the same about them as we feel about all mercenaries who get killed. The tragedy is that these companies mixed civilians with mercenaries, and that they were also killed. So have companies on Wall Street used civilians as human shields maybe?
According to a report by Bloomberg published in early October 2001, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began a probe into certain stock market transactions around 9/11 that included 38 companies, among them: American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corp., American Express Corp., American International Group, AXA SA, Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Corp., Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Morgan Stanley, General Motors and Raytheon. [14]
So far, so good. In the same month, however, the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that the SEC took the unprecedented step to deputize hundreds, if not even thousands of key stakeholders in the private sector for their investigation. In a statement that was sent to almost all listed companies in the US, the SEC asked the addressed companies to assign senior staff for the investigation, who would be aware of “the sensitive nature” of the case and could be relied on to “exercise appropriate discretion”. [15]
In essence, it was about controlling information, not about provision and disclosure of facts. Such a course of action involves compromising consequences. Ruppert:
What happens when you deputize someone in a national security or criminal investigation is that you make it illegal for them to disclose publicly what they know. Smart move. In effect, they become government agents and are controlled by government regulations rather than their own conscience. In fact, they can be thrown into jail without a hearing if they talk publicly. I have seen this implied threat time after time with federal investigators, intelligence agents, and even members of United States Congress who are bound so tightly by secrecy oaths and agreements that they are not even able to disclose criminal activities inside the government for fear of incarceration. [16]
Among the reports about suspected insider trading which are mentioned in Crossing the Rubicon/From the Wilderness is a list that was published under the heading “Black Tuesday: The World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism on September 21, 2001:
Between September 6 and 7, the CBOE saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these “insiders” would have profited by almost $5 million.
On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance; again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent “insiders”, they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
[The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co, which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley’s share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
Merrill Lynch & Co, with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day (a 1200% increase). When trading resumed, Merrill’s shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by “insiders”, their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
European regulators are examining trades in Germany’s Munich Re, Switzerland’s Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. (Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock, making the attacks a “double whammy” for them.) [17]Concerning the statements of the former chairman of the Deutsche Bundesbank Ernst Welteke, their tenor in various press reports put together is as follows:
German central bank president Ernst Welteke later reports that a study by his bank indicates, “There are ever clearer signs that there were activities on international financial markets that must have been carried out with the necessary expert knowledge,” not only in shares of heavily affected industries such as airlines and insurance companies, but also in gold and oil. [Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001] His researchers have found “almost irrefutable proof of insider trading”. [Miami Herald, 9/24/2001] “If you look at movements in markets before and after the attack, it makes your brow furrow. But it is extremely difficult to really verify it.” Nevertheless, he believes that “in one or the other case it will be possible to pinpoint the source”. [Fox News, 9/22/2001] Welteke reports “a fundamentally inexplicable rise” in oil prices before the attacks [Miami Herald, 9/24/2001] and then a further rise of 13 percent the day after the attacks. Gold rises nonstop for days after the attacks. [Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001] [18]
Related to those observations, I sent a request via e-mail to the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank on August 1, 2011, from which I was hoping to learn:
How did the Bundesbank deal with this information? Did US federal agencies ask to see the study? With whom did the Bundesbank share this information? And additionally:1. Can you confirm that there is such a study of the Bundesbank concerning 9/11 insider trading, which was carried out in September 2001?
2. If Yes: what is the title?
3. If Yes: who were the authors?
4. If Yes: has the study ever been made available to the public?
On August 2, I was then informed: “Your mail has been received by us and is being processed under the number 2011 / 011551.” Ultimately, however, the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank was only available for an oral explanation on the phone. With this explanation, I then turned to the press office of the federal financial regulator in Germany, the Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, BaFin, with the following e-mail – and that because of obvious reasons:
Yesterday, I sent a request (see end of this e-mail) to the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank relating to insider trading connected to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and respectively relating to an alleged study carried by the Deutsche Bundesbank. The request carries the reference number 2011 / 011551.
The press office or respectively Mr Peter Trautmann was only available for an oral explanation. I repeat this now, because it is related to your entity. This will be followed by my further questions.
According to an oral explanation from the press office of the Deutsche Bundesbank, there has never been a detailed and official study on insider trading from the Bundesbank. Rather, there has been probably ad-hoc analysis with corresponding charts of price movements as briefings for the Bundesbank board. In addition, it would have been the duty of the Bundesfinanzaufsicht to investigate this matter. The press office of the Bundesbank was also not willing to give out any written information, not even after my hint that this alleged study by the Bundesbank has been floating around the Internet for years without any contradiction. That was the oral information from the Bundesbank press office, or respectively from Mr Peter Trautmann.
Now my questions for you:
1. Has the BaFin ever investigated the 9/11 insider trading?
2. With what result? Have the results been made public?
3. Have there not been any grounds for suspicion that would have justified an investigation, for example as damaged enterprise: Munich Re, and as buyers of put options of UAL’s United Airlines Company: Deutsche Bank/Alex Brown?
4. Has the Deutsche Bundesbank ever enquired with BaFin what information they have regarding the 9/11 insider trading – for example for the creation of ad-hoc analysis for the Bundesbank?
5. Have the US federal agencies ever inquired if the BaFin could cooperate with them in an investigation?
Could you reply to me in writing, unlike the Deutsche Bundesbank, please? I would be very grateful for that!
The next day I did indeed receive an e-mail concerning this topic from Anja Engelland, the press officer of the BaFin in which she answered my questions as follows:
1. Yes, the former Bundesaufsichtsamt fur Wertpapierhandel, BAWe (federal supervisory for securities trading), has carried out a comprehensive analysis of the operations.
2. As a result, no evidence of insider trading has been found. Their approach and results have been published by the BAWe or BaFin in the annual reports for the years 2001 (cf S 26/27) and 2002 (cf p 156 above first paragraph). Here are the links. [See here and here.]
3. See annual reports 2001 and 2002. Put options on United Airlines were not traded on German stock exchanges (the first EUREX options on US equities were introduced only after the attacks on 9/11/2001); there were warrants on UAL and other US stocks, but those traded only in low volumes.
4. I personally do not know about such a request. Furthermore, the Bundesbank itself would have to comment on this.
5. BaFin is fundamentally entitled to the exchange of information with foreign supervisory authorities, like SEC, on the basis of written agreements, so-called memoranda of understanding (MoU). Regarding potential inquiries from foreign supervisory authorities, the BaFin can unfortunately not comment, this would be a matter of respective authority. For this I ask for understanding.
Then I wrote another brief note to BaFin, “in order to prevent any misunderstanding: your answers refers, as far as I understand, solely to the financial markets in Germany and Frankfurt, or not?” The reply from BaFin:
The answers refer to the German financial market as a whole and not only on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. In terms of the assessment of foreign financial markets, the relevant authorities are the competent points of contact.
In my inquiries, I mentioned, among other things, a scientific study by US economist Allen M Poteshman from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which had been carried out in 2006 regarding the put option trading around 9/11 related to the two airlines involved, United Airlines and American Airlines. Poteshman came to this conclusion: “Examination of the option trading leading up to September 11 reveals that there was an unusually high level of put buying. This finding is consistent with informed investors having traded options in advance of the attacks.” [19]
Lars Schall is a German financial journalist. This article published by the Asian Times is a slightly modified and updated excerpt from the book Mordanschlag 9/11. Eine kriminalistische Recherche zu Finanzen, Ol und Drogen (Assassination 9/11: A criminalistic research on finance, oil and drugs),published in Germany by Schild Verlag.
Despite overwhelming public support and support from a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.
The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members support passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote.
Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run out the clock until the legislative session ends in early May.
What happened to the formerly staunch legislative champions of Vermont’s “right to know” bill? They lost their nerve and abandoned their principles after Monsanto representative recently threatened a public official that the biotech giant would sue Vermont if they dared to pass the bill. Several legislators have rather unconvincingly argued that the Vermont public has a “low appetite” for any bills, even very popular bills like this one, that might end up in court. Others expressed concern about Vermont being the first state to pass a mandatory GMO labeling bill and then having to “go it alone” against Monsanto in court.
What it really comes down to this: Elected officials are abandoning the public interest and public will in the face of corporate intimidation.
Monsanto has used lawsuits or threats of lawsuits for 20 years to force unlabeled genetically engineered foods on the public, and to intimidate farmers into buying their genetically engineered seeds and hormones. When Vermont became the first state in the nation in 1994 to require mandatory labels on milk and dairy products derived from cows injected with the controversial genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone, Monsanto’s minions sued in Federal Court and won on a judge’s decision that dairy corporations have the first amendment “right” to remain silent on whether or not they are injecting their cows with rBGH – even though rBGH has been linked to severe health damage in cows and increased cancer risk for humans, and is banned in much of the industrialized world, including Europe and Canada.
Monsanto wields tremendous influence in Washington, DC and most state capitals. The company’s stranglehold over politicians and regulatory officials is what has prompted activists in California to bypass the legislature and collect 850,000 signatures to place a citizens’ Initiative on the ballot in November 2012. The 2012 California Right to Know Act will force mandatory labeling of GMOs and to ban the routine practice of labeling GMO-tainted food as “natural.”
All of Monsanto’s fear mongering and intimidation tactics were blatantly on display in the House Agriculture Committee hearings March 15-16.
During the hearings the Vermont legislature was deluged with calls, letters, and e-mails urging passage of a GMO labeling bill – more than on any other bill since the fight over Civil Unions in 1999-2000. The legislature heard from pro-labeling witnesses such as Dr. Michael Hansen, an expert on genetic engineering from the Consumers Union, who shredded industry claims that GMO’s are safe and that consumers don’t need to know if their food is contaminated with them.
Army General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, is having a busy year — hopping around the country, cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency’s greatly expanded eavesdropping network.
In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia.
Designed to house about 4,000 earphone-clad intercept operators, analysts and other specialists, many of them employed by private contractors, it will have a 2,800-square-foot fitness center open 24/7, 47 conference rooms and VTCs, and “22 caves,” according to an NSA brochure from the event. No television news cameras were allowed within two miles of the ceremony.
Overseas, Menwith Hill, the NSA’s giant satellite listening post in Yorkshire, England that sports 33 giant dome-covered eavesdropping dishes, is also undergoing a multi-million-dollar expansion, with $68 million alone being spent on a generator plant to provide power for new supercomputers. And the number of people employed on the base, many of them employees of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, is due to increase from 1,800 to 2,500 in 2015, according to a study done in Britain. Closer to home, in May, Fort Meade will close its 27-hole golf course to make room for a massive $2 billion, 1.8-million-square-foot expansion of the NSA’s headquarters, including a cybercommand complex and a new supercomputer center expected to cost nearly $1 billion.
The climax, however, will be the opening next year of the NSA’s mammoth 1-million-square-foot, $2 billion Utah Data Center. The centerpiece in the agency’s decade-long building boom, it will be the “cloud” where the trillions of millions of intercepted phone calls, e-mails, and data trails will reside, to be scrutinized by distant analysts over highly encrypted fiber-optic links.
