A man with Ebola in Dallas was initially sent home from the hospital with antibiotics after seeking treatment for an unknown illness, officials said.
The man, whose name wasn’t released, is the first case of the deadly viral infection to be diagnosed outside of Africa. He traveled from Liberia and arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.
The man is being kept in isolation in an intensive care unit. He had no symptoms when he left Liberia and began to show signs of the disease on Sept. 24, the CDC said. He sought care on Sept. 26, was hospitalized two days later at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and is critically ill, said CDC Director Thomas Frieden. The agency is working to identify anybody who had contact with the man and track them down, he said.
Medical officials in the United States announced on Tuesday the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed outside Africa during the latest outbreak, which has killed more than 3,000 people this year.
The patient, who has not yet been identified, is being treated in Dallas, Texas.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said the patient left Liberia in west Africa on 19 September, but did not develop symptoms until a few days after arriving in the US. He was admitted to the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas on Sunday.
Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC, said the patient was being treated in strict isolation, and that all measures would be taken to ensure that the disease would not spread in the US
With a rash of “beheadings” sweeping the world, a horrified public is asked to see this depraved barbarity as The New Normal.
First we had the August “murder” on video of U.S. journalist James Foley, shown kneeling before a black-robed, masked figure brandishing a knife. Yes, even a rather small knife can do it (just as box-cutters can enable the hijacking of commercial airplanes). The perpetrator is identified as a member of the terrorist group ISIS (or IS or ISIL), which supposedly wants to install a new Islamic caliphate based in the region.
However, the video did not actually show the beheading, but faded to black at the appropriate moment. A subsequent frame purports to show Foley’s head propped up on his headless body. This video was staged, however, as proved by numerous researchers, and even admitted in the British press.[1] According to a report in The Telegraph:
…a study of the four-minute 40-second clip, carried out by an international forensic science company which has worked for police forces across Britain, suggested camera trickery and slick post-production techniques appear to have been used…no blood can be seen, even though the knife is drawn across the neck area at least six times.[2]
Nonetheless, the U.S. media continue to report this “beheading” as a real occurrence, over and over again, followed by another “beheading” of an American journalist, Steven J. Sotloff, in a video released in early September. This was supposedly a “second message to America” from ISIS: “Just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”[3] This video too is problematic, with no blood in evidence before the scene fades to black.[4]
Both Foley and Sotloff have intelligence connections, as does SITE, the media dissemination service behind the release of the videos. SITE [Search for International Terrorist Entities] is an offshoot of Intel Center, both of which have an uncanny ability to produce such material at the most opportune times in support of U.S. foreign policy.[5] A visit to the SITE website is instructive.[6]
The SITE Intelligence Group, founded in 2001 by Rita Katz, is an intelligence gathering operation that monitors jihadists online, often finding terrorist statements and videos as uploads “before they are published,” according to Katz. These are transmitted to U.S. intelligence services, which are curiously beholden to SITE for these sensitive materials, and they are then released to the U.S. media.[7]
All such information obtained by SITE and then broadcast is therefore suspect. Nonetheless, the Foley and Sotloff videos have reportedly gotten the U.S. public on board with the bombing of northern Iraq and Syria in an R-2-P operation (Responsibility To Protect), the real goal being to take out Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
As for the U.K., David Haines was shown in a third “beheading” video released by SITE in mid-September.[8] And the black-robed “killer” has a British accent, which surely indicates that British citizens have gone to Iraq-Syria to join ISIS – and that they could return to wreak havoc in the homeland.
Not to neglect France, which now has its own beheading – of Hervé Gourdel, a mountaineering guide from Nice who was kidnapped in Algeria, shown in a video released by SITE in late September.[9] And certainly Australia should have one as well, but a dastardly ISIS plot in Sydney was reportedly thwarted by the government.[10]
These western countries are instrumental to the U.S.-led coalition to protect the world against ISIS, since the coalition initially included only Middle Eastern client states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. As of this writing, France, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, and England have now signed on, with Turkey lining up as well.[11]
Just to drive the point home (as it were) for any “war weary” Americans out there, we now have a home-grown beheading of an employee at a food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma. The perpetrator, a black man named Alton Nolen, is said to have been fired from his job at Vaughan Foods. Nolen “recently started trying to convert some of his co-workers to the Muslim religion,” according to a police spokesperson.[12]
On “a Facebook page that appears to be his,” Nolen posted the following: “This is the last days… AMERICA AND ISRAEL ARE WICKED. WAKE UP MUSLIMS!!!” The FBI is assisting with the investigation after putting out “an alert to local law enforcement officials across the country to be on the watch for so-called lone wolves who might respond violently” in the wake of U.S. bombing in Syria. Now ask yourself: is this scenario credible?[13]
Nonetheless, the “beheadings”are getting major traction in the U.S. press. Magazines feature articles and editorials, television anchors report with great gravity, and radio hosts banter with listeners about these fake events. WAKE UP AMERICANS!!! As this war propaganda multiplies, with gullible members of the public accepting these psy-ops as fact, at stake are the destruction of the Middle East, continued massive “collateral damage” in Iraq and Syria – and the degrading of our own collective mentality.[14]
Remember that time the Supreme Court ruled that our DNA is basically just like our fingerprints, and cops can snatch it from us subsequent to arrest? Remember the giant biometrics project the FBI has been spending at least a billion dollars of our money building (with many of the details kept secret), called ‘Next Generation Identification’? With those powers and monies combined, the FBI this week announced its plans “to accelerate the collection of DNA profiles for the government’s massive new biometric identification database.” Like with other biometrics collection schemes, the FBI aims to get local police to do the groundwork.
Various FBI divisions “are collaborating to develop and implement foundational efforts to streamline and automate law enforcement’s DNA collection processes” including at arrest, booking and conviction, according to an Aug. 19 notice about the industry briefing. The ongoing groundwork is expected to facilitate the “integration of Rapid DNA Analysis into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index (CODIS) and Next Generation Identification (NGI) systems from the booking environment.”
CODIS is the government’s central DNA database.
Rapid DNA analysis can be performed by cops in less than two hours, rather than by technicians at a scientific lab over several days. The benefit for law enforcement is that an officer can run a cheek swab on the spot or while an arrestee is in temporary custody. If there is a database match, they can then move to lock up the suspect immediately.
While current law requires DNA sent to CODIS to be examined in an accredited lab, FBI officials are looking for a “legislative tweak” to enable local law enforcement to skip that step, and send arrestees’ DNA straight to the FBI’s national database. In 2011, one out of every 25 Americans was arrested.
EFF’s Jennifer Lynch, one of the nation’s foremost experts on FBI biometrics programs, explains why the bureau’s DNA plans pose a serious threat to civil liberties.
“If you leave something behind, let’s say your trash on the sidewalk out in front of your house, then you’ve abandoned any kind of privacy interest in the trash,” she explained. “And so the cops can search through that trash without a warrant. That reasoning has been extended to DNA — if you leave your DNA behind, then the cops could get it without a warrant and test it.”
“If you consider DNA to be a form of ID, and the Supreme Court has already upheld state laws that allow officers to stop someone and ask for their ID, then this is the logical next step,” she added.
Everyone in the United States knows who gets stopped by police the most: young black and brown people. It’s therefore not hard to imagine whose DNA is going to disproportionately fill up this national database, says Lynch.
“If the cops are stopping more African Americans or Latinos and they have the ability to collect their DNA just at a stop, then it means that the DNA database is going to be even more heavily weighted with DNA from immigrant communities and different ethnic minorities,” Lynch told NextGov.
Concerned about your local police department obtaining a rapid DNA device, or sending your DNA to the FBI just because you were arrested at a protest, or for a bench warrant? Take up the matter at the local level. Tell your city government you don’t want your city or town participating in this dragnet DNA sweep.
Evidence exposing who put ISIS in power, and how it was done.
The Islamic militant group ISIS, formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and recently rebranded as the so called Islamic State, is the stuff of nightmares. They are ruthless, fanatical, killers, on a mission, and that mission is to wipe out anyone and everyone, from any religion or belief system and to impose Shari’ah law. The mass executions, beheadings and even crucifixions that they are committing as they work towards this goal are flaunted like badges of pride, video taped and uploaded for the whole world to see. This is the new face of evil.
Would it interest you to know who helped these psychopaths rise to power? Would it interest you to know who armed them, funded them and trained them? Would it interest you to know why?
This story makes more sense if we start in the middle, so we’ll begin with the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The Libyan revolution was Obama’s first major foreign intervention. It was portrayed as an extension of the Arab Spring, and NATO involvement was framed in humanitarian terms.
These jihadist militants from Iraq were part of what national security analysts commonly referred to as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Remember Al-Qaeda in Iraq was ISIS before it was rebranded.
With the assistance of U.S. and NATO intelligence and air support, the Libyan rebels captured Gaddafi and summarily executed him in the street, all the while enthusiastically chanting “Allah Akbar”. For many of those who had bought the official line about how these rebels were freedom fighters aiming to establish a liberal democracy in Libya, this was the beginning of the end of their illusions.
Now after Gaddafi was overthrown, the Libyan armories were looted, and massive quantities of weapons were sent by the Libyan rebels to Syria. The weapons, which included anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles were smuggled into Syria through Turkey, a NATO ally. The times of Londonreported on the arrival of the shipment on September 14th, 2012. (Secondary confirmation in this NYT article) This was just three days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi. Chris Stevens had served as the U.S. government’s liaison to the Libyan rebels since April of 2011.
While a great deal media attention has focused on the fact that the State Department did not provide adequate security at the consulate, and was slow to send assistance when the attack started, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh released an article in April of 2014 which exposed a classified agreement between the CIA, Turkey and the Syrian rebels to create what was referred to as a “rat line”. The “rat line” was covert network used to channel weapons and ammunition from Libya, through southern turkey and across the Syrian border. Funding was provided by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
However as the rebels gained strength, the reports of war crimes and atrocities that they were committing began to create a bit of a public relations problem for Washington. It then became standard policy to insist that U.S. support was only being given to what they referred to as“moderate” rebel forces.
This distinction, however, had no basis in reality.
In an interview given in April of 2014, FSA commander Jamal Maarouf admitted that his fighters regularly conduct joint operations with Al-Nusra. Al-Nusra is the official Al-Qa’ida branch in Syria. This statement is further validated by an interview given in June of 2013 by Colonel Abdel Basset Al-Tawil, commander of the FSA’s Northern Front. In this interview he openly discusses his ties with Al-Nusra, and expresses his desire to see Syria ruled by sharia law. (You can verify the identities of these two commanders here in this document from The Institute for the Study of War)
Moderate rebels? Well it’s complicated. Not that this should really come as any surprise. Reuters had reported in 2012 that the FSA’s command was dominated by Islamic extremists, and the New York Times had reported that same year that the majority of the weapons that Washington were sending into Syria was ending up in the hands Jihadists. For two years the U.S. government knew that this was happening, but they kept doing it.
So to review, the FSA is working with Al-Nusra, Al-Nusra is working with ISIS, and the U.S. has been sending money and weapons to the FSA even though they’ve known since 2012 that most of these weapons were ending up in the hands of extremists. You do the math.
[UPDATE 9.03.14]: Retired Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney admits: “We Helped Build ISIS”:
Note that the first version of this video I uploaded (here) was quickly taken down. To insure that this clip does not disappear we have provided a secondary download link here. So if the video below isn’t playing then use that link and upload it elsewhere.
Syria, we backed I believe, in some cases some of the wrong people and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) that’s a little confusing to people. So I’ve always maintained, and go back quite some time that we were backing the wrong types. I think it’s going to turn out maybe this weekend in a new special that Brett Baer is going to have Friday that’s gonna show some of those weapons from Benghazi ended up in the hands of ISIS. So we helped build ISIS.
After the second sarin gas fiasco, which was also exposed and therefore failed to garner public support for airstrikes, the U.S. continued to increase its the training and support for the rebels.
In February of 2014, Haaretz reported that the U.S. and its allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, were in the process of helping the Syrian rebels plan and prepare for a massive attack in the south. According to Haaretz Israel had also provided direct assistance in military operations against Assad four months prior (you can access a free cached version of the page here).
Then in May of 2014 PBS ran a report in which they interviewed rebels who were trained by the U.S. in Qatar. According to those rebels they were being trained to finish off soldiers who survived attacks.
“They trained us to ambush regime or enemy vehicles and cut off the road,” said the fighter, who is identified only as “Hussein.” “They also trained us on how to attack a vehicle, raid it, retrieve information or weapons and munitions, and how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.”
This is a blatant violation of the Geneva conventions. It also runs contrary to conventional military strategy. In conventional military strategy soldiers are better off left wounded, because this ends up costing the enemy more resources. Executing captured enemy soldiers is the kind of tactic used when you want to strike terror in the hearts of the enemy. It also just happens to be standard operating procedure for ISIS.
One month after this report, in June of 2014, ISIS made its dramatic entry, crossing over the Syrian border into Iraq, capturing Mosul, Baiji and almost reaching Baghdad. The internet was suddenly flooded with footage of drive by shootings, large scale death marches, and mass graves. And of course any Iraqi soldier that was captured was executed.
Massive quantities of American military equipment were seized during that operation. ISIS took entire truckloads of humvees, they took helicopters, tanks, and artillery. They photographed and video taped themselves and advertised what they were doing on social media, and yet for some reason Washington didn’t even TRY to stop them.