Despite the post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping of Americans, the NSA says that citizens should trust it not to abuse its growing power and that it takes the Constitution and the nation’s privacy laws seriously.
But one of the agency’s biggest secrets is just how careless it is with that ocean of very private and very personal communications, much of it to and from Americans. Increasingly, obscure and questionable contractors — not government employees — install the taps, run the agency’s eavesdropping infrastructure, and do the listening and analysis.
And with some of the key companies building the U.S.’s surveillance infrastructure for the digital age employing unstable employees, crooked executives, and having troubling ties to foreign intelligence services, it’s not clear that Americans should trust the secretive agency, even if its current agency chief claims he doesn’t approve of extrajudicial spying on Americans. His predecessor, General Michael V. Hayden, made similar claims while secretly conducting the warrantless wiretapping program.
Until now, the actual mechanics of how the agency constructed its highly secret U.S. eavesdropping net, code-named Stellar Wind, has never been revealed. But in the weeks following 9/11, as the agency and the White House agreed to secretly ignore U.S. privacy laws and bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, J. Kirk Wiebe noticed something odd. A senior analyst, he was serving as chief of staff for the agency’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (SARC), a sort of skunkworks within the agency where bureaucratic rules were broken, red tape was cut, and innovation was expected.
“One day I notice out in the hallway, stacks and stacks of new servers in boxes just lined up,” he said.
Passing by the piles of new Dell 1750 servers, Wiebe, as he often did, headed for the Situation Room, which dealt with threat warnings. It was located within the SARC’s Lab, on the third floor of Operations Building 2B, a few floors directly below the director’s office. “I walk in and I almost get thrown out by a guy that we knew named Ben Gunn,” he said. It was the launch of Stellar Wind and only a handful of agency officials were let in on the secret.
“He was the one who organized it,” said Bill Binney of Gunn. A former founder and co-director of SARC, Binney was the agency official responsible for automating much of the NSA’s worldwide monitoring networks. Troubled by the unconstitutional nature of tapping into the vast domestic communications system without a warrant, he decided to quit the agency in late 2001 after nearly forty years.
Gunn, said Binney, was a Scotsman and naturalized U.S. citizen who had formerly worked for GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, and later become a senior analyst at the NSA. The NSA declined Wired’s request to interview Gunn, saying that, as policy, it doesn’t confirm or deny if a person is employed by the agency.
Shortly after the secret meeting, the racks of Dell servers were moved to a room down the hall, behind a door with a red seal indicating only those specially cleared for the highly compartmented project could enter. But rather than having NSA employees putting the hardware and software together and setting up walls of monitors showing suspected terrorism threats and their U.S. communications, the spying room was filled with a half-dozen employees of a tiny mom-and-pop company with a bizarre and troubling history.
“It was Technology Development Corporation,” said Binney.
The agency went to TDC, he says, because the company had helped him set up a similar network in SARC — albeit one that was focused on foreign and international communications — the kind of spying the NSA is chartered to undertake.
“They needed to have somebody who knew how the code works to set it up,” he said. “And then it was just a matter of feeding in the attributes [U.S. phone numbers, e-mail addresses and personal data] and any of the content you want.” Those “attributes” came from secret rooms established in large telecom switches around the country. “I think there’s 10 to 20 of them,” Binney says.
Formed in April 1984, TDC was owned by two brothers, Randall and Paul Jacobson, and largely run out of Randall’s Clarkesville, Maryland house, with his wife acting as bookkeeper. But its listed address is a post office box in Annapolis Junction, across the Baltimore-Washington Parkway from the NSA, and thecompany’s phone number in various business directories is actually an NSA number in Binney’s old office.
The company’s troubles began in June 1992 when Paul lost his security clearance. “If you ever met this guy, you would know he’s a really strange guy,” Binney said of Paul. “He did crazy stuff. I think they thought he was unstable.” At the time, Paul was working on a contract at the NSA alongside a rival contractor, Unisys Corporation. He later blamed Unisys for his security problems and sued it, claiming that Unisys employees complained about him to his NSA supervisors. According to the suit, Unisys employees referred to him as “weird” and that he “acted like a robot,” “never wore decent clothes,” and was mentally and emotionally unstable. About that time, he also began changing his name, first to Jimmy Carter, and later to Alfred Olympus von Ronsdorf.
With “von Ronsdorf’s” clearance gone and no longer able to work at the NSA, Randy Jacobson ran the company alone, though he kept his brother and fellow shareholder employed in the company, which led to additional problems.
“What happened was Randy still let him have access to the funds of the company and he squandered them,” according to Binney. “It was so bad, Randy couldn’t pay the people who were working for him.” According to court records, Ronsdorf allegedly withdrew about $100,000 in unauthorized payments. But Jacobson had troubles of his own, having failed to file any income tax statements for three years in the 1990s, according to tax court records. Then in March 2002, around the time the company was completing Stellar Wind, Jacobson fired his brother for improper billing and conversion of company funds. That led to years of suits and countersuits over mismanagement and company ownership.
Despite that drama, Jacobson and his people appeared to have serious misgivings about the NSA’s program once they discovered its true nature, according to Binney. “They came and said, ‘Do you realize what these people are doing?’” he said. “‘They’re feeding us other stuff [U.S.] in there.’ I mean they knew it was unconstitutional right away.” Binney added that once the job was finished, the NSA turned to still another contractor to run the tapping operation. “They made it pretty well known, so after they got it up and running they [the NSA] brought in the SAIC people to run it after that.” Jacobsen was then shifted to other work at the NSA, where he and his company are still employed.
Randall Jacobsen answered his phone inside the NSA but asked for time to respond. He never called back.
In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network.
According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my book The Shadow Factory in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it does not comment on such matters.
What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S.
In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.”
Because of his position, it was something Binney should have been alerted to, but wasn’t.
“In addition to being the technical director,” he said, “I was the chair of the TAP, it’s the Technical Advisory Panel, the foreign relations council. We’re supposed to know what all these foreign countries, technically what they’re doing…. They didn’t do this that way, it was under the table.” After discovering the secret transfer of the technology, Binney argued that the agency simply pass it to them officially, and in that way get something in return, such as access to communications terminals. “So we gave it to them for switches,” he said. “For access.”
But Binney now suspects that Israeli intelligence in turn passed the technology on to Israeli companies who operate in countries around the world, including the U.S. In return, the companies could act as extensions of Israeli intelligence and pass critical military, economic and diplomatic information back to them. “And then five years later, four or five years later, you see a Narus device,” he said. “I think there’s a connection there, we don’t know for sure.”
Narus was formed in Israel in November 1997 by six Israelis with much of its money coming from Walden Israel, an Israeli venture capital company. Its founder and former chairman, Ori Cohen, once told Israel’sFortune Magazine that his partners have done technology work for Israeli intelligence. And among the five founders was Stanislav Khirman, a husky, bearded Russian who had previously worked for Elta Systems, Inc. A division of Israel Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Elta specializes in developing advanced eavesdropping systems for Israeli defense and intelligence organizations. At Narus, Khirman became the chief technology officer.
A few years ago, Narus boasted that it is “known for its ability to capture and collect data from the largest networks around the world.” The company says its equipment is capable of “providing unparalleled monitoring and intercept capabilities to service providers and government organizations around the world” and that “Anything that comes through [an Internet protocol network], we can record. We can reconstruct all of their e-mails, along with attachments, see what Web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their [Voice over Internet Protocol] calls.”
Like Narus, Verint was founded by in Israel by Israelis, including Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Some 800 employees work for Verint, including 350 who are based in Israel, primarily working in research and development and operations, according to the Jerusalem Post. Among its products is STAR-GATE, which according to the company’s sales literature, lets “service providers … access communications on virtually any type of network, retain communication data for as long as required, and query and deliver content and data …” and was “[d]esigned to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications.”
In a rare and candid admission to Forbes, Retired Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the highly secret Unit 8200, Israel’s NSA, noted his former organization’s influence on Comverse, which owns Verint, as well as other Israeli companies that dominate the U.S. eavesdropping and surveillance market. “Take NICE, Comverse and Check Point for example, three of the largest high-tech companies, which were all directly influenced by 8200 technology,” said Gefen. “Check Point was founded by Unit alumni. Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology.”
According to a former chief of Unit 8200, both the veterans of the group and much of the high-tech intelligence equipment they developed are now employed in high-tech firms around the world. “Cautious estimates indicate that in the past few years,” he told a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’artez in 2000, “Unit 8200 veterans have set up some 30 to 40 high-tech companies, including 5 to 10 that were floated on Wall Street.” Referred to only as “Brigadier General B,” he added, “This correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental: Many of the technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit veterans.”
When asked about these contractors, the NSA declined to “verify the allegations made.”
But the NSA did “eagerly offer” that it “ensures deliberate and appropriate measures are taken to thoroughly investigate and resolve any legitimate complaints or allegations of misconduct or illegal activity” and “takes seriously its obligation to adhere to the U.S. Constitution and comply with the U.S. laws and regulations that govern our activities.”
The NSA also added that “we are proud of the work we do to protect the nation, and allegations implying that there is inappropriate monitoring of American communications are a disservice to the American public and to the NSA civilian and military personnel who are dedicated to serving their country.”
However, that statement elides the voluminous reporting by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Wired on the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Also not reflected is that in the only anti-warrantless wiretapping lawsuit to survive the government’s use of the “state secrets” privilege to throw them out, a federal judge ruled that two American lawyers had been spied on illegally by the government and were entitled to compensation.
So take the NSA’s assurances as you will.
But as NSA director Alexander flies around the country, scissors in hand, opening one top-secret, outsourced eavesdropping center after another, someone might want to ask the question no one in Congress seems willing to ask: Who’s listening to the listeners?
It’s a familiar argument in the annals of American violence: is some specific heinous deed the work of a disturbed individual acting alone? Or is it the work of unidentified conspirators? That’s the question hanging over the case of Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians last weekend. With U.S. officials releasing no information on how many soldiers are under investigation, it is premature to rule out the possibility that Bales had no accomplices.
A group of Afghan parliamentary investigators has concluded that Bales was part of a group of 15-20 soldiers. As Outlook Afghanistan reported Monday, “The team spent two days in the province, interviewing the bereaved families, tribal elders, survivors and collecting evidences at the site in Panjwai district.” One of the parliamentarians told Pajhwok Afghan News that investigators believed 15 to 20 American soldiers carried out the killings.
“I have encountered almost no Afghan who believes it could have been one person acting alone, whether they think it was a group or people back at the base somehow organizing or facilitating it,” Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network told the Guardian. (The AAN is funded by four Scandanavian governments, all of which have troops in Afghanistan).
By contrast, few U.S. news account question that the massacre was the work of one man acting alone. In the U.S. media accounts Bales is described as the proverbial “lone nut,” a man under pressure from former investors and foreclosing banks who may have had too many tours of duties and too many drinks. In testimony to the House Armed Services Committee today, Gen. John Allen, commander of the international forces in Afghanistan, emphasized the singular nature of Bales’ actions. “We are now investigating what appears to be the murder of 16 innocent Afghan civilians at the hands of a U.S. service member,” he said. Allen also announced a separate administrative investigation into “command relationships associated with [Bales’] involvement in that combat outpost,” which suggests the scope of the probe may be broadening.
“He just snapped,” an unnamed senior U.S. official told the New York Times. “When it all comes out, it will be a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues.” This official’s comments reportedly drew from “accounts of the sergeant’s state of mind from two other soldiers with whom he illicitly drank alcohol on the night of the shootings, the official said, and those soldiers face disciplinary action.”
Leave aside this official’s willingness to draw sweeping conclusions from limited evidence. The passing admission that two other soldiers face disciplinary action for drinking with Bales on the night of the massacre might cast doubt on the notion that no one else knew what Bales was going to do. Army spokeswoman Lt. Col Amy Hannah said in telephone interview that she could not confirm the Times’ account. “I am not aware of any releases of information” about other soldiers facing disciplinary action, Hannah said. If the U.S. official’s remarks to the Times were accurate, then the Army is refraining from disclosing how many soldiers are under investigation.
Then there is conflicting eyewitness testimony. In this CNN video, one man describes the actions of a group in carrying out the killings. “They took him my uncle out of the room and shot him,” he says. “They came to this room and martyred all the children.” But one boy seen on the tape says there was only a single gunman. Still other witnesses pointed out a place outside the home, where they said they found footprints of more than one U.S. soldier.
Journalists seeking to clarify the question have been thwarted. In Afghanistan, Pajhaowk Afghan News reports that Lewis Boone, the public affairs director for coalition forces, declined to answer questions about the massacre, saying that a joint Afghan-ISAF team was investigating the killings. As the Seattle Times noted yesterday, the Army has been struggling “to regulate information on the Afghanistan suspect.”
Ryan Evans, who worked with ISAF in Afghanistan and is now a research fellow at the Center for National Policy in Washington, said the thought “a cover up is very unlikely.”
“I think the most likely story is that Bales was acting on his own,” he said in an email, “but that either (a) he was using multiple weapons systems and using standard small unit tactics (basically re-positioning and moving around) which gave the illusion of a larger force or (b) the local ODA went out looking for him at some point and people saw them or (c) a mixture of the two.”
That may be, but the military’s silence is only fueling alternative theories. “An attack carried out by a group can worsen Kabul-Washington relations more than it is now,” says Washington-based Afghan journalist, Farzad Lemeh. “Secondly, it would affect all U.S. military for showing mismanagement.”
With the Obama’s Afghan war policy facing another crisis, it is understandable that the White House and the Pentagon want to control the story. But the evidence does not entirely support the narrative they’re pushing.
Glenn Greenwald has a horrifying look at the repeated harassment to which filmmaker Laura Poitras, who has made a series of powerful documentaries about the impact of the War on Terror, has been subject when she’s returned home to the United States from trips abroad:
She has had her laptop, camera and cellphone seized, and not returned for weeks, with the contents presumably copied. On several occasions, her reporter’s notebooks were seized and their contents copied, even as she objected that doing so would invade her journalist-source relationship. Her credit cards and receipts have been copied on numerous occasions. In many instances, DHS agents also detain and interrogate her in the foreign airport before her return, on one trip telling her that she would be barred from boarding her flight back home, only to let her board at the last minute. When she arrived at JFK Airport on Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, she was told by one DHS agent — after she asserted her privileges as a journalist to refuse to answer questions about the individuals with whom she met on her trip — that he “finds it very suspicious that you’re not willing to help your country by answering our questions.” They sometimes keep her detained for three to four hours (all while telling her that she will be released more quickly if she answers all their questions and consents to full searches).
Poitras is now forced to take extreme steps — ones that hamper her ability to do her work — to ensure that she can engage in her journalism and produce her films without the U.S. Government intruding into everything she is doing. She now avoids traveling with any electronic devices. She uses alternative methods to deliver the most sensitive parts of her work — raw film and interview notes — to secure locations. She spends substantial time and resources protecting her computers with encryption and password defenses. Especially when she is in the U.S., she avoids talking on the phone about her work, particularly to sources. And she simply will not edit her films at her home out of fear — obviously well-grounded — that government agents will attempt to search and seize the raw footage.
The New York Times did a wonderful interview with Poitras as part of its September 11 coverage last year:
Apparently, it’s threatening to set up a continuum of reactions to the War on Terror that includes both Americans’ emotional reactions to the physical reality of Ground Zero and opponents of the U.S. occupation who are running for office in Iraq. Or perhaps Poitras’s sin is suggesting that things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan torture and indefinite detention…”are the things that were not created on 9/11. Those are things that we chose.” Because if we chose them, we can roll them back.
Creating sympathy for people who are harmed by our actions and suggesting we take responsibility for our own are just some of the powerful things that art can do. But confusing ideas that are dangerous to your interests—for example, the suggestion that the huge growth of our security state haven’t reaped us tangible benefits and may in fact have done some damage—and dangerous to the country is a mistake intelligent people out to be ashamed to make. Greenwald points out that DHS concluded that their interrogations of Poitras had produced nothing of value, and yet continued to perform them. Maybe those agencies should answer some questions about what they expect to get next time around, and why harassing Poitras is a valuable use of their time. It’s a far milder query than the ones Poitras is being interrogated for posing.
A guide to what data mining is, how it works, and why it’s important.
Big data is everywhere we look these days. Businesses are falling all over themselves to hire ‘data scientists,’ privacy advocates are concerned about personal data and control, and technologists and entrepreneurs scramble to find new ways to collect, control and monetize data. We know that data is powerful and valuable. But how?
This article is an attempt to explain how data mining works and why you should care about it. Because when we think about how our data is being used, it is crucial to understand the power of this practice. Without data mining, when you give someone access to information about you, all they know is what you have told them. With data mining, they know what you have told them and can guess a great deal more. Put another way, data mining allows companies and governments to use the information you provide to reveal more than you think.
Data mining allows companies and governments to use the information you provide to reveal more than you think.
To most of us data mining goes something like this: tons of data is collected, then quant wizards work their arcane magic, and then they know all of this amazing stuff. But, how? And what types of things can they know? Here is the truth: despite the fact that the specific technical functioning of data mining algorithms is quite complex — they are a black box unless you are a professional statistician or computer scientist — the uses and capabilities of these approaches are, in fact, quite comprehensible and intuitive.
For the most part, data mining tells us about very large and complex data sets, the kinds of information that would be readily apparent about small and simple things. For example, it can tell us that “one of these things is not like the other” a la Sesame Street or it can show us categories and then sort things into pre-determined categories. But what’s simple with 5 datapoints is not so simple with 5 billion datapoints.
And these days, there’s always more data. We gather far more of it then we can digest. Nearly every transaction or interaction leaves a data signature that someone somewhere is capturing and storing. This is, of course, true on the internet; but, ubiquitous computing and digitization has made it increasingly true about our lives away from our computers (do we still have those?). The sheer scale of this data has far exceeded human sense-making capabilities. At these scales patterns are often too subtle and relationships too complex or multi-dimensional to observe by simply looking at the data. Data mining is a means of automating part this process to detect interpretable patterns; it helps us see the forest without getting lost in the trees.
Discovering information from data takes two major forms: description and prediction. At the scale we are talking about, it is hard to know what the data shows. Data mining is used to simplify and summarize the data in a manner that we can understand, and then allow us to infer things about specific cases based on the patterns we have observed. Of course, specific applications of data mining methods are limited by the data and computing power available, and are tailored for specific needs and goals. However, there are several main types of pattern detection that are commonly used. These general forms illustrate what data mining can do.
Anomaly detection : in a large data set it is possible to get a picture of what the data tends to look like in a typical case. Statistics can be used to determine if something is notably different from this pattern. For instance, the IRS could model typical tax returns and use anomaly detection to identify specific returns that differ from this for review and audit.
Association learning: This is the type of data mining that drives the Amazon recommendation system. For instance, this might reveal that customers who bought a cocktail shaker and a cocktail recipe book also often buy martini glasses. These types of findings are often used for targeting coupons/deals or advertising. Similarly, this form of data mining (albeit a quite complex version) is behind Netflix movie recommendations.
Cluster detection: one type of pattern recognition that is particularly useful is recognizing distinct clusters or sub-categories within the data. Without data mining, an analyst would have to look at the data and decide on a set of categories which they believe captures the relevant distinctions between apparent groups in the data. This would risk missing important categories. With data mining it is possible to let the data itself determine the groups. This is one of the black-box type of algorithms that are hard to understand. But in a simple example – again with purchasing behavior – we can imagine that the purchasing habits of different hobbyists would look quite different from each other: gardeners, fishermen and model airplane enthusiasts would all be quite distinct. Machine learning algorithms can detect all of the different subgroups within a dataset that differ significantly from each other.
Classification: If an existing structure is already known, data mining can be used to classify new cases into these pre-determined categories. Learning from a large set of pre-classified examples, algorithms can detect persistent systemic differences between items in each group and apply these rules to new classification problems. Spam filters are a great example of this – large sets of emails that have been identified as spam have enabled filters to notice differences in word usage between legitimate and spam messages, and classify incoming messages according to these rules with a high degree of accuracy.
Regression: Data mining can be used to construct predictive models based on many variables. Facebook, for example, might be interested in predicting future engagement for a user based on past behavior. Factors like the amount of personal information shared, number of photos tagged, friend requests initiated or accepted, comments, likes etc. could all be included in such a model. Over time, this model could be honed to include or weight things differently as Facebook compares how the predictions differ from observed behavior. Ultimately these findings could be used to guide design in order to encourage more of the behaviors that seem to lead to increased engagement over time.
The patterns detected and structures revealed by the descriptive data mining are then often applied to predict other aspects of the data. Amazon offers a useful example of how descriptive findings are used for prediction. The (hypothetical) association between cocktail shaker and martini glass purchases, for instance, could be used, along with many other similar associations, as part of a model predicting the likelihood that a particular user will make a particular purchase. This model could match all such associations with a user’s purchasing history, and predict which products they are most likely to purchase. Amazon can then serve ads based on what that user is most likely to buy.
Data mining, in this way, can grant immense inferential power. If an algorithm can correctly classify a case into known category based on limited data, it is possible to estimate a wide-range of other information about that case based on the properties of all the other cases in that category. This may sound dry, but it is how most successful Internet companies make their money and from where they draw their power.
War Zone – Soldiers With No Name [Commander X interview]
Language: Greek | Interviews: English
On March 2012 War Zone covered the Anonymous story interviewing Commander X via Skype.