U.S. military doctrine clearly calls for the destruction of military equipment and supplies when friendly forces cannot prevent them from falling into enemy hands, but that didn’t happen here. ISIS was allowed to carry this equipment out of Iraq and into Syria unimpeded. The U.S. military had the means to strike these convoys, but they didn’t lift a finger, even though they had been launching drone strikes in Pakistan that same week.
Why would they do that?
Though Obama plays the role of a weak, indecisive, liberal president, and while pundits from the right have had a lot of fun with that image, this is just a facade. Some presidents, like George W. Bush, rely primarily on overt military aggression. Obama gets the same job done, but he prefers covert means. Not really surprising considering the fact that Zbigniew Brzezinski was his mentor.
Those who know their history will remember that Zbigniew Brzezinski was directly involved in the funding and arming the Islamic extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to weaken the Soviets.
By the way Osama bin Laden was one of these anti-Soviet “freedom fighters” the U.S. was funding and arming.
This operation is no secret at this point, nor are the unintended side effects.
The strategy worked. The Soviets invaded, and the ten years of war that followed are considered by many historians as being one of the primary causes of the fall of the USSR.
This example doesn’t just establish precedent, what we’re seeing happen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria right now is actually a continuation of a old story. Al-Nusra and ISIS are ideological and organizational decedents of these extremist elements that the U.S. government made use of thirty years ago.
The U.S. the went on to create a breeding ground for these extremists by invading Iraq in 2003. Had it not been for the vacuum of power left by the removal and execution of Saddam, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, aka ISIS, would not exist. And had it not been for Washington’s attempt at toppling Assad by arming, funding and training shadowy militant groups in Syria, there is no way that ISIS would have been capable of storming into Iraq in June of 2014.
On every level, no matter how you cut it, ISIS is a product of U.S. government’s twisted and decrepit foreign policy.
Now all of this may seem contradictory to you as you watch the drums of war against ISIS begin to beat louder and the air strikes against them are gradually widenedhttp://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/08/president-obama-considers-possible-…). Why would the U.S. help a terrorist organization get established, only to attack them later?
Well why did the CIA put Saddam Hussein in power in 1963?, Why did the U.S. government back Saddam in 1980 when he launched a war of aggression against Iran, even though they knew that he was using chemical weapons? Why did the U.S. fund and arm Islamic extremists in Afghanistan against the Soviets?
There’s a pattern here if you look closely. This is a tried and true geopolitical strategy.
Step 1: Build up a dictator or extremist group which can then be used to wage proxy wars against opponents. During this stage any crimes committed by these proxies are swept under the rug. [Problem]
Step 2: When these nasty characters have outlived their usefulness, that’s when it’s time to pull out all that dirt from under the rug and start publicizing it 24/7. This obviously works best when the public has no idea how these bad guys came to power.[Reaction]
Step 3: Finally, when the public practically begging for the government to do something, a solution is proposed. Usually the solution involves military intervention, the loss of certain liberties, or both. [Solution]
ISIS is extremely useful. They have essentially done Washington dirty work by weakening Assad. In 2014, while the news cycle has focused almost exclusively on Ukraine and Russia, ISIS made major headway in Syria, and as of August they already controlled 35% of the country.
Since ISIS largely based in Syria, this gives the U.S. a pretext to move into Syria. Sooner or later the U.S. will extend the airstrikes into Assad’s backyard, and when they do U.S. officials are already making it clear that both ISIS and the Syrian government will be targeted. That, after all, is the whole point. Washington may allow ISIS to capture a bit more territory first, but the writing is on the wall, and has been for some time now.
The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that this will never lead to boots on the ground, however, the truth of the matter is that anyone who understands anything about military tactics knows full well that ISIS cannot be defeated by airstrikes alone. In response to airstrikes ISIS will merely disperse and conceal their forces. ISIS isn’t an established state power which can be destroyed by knocking out key government buildings and infrastructure. These are guerrilla fighters who cut their teeth in urban warfare.
To significantly weaken them, the war will have to involve ground troops, but even this is a lost cause. U.S. troops could certainly route ISIS in street to street battles for some time, and they might even succeed in fully occupying Syria and Iraq for a number of years, but eventually they will have to leave, and when they do, it should be obvious what will come next.
The puppets that the U.S. government has installed in the various countries that they have brought down in recent years have without exception proven to be utterly incompetent and corrupt. No one that Washington places in power will be capable of maintaining stability in Syria. Period.
Right now, Assad is the last bastion of stability in the region. He is the last chance they have for a moderate non-sectarian government and he is the only hope of anything even remotely resembling democracy for the foreseeable future. If Assad falls, Islamic extremist will take the helm, they will impose shari’ah law, and they will do everything in their power to continue spreading their ideology as far and wide as they can.
If the world truly wants to stop ISIS, there is only one way to do it:
1. First and foremost, the U.S. government and its allies must be heavily pressured to cut all support to the rebels who are attempting to topple Assad. Even if these rebels that the U.S. is arming and funding were moderate, and they’re not, the fact that they are forcing Assad to fight a war on multiple fronts, only strengthens ISIS. This is lunacy.
2. The Syrian government should be provided with financial support, equipment, training and intelligence to enable them to turn the tide against ISIS. This is their territory, they should be the ones to reclaim it.
Now obviously this support isn’t going to come from the U.S. or any NATO country, but there are a number of nations who have a strategic interest in preventing another regime change and chaotic aftermath. If these countries respond promptly, as in right now, they could preempt a U.S. intervention, and as long this support does not include the presence of foreign troops, doing so will greatly reduce the likelihood of a major confrontation down the road.
3. The U.S. government and its allies should should be aggressively condemned for their failed regime change policies and the individuals behind these decisions should be charged for war crimes. This would have to be done on an nation by nation level since the U.N. has done nothing but enable NATO aggression. While this may not immediately result in these criminals being arrested, it would send a message. This can be done. Malaysia has already proven this by convicting the Bush administration of war crimes in abstentia.
Now you might be thinking: “This all sounds fine and good, but what does this have to do with me? I can’t influence this situation.”
That perspective is quite common, and for most people, it’s paralyzing, but the truth of the matter is that we can influence this. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.
I’ll be honest with you though, this isn’t going to be easy. To succeed we have to start thinking strategically. Like it or not, this is a chess game. If we really want to rock the boat, we have to start reaching out to people in positions of influence. This can mean talking to broadcasters at your local radio station, news paper, or t.v. station, or it can mean contacting influential bloggers, celebrities, business figures or government officials. Reaching out to current serving military and young people who may be considering joining up is also important. But even if it’s just your neighbor, or your coworker, every single person we can reach brings us closer to critical mass. The most important step is to start trying.
If you are confused about why this is all happening, watch this video we put out on September 11th, 2012
If this message resonates with you then spread it. If you want to see the BIG picture, and trust me we’ve got some very interesting reports coming, subscribe to StormCloudsGathering on Youtube, and follow us on Facebook, twitter and Google plus.
Writing Tuesday in the New York Times, Bamford disclosed this alarming new anecdote from his Snowden debrief:
Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the NSA was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.
Typically, when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel, the NSA evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this way.
Mr. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications—email as well as phone calls—of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.”
As of last week, exactly 43 ex-members of Unit 8200—many young and active reservists who could theoretically be called again to serve Israel at a moment’s notice—passionately agree.
In an act of protest that had been planned well in advance of this summer’s brutal bombing campaign in Gaza (which you may have heard killed 2,100 Palestinians and turned Gaza City into the lunar ruins of an ancient alien race), the young members of Unit 8200 drafted a long letter publicly refusing to participate in any further intelligence gathering activities against the Palestinians.
“The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence. It is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators,” the letter says. Adding, “In many cases, intelligence prevents defendants from receiving a fair trial in military courts, as the evidence against them is not revealed.”
“Contrary to Israeli citizens or citizens of other countries,” whose rights are protected under law, the letter points out, “there’s no oversight on methods of intelligence or tracking and the use of intelligence information against the Palestinians, regardless if they are connected to violence or not.”
London-based newspaper The Guardianinterviewed several of the unit’s conscientious objectors under the condition of anonymity—which was requested not out of fear of persecution, but out of the desire to comply with Israeli law. (Only the copies of the letter sent to their unit commander used the objectors’ full names.)
Among the personal statements, agents disclosed that the majority of Unit 8200’s operations in Palestine targeted “innocent people unconnected to any military activity.” The unit was instructed to keep any personal information potentially embarrassing or damaging to a Palestinian’s life, including sexual preferences, extramarital affairs, financial trouble, family illnesses, or anything else that could be “used to extort/blackmail the person and turn them into a collaborator.” The private “sex talk” intercepted by Palestinians (in what’s becoming a gross trend for these surveillance scandals) were allegedly passed around by certain members of the unit for titters/yucks.
One member, referred to as “D” by the Guardian, formerly a 29-year-old captain who served in the unit for eight years, told the paper that part of his decision to protest came from the dawning realization that his actions were really no different than those of any totalitarian government’s secret police.
“It was when I realized that what I was doing was the same job that the intelligence services of every undemocratic regime are doing,” he said.
There have been many precursors, both historically and more recently, to this secretive alliance between Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies. Back in Mad Men times, the CIA’s director of counter-intelligence, legendary super-spook James Angleton, practically contracted all of the CIA’s North African operations to the Mossad along with a generous aid package, and has often been said to have helped found their agency in 1951. During the more recent disclosures regarding the NSA’s (basically illegal) surveillance program STELLAR WIND, agency whistleblowers revealed that two Israeli companies, Verint and Narus, were contracted to manage the actual bugging of America’s telecommunications network.
Apart from the Mossad’s long, aggressive history of spying on the United States, the arrangement also provoked concerns due to corruption within one of the firms; Verint’s founder and former chairman Kobi Alexander was added to the FBI “most wanted list” in 2006 regarding various forms of stock fraud and fought against extradition for many years. Some former agency employees have also reported that a mid-level NSA employee friendly with Israeli intelligence unilaterally decided to hand over advanced analytical and data mining software that the agency had developed internally for its own international eavesdropping operations. (According to a piece by James Bamford in WIRED, that software is now also in the hands of many private Israeli companies.)
In all that context, it’s true that this recent news isn’t exactly surprising or shocking—the kind of lame, bullshit “take” pundits and anonymous commenters always love trotting out to congratulate themselves for their knowledgeable cynicism. (Seriously: Good for you guys.)
What it still is—obviously and regardless of this context—is abhorrent and genuinely scandalous for a country, like Israel, that loves positioning itself as a bastion of democracy in the autocratic Middle East.
Perhaps, we should start looking for some fresh perspectives on how best to resolve this ongoing humanitarian crisis.
[photo of an Israeli Defense Force Situation Room—really actually already redacted like that—via the IDF Spokesman’s Office by way of Haaretz; June 2014 photo of an Israeli soldier carrying a computer tower seized during the search for three Israeli teenagers believed to be kidnapped by Palestinian militants, by Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images]
IN WHAT WILL SOON BE CONSIDERED AS THE HOLY GRAIL OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL RESEARCH, THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT HAS RELEASED ANCIENT DOCUMENTS PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF E.T.’S ONCE AND FOR ALL
CALAKMUL, MEXICO (INTELLIHUB) — Newly released Mayan documents, i.e. artifacts, dating back at least 1300-years reveal that the human race is not alone and highly advanced technologies including space travel have likely existed for quite some time.
Not only does this documentation released by the Mexican government show the existence of an explorer race, it may also reveal the roots of mankind.
Some consider the government’s presentation of the information to be a major step forward for humanity as the truth is finally being slowly let out. Hopefully this will prompt other governments around the world to be more forthcoming with such information, turning the tide in the UFO and extraterrestrial research community for good.
Sundance winner Juan Carlos Rulfo’s Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond also touches on such technology. “Producer Raul Julia-Levy said the documentary-makers were working in cooperation with the Mexican government for what he said was “the good of mankind”. He said the order to collaborate had come directly from the country’s president, Álvaro Colom Caballeros.
“Mexico will release codices, artifacts and significant documents with evidence of Mayan and extraterrestrial contact, and all of their information will be corroborated by archaeologists,” he said. “The Mexican government is not making this statement on their own – everything we say, we’re going to back it up.”
Caballeros himself was conspicuous by his absence from the statement released by Julia-Levy. So far, the minister of tourism for the Mexican state of Campeche, Luis Augusto García Rosado, appears to be the highest-ranking government official to go on record confirming the discovery of extraterrestrial life, but he’s not holding back.
In a statement, Rosado spoke of contact “between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some time”. In a telephone conversation with the Wrap, he also spoke of “landing pads in the jungle that are 3,000 years old”.[2]
These secrets have been said to be “protected” by the mexican government for as long as 80-years.
Sources:
[1] The Mexican government reveals Mayan documents proving extraterrestrial contacts – Arcturius.org
[2] Mayan documentary to show ‘evidence’ of alien contact in ancient Mexico – TheGuardian.com
[3] Aliens and UFOs Depicted In Mayan Artifacts Released By Mexican Government – ConciusLifeNews.com
In less than 15 years, the United States’ airline industry has shrunk from ten airlines in the sky to just the big four that are left today. (Photo via Shutterstock)
There’s a stunning lack of choice for American consumers today, and nowhere is that more evident than in our nation’s ever-shrinking airline industry.
According to a new report from the AP, the average roundtrip ticket to anywhere in the US was over $509.15, including taxes, in the first half of this year. That’s up $14 from the same period last year.