SOLDIERS WITH NO NAME: Activists or internet rebels? Pranksters, common hackers or contemporary revolutionaries with keyboards and flat-screens? For the first time on Greek television, the people behind the masks that spread panic with their attacks and have set off the alarm at governments and corporations around the world, reveal their goals and targets. The notorious “Anonymous” came on TV screens last night, in War Zone’s new two-part documentary “Soldiers With No Name”. via War Zone
The documentary also feature interviews with Wired journalist Quinn
A war correspondent and photographer, Sotiris has been filming news & current affairs documentaries since 2003, highlighting the stories of people in crisis and the contemporary issues of the world we live in. The awarded War Zone documentary series takes the viewer to the world’s hot spots and the centre of international news developments. Each feature of 60 minutes, is the result of long-term journalist research characterized by cinematic narrative, quality image & detailed editing. War Zone airs on Mega TV Greece.Norton and Chief Technology Officer of Application Security, INC, Josh Shaul.
INTERNET giant Facebook is accessing smartphone users’ personal text messages, an investigation revealed today.
Facebook admitted reading text messages belonging to smartphone users who downloaded the social-networking app and said that it was accessing the data as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service, The (London) Sunday Times reported.
Other well-known companies accessing smartphone users’ personal data – such as text messages – include photo-sharing site Flickr, dating site Badoo and Yahoo Messenger, the paper said.
It claimed that some apps even allow companies to intercept phone calls – while others, such as YouTube, are capable of remotely accessing and operating users’ smartphone cameras to take photographs or videos at any time.
Security app My Remote Lock and the app Tennis Juggling Game were among smaller companies’ apps that may intercept users’ calls, the paper said.
Emma Draper, of the Privacy International campaign group, said, “Your personal information is a precious commodity, and companies will go to great lengths to get their hands on as much of it as possible.”
More than 400,000 apps can be downloaded to Android phones, and more than 500,000 are available for iPhones – with all apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store covered by the same terms and conditions policy.
According to a YouGov poll for the newspaper, 70 per cent of smartphone users rarely or never read the terms and conditions policy when they download an app.
(NaturalNews) The state of Michigan is only days away from engaging in what can only be called true “animal genocide” — the mass murder of ranch animals based on the color of their hair. It’s all part of a shocking new “Invasive Species Order” (ISO) put in place by Michigan’sDepartment of Natural Resources(DNR). This Invasive Species Order suddenly and shockingly defines virtually all open-range pigs raised by small family farms to be illegal “invasive species,” and possession of just one of these animals is now a felony crime in Michigan, punishable by up to four years in prison.
The state has said it will “destroy” these pigs beginning in April, potentially byraiding local farms with government-issued rifles, then shooting the pig herds while arresting the members of the family and charging them with the “crime” of raising pigs with the wrong hair color. This may truly be a state-sponsored serial animal killing spree.
Reality check: You may think this story is some kind of early April Fools prank, but it isn’t. This is factually true and verifiable through the documents, videos and websites linked below. The state of Michigan seriously intends to unleash amass murder spree of pigs of the wrong colorbeginning April 1.
Yet these are the very pigs that farmers and ranchers in Michigan have been raisingfor decades. The state doesn’t seem to care about this, and there are indications thatthis ISO may have been nudged into position by the conventional pork industryas a tactic to wipe out its competition of local, specialty ranching conducted by small families and dedicated farmers who don’t work for the big pork corporations. (The Michigan Pork Grower’s Association.)
Hear the shocking interview and watch the family farm video…
I have recorded an exclusive interview withMark BakerfromBaker’s Green Acres— one of many ranching operations threatened with total destruction by state bureaucrats and this new Invasive Species Order. Listen to that interview here: http://buzz.naturalnews.com/000025-Michigan-pigs-invasive_species.htm…
The Baker family has also recorded a video explaining their farming operation and how the state of Michigan is threatening to destroy their entire farming operation. Watch that stunning video (and spread the word about it) at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=843yH_0RMIA
Mark Baker, by the way, is a veteran of the United States Air Force. As a veteran of the U.S. armed forces, he served to protect the rights of others, yet he now finds his own rights and freedoms under assault by the state of Michigan. He told NaturalNews he is determined to protect his livelihood at all costs and to take a stand against tyranny in Michigan.
Got the wrong hair color? The state of Michigan will kill you
The state of Michigan has issued a document describing nine “traits” of what they call “feral pigs” which they claim should be destroyed on April 1.
Those traits includehaving the wrong color on the tip of the hairor evenbeing born with striped hair. The traits are written so that virtually all pigs raised by family ranchers across the state of Michigan will be targeted for destruction by the state of Michigan starting April 1. Farmers who defend their livestock may be arrested as felons and charged with multiple felony crimes by the state.
Michigan to destroy pigs based on the color of their hair – racial profiling for animal murder
Here’s some of the language from the Michigan document describing which animals are to be destroyed. Remember: For a pig to qualify as “feral” according to state tyrants, it only has to exhibit ONE of these traits, not all of them:
1) Bristle-tip coloration: exhibit bristle tips that are lighter in color (e.g., white, cream, or buff) than the rest of the hair shaft.
2) Dark point coloration: exhibits “points” (i.e., distal portions of the snout, ears, legs, and tail) that are dark brown to black in coloration, and lack light-colored tips on the bristles.
3) Coat coloration: exhibit a number of coat coloration patterns:solid black, solid red / brown, black and white spotted, black and red / brown spotted.
4) Underfur: exhibit the presence of underfur that is lighter in color (e.g., smoke gray to brown) than the overlying dark brown to black bristles/guard hairs.
5) Juvenile coat pattern: exhibit striped coat patterns — a light grayish-tan to brown base coat, with a dark brown to black spinal stripe and three to four brown irregular longitudinal stripes with dark margins along the length of the body.
6) Skeletal appearance: Structures include skull morphology, dorsal profile, and external body measurements including tail length, head-body length, hind foot length, ear length, snout length, and shoulder height.
7) Tail structure: Straight tails.
8) Ear structure: Erect ear structure.
9) “Other characteristics not currently known to the MDNR that are identified by the scientific community.”
Did you catch that last one? So now the so-called “scientific community” can simply invent whatever trait they want and the state of Michigan will legalize the mass murder of all ranch animals displaying that trait.
The state of Michigan plans to bring guns to destroy local food, local farms
What’s clear from all this is that Michigan bureaucrats plan to bring guns and handcuffs to ranches all across Michigan, shooting their family livestock dead and ruining their farming operations. They then plan to arrest these ranchers as felons and separate them from their families, then charge them with felony crimes.
This is all being done under the mantra of “government is good! Government protects you!” It’s being pushed under the guise of protecting people from “invasive species,” yet what the Michigan bureaucrats don’t tell anyone is that now your local food producers have had their own ranch animals placed on that list!
That’s the trick here: Michigan has declaredfarm animalsto be an invasive species!
An epic battle of truth, freedom and justice is being waged in Michigan
We need your help to defend farm freedom in Michigan and across the country. Here are some actions you can take:
4) DONATE to help support the legal fees of the Baker family farm. Their website is atwww.BakersGreenAcres.com
5) DEMAND farm freedom in your area! No government has the right to tell us what food we can or cannot grow, eat or trade! It’s as simple as that, and any government bureaucrat, tyrant or local dictator who thinks they can trample on your God-given right to choose what kind of food you wish to produce or consume is in desperate need of having a boot shoved deeply and forcefully up their rear ends.
Give tyrants the boot! Defend local farms. Even if you don’t eat pork (I don’t), this is still a farm freedom issue worth fighting for.
Update: I’ve clarified two aspects of this story below. First, Micro Systemation’s XRY tool often requires more than two minutes to crack the iPhone’s password. The two minutes I originally cited were a reference to the time shown in the video (now removed by Micro Systemation) below. Given that, as I originally wrote, the phone in the video used the simplest possible password (0000), the process often takes far longer.
Second, Micro Systemation had told me that XRY can gain access to phones that run the latest version of iOS. But in fact, it can only gain access to older iPhones and iPads running the latest version of the operating system, and can’t access the iPhone 4S or the iPad 2 or later. Apologies for this oversight.
Set your iPhone to require a four-digit passcode, and it may keep your private information safe from the prying eyes of the taxi driver whose cab you forget it in. But if law enforcement is determined to see the data you’ve stored on your smartphone, those four digits will slow down the process of accessing it as little as two minutes.
Here’s a video posted last week by Micro Systemation, a Stockholm, Sweden-based firm that sells law enforcement and military customers the tools to access the devices of criminal suspects or military detainees and siphon off their personal information.
Update: After this post brought widespread attention to Micro Systemation’s video, the company has removed it from YouTube.
As the video shows showed, a Micro Systemation application the firm calls XRY can quickly crack an iOS or Android phone’s passcode, dump its data to a PC, decrypt it, and display information like the user’s GPS location, files, call logs, contacts, messages, even a log of its keystrokes.
Mike Dickinson, the firm’s marketing director and the voice in its videos, says that the company sells products capable of accessing passcode-protected iOS and Android devices in over 60 countries. It supplies 98% of the U.K.’s police departments, for instance, as well as many American police departments and the FBI. Its largest single customer is the U.S. military. ”When people aren’t wearing uniforms, looking at mobile phones to identify people is quite helpful,” Dickinson says by way of explanation.
With smartphone adoption rocketing around the world, Dickinson says Micro Systemation’s “business is booming.” The small company has grown close to 25% in revenue year-over-year, earned $18 million in revenue in 2010 up from $12 million the year before, and doubled its employees since 2009.
“It’s a massive boom industry, the growth in evidence from mobile phones,” says Dickinson. “After twenty years or so, people understand they shouldn’t do naughty things on their personal computers, but they still don’t understand that about phones. From an evidential point of view, it’s of tremendous value.”
“If they’ve done something wrong,” he adds.
XRY works much like the jailbreak hacks that allow users to remove the installation restrictions on their devices, Dickinson says, though he wouldn’t say much about the exact security vulnerability that XRY exploits to gain access to the iPhone. He claims that the company doesn’t use backdoor vulnerabilities in the devices created by the manufacturer, but rather seeks out security flaws in the phone’s software just as jailbreakers do, one reason why half the company’s 75 employees are devoted to research and development. “Every week a new phone comes out with a different operating sytems and we have to reverse engineer them,” he says. “We’re constantly chasing the market.”
Update: Mike Dickinson has clarified that Micro Systemation’s XRY tool doesn’t support the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPad 3. It does, however, support the latest version of Apple’s iOS operating system, so he says that older devices that have the latest software installed are still vulnerable.
After bypassing the iPhone’s security restrictions to run its code on the phone, the tool “brute forces” the phone’s password, guessing every possible combination of numbers to find the correct code, as Dickinson describes it. In the video above, the process takes seconds. (Although admittedly, the phone’s example passcode is “0000″, about the most easily-guessed password possible.)
Dicksinson acknowledges that users who set longer passcodes for devices can in fact make the devices far tougher to crack. “The more complex the password, the longer and harder it’s going to be to access the phone,” he says. “In some cases, it takes so long to brute force that it’s not worth doing it.” That may have been the situation, for instance, in one recent case involving the phone of Dante Dears, a paroled convict accused of running a prostitution ring known as “Pimping Hoes Daily” from his Android phone; The FBI, apparently unable or unwilling to crack the phone, asked Google to help in accessing it.