The AP also points out that domestic airfare pricing is outpacing inflation, up 2.7 percent compared to the 2.1 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index.
And, according to data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation, airfare costs have shot up 10.7 percent during the past five years alone.
So, what’s behind these sky-high airfare prices?
Well, as the AP piece points out, airlines have discovered that thanks to the economic recovery, more people want to fly, so airlines have dropped the number of available seats on their planes, which all translates to higher ticket prices.
The airlines are taking advantage of simple supply-and-demand economics.
But that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
The real reason that airfare costs are so high is because of the stunning lack of competition in the airline industry today.
Back in 2001, there were 10 major airlines flying through American skies: American Airlines, TWA, America West, US Airways, Delta, Northwest, United, Continental, Southwest, and AirTran.
All those airline choices meant more completion in the marketplace, which translated into lower airfare prices for American consumers.
However, slowly but surely, the competition in the airline industry has disappeared.
In 2001, American Airlines bought out TWA.
In 2005, America West bought up US Airways, keeping the US Airways name.
In 2008, Delta officially began the process of merging with Northwest.
In 2010, United and Continental announced that they were joining forces, and just a few months later, Southwest announced that it was taking over AirTran.
And finally, last year, US Airways and American Airlines announced that they were merging to form the world’s largest airline.
So, in less than 15 years, the American airline industry has shrunk from ten airlines in the sky to just the big four that are left today.
Similarly, as the number of airlines has dwindled, airfare prices have shot up, because there’s so little competition in the marketplace.
The disappearing competition in the airline industry isn’t just some strange phenomenon.
In fact, this same sort of thing is happening in just about every other industry in America.
Look at America’s media and telecom industries.
Back in 1983 – 90 percent of American media was owned by 50 companies.
As of 2011 – that same 90 percent was controlled by just six massive corporations: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time-Warner and CBS.
Similarly, right now, there are just 10 giant corporations that control, either directly or indirectly, virtually all American consumer products.
And then there’s America’s banking industry.
As Mother Jones points out, 37 banks and financial institutions back in 1990 have slowly transformed into the big four banks we see today (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo).
And we all know how much damage those big banks have done to the American economy.
From fewer airlines in the skies, to fewer banks on Main Street, competition has disappeared from the American marketplace, and it’s all because Ronald Reagan, in 1982, stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Ever since Ronald Reagan came to Washington, “mergers and acquisitions” became the main way to do business, and we’ve all suffered as a result, in the form of things like higher airfare costs.
The steady aggregation of big businesses taking over entire industries over the past 34 years in just about every major commercial sector has concentrated far too much power in the hands of too few players.
Americans deserve choice.
We shouldn’t have to feel like we’re being robbed every time we fly home to see family members or jet off for vacations.
And the only way to bring that choice back is by undoing the damage that 34 years of failed Reaganomics has caused, by starting again to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, by breaking up America’s giant corporations, and by thus bringing competition back into our marketplace.
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.
In the ongoing drizzle of Snowden revelations the public has witnessed a litany of calls for the widespread adoption of online anonymity tools. One such technology is Tor, which employs a network of Internet relays to hinder the process of attribution. Though advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation openly claim that “Tor still works[1]” skepticism is warranted. In fact anyone risking incarceration (or worse) in the face of a highly leveraged intelligence outfit like the NSA would be ill- advised to put all of their eggs in the Tor basket. This is an unpleasant reality which certain privacy advocates have been soft-pedaling.
The NSA Wants You To Use Tor
Tor proponents often make a big deal of the fact that the NSA admits in its own internal documents that “Tor Stinks,” as it makes surveillance more work-intensive[2]. What these proponents fail to acknowledge is that the spies at the NSA also worry that Internet users will abandon Tor:
“[A] Critical mass of targets use Tor. Scaring them away from Tor might be counterproductive”
Go back and re-read that last sentence. Tor is a signal to spies, a big waving flag that gets their attention and literally draws them to your network traffic[3]. Certain aspects of Tor might “stink” but ultimately the NSA wants people to keep using Tor. This highlights the fact that security services, like the FBI[4], have developed sophisticated tools to remove the veil of anonymity that Tor aims to provide.
For example, the Washington Post reports[5]:
“One document provided by Snowden included an internal exchange among NSA hackers in which one of them said the agency’s Remote Operations Center was capable of targeting anyone who visited an al-Qaeda Web site using Tor.”
It’s well known that Tor is susceptible to what’s called a traffic confirmation attack (AKAend-to-endcorrelation), where an entity monitoring the network traffic on both sides of a Tor session can wield statistical tools to identify a specific communication path. Keep in mind that roughly 90 percent of the world’s internet communication flows through the United States[6], so it’s easy for U.S. intelligence to deploying this approach by watching data flows around entry and exit points[7].
Another method involves “staining” data with watermarks. For example, the NSA has been known to mark network traffic by purchasing ad space from online companies like Google. The ads cause web browsers to create a cookie artifact on the user’s computer which identifies the machine viewing the ad[8]. IP addresses may change but the cookie and its identifiers do not.
De-cloaking Tor users doesn’t necessarily require a federal budget either. According to a couple of researchers slated to speak at Black Hat in a few weeks[9]:
“In our analysis, we’ve discovered that a persistent adversary with a handful of powerful servers and a couple gigabit links can de-anonymize hundreds of thousands Tor clients and thousands of hidden services within a couple of months. The total investment cost? Just under $3,000.”
Client Network Exploitation (CNE) Trumps Crypto
Back in 2009 security researcher Joanna Rutkowska implemented what she dubbed the “Evil Maid” attack to foil TrueCrypt’s disk encryption scheme[10]. By compromising the Windows boot environment her team was able to capture the hard disk’s encryption passphrase and circumvent TrueCrypt’s protection. While users can [usually] defend against this sort of monkey business, by relying on a trusted boot process, the success of the Evil Maid attack underscores the capacity for subversion to trump encryption.
This type of client-side exploitation can be generalized for remote network-based operations. In a nutshell, it doesn’t matter how strong your network encryption is if a spy can somehow hack your computer and steal your encryption passphrase (to decrypt your traffic) or perhaps just pilfer the data that they want outright.
Enter the NSAs QUANTUM and FOXACID tag team. QUANTUM servers have the ability to mimic web sites and subsequently re-direct user requests to a second set of FOXACID servers which infects the user’s computer with malware[11]. Thanks to Ed Snowden it’s now public knowledge that the NSA’s goal is to industrialize this process of subversion (a system codenamed TURBINE[12]) so it can be executed on an industrial scale. Why go to the effort of decrypting Tor network traffic when spies can infect, infiltrate, and monitor millions of machine at a time?
Is it any wonder that the Kremlin has turned to old-school typewriters[13] and that German officials have actually considered a similar move[14]? In the absence of a faraday cage even tightly configured air- gapped systems can be breached using clever radio and cellular-based rootkits[15]. As one user shrewdly commented in an online post[16]:
“Ultimately, I believe in security. But what I believe about security leaves me far from the cutting edge; my security environment is more like bearskins and stone knives, because bearskins and stone knives are simple enough that I can *know* they won’t do something I don’t want them to do. Smartphones and computers simply cannot provide that guarantee. The parts of their security models that I do understand, *won’t* prevent any of the things I don’t want them to do.”
Software is hard to trust, there are literally thousands upon thousands of little nooks where a flaw can be “accidentally” inserted to provide a back door. Hardware is even worse.
Denouement
About a year ago John Young, the operator of the leaks site Cryptome, voiced serious concerns in a mailing list thread about the perception of security being conveyed by tools like Tor[17]:
“Security is deception. Comsec a trap. Natsec the mother of secfuckers”
Jacob Appelbaum, who by the way is intimately involved with the Tor project, responded:
“Whatever you’re smoking, I wish you’d share it with the group”
Appelbaum’s cavalier dismissal fails to appreciate the aforementioned countermeasures. What better way to harvest secrets from targets en mass than to undermine a ubiquitous technology that everyone thinks will keep them safe? Who’s holding the shit-bag now? For activists engaged in work that could get them executed, relying on crypto as a universal remedy is akin to buying snake oil. John Young’s stance may seem excessive to Tor promoters like Appelbaum but if Snowden’s revelations have taught us anything it’s that the cynical view has been spot on.
Bill Blunden is an independent investigator whose current areas of inquiry include information security, anti-forensics, and institutional analysis. He is the author of several books, including The Rootkit Arsenal and Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation, and the Malware-IndustrialComplex. Bill is the lead investigator at Below Gotham Labs.
End Notes
1 Cooper Quintin, “7 Things You Should Know About Tor,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, July 1, 2014, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/7-things-you-should-know-about-tor
2 ‘Tor Stinks’ presentation, Guardian, October 4, 2013,http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document
3 J. Appelbaum, A. Gibson, J. Goetz, V. Kabisch, L. Kampf, L. Ryge, “NSA targets theprivacy-conscious,” http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html
4 Kevin Poulsen, “FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack,”
Wired, September 13, 2013, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/
5 Barton Gellman, Craig Timberg, and Steven Rich, “Secret NSA documents show campaign against Tor encrypted network,” Washington Post, October 4, 2013
6 James Ball, “NSA stores metadata of millions of web users for up to a year, secret files show,” Guardian, September 30, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/nsa-americans-metadata-year-documents/print
7 Maxim Kammerer, [tor-talk] End-to-end correlation for fun and profit, August 20, 2007,https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-August/025254.html
8 Seth Rosenblatt, “NSA tracks Google ads to find Tor users,” CNET, October 4, 2013, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57606178-83/nsa-tracks-google-adsto-find-tor-users/
9 Alexander Volynkin & Michael McCord, “You Don’t Have to be the NSA to Break Tor: Deanonymizing Users on a
Budget,” Black Hat USA 2014, https://www.blackhat.com/us-14/briefings.html#you-dont-have-to-be-the-nsa-to-break-tor-deanonymizing-users-on-a-budget
10 Joanna Rutkowska, “Evil Maid goes after TrueCrypt!” Invisible Things Lab’s Blog, October 16, 2009, http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2009/10/evil-maid-goes-after-truecrypt.html
11 Bruce Schneier, “Attacking Tor: how the NSA targets users’ online anonymity,” Guardian, October 4, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks-nsa-users-online-anonymity/print
12 Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald, “How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware,”
Intercept, March 12, 2014, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware/
13 Chris Irvine, “Kremlin returns to typewriters to avoid computer leaks,” Telegraph, July 11, 2014,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10173645/Kremlin-returns-to-typewriters-to-avoid-computer-leaks.html
14 Cyrus Farivar, “In the name of security, German NSA committee may turn to typewriters,” Ars Technica, July 14, 2014, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/in-the-name-of-security-german-nsa-committee-may-turn-to-typewriters/
15 Jacob Appelbaum, “Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox,” Der Spiegel, December 29, 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html
16 “Iron Box Security,” Cryptome, June 6, 2014, http://cryptome.org/2014/06/iron-box-security.htm
17 “Natsec the Mother of Secfuckers,” Cryptome, June 9, 2013, http://cryptome.org/2013/06/nat-secfuckers.htm
Today Israel carried out aerial strikes in Gaza targeting a mosque it claims was hosting rockets, a disabled care center and a geriatric urgent care hospital, where international volunteers have since rushed to shield patients.
In the deadliest strike yet, the home of Gaza’s police chief was also bombed, killing 18 members of his family.
These horrors are just the latest examples of death and destruction being wreaked amidst Israel’s five day long bombing campaign dubbed ‘Operation Protective Edge’.
Since the beginning of the offensive, at least 150 Palestinians have been killed and over 1,000 more injured. Thousands of homes have been utterly destroyed. No Israelis have yet died from a Hamas launched rocket.
Yet despite the disproportionality of the brutality, the establishment media continues to distort the truth by painting Hamas as the sole aggressor.
From FOX‘s ‘Gaza Rockets Aimed at Israel: What Would you Do with Just 15 Seconds?’ to liberal alt-news site VOX‘s ‘The Tragedy Never Ends, Palestinian Rockets Force Israeli Peace Conference to Evacuate’ to even Human Rights Watch, a human rights organization that is supposed to be unbiased in its criticism of atrocities, which leads with ‘Indiscriminate Palestinian Rocket Attacks’.
But perhaps most disturbing is the initial headline crafted by The New York Timesdescribing an Israeli missile bombing a cafe in Gaza packed with Palestinians watching the World Cup:
Missile at Beachside Gaza Cafe Finds Patrons Poised for World Cup http://t.co/t1N3tag2rf
As journalist Rania Khalek explains in an article dissecting the egregious error:
“Sawyers bald misreporting reflects either a deliberate lie by ABC news or willful ignorance so severe that Palestinian death and misery is invisible even when it’s staring ABC producers right in the face.”
The Western media routinely devalues Palestinian lives, and the dead bodies that stack up every time Israel goes on the offense remain an inconvenient truth for its narrative.
What Israel is actually doing in Gaza – MURDER
Another common misconception thanks to the media’s false depiction of Palestine is that Hamas is a rogue terrorist group, when in reality it is the democratically elected leadership of Gaza. When the IDF claims it only targets Hamas, it could mean any building affiliated with the government or social services provided to Palestinians.
As Noam Chomsky said, this isn’t war, it’s murder:
“When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing.”
According to the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is acting ‘responsible’ in his defense of the rocket attacks. Yet the collective punishment of over a million people living in an open-air prison hardly seems as such.