An inquisitive alien visits the planet to check on our progress as a species, and gets into a conversation with the first person he meets. The alien discovers that we live under the rule of a thing called “government”, and wants to understand more about what “government” is, what it does, and why it exists.
“We want the Syrian Army posted on the roofs of the houses, with helicopters and tanks.”
“Stop these snipers from killing us.”
~ The Residents of Homs, Syria.
Moscow has accused the West and co’ of stirring up tensions in the Arab world by calling for the overthrow of President Assad and the Syrian Government. Russia has commented that those nations who are calling for the “Syrian opposition” to avoid dialogue with the government, are only encouraging and provoking further violence.
Author and journalist Webster Tarpley, from a visit to Syria, says it’s very simple: the Western powers, Israel and the Gulf States are the true forces behind the violence in Syria. They are funding Foreign Terrorist Snipers; “Death Squads”, to come into Syria and Murder Innocent Syrians randomly in their twisted bid to destabilize Syria.
Many of the so called “free syrian army” are in FACT just foreign fighters and fanatics, brought into Syria by the Western Powers, the CIA and Mossad, so as to engineer a false and highly exaggerated impression of the situation there, in order to intervene militarily in Syria and depose Assad’s Government.
What worked so wonderfully for them in Libya, they are trying to repeat in Syria. This engineered and false situation the Western Powers, Israel and the Corrupt Gulf Monarchies are engineering and cultivating is ultimately part of their unjust Zionist agenda and War against Iran and must be Exposed for the Pure Evil it is.
Qorvis Communications is a “Public Relations” / lobbying firm based in Washington, DC which specializes in representing high-profile overseas clients – including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Brunei. They are fond of editing Wikipedia to make themselves look better, as documented by Business Insider and Project PM.
According to a media release on 9 Aug, 2000, Qorvis was:
‘Formed through the merger of three well-known and highly regarded companies: The Poretz Group, an investor relations firm serving technology companies; The Weber/Merritt Company, a public affairs and grassroots firm; and JAS Communications, a public relations and marketing communications company. Main mover in the formation of Qorvis was Michael Petruzzello, former CEO of Shandwick North America, who will be the new firm’s managing director. The company launches with approximately $14 million in revenues and 22 employees. In addition, powerhouse law firm Patton Boggs has established an exclusive strategic alliance with Qorvis and is the company’s lead investor.’[1]
Qorvis acquired its Bahrain account from Bell Pottinger in July 2010, for whom it served as a subcontractor until August 2011. [2] In its November 2011 FARA statement, the firm declared having rendered the following services to the Kingdom:
monitoring daily media coverage relevant to Bahrain;
conducting press activities for government officials
drafting/distributing fact sheets, op-ed pieces speeches and news articles by e-mail in order to position Bahrain as a committed player in the war on terror, an agent of peace in the Middle East and other unspecified issues “pertinent to the Kingdom.”[3]
Service began approximately one month prior to a major crackdown on Shiite opposition figures and domestic media outlets.[4] The New York Times speculated that the clampdown was part of the lead-up to the October 2010 parliamentary elections in which the Sunni establishment was expected to lose power to representatives of the Shiite demographic majority.[5]
Qorvis sparked criticism in March, 2011, after issuing a misleading press release on behalf of the Bahraini government.[6] After a draconian crackdown in which security forces in the Bahraini capital violently dispersed unarmed demonstrators, interrupted telecommunications services and reportedly hindered the treatment of injured civilians, Hilary Clinton issued a strong criticism of the government’s actions.[7] Qorvis responded by issuing a press release that emphasized Clinton’s positive comments by presenting them out of context, while completely skirting her critical statements:[8]
PARIS, March 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today emphasized the
commitment of the United States toward Bahrain and her hope for the success of the National Dialogue in the island
kingdom. She also affirmed the "sovereign right" of Bahrain to invite security forces from allied countries, and
stated that the U.S. shared the goals of the GCC regarding Bahrain.
Since the uprising in Bahrain began, Bahrain's Crown Prince has called on all parties to engage in a dialogue to
reconcile differences. Secretary Clinton said the goal of the United States is "a credible political process that can
address the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Bahrain."
Ambassador Houda Nonoo appreciated the Secretary's comments that dialogue should unfold in a peaceful, positive
atmosphere that ensures that students can go to school, businesses can operate and people can undertake their normal
daily activities. Said Ambassador Nonoo, "The government of Bahrain has consistently maintained that differences
should be resolved peacefully around the negotiating table, but unfortunately, the opposition has not responded to
this offer and instead has chosen to continue along the path of violence and disruption of normal life in Bahrain. It
is my government's belief that wisdom will prevail among the opposition and they will come to the negotiating table to
resolve all differences peacefully."
This has been issued by Qorvis Communications on behalf of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United States.
SOURCE Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United States*
Recent media:
‘How Bahrain works Washington’ from Salon (Dec 9, 2011)[9]
‘Meet Bahrain’s Lobbyists’ from The Hill (Dec 9, 2011)[10]
In May, 2011, Bahrani human rights activist Maryam al-Khawaja was invited to speak as part of a panel discussion ‘Dawn of a New Arab World’ at the Oslo Freedom Forum.[11] Writing in the Huffington Post, Oslo Freedom Forum founder and CEO Thor Halvorssen[12] notes that ‘the Bahraini government has been aided by a coterie of “reputation management” experts, including professionals from the Washington, D.C., offices of Qorvis Communications and the Potomac Square Group, in addition to Bell Pottinger out of their offices in London and Bahrain.’ He goes on to describe:
‘Within minutes of Maryam’s speech (streamed live online) the global Bahraini PR machine went into dramatic overdrive. A tightly organized ring of Twitter accounts began to unleash hundreds of tweets accusing Maryam of being an extremist, a liar, and a servant of Iran. Simultaneously, the Oslo Freedom Forum’s email account was bombarded with messages, all crudely made from a simple template, arguing that Maryam al-Khawaja is an enemy of the Bahraini people and a “traitor.” Most of the U.S.-based fake tweeting, fake blogging (flogging), and online manipulation is carried out from inside Qorvis Communication’s “Geo-Political Solutions” division.
The effort is mechanical and centrally organized, and it goes beyond the online world. In fact, right before Maryam was to give her speech, she noticed two young women in the crowd who stalk her speeches and heckled her a few days earlier at an event in the U.S.
More so than intimidation, violence, and disappearances, the most important tool for dictatorships across the world is the discrediting of critics like Maryam.’[13]
An earlier Huffington Post article on Qorvis, linked to by Halvorssen, states:
‘One of the methods used by Qorvis and other firms is online reputation management — through its Geo-Political Solutions (GPS) division, the firm uses ‘”black arts” by creating fake blogs and websites that link back to positive content, “to make sure that no one online comes across the bad stuff,” says the former insider. Other techniques include the use of social media, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.’[14]
Attacks made on Maryam al-Khawaja through Twitter were numerous at that time and this, from @ActivateBahrain, is representative: #OFF2011 Maryam Al Khawaja is presenting a falsified presentation in #oslo about #Bahrain it is a package of lies and exaggerations.[15]
Another, from @Dand00na86, and posted to the #Bahrain hashtag included two phone numbers and the message Let Maryam Al-Khawaja know what you think of her lies by calling her direct![16]
Thor Halvorssen also writes that a second Bahrani blogger, Ali Abdulemam, had also been invited to speak at the 2011 Forum:
‘Ali was imprisoned by his government in September 2010 for “spreading false information.” After being released on February 23, he enthusiastically accepted his speaking invitation and plans were made for his travel. And then he disappeared. No one has seen or heard from him since March 18.’
The Geo-Political Solutions division of Qorvis is under the supervision of partner Matt J Lauer.
To date, Qorvis’ work in Yemen has come about through their association with UK firm Bell Pottinger which is reported to have held contracts with Yemen’s National Awareness Authority and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[17]
On November 29, 2010, Qorvis’ lodged a statement with the US Department of Justice’s register of lobbyists which outlined its role as a subcontractor to Bell Pottinger on a ‘one off basis’[18]. The work required Qorvis ‘to place an opinion article by a Yemeni official in a news outlet’.[19]
A secong statement was lodged on August 4, 2011. Qorvis was to be ‘subcontracted to provide media outreach for print and television media and strategic communications consulting’ and this would last ‘for the duration of Bell Pottinger’s engagement by Yemen’. The contract was worth a ‘payment of $30,000 monthly’[20].
[edit] Involvement With Saudi Government’s 9/11 Response
Three of Qorvis’s founding partners – Judy Smith, Bernie Merritt and Jim Weber – left in December 2002, probably due to the firm’s taking $200,000 a month from the Saudi government to aid in downplaying the links between Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda after September 11th, 2001.[21]
Sam Dealey – Former editor of the Washington Times, the newspaper funded by the CIA and the Unification Church that eschews both profitability and truth-seeking in favor of sucking Ronald Regan zombie dick.
Ron Faucheux
Greg Lagana – Former SVP for communications and marketing @ DynCorp International; worked for Bush 2 at the Coalition Information Center prior to that.
Matt J Lauer – Former executive director of U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy @ Department of State.
Rich Masters – Talking head. Manages client teams for the House of Saud as well as big pharma and the sugar industry.
John Reid – Partner and managing director for the Middle East.
‘Yemen’s butcher, Ali Saleh hires PR firm Bell Pottinger (& Qorvis) amid murder of journo and protesters’[22]
‘Lobbyists Jump Ship In Wake Of Mideast Unrest’[23]
‘PR Mercenaries, Their Dictator Masters, And The Human Rights Stain’[24]
‘Extreme Makeover: Mideast Autocrat Edition: From Moammar Qaddafi to the house of Saud, six repressive rulers who hired PR firms to help clean up their images’[25]
A member of the U.S. Air Command with special clearance of White House, spoke earlier this Sunday, during an interview apparently aired only by Australian MSM, about the official plans of the U.S. military to fight a hostile alien invasion. Take in mind that TPTB are building a mega radio-telescope in Australia and New Zealand, for detecting an alien invasion and also the U.S. Army is deploying thousands of Marines in Australia, what strongly suggests that a major false-flag event will take place in the land of down under.
“A mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits (of government) is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.” – James Madison, Federalist Paper #48, 1788.
President Obama signed an Executive Order for “National Defense” yesterday that claims executive authority to seize all US resources and persons, including during peacetime, for self-declared “national defense.”
The EO claims power to place any American into military or “allocated” labor use (analysis here and here).
“American exceptionalism” is the belief that a 200+ year-old parchment in the National Archives has magical powers to somehow guarantee limited government from 1% tyranny, despite the specific and clear warnings of the US Founders, despite world history of repeated oligarchic/1% tyranny claiming to be for the “good of the people,” and despite US history’s descent into vicious psychopathy (short version here: US war history in 2 minutes) hidden in plain view with paper-thin corporate media propaganda.