I made a statement recently addressing Israel’s irresponsible barbarism:
Why Doesn’t the Media Care About Dead Palestinians?
Since posting this video, I have been overwhelmed at the feedback and support from thousands of Palestinians around the world. It’s already been featured on one of Turkey’s most popular news websites En Son Haber, Indonesian newspaper Liputan, translated in French on DailyMotion, posted on Arabic newspaper Alwatan Voice and has gone viral on Palestinian TV station Raya FM.
I strongly denounce deadly force on both sides, but it’s important to not frame this as a cycle of violence. One is the colonizer oppressor, the other the colonized oppressed. As IDF General’s son Miko Peled said, Palestinians living in occupied territories have two choices: the completely surrender, or resist – and resistance is what we’re seeing now.
**
Don’t miss Max Blumenthal talking about how the Israeli government hid information on the three murdered teens’ deaths in order to incite violence, racial tensions and justify a military rampage.
Why Gaza is Burning: What the Corporate Media Isn’t Telling You
**
IDF General’s son Miko Peled talks about the latest siege on Gaza and why Israel should decolonize Palestine and end the apartheid regime if it doesn’t like getting shot at with rockets.
IDF General’s Son: If Israel Doesn’t Like Rockets, Decolonize Palestine
**
Earlier this year, Secretary of State John Kerry came under fire for saying that Israel could turn into an apartheid state if reforms aren’t made. I outline five reason why it already is one.
5 Reasons Why Israel is an Apartheid State
**
When Israel launched its 2012 military offensive dubbed ‘Operation Pillar of Defense’, the IDF knowingly bombed a journalist tower in Gaza that housed RT among other foreign news networks. I responded to the war crime on Breaking the Set.
Many Americans think the clock starts with Hamas rockets every time Israel carries out a military operation, without realizing the history of the occupation and roots of the conflict. Here’s a brief breakdown.
Statistically speaking, Americans should be more fearful of the local cops than “terrorists.”
Though Americans commonly believe law enforcement’s role in society is to protect them and ensure peace and stability within the community, the sad reality is that police departments are often more focused on enforcing laws, making arrests and issuing citations. As a result of this as well as an increase in militarized policing techniques, Americans are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, estimates a Washington’s Blog report based on official statistical data.
Though the U.S. government does not have a database collecting information about the total number of police involved shootings each year, it’s estimated that between 500 and 1,000 Americans are killed by police officers each year. Since 9/11, about 5,000 Americans have been killed by U.S. police officers, which is almost equivalent to the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in the line of duty in Iraq.
Because individual police departments are not required to submit information regarding the use of deadly force by its officers, some bloggers have taken it upon themselves to aggregate that data. Wikipedia also has a list of “justifiable homicides” in the U.S., which was created by documenting publicized deaths.
Mike Prysner, one of the local directors of the Los Angeles chapter for ANSWER — an advocacy group that asks the public to Act Now to Stop War and End Racism — told Mint Press Newsearlier this year that the “epidemic” of police harassment and violence is a nationwide issue.
He said groups like ANSWER are trying to hold officers accountable for abuse of power. “[Police brutality] has been an issue for a very long time,” Prysner said, explaining that in May, 13 people were killed in Southern California by police.
As Mint Press News previously reported, each year there are thousands of claims of police misconduct. According to the CATO Institute’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, in 2010 there were 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct involving 6,613 sworn officers and 6,826 alleged victims.
Most of those allegations of police brutality involved officers who punched or hit victims with batons, but about one-quarter of the reported cases involved firearms or stun guns.
Racist policing
A big element in the police killings, Prysner says, is racism. “A big majority of those killed are Latinos and Black people,” while the police officers are mostly White, he said. “It’s a badge of honor to shoot gang members so [the police] go out and shoot people who look like gang members,” Prysner argued, giving the example of 34-year-old Rigoberto Arceo, who was killed by police on May 11.
According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, Arceo, who was a biomedical technician at St. Francis Medical Center, was shot and killed after getting out of his sister’s van. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department says Arceo “advanced on the deputy and attempted to take the deputy’s gun.” However, Arceo’s sister and 53-year-old Armando Garcia — who was barbecuing in his yard when the incident happened — say that Arceo had his hands above his head the entire time.
Prysner is not alone in his assertion that race is a major factor in officer-related violence. This past May, astudy from the the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an anti-racist activist organization, found that police officers, security guards or self-appointed vigilantes killed at least 313 Black people in 2012 — meaning one Black person was killed in the U.S. by law enforcement roughly every 28 hours.
Prysner said the relationship between police departments and community members needs to change and that when police shoot an unarmed person with their arms in the air over their head, the officer should be punished.
Culture of misconduct
“You cannot have a police force that is investigating and punishing itself,” Prysner said, adding that taxpayer money should be invested into the community instead of given to police to buy more guns, assault rifles and body armor.
Dissatisfied with police departments’ internal review policies, some citizens have formed volunteer police watch groups to prevent the so-called “Blue Code of Silence” effect and encourage police officers to speak out against misconduct occurring within their department.
As Mint Press News previously reported, a report released earlier this year found that of the 439 cases of police misconduct that then had been brought before the Minneapolis’s year-old misconduct review board, not one of the police officers involved has been disciplined.
Although the city of Minneapolis spent $14 million in payouts for alleged police misconduct between 2006 and 2012, despite the fact that the Minneapolis Police Department often concluded that the officers involved in those cases did nothing wrong.
Other departments have begun banning equipment such as Tasers, but those decisions were likely more about protecting the individual departments from lawsuits than ensuring that officers are not equipped with weapons that cause serious and sometimes fatal injuries when used.
To ensure officers are properly educated on how to use their weapons and are aware of police ethics, conflict resolution and varying cultures within a community, police departments have historically heldtraining programs for all officers. But due to tighter budgets and a shift in priorities, many departments have not provided the proper continuing education training programs for their officers.
Charles Ramsey, president of both the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the Police Executive Research Forum, called that a big mistake, explaining that it is essential officers are trained and prepared for high-stress situations:
“Not everybody is going to be able to make those kinds of good decisions under pressure, but I do think that the more reality-based training that we provide, the more we put people in stressful situations to make them respond and make them react.”
GI Joe replaces Carl Winslow
In order to help local police officers protect themselves while fighting the largely unsuccessful War on Drugs, the federal government passed legislation in 1994 allowing the Pentagon to donate surplus military equipment from the Cold War to local police departments. Meaning that “weaponry designed for use on a foreign battlefield has been handed over for use on American streets … against American citizens.”
So while the U.S. military fights the War on Terror abroad, local police departments are fighting another war at home with some of the same equipment as U.S. troops, and protocol that largely favors officers in such tactics as no-knock raids.
Radley Balko, author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” wrote in the Wall Street Journal in August:
“Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier.
“Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”
As Mint Press News previously reported, statistics from an FBI report released in September reveal that a person is arrested on marijuana-related charges in the U.S. every 48 seconds, on average — most were for simple possession charges.
According to the FBI’s report, there were more arrests for marijuana possession than for the violent crimes of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault — 658,231 compared with 521,196 arrests.
While groups that advocate against police brutality recognize and believe that law enforcement officials should be protected while on duty, many say that local police officers do not need to wear body armor, Kevlar helmets and tactical equipment vests — all while carrying assault weapons.
“We want the police to keep up with the latest technology. That’s critical,” American Civil Liberties Union senior counsel Kara Dansky said. “But policing should be about protection, not combat.”
According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, there are more than 900,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States. In 2012, 120 officers were killed in the line of duty. The deadliest day in law enforcement history was reportedly Sept. 11, 2001, when 72 officers were killed.
Despite far fewer officers dying in the line of duty compared with American citizens, police departments are not only increasing their use of protective and highly volatile gear, but are increasingly setting aside a portion of their budget to invest in new technology such as drones, night vision goggles, remote robots, surveillance cameras, license plate readers and armored vehicles that amount to unarmed tanks.
Though some officers are on board with the increased militarization and attend conferences such as the annual Urban Shield event, others have expressed concern with the direction the profession is heading.
For example, former Arizona police officer Jon W. McBride said police concerns about being “outgunned” were likely a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” He added that “if not expressly prohibited, police managers will continually push the arms race,” because “their professional literature is predominately [sic] based on the acquiring and use of newer weapons and more aggressive techniques to physically overwhelm the public. In many cases, however, this is the opposite of smart policing.”
“Coupled with the paramilitary design of the police bureaucracy itself, the police give in to what is already a serious problem in the ranks: the belief that the increasing use of power against a citizen is always justified no matter the violation. The police don’t understand that in many instances they are the cause of the escalation and bear more responsibility during an adverse outcome.
“The suspects I encountered as a former police officer and federal agent in nearly all cases granted permission for me to search their property when asked, often despite unconcealed contraband. Now, instead of making a simple request of a violator, many in law enforcement seem to take a more difficult and confrontational path, fearing personal risk. In many circumstances they inflame the citizens they are engaging, thereby needlessly putting themselves in real and increased jeopardy.”
Another former police officer who wished to remain anonymous agreed with McBride and told Balko,
“American policing really needs to return to a more traditional role of cops keeping the peace; getting out of police cars, talking to people, and not being prone to overreaction with the use of firearms, tasers, or pepper spray. … Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in more than my share tussles and certainly appreciate the dangers of police work, but as Joseph Wambaugh famously said, the real danger is psychological, not physical.”
Release Us – a short film on police brutality by Charles Shaw
Conspiracy fact and witnesses to the dark side of aliens, reptilians, illuminati and personal links to the pleiadians are all discussed with Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot. We discuss the silver star, illuminati, and many of the connections between the higher orders of influence and both light and darkness. The vatican connections to illuminati, chakra work, and whistleblowers alike are examined with the veteran interviewer in the uncensored talk with Sean Stone for Buzzsaw.
GUEST BIO:
Kerry Lynn Cassidy is the CEO and co-Founder of Project Camelot. Kerry has a BA in English with graduate work in Sociology, an MBA certificate from the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management, and was competitively selected to attend a year of film school at the UCLA Extension Short Fiction Film Program as one of their first “hyphenates”: a writer-director-producer.
Kerry conducts interviews documenting the testimony of whistleblowers with above top secret clearances as well as researchers and experiencers covering all aspects of reality both on and off planet. She speaks at conferences around the world on the subjects of ETs, the Illuminati agenda, mind control, the matrix, prophecies, Kundalini activation and more. Kerry is an intuitive and spent years researching the occult and studying Eastern philosophy. While spending dedicated time in meditation, she linked her chakras in her 20s and has had multiple samadhi experiences since then.
Kerry Cassidy is also a well known radio talk show host, hosts events and speaks around the world. She writes groundbreaking articles and commentary on current events from a Big Picture standpoint involving black projects, secret space and conspiracies.
EPISODE BREAKDOWN: 00:01 Welcome to Buzzsaw. 00:30 Introducing Kerry Cassidy. 01:00 What was the inspiration behind Project Camelot? 07:00 The last pope? 09:00 Illuminati, freemasons, templars, and dark magicians. 13:30 Whistleblowing, the reptilian agenda. and the many different reptilian races. 21:00 The war between humans and the various extraterrestrial factions. 28:30 Truth in certain sci-fi features and black magic in Hollywood. 42:10 Thanks and goodbye.
Shortly after the Snowden leaks began exposing the NSA’s massive collection efforts, the New York Times uncovered the DEA’s direct access to AT&T telecom switches (via non-government employee “analysts” working for AT&T), from which it and other law enforcement agencies were able to gather phone call and location data.
Unlike the NSA’s bulk records programs (which are limited to holding five years worth of data), the Hemisphere database stretches back to 1987 and advertises instant access to “10 years of records.” And unlike the NSA’s program, there’s not even the slightest bit of oversight. All law enforcement needs to run a search of the Hemisphere database is an administrative subpoena — a piece of paper roughly equivalent to calling up Hemisphere analysts and asking them to run a few numbers. Administrative subpoenas are only subject to the oversight of the agency issuing them.
Unlike the documents obtained by the New York Times (possibly inadvertently), these do contain a few redactions, including some apparent success stories compiled at the end of the presentation. But like the earlier documents, the documents show that the DEA and law enforcement have unchecked access to a database that agents and officers are never allowed to talk about — not even inside a courtroom.
It is expected that all Hemisphere requests will be paralleled with a subpoena for CDRs from the official carrier for evidentiary purposes.
It’s spelled out more explicitly on a later slide, listed under “Official Reporting.”
DO NOT mention Hemisphere in any official reports or court documents.
Judging from the request date, it would appear that this version of the Hemisphere presentation possibly precedes the New York Times’ version. However, this one does not name the cooperating telco, although that appears to be a deliberate choice of the person writing the presentation, rather than due to redaction. At one point the document declares Hemisphere can access records “regardless of carrier,” but later clarifies that it will only gather info that crosses certain telecom switches — most likely AT&T’s. Additional subpoenas will be needed to gather info from other carriers, as well as to obtain subscriber information linked to searched numbers. This small limitation plays right into the DEA’s insistence that Hemisphere be “walled off” from defendants, court systems and the public.
If exigent circumstances make parallel construction difficult, Hemisphere analysts (non-government liaisons within the telco) will “continue to work with the investigator throughout the entire prosecution process in order to ensure the integrity of
Hemisphere and the case at hand.” Analysts are allowed to advise investigators on report writing, presentations to prosecutors and issues occurring during the trial phase. The word “integrity” seems out of place when it describes non-government employees assisting government agencies in hiding the origin of evidence from other government agencies.