I don’t know about you, but both my grandfathers were in the US military during the gruesome WW1. My father, father-in-law, and only uncle were in a brutal WW2. Both wars were functions of colonialism; a 1%’s vicious and rapacious greed.
I don’t know about you, but I’m teaching the obvious crimes in war and money, destruction of Constitutional Rights rights (see specific links below), and asking students (of all ages) what they see to do about these clear facts. The first answer people see is to help people get over their “American exceptionalism” to recognize these massive crimes, and demand arrests of the obvious criminal “leadership.”
I don’t know about you, but I refuse to be silent in face of lying and criminal government policies that annually murder millions, harm billions, and loot trillions of the 99%’s dollars.
What will you do?
Here is the US government claiming it can Constitutionally assassinate Americans upon the non-reviewable dictate of the leader, as these criminals take psychopathic steps to murder Americans who expose their crimes.
Here is NDAA 2012 where US government claims it can Constitutionally disappear Americans and then appoint a tribunal with death sentence authority (unless unlimited detention is their choice). Here is the 2006 Military Commissions Act that says the same. This is fascist terrorism to silence Americans from communicating that the 1% are War Criminals to arrest NOW.
Here is US government claiming it can Constitutionally control-drown (waterboard) anyone they declare a “terrorist” as a 1% terror-tactic to silence Americans.
CHICAGO — A week before Ben Breedlove died of a heart attack, the Texas teenager posted a remarkable video describing the peace and bright lights he’d found the other times his heart stopped.
Breedlove, 18, tells his story with simple note cards and the occasional smile, sitting close to the camera and stepping back just once to show the scar from when a pacemaker was implanted to help his troubled heart.
It is a remarkably hopeful video, though Breedlove also describes the fear he lived with after being born with a serious heart condition and disappointment that he could not play sports and “be the same as everyone else.”
“The first time I cheated death was when I was 4,” one of the cards said.
Breedlove had a seizure and as nurses rushed him down a hospital hallway, he told his mother of the bright light overhead.
She said she couldn’t see anything, but he felt his fear and worries washed away and couldn’t help smiling.
“I can’t even describe the peace, how peaceful it was,” he wrote. “I will NEVER forget that feeling or that day.”
Breedlove nearly died again a few months ago when his heart stopped during a routine surgery to remove his tonsils.
“It was a miracle that they brought me back,” he wrote. “I was scared to die but am SO glad I didn’t.”
Breedlove’s heart stopped again on December 6. He was at his Austin high school and sat down on a bench after feeling like he was going to faint.
He passed out and when he woke up, he couldn’t talk or move. He could only watch and listen as paramedics put shock pads on his chest.
He heard them say that his heart had stopped and that he had no pulse, which he explains by the fact that “when people’s bodies ‘die’ the brain still works for a short time.”
“I really thought to myself, this is it, I’m dying,” he wrote.
“The next thing that happened I’m not sure if it was a dream or vision. But while I was still unconscious I was in this white room. No walls, it just went on and on…”
He found himself standing with his favorite rapper, Kid Cudi, and they were both dressed in really nice suits.
“Why he was the only one there with me, I’m still trying to figure out,” Breedlove wrote.
“I had that same feeling, I couldn’t stop smiling. I then looked at myself in the mirror and I was proud of MYSELF. Of my entire life, everything I have done. IT WAS THE BEST feeling.”
Kid Cudi put his hand on his shoulder and then Breedlove’s favorite song came on, the part where Cudi raps “when will this fantasy end… when will the heaven begin?”
Cudi told him “Go now” and Breedlove woke up.
After viewing the video, the rapper said he broke down in tears watching it.
“This has really touched my heart in a way I cant describe, this is why I do what I do. Why I write my life, and why I love you all so much,” Kid Cudi wrote on his blog.
“I know Ben is at Peace, and I hope he gets a chance to sit and talk with my Dad.”
Breedlove ended his video with four final cards: “I didn’t want to leave that place. I wish I NEVER woke up. Do you believe in angels or God? I Do.”
Breedlove died at Christmas and his family said in his death notice that it was a gift from God.
“We know the Lord used the amazing life of our precious son to reach a weary world on Christmas night, just as He did over 2000 years ago with his own Son,” they wrote, and urged people to find the video that Breedlove posted on YouTube on December 18.
Director, Center for Counter-terrorism & World Peace
Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest and most gifted men ever to have walked this Earth.
A huge amount has been written about the prodigal genius of Nikola Tesla and so there may not be a great need to say more here about his life, his brilliance, his vision, and his achievements.
But in brief, Tesla was an extraordinary, intuitive, creative genius who, among a great deal else, invented alternating current (which powers the the modern world) and radio (for which Marconi is often falsely given credit).
Contemporary biographers of Tesla have deemed him “the father of physics”, “the man who invented the twentieth century”, and “the patron saint of modern electricity”.
Much of his life’s work was about providing for the world free (i.e. zero-cost) energy, which Tesla envisaged would be broadcast wirelessly through the air or through the Earth itself with no need for powerlines – but despite years of trying, he never obtained the funding to achieve this, one of his dreams.
It has long since been rumored that he invented or developed a significant number of electrical and electronic devices which were decades ahead of their time and would have been of special interest to US military and intelligence circles. Around 300 patents were issued to Tesla in 25 countries, many of them major and far-reaching in concept.
The reality of Tesla’s murder was brought home to us after listening to this Youtube presentation. Eric Bermen tells Greg Syzmanski how he discovered his former girlfriend was the daughter of ex-Nazi SS Commando Otto Skorzeny, and thereby quite by chance met the elderly Skorzeny who had been living for years in the US, working as a carpenter with a new identity supplied by the CIA after WWII.
Bermen (who sometimes uses the pseudonym Eric Orion) heard a full confession from Skorzeny, who was nearing the end of his life, and was given a shoebox full of over a hundred photographs to substantiate his claims.
Among a number of other highly significant revelations, Bermen heard from Skorzeny that he had personally suffocated Nikola Tesla on January 6, 1943, assisted by fellow-Nazi Reinhard Gehlen. Tesla was then 86 years old.
According to Skorzeny, he and Gehlen had tricked Tesla the previous day into revealing the full details of his most important discoveries. After the murder, they stole the contents of Tesla’s safe, which were delivered to Hitler. (Note, of course, that the US military would have fully repatriated this treasure trove of innovation through Project Paperclip at the end of the war.)
Otto Skorzeny was Hitler’s bodyguard & also an assassin, one of the many Nazis who ex-filtrated to the USA after WWII, as part of Project Paperclip. Many of these Nazi scientists ended up working for NASA, the CIA, and other US secret services.
Although he supposedly died in 1975 in Spain, Skorzeny resurfaced in 1999. Otto Skorzeny described how (“contrary to the CIA-written history books”) he helped Hitler escape to Austria in a plane flown by a female pilot, Hanna Reitsch.
“Hitler did not commit suicide,” Skorzeny recounted. “His double was shot between the eyes, and the dental records proved he was not Hitler. The Americans kept it a secret, worried the truth might anger the Russians.”
A Young Tesla
Despite conflicting literary and historical accounts, Nikola Tesla, a Serb, was born on July 10, 1856, in Smiljan, Lika Serbian province, Austro-Hungarian Empire of that time, or what is now modern-day Croatia. Prior to World War I, Smiljan was on the border of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
The son of a Serbian Orthodox priest who rose to the rank of Archbishop, Tesla had the opportunity to study a variety of topics contained in his father’s personal library. As a young boy, he accompanied his father on trips to Rome, where he was able to study the lesser-known works stored in the Vatican’s vast scientific repository.
Upon completing his studies in engineering and physics at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria, Tesla attended the University at Prague. He demonstrated, early on, an innate ability to solve mechanical and scientific problems, especially in the area of electricity and its applications in power production.
After working for Edison Telephone Company subsidiaries in Budapest, Paris, and other cities throughout Europe, Nikola Tesla went to America, to meet the man whose company gave him his first job, Thomas Edison.
Tesla found it difficult to work for Edison (due to Edison’s reneging on financial promises), but soon found backers to finance his research and development projects and his new inventions.
Financiers, such as John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan, George Westinghouse and John Jacob Astor were among those who saw the potential in Tesla’s pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit to capitalize on his technological discoveries in electricity, wireless communications, and physics.
The only official documentation of Nikola Tesla’s arrival to the United States was, again, produced at the Port of New York. [9] On April 7, 1882 a 25-year old Tesla arrived via the SS Nordland, which departed from Antwerp. He had returned, on this trip to the U.S., after lecturing in Paris.
Tesla’s destination: New York. Tesla immigrated as a “laborer,” though this label hardly befit the man who would become the most prolific inventor in history, with some 700 technological patents to his credit. Previous accounts of Tesla’s association with Thomas Edison’s projects place him in the United States in the 1870s.
Tesla in Colorado Springs Lab
His many technological discoveries were certain to have drawn the attention of those hungry for world domination and superiority.
By and large, Tesla’s inventions and his career were excluded from our history books because his inventions and patents were stolen and then weaponized.
It was never intended for us to learn about the suppression of Tesla’s advanced scientific discoveries, nor about those who profited from their theft—the orchestrators of the master plan.
Though much has been written about Tesla’s successes and failures, few have detailed the behind-the-scenes financial activities which disclose a Nazi plot to acquire his technology, while research and development costs had largely been paid (unknowingly) by U.S. taxpayers.
Many of Tesla’s patents fell into Nazi hands prior to and during World Wars I and II. As a result, Tesla continuously found himself in litigation over patent rights and other issues.
Although he had succeeded in winning the majority of his patent lawsuits, his technology had been repeatedly stolen and sold to the German Nazis and other foreign governments, so he never achieved the financial success he deserved.
The embezzlement of his capitalization went unchecked throughout Tesla’s career. At the time of his death (by murder, according to Skorzeny) on January 6, 1943, Tesla died virtually penniless.
On Good Friday, Ortodox Christmas Eve, he was found in bed, dressed in solemn black suit, arms folded on his chest. They say that a great mind felt his death is coming , he put on the solemn black suit – and then died. An incredible lie and mission impossible, even for a great mind as it was Nikola Tesla.
Tesla’s Ashes are preserved in a Gilded Sphere – His Favorite Shape
This is the ultimate proof that he was murdered and his killers dressed him in a suit and left him in the bed! His killers: Otto Skorzeny and Reinhard Gehlen. Nikola Tesla’s successes in discovering new technologies did not go unnoticed by many industrial capitalists and world governments.
In fact, many of his inventions were developed through secret government programs which began soon after his discoveries in alternating current (AC), electromagnetic energy, electric motors, generators, coils, radio transmission, energy-saving devices, and wireless transmission technologies.
Since Tesla was often buried deep in research at remote labs, many of his financial and legal affairs were supervised by his closest associate, George H. Scherff.
Scherff often advised Tesla about pending patent litigation, contracts, proposals, demonstrations, and financial affairs.