Cross-referencing what’s been redacted in this one with the unredacted document published earlier, it appears as though the DEA is trying to (belatedly) hide the fact that its Hemisphere can also search IMSI and IMEI data (for wireless connections). Although this document states (after a long redaction) that Hemisphere does not collect subscriber information, that’s only partially true. As of July 2012, subscriber information for AT&T customers can be obtained from the database. This information may have been redacted or it may be that this presentation pre-dates this added ability.
What this shows is that the DEA has access to loads of information and a policy of “parallel construction in all things.” Tons of other government agencies, including the NSA, FBI and CIA are funneling information to the DEA and instructing it to hide the origin. The DEA then demands law enforcement agencies around the nation to do the same thing. This stacks the deck against defendants, who are “walled off” from the chain of evidence, preventing them from challenging sources, methods or the integrity of the evidence itself.
Even the mightiest have their come-uppance when their internal logic spews out destructiveness returning on the self—“blowback” in a way perhaps not seen before. I refer to James Risen’s extraordinary article in the New York Times, “Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater,” (June 30), in which the customary meaning of “blowback” refers to policies, e.g., the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, the “pivot” of military power to the Pacific intent on the encirclement, containment, isolation of China, produce unintended, or if intended, still unwelcome, consequences for the initiator of the policy or action.
Thus: Iraq, out-of-control (from the US standpoint, a raging civil war negating massive intervention and alerting the world to America’s hegemonic purposes); Afghanistan, original support of the Taliban against the Soviet Union, resulting in their material strengthening now turned against the US, endangering its power-position in the region; use of Ukraine as a basis for bringing NATO forces to the Russian border, now an overreach which may disrupt the EU and weaken US dominance over it; and blatant confrontation with China, both military and trade, with potential for war leading to nuclear annihilation. The status and role of world policeman is losing its blackjack, its reputation as global bully being challenged through the rise of multiple power-centers and industrial-commercial-financial patterns no longer defined, supervised, indeed controlled, by American global interests and military implementation.
That is blowback in its familiar guise. Less so, the self-chosen instruments of repression spilling out of behemoth’s mouth because America’s dependence on repression to secure its aims makes it dependent as well on the executors of repression, in this case, given the extreme stress on privatization (the core of the monster’s functional existence), Blackwater at your service, a private army on hire to USG for pursuit of the dirty work, deemed necessary, yet, delegated to official forces, the cause of embarrassment and shame. Browbeating indigenous populations, with an overwhelming swagger and display in the grand tradition of conquerors, in addition to protecting representatives of the conquerors, is a mission worthy, as here, of billion dollar contracts to the private militias (euphemism: “security guards”) as insurance the military victory and occupation will hold.
Here Blackwater is, and is treated as, inseparable from the intervention (read: conquest) itself, at times assisting in the fighting on an informal basis—it has not yet been invited to join NATO(!)—but more to the point, the intimidating presence in the post-military phase, as though instilling the message: You Iraqis think the military is bad, well don’t mess around, for far worse awaits you, we former Navy SEALS know nothing can touch us. Our motto might as well be, A Law Unto Ourselves, even USG—beyond the status-of-forces agreement it forced your government to sign—afraid of us. Blowback: the cancer in the bowels of behemoth rapidly spreading to the extremities, spinal column, brain. Soon we shall all be made over in the image of Blackwater, or rather, as Blackwater would like to see, as its actions show, America become, a nation subservient to its thugs, extolling martial glory for its own sake and for the sake of global dominance. Authoritarianism once off the ground knows no limits and demands the complete adherence of its subjects. America has lived with CIA for decades; Blackwater is icing on the cake.
***
Before turning to the evidence contained in James Risen’s article, it is important to see how events from the past are converging on the present. His credentials as a whistleblower are borne out by his previous record (exposure of CIA dirty tricks, in his book State of War, with respect to Iran’s nuclear program) and current circumstances (he faces a possible jail sentence for refusing to disclose, from that account, the identity of an anonymous source). In the Bush doghouse for exposing the use of warrantless wire taps in 2005, and now, Obama contemplating more serious action, jail time for not complying with a DOJ subpoena, possibly leading to an Espionage Act prosecution, for which Obama excels over all of his predecessors combined (liberals, of course, furiously denying the sordid record), Risen not only stares down his persecutors, Obama, Holder, DOJ, but here presents an exposure in some ways more damning of US baseness from the top down, nurturing a murderous nest in the structure of government.
As for the administration hounding, Jonathan Mahler’s New York Times article, “Reporter’s Case Poses Dilemma for Justice Dept.,” (June 27), implies that Risen’s refusal to be intimidated is causing Obama and Holder second thoughts about pushing for his imprisonment. According to John Rizzo, CIA’s acting general counsel, Bush people wanted State of War kept off the market—too late, however. Risen then was subpoenaed to testify against the suspected leaker—and refused. “More than six years of legal wrangling,” in what Mahler terms “the most serious confrontation between the government and the press in recent history,” is coming to a head. Risen “is now out of challenges. Early this month, the Supreme Court declined to review his case, a decision that allows prosecutors to compel his testimony.”
But The Times, in defending its own man, cannot strongly protest, lest it antagonize the White House. Yes, Obama appears to be in a bind: “Though the court’s decision looked like a major victory for the government, it has forced the Obama administration to confront a hard choice. Should it demand Mr. Risen’s testimony and be responsible for a reporter’s being sent to jail? Or reverse course and stand down, losing credibility with an intelligence community that has pushed for the aggressive prosecution of leaks?” If Obama and USG were truly democratic (small “d”), there should not be a choice but only one course of action, moreover reigning in the “intelligence community” serving under their control.
The reporter, I believe reflecting the paper’s view, however, credits the Obama administration with actually weighing alternatives and being capable of making moral choices: “The dilemma comes at a critical moment for an administration that has struggled to find a balance between aggressively enforcing laws against leaking and demonstrating concern for civil liberties and government transparency.” What balance? What concern? Everything points the other way, on both civil liberties (e.g., due process and habeas corpus rights for detainees) and government transparency (simply, a thick protective shield in place, symbolized by the high art of redaction—and, as with Blackwater’s killing sprees, the refusal or half-heartedness about prosecution). Its reporter’s back against the wall, NYT ignores the Espionage Act prosecutions of whistleblowers.
Mahler succinctly describes the reporting: “The failed C.I.A. action at the heart of Mr. Risen’s reporting was intended to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Intelligence officials assigned a former Russian scientist who had defected to the United States to deliver a set of faulty blueprints for a nuclear device to an Iranian scientist. But the Russian scientist became nervous and informed the Iranians that the plans were flawed.” One readily appreciates the dangers to the National Security State, especially revelations of the stupidity and dangerousness of its crown jewel, CIA, posed by investigative journalism. The Times, to its everlasting shame, bowed to Coldoleezza Rice’s request to withhold publication of the article. As a Times spokesperson later declared, “We weighed the government’s concerns and the usual editorial considerations and decided not to run the story.” Hence, James Risen—enemy of National Security; he “broke the story” later in State of War. Yet Bush is not the only culprit in this story; Obama ordered two additional subpoenas to force Risen to testify, his DOJ going after him hammer-and-tongs: “After a trial court largely quashed his third subpoena [the first under Bush] in late 2010, the Justice Department successfully challenged the ruling in a federal appeals court, arguing that the First Amendment does not afford any special protections to journalists.” Enough said about the dedication to civil liberties and freedom of the press: “The administration then urged the Supreme Court not to review Mr. Risen’s case.”
***
I have already discussed the mass killings in Nisour Square, Baghdad, in a previous article. Now we learn that this was part of a pattern in Blackwater’s behavior—again, Risen’s reporting. Even for one who is a seasoned critic, it is painful for me to write about. Organized thuggery knows no limits particularly when working for the highest authority, immunity from punishment worn as a badge of honor, as meanwhile government officials hide their eyes. Risen writes, “Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: ‘that he could kill’ the government’s chief investigator and ‘no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,’ according to department reports.” A private contractor threatens the life of a State Department investigator! No reprisal, punishment, cancellation of the contract, not even disclosure of the threat—yet Blackwater still in place years later, as part of the silence on atrocities in the Obama-Hillary era.
Those 17 killed are on America’s hands, bloody hands. There was a clear warning about what to expect: “After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created ‘an environment full of liability and negligence.’” Even more outrageous, Risen notes, the investigators become the criminals gumming up the security works: “American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.”
Jean Richter, lead investigator, wrote, in a memo to the State Department only weeks prior to Nisour Square: “’The management structures in place to manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors themselves. Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law…. ‘hands off’ [management meant that] the contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.’” Now, nearly seven years later, four Blackwater guards are on trial, facing, if ever convicted, watered down charges, this being “ the government’s second attempt to prosecute the case in an American court [I wonder how serious the effort under Holder and Obama] after previous charges against five guards were dismissed in 2009.” Much of the time this is on Obama’s watch, yet, “despite a series of investigations in the wake of Nisour Square, the back story of what happened with Blackwater and the embassy in Baghdad before the fateful shooting has never been fully told.”
So much for transparency, civil liberties, and prosecuting the crimes of a predecessor (the cardinal rule of presidents, at least this one, cover-up WAR CRIMES past and present, a solemn command of the National Security State). Silence and deniability, in all matters large and small, characterize the responses of USG and private principals: “The State Department declined to comment on the aborted investigation. A spokesman for Erik Prince, the founder and former chief executive of Blackwater, who sold the company in2010, said Mr. Prince had never been told about the matter.” The $1B contract itself testifies to the fusion of patriotism, secrecy, repression, and yes, corporate profit: “After Mr. Prince sold the company, the new owners named it Academi. In early June, it merged with Triple Canopy, one of its rivals for government and commercial contracts to provide private security. The new firm is called Constellis Holdings.” Like war, private security stands to make a killing (pardon the pun), no doubt in flight from the original name for damage-control and public-relations purposes.
Previous to Nisour Square (Sept. 16, 2007) Blackwater guards “acquired a reputation…for swagger and recklessness,” but complaints “about practices ranging from running cars off the road to shooting wildly in the streets and even killing civilians typically did not result in serious action by the United States or the Iraqi government.” After firing in the Square, there was closer scrutiny, the Blackwater claim that they were fired on even US military officials denied, and “[f]ederal prosecutors later said Blackwater personnel had shot indiscriminately with automatic weapons, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.” To no avail, given the symbiotic relationship between the company and the government. In fact, Blackwater had itself been run by Prince as a nation in microcosm, its people shortly before Nisour Square gathered by him at company headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina and made to “swear an oath of allegiance” like the one required of enlistees in the US military. They were handed copies of the oath, which, after reciting the words, were told to sign.
The State Department investigation into Blackwater in Iraq, which began Aug. 1, 2007 and was slated for one month, led early to the “volatile” situation (including the death threat), our knowledge coming from “internal State Department documents” furnished “to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Blackwater that was unrelated to the Nisour Square shootings,” seemingly by accident then and fleshed out by Risen. In that month—or that part of it before being forced to leave– the investigators discovered “a long list of contract violations by Blackwater,” staffing changes of security details “without State Department approval,” reducing the number of guards on details, “storing automatic weapons and ammunition in their private rooms, where they were drinking heavily and partying with frequent female visitors,” and, for many, failing “to regularly qualify on their weapons” or “carrying weapons on which they had never been certified” nor “authorized to use.” Extravagance for mayhem abroad, less than peanuts for critical needs at home, education, health care, employment, beyond the means or reach of Imperial grandeur as the national obsession.
In addition to “overbilling the State Department by manipulating its personnel records, using guards assigned to the State Department contract for other work and falsifying other staffing data on the contract,” (no wonder the investigators’ poor reception by Blackwater’s resident head in Iraq), one of its affiliates forced “third country nationals” who did the dirty work at low wages “to live in squalid conditions, sometimes three to a cramped room with no bed,” according to the investigators’ report. Their conclusion: “Blackwater was getting away with such conduct because embassy personnel had gotten too close to the contractor.”
Ah, the denouement; we have a name to go with the face of the project manager who threatened Richter’s life, Daniel Carroll, who said he could kill him without anything happening to himself “as we were in Iraq” (this was witnessed by Donald Thomas, the other investigator), and Richter, in his memo to the Department stated: “I took Mr. Carroll’s threat seriously. We were in a combat zone where things can happen unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract.” Nicely put, and corroborated by Thomas, who wrote in a separate memo that “others in Baghdad had told the two investigators to be ‘very careful,’ considering that their review could jeopardize job security for Blackwater personnel.” The wonder perhaps is that Richter and Thomas were not prosecuted under the Espionage Act for spoiling the show. It didn’t matter. No one at State listened.
The two men were ordered to leave (Aug 23), and “cut short their inquiry and returned to Washington the next day.” Finally, on Oct. 5, after the Nisour Square scandal, State Department officials responded to Richter’s “August warning,” and took statements from him and Thomas about “their accusations of a threat by Mr. Carroll, but took no further action.” A special panel convened by Rice on Nisour Square “never interviewed Mr. Richter or Mr. Thomas.” The official who led the panel “told reporters on Oct. 23, 2007, that the panel had not found any communications from the embassy in Baghdad before the Nisour Square shooting that raised concerns about contractor conduct.” Voila, vanished in thin air. This State Department officer deserves the last word: “We interviewed a large number of individuals. We did not find any, I think, significant pattern of incidents that had not—that the embassy had suppressed in any way.” And my last word: fascism. Beyond all structural-cultural-societal considerations about wealth-concentration, industrial-financial consolidation, foreign expansion through preponderant power and the spirit of militarism, the rampaging privatization with government consent witnessed here, which has wreaked havoc on another people, only to be covered over by the state, aka, the National Security State, disregarding its Constitutional protections to the individual, as in sponsoring massive surveillance, is enough for me to satisfy the working definition of that single word.
via Norman Pollack has written on Populism. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at [email protected].
NSA says it has no idea how much US info it collects, but FBI searches for it so much it can’t count how many times.
The blowback against the National Security Agency has long focused on the unpopular Patriot Act surveillance program that allows the NSA to vacuum up billions of US phone records each year. But after a rush of attention this week, some much deserved focus is back on the surveillance state’s other seemingly limitless program: the warrantless searches made possible by Section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act, which allows the NSA to do all sorts of spying on Americans and people around the world – all for reasons that, in most cases, have nothing to do with terrorism.
The long awaited draft report from the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board (PCLOB) on this subject was finally released Tuesday night, and it gives Americans a fairly detailed look unclassified at how the NSA spies through its notorious Prism program – and how it snoops “upstream” (a euphemism for the agency’s direct access to entire internet streams at telecoms like AT&T). The board issued a scathing report on the Patriot Act surveillance months ago, but oddly they went the opposite route this time around.
While many of the details are interesting, the board’s new report recommends no systematic changes to the several disturbing privacy issues covered therein. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (my former employer) issued a scathing PCLOB review late Tuesday night, calling the report “legally flawed and factually incomplete” and saying it ignored the “essential privacy problem … that the government has access to or is acquiring nearly all communications that travel over the Internet.”
As usual, it’s the Edward Snowden revelations that give context to all the snooping – and provide the impetus to keep pushing for real reform. Some 36 hours before the latest PCLOB report was made public, the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman disclosed previously unreleased Snowden documents showing that true scope of “702”-style information sweeps:
Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information from individuals ‘concerning’ all but four countries on Earth.
As the Post reports, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s interpretation of the the Fisa Amendments Act is so broad, it “could allow for surveillance of academics, journalists and human-rights researchers.”
Fisa Amendments Act surveillance also includes scanning the emails of Americans never even accused of a crime. It’s the Snowden revelations that originally led the New York Times to report last year any conversation you’ve ever had with someone outside the country may be fair game under the act, as the NSA “is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country who mention information about foreigners under surveillance.”
Perhaps in an attempt to pre-empt the PCLOB report, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper finally just released what he promised Sen Ron Wyden months ago: the number of warrantless searches by the US government on American communications in its vast databases of information collected under the Fisa Amendments Act. This is the second giant problem with 702 surveillance. Wyden refers to these as “backdoor” searches since they’re performed using data supposedly collected for “foreign intelligence” purposes – even though they still suck up huge amounts of purely US information. And it’s exactly the type of search the House overwhelmingly voted to ban in its surprise vote two weeks ago.
The NSA conducted “backdoor” searches 198 times in 2013 (and another 9,500 for internet metadata on Americans). Curiously, the CIA conducts far more warrantless searches of American information in the NSA databases than the NSA itself – almost 10 times more. But the FBI was the worst culprit, querying data on Americans so many times it couldn’t even count. The DNI left it at this: “the FBI believes the number of queries is substantial.”
The FBI has always been the NSA’s silent partner in all its surveillance and has long been suspected of doing the dirty work on Americans’ data after it’s been collected by NSA.
Wyden, who has for years repeatedly pushed for this information to be released to the public, responded:
When the FBI says it conducts a substantial number of searches and it has no idea of what the number is, it shows how flawed this system is and the consequences of inadequate oversight. This huge gap in oversight is a problem now, and will only grow as global communications systems become more interconnected.
The PCLOB also went on to reveal in its report that the FBI can search the vast Prism database for crimes that have nothing to do with terrorism, or even national security. Oh, and how many US persons have had their data collected through Prism and other 702 programs? That government has no idea.
Unfortunately, the PCLOB chickened out of making any real reform proposals, leading Politico’s Josh Gerstein to point out that the Republican-controlled House already endorsed more aggressive reforms than the civil liberties board. More bizarrely, one of the holdouts on the panel for calling for real reform is supposed to be a civil liberties advocate. The Center for Democracy and Technology’s vice president, James Dempsey, had the chance to side with two other, more liberal members on the five-person panel to recommend the FBI get court approval before rummaging through the NSA’s vast databases, but shamefully he didn’t.
Now, as the Senate takes up a weakened House bill along with the House’s strengthened backdoor-proof amendment, it’s time to put focus back on sweeping reform. And while the PCLOB may not have said much in the way of recommendations, now Congress will have to. To help, a coalition of groups (including my current employer, Freedom of the Press Foundation) have graded each and every representative in Washington on the NSA issue. The debate certainly isn’t going away – it’s just a question of whether the public will put enough pressure on Congress to change.
The history of pilotless aircraft in the United States military stretches back to the days of the Wright brothers. It’s difficult to describe any good that emerges from warfare, but many modern technological advancements — computers, zippers, microwaves — can be traced back to conflicts of a bygone era. Today unmanned aerial vehicles are being used by a whole slew of people, the U.S. Department of Defense being just one primary example. While drones have been used routinely to support or undertake lethal force abroad for over a decade, their domestic applications are just now being given more serious consideration. The capabilities and contributions of UAVs have, up until recently, been propelled more or less exclusively by the defense community. UAV technology may currently be associated with what some would consider secretive and nefarious militarism, but in examining the range of practical, commercial applications we can only hope that drone technology will begin to move away from the dark side.
President Obama’s approach to counterterrorism has been marked by his embrace of drone technology to target terrorist operatives. But they’ve come a long way since their first strike operations: drone backpacks are now used by soldiers, and Predator drones come equipped with even more powerful warheads. U.S. DOD spending on drones increased from $284M in 2000 to $3.3B in October of 2012. Small surveillance drones, called Cicadas, are now being released from balloons to collect data on the ground in Iraq. In short, the military has a seemingly infinite range of uses for unmanned aerial vehicles, large and small. And the scope of drone missions only continues to expand, as the technology necessary to program and operate them becomes at once more commonplace and versatile. Over the next decade, the Pentagon anticipates that the number of “multirole” UAVs (those capable of both spying and striking) will nearly quadruple.
As of October 2013, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued 285 clearance certificates for drones inside the United States. Under pressure from the Unmanned Systems Caucus (or drone lobby) the Department of Homeland Security has accepted eight Predator drones for use along the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. The FAA is set to further open skies to commercial drones by 2015, allowing civilians to finally explore and expand upon the uses of UAV technology. But even with the law by their side, can civilian companies ever hope to utilize drones to the extent in which they are employed by the military? Many recognize the civil potential of flying robots, but recognize that with certain valuable contributions also comes the possibility of tighter law enforcement and increased government surveillance.
The dualistic nature of drones is being explored by hobbyists and venture capitalists alike. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is even developing a program that will employ drones and satellite internet to deliver internet to disenfranchised communities throughout the world. While this probably speaks to Zuckerberg’s opportunism (and his desire to compete in the marketplace against Google’s Loon Project and HughesNet Internet) that isn’t to say that people in underserved communities don’t stand to benefit. The U.S. government already uses drones to protect endangered wildlife species, like the sandhill crane, and researchers in Indonesia and Malaysia are also using unmanned aerial devices to monitor the activity of similarly threatened orangutan populations. UAV systems are emerging as key tools in agricultural innovation and the monitoring of natural resources. Search and rescue missions, 3-D mapping and surveying projects, and hurricane tracking projects are also being carried out by UAVs. With unmanned aircraft, it seems the sky’s the limit for civil and commercial usage.
But the business of drones still comes with plenty of risks. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned of a “dystopian future” in which “mass, suspicionless searches of the general population” are the norm. Given the history of drones as advanced tools of the government and military, this doesn’t seem like an empty threat. And for now, the law still stands in the way of any real development on the commercial end. Despite the fact that many ideas for drones, from the delivery of Amazon parcels to Domino’s pizzas, have been suggested, the military still holds the key to their innovation from an American standpoint. Their function as a militaristic tool remains at the forefront of their continued growth, resulting in large spending increases for advanced cameras, sensors, and systems with attack capabilities. But the integration of drone technology into domestic airspace by law enforcement — and later, by corporations — seems inevitable. As technological improvements continue to catapult the UAV industry into the future, the true beneficiaries of these developments remain to be seen.
History was made today in a NYC courtroom with the extra-leniant sentencing of notorious Anonymous hacker turned FBI Informant ‘Sabu’ otherwise known as Hector Xavier Monsegur. But, what if things are not what they appear to be?
When considering history in hindsight, things were rarely what they seemed at the time. Cybersecurity drama and events should be held in similar regard, as the game of smoke and mirrors has never been more applicable than within the globally distributed Internet and its ‘security mechanisms’. Lets take a moment to consider the recent developments with this case and look at the sentencing from a different perspective.
Federal agents and LEAs accross the globe have been known to bend the rules, outright lie, or falsify evidence to suit their best interest. Not in pursuit of truth nor justice, but instead in pursuit of ‘winning’ at whatever cost. Another subject entirely, but it remains a fundamental pillar to this overall hypothesis.. What if Sabu never flipped, and [for reasons still unclear] they are only providing the illusion that he has?
Virtually everything known about how these ‘hacks’ unfolded has been described only by Court Documents and MSM/Fox News opinion of those documents. When considering that the messaging is one sided, it becomes even more interesting when observing how hard the MSM and FBI have pushed this message, which is that ‘Sabu turned informant on a dime’.
Judge Preska, being the wife of a hacked stratfor client, was arguably conflicted from start in Jeremy Hammond’s case, the individual who allegedly hacked Stratfor at behest of Sabu & the FBI. Today, this same judge not only provided a lenient sentence on Hector, but offered a public and glowing praise of the effectiveness of his efforts in subsequent critical takedowns. This is highly suspicious, as a ‘real’ thank you from a judge should be a sealed case, and witness protection. What the message actually sounded like was a backhanded compliment meaning ‘thanks for nothing, and good luck with the death threats’.
Love him or hate him, Sabu isn’t stupid. Certainly not, if he’s capable of doing all of these things the government claims he can do. In that assumption, one would allso assume he would outright demand protection, and probably future employment. What’s the point of flipping on multiple high value targets, if the end result is a publicly announced ‘time served’ with release back into a furious community, hated & minimum-wage forever? Finding a highly intelligent hacker that would agree to this, is incredibly unrealistic.
Taking an objective look at all the evidence, without bias, another theory can emerge. While it’s not much, there are historical Tweets and leaked IRC conversations to keep in mind, that may tell another side of the story. In a final Twitter posting, Sabu calls out the FBI for ‘being cowards, and not to give in’. Another post on the day before going dark, reminiscent of a yet-to-leak Snowden, Sabu describes invasive & illegal government spying, and hints that ‘informants & corporate compliance’ as the government’s only real tools. Some would just say he’s only playing the part. Others could say those tweets were a deliberate slap in the face, and evidence of non-compliance.
In those leaked IRC conversations, if believed are legitimate, outline some additional possibilities and variations to the actual events as we understand them.
You’ll find that m45t3rs4d0w8 (aka Sanguinarious) brings up the false flag possibility, and they discuss the lies of FoxNews and how ‘anons believe anything’ and ‘dont ask the right questions’. Later in the leaked record, its discussed how the MSM lied about how he was caught. It should be noted that alledged LulSec accomplice, JoePie91 also believes there are inconsitencies with the Sabu story, and how he was nabbed, as documented on his blog March 10, 2012 shortly after Sabu’s public arrest.
In what could be most telling, m45t3rs4d0w8 not Sabu that then explains “regarding those things they ‘said’ you did” he noticed some court documentation doesnt make sense, has missing dates, and possibly falsified Witness and Defendant signatures. Sabu replies, “Good things to question, sadly no one is questioning like you are”.
Other final bits to mention would be Sabu’s talk of return. “I cant wait until i’m sentenced so i can finally get the truth out”, and his disgust of LEA/FBI manipulations, “they will go through your entire life… they will find a way to blackmail your a**. I’m not even ****ing exaggerating.”
Journalism requires critical thinking in order to truly get the message across. Proposed are critical unanswered questions:
Q. If Sabu is cooperating with such efficiency, why is gov’t hanging him out to dry?
No Witness Protection Offered nor Demanded? No Sealed Case (to Protect the Informant)?
Anyone else in Sabu’s shoes would likely have said “OK, you got me, i’ll cooperate. But you’re going to seal this case, and give me witness protection. Otherwise the public will crucify me”.
Q. Is there a chance that Sabu was apprehended, but the FBI simply used his alias to entrap Hammond / Davis / Ackroyd/ etc by themselves?
What proof do we really have that Hector himself is responsible?
Q. Could the FBI have decided that publicly promoting Sabu as a crucial Anonymous Informant was a most effective way to ‘make the FBI look good’, whether true or not?
If Sabu had not flipped, do we believe the FBI would admit this failure? Does the FBI have the will & means to falsify this into reality?