As any trusty associate would, Scherff stood beside Tesla through all the ups and downs of his financial nightmares, sometimes arranging for extended credit at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Tesla often resided, or by obtaining a cash advance toward research he had been contracted to perform.
Near the end of his career, Tesla was evicted from the Waldorf for an outstanding bill which exceeded $20,000 — a rather large sum for those days.
As Tesla worked on secret U.S. government projects at Colorado Springs, Colorado, Scherff communicated to Tesla the status of his business affairs. Tesla spoke of hopeful, future financial successes, though Scherff repeatedly delivered the news of dwindling funds. Tesla had begun construction of a wireless power transmission tower (“Wardenclyffe,” Shoreham, Long Island) with funds invested by J.P. Morgan.
Tesla’s Tower
When Morgan discovered that the tower would transmit free electricity and radio waves, he cancelled the project and had the tower dismantled, then sold for scrap. Morgan was not about to allow Americans to receive free electricity, television and radio.
Tesla was devastated when he received the news, but continued on with his new inventions. The Rockefeller Connection Records show that 17 Battery Place is the Whitehall Building and was owned by Frank Rockefeller, who, with his brothers William and John D., also owned many of the companies with offices located there.
The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) had its world headquarters there, as well as a variety of oil, mining, and chemical companies.
Though Union Sulphur Company was run by its president, Herman Frasch, a German chemist who patented extraction methods for sulphur and petroleum, Frasch also worked for John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company (in New York, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio), developing similar extraction methods.
Frank Rockefeller was also an investor of Buckeye Steel Castings in Columbus, Ohio. Buckeye manufactured automatic couplers and chassis for railroad cars owned by the Harrimans, the Rockefellers, and J.P. Morgan. Eventually, Samuel P. Bush was promoted from general manager to president of the company after producing gigantic profits.
Samuel P. Bush’s association with the Rockefellers and his subsequent position as Director of the War Industries Board afforded him the opportunity to create contracts with Remington Arms during the war, courtesy of Percy Rockefeller. Nikola Tesla’s trusted assistant (sometimes referred to as “accountant” or “secretary”) George Scherff, Sr., worked at Union Sulphur Company.
Normally, this association would not set off alarms, considering the state of Tesla’s affairs. Scherff had every right to earn a decent living in order to support his family. That was “the American Way.” But a careful examination of Union Sulphur Co. might reveal that someone was being deceived — Tesla, and Scherff was at the root of this deception.
Who was George Scherff? Who was George Scherff? Better yet, who was George H. Scherff, Sr.? There exists no legitimate record of a George H. Scherff being born in the U.S. from the late-1800s through 1925, yet, George Scherff was Nikola Tesla’s assistant/accountant.
Only one photograph in public circulation records the face of George Scherff, Sr. -at the Association of Radio Engineers banquet of 1915 (above). Tesla is seen standing tallest in the middle of the back row, while Scherff stands at the end of the same row to Tesla’s left, his hands visible at his sides.
If he was born in Germany, could his birthplace shed some light on this mystery? Probably—if they exist (it has become apparent that individuals associated with the Nazi Party commonly have all or parts of their genealogical records expunged—we will explore this further in the section of this article dealing with the “Bush” family tree).
In short, Otto Skorzeny claimed that the true identity of George H.W. Bush was “George H. Scherff, Jr., the son of Nikola Tesla’s illegal-immigrant, German-born accountant, George H. Scherff, Sr.”
Worth a thousand words: But this was not the only bombshell Otto Skorzeny delivered that day in late-1999. Skorzeny, producing a shoe box full of 60-years worth of his personal photographs, showed them to Berman, describing each one in great detail.
The collection featured a photo of a young, majestic Skorzeny in full S.S. Nazi military dress, next to his Fьhrer, Adolph Hitler. Then there were photos of Reinhard Gehlen (S.S. spy and assassin) Dr. Joseph Mengele (the “Angel of Death”) Martin Bormann (Hitler aide and S.S. assassin) .
Eric “Orion” (Berman), in a live radio interview on Republic Broadcasting Network, January 17, 2006, detailed how:
“Skorzeny died on December 31, 1999. His body was cremated, I have a copy of his death certificate, and I saw his ashes. After the war, he helped George Bush found the CIA through Operation Paperclip and ODESSA.”
Berman recounted how Skorzeny was found “not guilty” at the Nuremburg trials, and then ushered into the CIA. “Some 50,000+ S.S. Nazi war criminals, not just rocket scientists, were brought to America after the war.”
Skorzeny, about age 90 at the time, was described by Berman as “very focused and very lucid, and he was still very mobile. He was still able to walk around—he was still very impressive and he had about the biggest hands I have ever shaken. He was 6’-4”and was a giant for his day. He towered over me, and I’m 5’-8”.”
When asked why he thought Skorzeny entrusted this information to him, Berman responded,
“I was dating one of his daughters. He knew that I’m Jewish, first of all, I’m an honest guy and he thought that I would really try to do something about this and bring some justice, yeah, to these wanted Nazi war criminals.
His whole goal was…. they had screwed him over, including George Bush, they screwed him over….. and out of large sums of money over the years. This was his one last way of… you know, getting even with them.”
A biographical article about Nikola Tesla appeared in the Tesla Tech, Inc. magazine, “Extraordinary Technology,” Volume 4, Number 3, Aug., Sept., Oct., 2006. The article, written by Dustin Wallace, spoke of Tesla’s childhood, some of his inventions, and his last days. Wallace wrote (pp. 21-22), “The Yugoslav Monarchy in Exile was summoned to visit Tesla in the fall of 1942.
However, Charlotte Muzar, a secretary, paid Tesla the visit. From his condition upon her arrival she felt as though he may not live through the night. Another friend of Tesla’s, Kenneth Swezey visited him during the time and noted that he was existing on warm milk and Nabisco crackers alone.
It was apparent that Tesla was nearing the end of his time. By late December of 1942, Tesla began meeting with two U.S. government agents in order to share some of his most sensitive discoveries. These men carried away many of his documents for microfilming.”
“On January 4, 1943, Tesla’s faithful assistant, George Scherff, visited Tesla for the last time, Tesla was found deceased in his hotel room on the morning of January 8. 1943. He had passed away between those four days since Scherff’s visit.”
The article continued, “Following Tesla’s death the United States Office of Alien Property, under the instructions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confiscated all of Tesla’s papers and property. This was an interesting maneuver considering that Tesla was a United States citizen.”
The significance of this benign description of Tesla’s inventions and his last days has a direct relationship to the previously unknown claims of Otto Skorzeny. As Skorzeny described (to Berman) in detail his involvement with George H. W. Bush (George H. Scherff, Jr.) in organizing the CIA by absorbing Nazi S.S. agents,” he intimated that it was Reinhard Gehlen and himself who murdered Nikola Tesla on January 6, 1943 by strangulation/suffocation.
Prior to the murder, Skorzeny and Gehlen “spoke in great detail to Tesla about his most-advanced technologies and then stole the blueprints of his best, most-secret inventions.”
Were these the “two U.S. government agents” about whom Dustin Wallace wrote? The timing of George Scherff’s last visit to Nikola Tesla was suspicious, as well.
Skorzeny did not stop with these soul-cleansing disclosures. He went on to describe the aliases of himself Frank Edward P_ _ _ _ _, of south Florida (according to Berman, who claims he is trying to protect Skorzeny’s daughter), Reinhard Gehlen (Hank Janowicz, Wayne, N.J.), and Dr. Joseph Mengele (Steven Rabel).
According to Berman,
“Gehlen was tipped off by the FBI about Skorzeny’s unveiling of his identity and location, and Gehlen (Janowicz) then went into hiding. Mengele (Rabel), through a series of anti-aging hormone injections, a black hairpiece, and ‘cannibalism’ has maintained a youthful appearance.”
Having investigated some of Skorzeny’s claims, Berman had contacted the U.S. Justice Department to inform them that Nazi spies were being harbored by certain factions of the U.S. intelligence agencies, in particular, the CIA. “My thoughts were that, uh, I needed to try to bring these wanted SS Nazi war criminal, holocaust killers—terrorists, basically—to justice.
I wanted to call our government and tell ‘em, ‘Hey, that they’re still alive.’ I wanted to bring ‘em to justice. That was my whole intention. I initially had contacted, or tried to contact Eli Rosenbaum, who was the Director of the United States Justice Department, Office of Special Investigations.
Basically, they, uh, thought it was a hoax and they told me that I was mistaken, and that according to the CIA, ‘all of them were all dead and I was mistaken.’ That’s what they told me. I was wrong.“
The CIA admits that the U.S. overthrew the moderate, suit-and-tie-wearing, Democratically-elected prime minister of Iran in 1953. He was overthrown because he had nationalized Iran’s oil, which had previously been controlled by BP and other Western oil companies. As part of that action, the CIA admits that it hired Iranians to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its prime minister
If the U.S. hadn’t overthrown the moderate Iranian government, the fundamentalist Mullahs would have never taken over. (Moreover, the U.S. has had a large hand in strengthening radical Islam in the Middle East by supporting radicals to fight the Soviets and others)
The U.S. armed and supported Iraq after it invaded Iran and engaged in a long, bloody war which included the use of chemical weapons. Here is former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam Hussein in the 1980′s, several months after Saddam had used chemical weapons in a massacre:
* The U.S. has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran was on the verge of nuclear capability
* The U.S. helped fund Iran’s nuclear program
* The U.S. has been actively planning regime change in Iran – and throughout the oil-rich Middle East and North Africa – for 20 years
* The decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made before 9/11
* America and Israel both support a group designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization which is trying to overthrow the Iranian government
* Top American and Israeli military and intelligence officials say that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear bomb
* Top American and Israeli military and intelligence officials say that – even if Iran did build a nuclear bomb – it would not be that dangerous, because Israel and America have so many more nukes. And see this
* American military and intelligence chiefs say that attacking Iran would only speed up its development of nuclear weapons, empower its hardliners, and undermine the chance for democratic reform
* The people pushing for war against Iran are the same people who pushed for war against Iraq, and said it would be a “cakewalk”.
* Well-known economist Nouriel Roubini says that attacking Iran would lead to global recession. The IMF says that Iran cutting off oil supplies could raise crude prices 30%. War with Iran would kill the American economy. And see this and this
* China and Russia have warned that attacking Iran could lead to World War III
The Arizona legislature passed Arizona House Bill 2549, which would update the state’s telephone harassment law to apply to the Internet and other electronic communications. The bill is sweepingly broad, and would make it a crime to communicate via electronic means speech that is intended to “annoy,” “offend,” “harass” or “terrify,” as well as certain sexual speech. Because the bill is not limited to one-to-one communications, H.B. 2549 would apply to the Internet as a whole, thus criminalizing all manner of writing, cartoons, and other protected material the state finds offensive or annoying. The Bill is currently on Governor Jan Brewer’s desk awaiting her decision on whether to veto or sign the bill.