In conclusion, opinion should still be out on whether Hector Xavier Monesgur deserves the landslide of lambasting. It would be wise to dig deeper, withhold some bias (towards the incarcerated) and keep in mind…
“All warfare, is based on deception..” Sun Tzu
Who will be the first to interview Xavier, and ask these and likely more very important questions?
No matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantage is to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades. – Dr. Gordon J.F. MacDonald 1968
In order to increase functionality and effectiveness, ionospheric heaters are used in combination.Peter A. Kirby, Contributor Activist Post
Located on an United States Air Force site near Gakona, Alaska, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) is the world’s largest and most functional ionospheric heater. Construction began in 1993. Today, HAARP can generate super high powered beams of directed energy. HAARP is designed to shoot these energy beams 200 kilometers up into the sky; affecting an area known as earth’s ionosphere. In doing this, HAARP can perform a number of functions.
The known uses of HAARP are: weather modification, power beaming, earth tomography (mapping of our planet’s interior), Star Wars-type defense capabilities, enhanced communications, communication disruptions and mind control. For an in-depth discussion about what HAARP does and how it does it, you must read the 1995 book Angels Don’t Play this HAARP by Dr. Nick Begich and journalist Jeane Manning. You can freely access a searchable .pdf here: http://freedomfchs.com/adpthaarp.pdf
Although lesser ionospheric heaters do not generate energy beams as powerful or possess the same functionality as HAARP, similar facilities are located around the world. Along with a smaller facility located near Fairbanks, Alaska, other ionospheric heater locations include: Puerto Rico, Norway, Russia, Tajikistan, Peru and the Middle East. The latest word is that Russia, China and the United States have set up HAARP-like facilities in Antarctica. (Source)
The HAARP website explains the differences between HAARP and other ionospheric heaters like this, “HAARP is unique to most existing facilities due to the combination of a research tool which provides electronic beam steering, wide frequency coverage and high effective radiated power collocated with a diverse suite of scientific observational instruments.” HAARP can be remotely operated. HAARP employs technology originally envisioned and demonstrated by American inventor Nikola Tesla.
HAARP is jointly managed by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in conjunction with the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Here’s more from the HAARP website:
Technical expertise and procurement services as required for the management, administration and evaluation of the program are being provided cooperatively by the Air Force (Air Force Research Laboratory), the Navy (Office of Naval Research and Naval Research Laboratory), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Since the HAARP facility consists of many individual items of scientific equipment, both large and small, there is a considerable list of commercial, academic and government organizations which are contributing to the building of the facility by developing scientific diagnostic instrumentation and by providing guidance in the specification, design and development of the IRI [HAARP]. BAE Advanced Technologies (BAEAT) is the prime contractor for the design and construction of the IRI. Other organizations which have contributed to the program include the University of Alaska, Stanford University, Cornell University, University of Massachusetts, UCLA, MIT, Dartmouth University, Clemson University, Penn State University, University of Tulsa, University of Maryland, SRI International, Northwest Research Associates, Inc., and Geospace, Inc.
The HAARP website notes that, “…major construction at the facility was completed during 2007.”
12 U.S. patents are commonly recognized as applicable. A man named Dr. Bernard Eastlund is listed as the inventor on two of these patents and a co-inventor on another. Dr. Eastlund is commonly acknowledged as the inventor of HAARP.
The 12 HAARP patents were all assigned to ARCO Power Technologies Incorporated (APTI); a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). APTI also won the initial contract to build HAARP. In 1994, APTI was sold to a company called E-Systems. E-Systems then changed APTI’s name to Advanced Power Technologies Incorporated. Largely involved in communications and information systems, E-Systems gets most of its business from and has extensive ties to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1995, Raytheon acquired E-Systems. Raytheon, the defense contracting behemoth, now holds all 12 HAARP patents.
Weather Modification
As far back as 1958, the chief White House advisor on weather modification, Captain Howard T. Orville, said the U.S. defense department was studying “ways to manipulate the charges of the earth and sky and so affect the weather” by using an electronic beam to ionize or de-ionize the atmosphere over a given area.The seminal 1996 Air Force report ‘Owning the Weather 2025’ outlines a weather modification program utilizing ground based support such as HAARP.Let us reference a passage from Nick Begich and Jeane Manning’s book Angels Don’t Play this HAARP:
Eastlund’s enthusiasm for planetary-scale engineering came through just as clearly in an interview with Omni Magazine. While acknowledging that many of the uses of his invention are warlike, he also talked about ‘more benign’ uses. His view of benign included using the technology to reroute the high-altitude jet stream, which is a major player in shaping global weather. Another way to control the weather with his technology would be to build ‘plumes of atmospheric particles to act as a lens or focusing device’ for sunlight, he told Omni. With this, the people controlling the antennae could aim in such a way that the return beams would hit a certain part of the earth. With the heating ability, they could experiment until they could control wind patterns in a specific place.
The Omni article explained. ‘What this means, he says, is that by controlling local weather patterns one could, say, bring rain to Ethiopia or alter the summer storm pattern in the Caribbean.’
United States patent #4,686,605 ‘Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere and/or Magnetosphere’ is one of the 12 HAARP patents. Dr. Eastlund is credited as the inventor. It states, “Weather modification is possible by, for example, altering upper atmosphere wind patterns or altering solar absorption patterns by constructing one or more plumes of atmospheric particles which will act as a lens or focusing device.”I know that quote on the surface looks like a connection between HAARP and chemtrails, but, before we think we have the smoking gun, realize that they are probably talking about particles precipitated from the ionosphere forming a lens without the need of chemtrails; as outlined elsewhere in the patent. The good news is, the patent goes on:
Also as alluded to earlier, molecular modifications of the atmosphere can take place so that positive environmental effects can be achieved. Besides actually changing the molecular composition of an atmospheric region, a particular molecule or molecules can be chosen for increased presence. For example, ozone, nitrogen, etc. concentrations in the atmosphere could be artificially increased. Similarly, environmental enhancement could be achieved by causing the breakup of various chemical entities such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, and the like. Transportation of entities can also be realized when advantage is taken of the drag effects caused by regions of the atmosphere moving up along diverging field lines. Small micron sized particles can be then transported, and, under certain circumstances and with the availability of sufficient energy, larger particles or objects could be similarly affected.
That, my friends is a smoking gun. They are talking about introducing small particles into the atmosphere and then using HAARP to move them and the matter around them for the purpose of weather modification.
HAARP can be used in conjunction with chemtrails in order to modify the weather. Disbursed metallic particles such as aluminum, barium and strontium (the main chemtrail ingredients) may increase the atmosphere’s conductivity and therefore enhance HAARP’s weather modification performance.
A grand history of releasing stuff into the atmosphere as part of scientific research exists.
In the early 1960s our U.S. military dumped 350,000 2-4cm copper needles into the ionosphere attempting to create a ‘telecommunications shield.’
The HAARP executive summary says:
DOD [Department of Defense] agencies already have on-going efforts in the broad area of active ionospheric experiments, including ionospheric enhancements. These include both space and ground based approaches. The space-based efforts include chemical releases (e.g., the Air Force’s Brazilian Ionospheric Modification Experiment, BIME; the Navy’s RED AIR program; and multi-agency participation in the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite, CERES).
Patent #4,686,605’s description states, “It has also been proposed to release large clouds of barium in the magnetosphere so that photoionization will increase the cold plasma density, thereby producing electron precipitation through enhanced whistler-mode interaction.” Barium is the second most common chemtrail ingredient.
These chemical releases are not all necessarily chemtrails, but they show our military’s extensive atmospheric chemical release activities involving ground and space based monitoring and support.
Lastly, let us refer again to Angels Don’t Play this HAARP:
…there is a super-powerful electrical connection between the ionosphere and the part of the atmosphere where our weather comes onstage, the lower atmosphere. Furthermore, scientific theories describe how the electrical energetic levels of the atmosphere are connected to cloud processes.
Chemtrails may enhance this connection between the lower and upper atmosphere. Then, when HAARP manipulates the ionosphere, the lower areas of the atmosphere (where our weather happens) can be manipulated accordingly.
Power Beaming
United States patent #5,068,669 titled ‘Power Beaming System’ outlines the technical details of how to remotely power airplanes.
Let us refer to a passage from ‘Angels Don’t Play this HAARP.’ Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning reference an ‘Aviation Week’ article:
This ‘Star Wars’ technology developed by ARCO Power Technologies, Incorporated [patent #5,068,669’s assignee] was used in a microwaved-powered aircraft. The aircraft was reported to be able to stay aloft for up to 10,000 hours at 80,000 foot altitudes in a single mission. This craft was envisioned as a surveillance platform. The craft had no need for refueling because the energy was beamed to it and then converted to electrical energy for use by the aircraft. Flight tests were undertaken at Tyendinga Airport near Kingston, Ontario, Canada in the early 1990’s. This test by APTI most likely involved this patent…
If HAARP is powering the chemtrail airplanes, this would be a great logistical advantage as the planes would not need to be grounded for fueling. The airplanes would probably only need to be grounded for payload and maintenance and therefore could remain in the sky, performing their functions without interruption for long periods of time. This would also be an advantage because the more time these planes spend in the air, the less chance there is of the program being exposed. It’s incredibly difficult (as this author has learned) to expose something going on at 40,000 ft. in the sky. The power beaming need not be constant as the airplanes could utilize capacitors.
Little HAARPs
It is reported that smaller, mobile versions of HAARP exist.
Let us refer again to Angels Don’t Play this HAARP:
Is it possible that the HAARP scientists could have miniaturized the technology so that they don’t need such a large area of land and electrical power as called for in Eastlund’s pattents? Manning asked him.
“It’s entirely possible,” he [Eastlund] replied. “They have had a lot of good engineers working on it for some time. I would hope they have improved it.”
Aviation Week reports in 2008 that the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing an airborne version of HAARP. BAE Systems, the article tells us, is to demonstrate this unit by towing it, ‘behind a helicopter.’
Here is a picture of what is described as a mobile HAARP ship:
It has been speculated that this HAARP ship was used to trigger the March 2011 magnitude 9.0 Japan earthquake.
There may be many HAAARP-like facilities of which we are not aware. There may be HAARP-like technology all around us! As noted earlier, ionospheric heaters such as HAARP are used in combination to increase capabilities and effectiveness.
A little HAARP atop the Rocky Mountains at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) might work well. This is also the location from which I speculate the airplanes are commanded.
A Pattern of Deception
When it comes to HAARP, our government has shown a pattern of denial and obfuscation. In many instances, the HAARP website and the military contradict each other and/or the authors of ‘Angels Don’t Play this HAARP.’
The HAARP website claims that HAARP is not used for weather modification and the military has never admitted to these capabilities. The patents, Nick Begich, Jeane Manning and the European parliament say HAARP can modify the weather.
Although the HAARP website claims experiments are only being carried out in a relatively small portion of the ionosphere directly over the facility, the HAARP executive summary says, “For broader military applications, the potential for significantly altering regions of the ionosphere at relatively great distances (1000 km or more) from a [ionospheric] heater is very desirable.”
The HAARP website claims that HAARP does not make holes in the ionosphere. The European parliament and the authors of Angels Don’t Play this HAARP say it does.
The HAARP website and the military deny that HAARP is a ‘Star Wars’ defense type weapon. The European parliament and the authors of Angels Don’t Play this HAARP insist it is; the patents support their position. Angels says:
In February, 1995, the Star Wars missile defense shield was supposed to be dead. The United States House of Representatives by a 218 to 212 voted to kill the program. Yet HAARP continues on while the motives of the military are hidden from the world.
The military and the HAARP website both claim that HAARP is not a classified project, but leaked documents show that the military planners intend to keep the program under wraps.
The HAARP website contradicts itself about military involvement. In their self-description, they say they are a military project, but in the FAQs, they say HAARP is, “not designed to be an operational system for military purposes.” All this while the military’s executive summary says HAARP is to ‘exploit’ ionospheric processes for Department of Defense purposes.
Dr. Eastlund has contradicted the official military position many times. Even though they have been exhaustively proven, our military denies connections between Eastlund, APTI and HAARP. Eastlund himself said in a 1988 NPR interview that the military had tested some of the ideas presented in the patents. According to Dr. Begich and Jeane Manning:
Eastlund said in a 1988 radio interview that the defense department had done a lot of work on his concepts, but he was not at liberty to give details. He later told Manning that after he had worked within ARCO for a year and applied for patents, Defense Advanced Research Project agency (DARPA) had combed through his theories then gave out a contract for him to study how to generate the relativistic (light speed) electrons in the ionosphere.
Here’s more about Eastlund from Angels:
Eastlund told Chadwick of National Public Radio that the patent should have been kept under government secrecy. He said he had been unhappy that it was issued publicly, but, as he understood it, the patent office does not keep basic ‘fundamental information’ secret. ‘You don’t get a patent if you don’t describe in enough detail to another person how to use it,’ he said. Specifics of military applications of his patent remain proprietary (secret), he added.
I guess it’s just a matter of who you trust. I choose to trust the patents, Nick Begich and Jeane Manning because, about HAARP, the government has been caught lying. To my knowledge, the authors of ‘Angels Don’t Play this HAARP’ have not once yet been found to be lying. The patents speak for themselves.