Media Coalition, a trade association protecting the First Amendment rights of content industries, whose membership includes CBLDF, has been active in opposing the bill. On March 14, Media Coalition sent a memo to the Senate Rules Committee regarding constitutional infirmities in H.B. 2549. Yesterday they sent a letter to Governor Brewer urging her to veto the bill.
That letter outlines the constitutional deficiencies in the bill:
H.B. 2549 would make it a crime to use any electronic or digital device to communicate using obscene, lewd or profane language or to suggest a lewd or lascivious act if done with intent to “annoy,” “offend,” “harass” or “terrify.” The legislation offers no definitions for “annoy,” “offend,” “harass” or “terrify.” “Electronic or digital device” is defined only as any wired or wireless communication device and multimedia storage device. “Lewd” and “profane” are not defined in the statute or by reference. “Lewd” is generally understood to mean lusty or sexual in nature and “profane” is generally defined as disrespectful or irreverent about religion or religious practices.
Government may criminalize speech that rises to the level of harassment and many states have laws that do so, but this legislation takes a law meant to address irritating phone calls and applies it to communication on web sites, blogs, listserves and other Internet communication. H.B. 2549 is not limited to a one to one conversation between two specific people. The communication does not need to be repetitive or even unwanted. There is no requirement that the recipient or subject of the speech actually feel offended, annoyed or scared. Nor does the legislation make clear that the communication must be intended to offend or annoy the reader, the subject or even any specific person.
Speech protected by the First Amendment is often intended to offend, annoy or scare but could be prosecuted under this law. A Danish newspaper posted pictures of Muhammad that were intended to be offensive to make a point about religious tolerance. If a Muslim in Arizona considers the images profane and is offended, the paper could be prosecuted. Some Arizona residents may consider Rush Limbaugh’s recent comments about a Georgetown law student lewd. He could be prosecuted if he intended his comments to be offensive. Similarly, much general content available in the media uses racy or profane language and is intended to offend, annoy or even terrify. Bill Maher’s stand up routines and Jon Stewart’s nightly comedy program, Ann Coulter’s books criticizing liberals and Christopher Hitchens’ expressing his disdain for religion, Stephen King’s novels or the Halloween films all could be subject to this legislation. Even common taunting about sports between rival fans done online is frequently meant to offend or annoy and is often done using salty and profane language.
While protecting people from harassment is a worthy goal, legislators cannot do so by criminalizing speech protected by the Constitution. All speech is presumptively protected by the First Amendment against content-based regulation, subject only to specific historic exceptions.
If passed, the law could create vulnerabilities for cartoonists and publishers who publish material online intended to shock, satirize, and criticize. Beyond the example of the Mohammad cartoons listed in the Media Coalition letter, the taboo-pushing work of cartoonists like R. Crumb, Johnny Ryan, and Ivan Brunetti would potentially be vulnerable to prosecution, as could incendiary works such as Frank Miller’s Holy Terror and Dave Sim’s Cerebus. Similarly, the culture of message boards, within and beyond comics, would be imperiled. With more titles released digitally each week, and an extremely active online ecosystem of professional and fan exchange, laws like this one are extremely worrisome for the creators, publishers, and readers of comics.
For more information about this bill, please visit Media Coalition.
Charles Brownstein is the Executive Director for Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
BEIJING — As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney.
Chinese cities are installing surveillance systems with hundreds of thousands of cameras like these at a Beijing building site.
In December, a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques and movie theaters from centralized command posts.
The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police officials in different jurisdictions to share images in real time through the Internet. Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet that “provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s Web site.
Such surveillance systems are often used to combat crime and the manufacturer has no control over whether they are used for other purposes. But human rights advocates say in China they are also used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents. “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear,” said Loksag, a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gansu Province. He said the cameras helped the authorities identify and detain nearly 200 monks who participated in a protest at his monastery in 2008.
Mr. Romney has had no role in Bain’s operations since 1999 and had no say over the investment in China. But the fortunes of Bain and Mr. Romney are still closely tied.
The financial disclosure forms Mr. Romney filed last August show that a blind trust in the name of his wife, Ann Romney, held a relatively small stake of between $100,000 and $250,000 in the Bain Capital Asia fund that purchased Uniview.
In a statement, R. Bradford Malt, who manages the Romneys’ trusts, noted that he had put trust assets into the fund before it bought Uniview. He said that the Romneys had no role in guiding their investments. He also said he had no control over the Asian fund’s choice of investments.
Mr. Romney reported on his August disclosure forms that he and his wife earned a minimum of $5.6 million from Bain assets held in their blind trusts and retirement accounts. Bain employees and executives are also among the largest donors to his campaign, and their contributions accounted for 10 percent of the money received over the past year by Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney “super PAC.” Bain employees have also made substantial contributions to Democratic candidates, including President Obama.
Bain’s decision to enter China’s fast-growing surveillance industry raises questions about the direct role that American corporations play in outfitting authoritarian governments with technology that can be used to repress their own citizens.
It also comes at a delicate time for Mr. Romney, who has frequently called for a hard line against the Chinese government’s suppression of religious freedom and political dissent.
As with previous deals involving other American companies, critics argue that Bain’s acquisition of Uniview violates the spirit — if not necessarily the letter — of American sanctions imposed on Beijing after the deadly crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square. Those rules, written two decades ago, bar American corporations from exporting to China “crime-control” products like those that process fingerprints, make photo identification cards or use night vision technology.
Most video surveillance equipment is not covered by the sanctions, even though a Canadian human rights group found in 2001 that Chinese security forces used Western-made video cameras to help identify and apprehend Tiananmen Square protesters.
Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, who frequently assails companies that do business with Chinese security agencies, said calls by some members of Congress to pass stricter regulations on American businesses have gone nowhere. “These companies are busy making a profit and don’t want to face realities, but what they’re doing is wrong,” said Mr. Wolf, who is co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
In public comments and in a statement posted on his campaign Web site, Mr. Romney has accused the Obama administration of placing economic concerns above human rights in managing relations with China. He has called on the White House to offer more vigorous support of those who criticize the Chinese Communist Party“Any serious U.S. policy toward China must confront the fact that China’s regime continues to deny its people basic political freedoms and human rights,” according to the statement on his Web site. “The United States has an important role to play in encouraging the evolution of China toward a more politically open and democratic order.”
In recent years, a number of Western companies, including Honeywell, General Electric, I.B.M. and United Technologies, have been criticized for selling sophisticated surveillance-related technology to the Chinese government.
Other companies have been accused of directly helping China quash perceived opponents. In 2007, Yahoo settled a lawsuit asserting that it had provided the authorities with e-mails of a journalist who was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for sending an e-mail that prosecutors charged contained state secrets.
Cisco Systems is fighting a lawsuit in the United States filed by a human rights group over Internet networking equipment it sold to the Chinese government. The lawsuit asserts that the system, tailored to government demands, allowed the authorities to track down and torture members of the religious group Falun Gong.
Bain defended its purchase of Uniview, stressing that the Chinese company’s products were advertised as instruments for crime control, not political repression. “China’s increasingly urban population will face growing needs around personal safety and property protection,” the company said in a statement. “Video surveillance is part of the solution to that, as it is anywhere in the world.” The company also said that only one-third of Uniview’s sales were to public security bureaus.
William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington, said it was up to the American government, not individual companies, to set the guidelines for such business ventures. “A lot of the stuff we’re talking about is truly dual use,” said Mr. Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration. “You can sell it to a local police force that will use it to track down speeders, but you can also sell it to a ministry of state security that will use it to monitor dissidents.”
But Adam Segal, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on the intersection of technology and domestic security in China, said American companies could not shirk responsibility for the way their technology is used, especially in the wake of recent controversies over the sales of Western Internet filtering systems to autocratic rulers in the Arab world. “Technology companies have to begin to think about the ethics and political implications of selling these technologies,” he said.
Uniview is proud of its close association with China’s security establishment and boasts about the scores of surveillance systems it has created for local security agencies in the six years since the Safe Cities program was started.
“Social management and society building pose new demands for surveillance and control systems,” Uniview says in its promotional materials, which include an interview with Zhang Pengguo, the company’s chief executive. “A harmonious society is the essential nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Mr. Zhang says.
Until now, Bain’s takeover of Uniview has drawn little attention outside China. The company was formerly the surveillance division of H3C, a joint venture between 3Com and Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant whose expansion plans in the United States have faced resistance from Congress over questions about its ties to the Chinese military.
In 2010, 3Com, along with H3C, became a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard in a $2.7 billion buyout deal.
H3C also sells technology unrelated to video surveillance, including Internet firewall products, but it was the video surveillance division alone that drew Bain Capital’s interest.
In December, H3C announced that Bain had bought out the surveillance division and formed Uniview, although under terms of the buyout, H3C provides Uniview with products, technical support and, for a period of time, the use of its brand name. Bain controls Uniview but says it has no role in its day-to-day operations.
Bain is, however, well positioned to profit. According to the British firm IMS Research, the Chinese market for security camera networks was $2.5 billion last year, a figure that is expected to double by 2015, with more than two-thirds of that demand coming from the government. Uniview currently has just 1 percent of the market, the firm said.
Chinese cities are rushing to construct their own surveillance systems. Chongqing, in southwest China, is spending $4.2 billion on a network of 500,000 cameras, according to the state news media. Guangdong Province, the manufacturing powerhouse adjacent to Hong Kong, is mounting one million cameras. In Beijing, the municipal government is seeking to place cameras in all entertainment venues, adding to the skein of 300,000 cameras that were installed here for the 2008 Olympics.
By marrying Internet, cellphone and video surveillance, the government is seeking to create an omniscient monitoring system, said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong. “When it comes to surveillance, China is pretty upfront about its totalitarian ambitions,” he said.
For the legion of Chinese intellectuals, democracy advocates and religious figures who have tangled with the government, surveillance cameras have become inescapable.
Yang Weidong, a politically active filmmaker, said a phalanx of 13 cameras were installed in and around his apartment building last year after he submitted an interview request to President Hu Jintao, drawing the ire of domestic security agents. In January, Ai Weiwei, the artist and public critic, was questioned by the police after he threw stones at cameras trained on his front gate.
Li Tiantian, 45, a human rights lawyer in Shanghai, said the police used footage recorded outside a hotel in an effort to manipulate her during the three months she was illegally detained last year. The video, she said, showed her entering the hotel in the company of men other than her boyfriend.
During interrogations, Ms. Li said, the police taunted her about her sex life and threatened to show the video to her boyfriend. The boyfriend, however, refused to watch, she said.
“The scale of intrusion into people’s private lives is unprecedented,” she said in a phone interview. “Now when I walk on the street, I feel so vulnerable, like the police are watching me all the time.”
Is there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States?
Qorvis Communications is a “Public Relations” / lobbying firm based in Washington, DC which specializes in representing high-profile overseas clients – including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Brunei. They are fond of editing Wikipedia to make themselves look better, as documented by 