Conclusions
Even the technocratic European parliament found serious concerns about HAARP. A 1999 European parliament committee report, after hearing Dr. Nick Begich and others, concluded:
[the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection] Regards the US military ionospheric manipulation system, HAARP, based in Alaska, which is only a part of the development and deployment of electromagnetic weaponry for both external and internal security use, as an example of the most serious emerging military threat to the global environment and human health, as it seeks to interfere with the highly sensitive and energetic section of the biosphere for military purposes, while all of its consequences are not clear, and calls on the Commission, Council and the Member States to press the US Government, Russia and any other state involved in such activities to cease them, leading to a global convention against such weaponry;
I speculate that HAARP, when and if used for nefarious purposes (such as weather modification in co-operation with chemtrails), is remotely operated from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and/or Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. During my humble investigation, I found that these three locations have produced much of the leading research and development. HAARP is an incredibly high-tech machine. You need highly skilled scientists and engineers to run the thing. The best place to run HAARP would be from a laboratory where the technology was developed. Also, most people (top scientists included) are generally not so hot about relocating to the wilds of Alaska. As noted earlier, HAARP can be remotely operated.
We know HAARP can modify the weather. If one could, don’t you think they would? Weather control is god-like power. Chemtrails may be sprayed to enhance the effectiveness of these operations. If this is the case, our government’s pattern of lying and obfuscation about HAARP makes perfect sense and is consistent with behavior exhibited by others associated with every aspect of chemtrails, geoengineering and the related activities I outline.
Notes:
– Unless Peace Comes book edited by Nigel Calder, Viking Press 1968
– Angels Don’t Play this HAARP book by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning, Earthpulse Press 1995
-United States patent #4,686,605 ‘Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere and/or Magnetosphere’ assigned to ARCO Power Technologies Incorporated 1987
-United States patent #5,068,669 ‘Power Beaming System’ assigned to ARCO Power Technologies Incorporated 1991
-‘HAARP HF Active Auroral Research Program: Joint Services Program Plans and Activities’ report by the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory and the Navy Office of Naval Research 1990
-‘Equatorial Ionospheric Irregularities Produced by the Brazilian Ionospheric Modification Experiment (BIME)’ report by J.A. Klobuchar and M.A. Abdu Journal of Geophysical Research vol. 94, no. A3 1989
-‘Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System CERES’ report by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 1999
-‘DARPA at 50’ Aviation Week Aug. 18, 2008
-European parliament report on the environment, security and foreign policy: Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy January 14, 1999
-‘Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather 2025’ report by the United States Air Force 1996
-‘Holes in Heaven: HAARP and Advances in Tesla Technology’ video by Paula Randol-Smith Productions and Gallina Projects 1998*
-‘Angels Still Don’t Play this HAARP’ video by Dr. Nick Begich, Earthpulse Press, Swenson Media Group 2006*
Director Errol Morris’s ‘The Unknown Unknown’ shows Rumsfeld as unapologetic.
April 5, 2014
So what do we know now that we didn’t after documentarian Errol Morris’s 100-minute Q&A with Donald “I Don’t Do Quagmires” Rumsfeld in “The Unknown Known”? Only that the former U.S. secretary of defense is still a master strategist of evasion, contradiction, misdirection and malapropism.
As a footnote, here’s what we do know to date about that dirty little Iraq War that “Rummy,” the George W. Bush White House and their nincompoop Pentagon neo-cons cooked up and spoon fed to the omnivorous American public: more than 4400 U.S. military deaths and 32,000 wounded, at least 100,000 to as many as 500,000 Iraqi fatalities, millions more displaced, and an estimated price tag of $3 trillion, give or take a few hundred billion.
Yet like most of the questions that Morris tosses—gently—at his subject, any such factual horrors are sidestepped, parried and danced around by a fitfully nimble Rumsfeld. Relaxed, nattily dressed and imperiously self-assured as ever, Morris’ hollow yet overstuffed man does his imitation of “Hogan’s Heroes” Sgt. Schultz (“I know nothing, nothing”) while implausibly denying personal culpability for any stink that blew back from the Iraq War, whether the phony Weapons of Mass Destruction raison d’être, prisoner torture or the fictitious links between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks.
In his Oscar-winning “The Fog of War,” Morris at least got Lyndon Johnson-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to shoulder some of blame for the Vietnam War quagmire. But Rumsfeld is impishly unapologetic, even as his own words are shot down by Morris’ juxtapositions with TV news footage culled from the run-up and catastrophic letdown to the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent U.S. occupation. Yet it’s clear that Morris’ mission isn’t to catch his subject in a Captain Queeg-style meltdown that would cause Rummy to shout “Good gracious” or “Henny-penny” and storm off the set.
Rather, Morris is chiefly interested in the infernal meta-narrative of how those in the pinnacles of power can delude themselves for so long and so often that—perhaps—they don’t even know what the truth is anymore. This is a man seemingly without an ounce of introspection and one who surely sleeps well at night, confident he did all the right things, from his time as the youngest (44) secretary of defense, during the Gerald Ford presidency, to his Freddy Krueger-like return to the Pentagon as prime architect of the shock-and-awe Iraq and Afghanistan U.S.-led invasions.
Morris goes out of his way to humanize Rumsfeld, including humdrum details of his marriage while tracing his long career as Republican White House insider and go-to warhorse who trumpeted “peace through strength” and other hawkish mantras. We hear Morris’ off-camera questions, but the slippery answers are challenged only indirectly via news footage and period headlines, not by contrary interviews that would offer known arguments to Rumsfeld’s self-serving explanations.
The film’s title is a quote from one of the enormous number of official memos Rumsfeld generated over the decades. In one wacky rumination from 2004 (Subject: What You Know), he writes of the “things that you think you know that it turns out you do not.” For Morris, this is a four-star analogy for his subject, a polarizing public figure who indeed is a riddle wrapped in an enigma—and cloaked in an impenetrable armor of Orwellian double-talk. As running metaphor, Morris cuts back and forth to images of a deep blue sea, significantly more fathomable than Rumsfeld himself.
As to any possible policy misfires during his Washington tenures, Rumsfeld blithely chalks them up to the unintended consequences of war, executive decision-making and the inevitable inability for leaders like him to anticipate everything, for Pete’s sake: i.e., heck, Stuff Happens. This expedient philosophy can rationalize pretty much any horrors stretching from Abu Ghraib to Gitmo. If only Emily Littella were still on active duty, I know she’d just say, “Never mind.”
And so it goes in Rummy-speak, as Morris sends his cameras down the rabbit hole into an upside-down universe where government morality and mea culpas have no standing, yet mad tautologies like “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” do. In the question of those well-known phantom WMDs, such inane statements can justify anything, including interminable wars in which bodies are still piling up, peace is not won, and mass Mideast destruction marches on.
I am a former Google employee and I am writing this to leak information to the public of what I
witnessed and took part in while being an employee. My position was to deal with AdSense accounts,
more specifically the accounts of publishers (not advertisers). I was employed at Google for a period of
several years in this capacity.
Having signed many documents such as NDA’s and non-competes, there are many repercussions for me,
especially in the form of legal retribution from Google. I have carefully planned this leak to coincide with
certain factors in Google such as waiting for the appropriate employee turn around so that my identity
could not be discovered.
To sum it up for everyone, I took part in what I (and many others) would consider theft of money from
the publishers by Google, and from direct orders of management. There were many AdSense employees
involved, and it spanned many years, and I hear it still is happening today except on a much wider scale.
No one on the outside knows it, if they did, the FBI and possibly IRS would immediately launch an
investigation, because what they are doing is so inherently illegal and they are flying completely under
the radar.
It began in 2009. Everything was perfectly fine prior to 2009, and in fact it couldn’t be more perfect from
an AdSense employees perspective, but something changed.
Google Bans and Ban Criteria
Before December 2012:
In the first quarter of 2009 there was a “sit-down” from the AdSense division higher ups to talk about
new emerging issues and the role we (the employees in the AdSense division needed to play. It was a
very long meeting, and it was very detailed and intense. What it boiled down to was that Google had
suffered some very serious losses in the financial department several months earlier. They kept saying
how we “needed to tighten the belts” and they didn’t want it to come from Google employees pockets.
So they were going to (in their words) “carry out extreme quality control on AdSense publishers”. When
one of my fellow co-workers asked what they meant by that. Their response was that AdSense itself
hands out too many checks each month to publishers, and that the checks were too large and that
needed to end right away. Many of the employees were not pleased about this (like myself). But they
were successful in scaring the rest into thinking it would be their jobs and their money that would be on
the line if they didn’t participate. The meeting left many confused as to how this was going to happen.
What did they mean by extreme quality control? A few other smaller meetings occur with certain key
people in the AdSense division that furthered the idea and procedure they planned on implementing.
There were lots of rumors and quiet talking amongst the employees, there was lots of speculations,
some came true and some didn’t. But the word was that they were planning to cut off a large portion of
publisher’s payments.
After that point there was a running gag amongst fellow co-workers where we would walk by each other
and whisper “Don’t be evil, pft!” and roll our eyes.
What happened afterwards became much worse. Their “quality control” came into full effect. Managers
pushed for wide scale account bans, and the first big batch of bans happened in March of 2009. The
main reason, the publishers made too much money. But something quite devious happened. We were
told to begin banning accounts that were close to their payout period (which is why account bans never
occur immediately after a payout). The purpose was to get that money owed to publishers back to
Google AdSense, while having already served up the ads to the public.
This way the advertiser’s couldn’t claim we did not do our part in delivering their ads and ask for money
back. So in a sense, we had thousands upon thousands of publishers deliver ads we knew they were
never going to get paid for.
Google reaped both sides of the coin, got money from the advertisers, used the publishers, and didn’t
have to pay them a single penny. We were told to go and look into the publishers accounts, and if any
publisher had accumulated earnings exceeding $5000 and was near a payout or in the process of a
payout, we were to ban the account right away and reverse the earnings back. They kept saying it was
needed for the company, and that most of these publishers were ripping Google off anyways, and that
their gravy train needed to end. Many employees were not happy about this. A few resigned over it.
I did not. I stayed because I had a family to support, and secondly I wanted to see how far they would
go.
From 2009 to 2012 there were many more big batches of bans. The biggest of all the banning sessions
occurred in April of 2012. The AdSense division had enormous pressure from the company to make up
for financial losses, and for Google’s lack of reaching certain internal financial goals for the quarter prior.
So the push was on. The employees felt really uneasy about the whole thing, but we were threatened
with job losses if we didn’t enforce the company’s wishes. Those who voiced concerned or issue were
basically ridiculed with “not having the company’s best interest in mind” and not being “team players”.
Morale in the division was at an all-time low. The mood of the whole place changed quite rapidly. It no
longer was a fun place to work.
The bans of April 2012 came fast and furious. Absolutely none of them were investigated, nor were they
justified in any way. We were told to get rid of as many of the accounts with the largest
checks/payouts/earnings waiting to happen. No reason, just do it, and don’t question it. It was heart
wrenching seeing all that money people had earned all get stolen from them. And that’s what I saw it as,
it was a robbery of the AdSense publishers. Many launched appeals, complaints, but it was futile
because absolutely no one actually took the time to review the appeals or complaints. Most were simply
erased without even being opened, the rest were deposited into the database, never to be touched
again.
Several publishers launched legal actions which were settled, but Google had come up with a new policy
to deal with situations such as that because it was perceived as a serious problem to be avoided.
So they came up with a new policy.
After December 2012: The New Policy
The new policy; “shelter the possible problem makers, and fuck the rest” (those words were actually
said by a Google AdSense exec) when he spoke about the new procedure and policy for “Account
Quality Control”.
The new policy was officially called AdSense Quality Control Color Codes (commonly called AQ3C by
employees). What it basically was a categorization of publisher accounts. Those publisher’s that could
do the most damage by having their account banned were placed in a VIP group that was to be left
alone. The rest of the publishers would be placed into other groupings accordingly.
The new AQ3C also implemented “quality control” quotas for the account auditors, so if you didn’t meet
the “quality control” target (aka account bans) you would be called in for a performance review.
There were four “groups” publishers could fall into if they reached certain milestones.
They were:
Red Group: Urgent Attention Required
Any AdSense account that reaches the $10,000/month mark is immediately flagged (unless they are part
of the Green Group).
– In the beginning there were many in this category, and most were seen as problematic and were seen
as abusing the system by Google. So every effort was taken to bring their numbers down.
– They are placed in what employees termed “The Eagle Eye”, where the “AdSense Eagle Eye Team”
would actively and constantly audit their accounts and look for any absolute reason for a ban. Even if
the reason was far-fetched, or unsubstantiated, and unprovable, the ban would occur. The “Eagle Eye
Team” referred to a group of internal account auditors whose main role was to constantly monitor
publisher’s accounts and sites.
– A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. The problem was that notifying the
publisher for the reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact
reason must be provided if a legal representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.
– But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
amount of money accrued/earned. Yellow Group: Serious Attention Required
Any AdSense account that reaches the $5,000/month mark is flagged for review (unless they are part of
the Green Group).
– All of the publisher’s site(s)/account will be placed in queue for an audit.
– Most of the time the queue is quite full so most are delayed their audit in a timely fashion.
– The second highest amount of bans occur at this level.
– A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. Notifiying the publisher for the reason is not
a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact reason must be provided if a legal
representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.
– But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
amount of money accrued/earned. Blue Group: Moderate Attention Required
Any AdSense account that reaches the $1,000/month mark is flagged for possible review (unless they
are part of the Green Group).
– Only the main site and account will be place in queue for what is called a quick audit.
– Most bans that occur happen at this level. Main reason is that a reason doesn’t have to be attached to
the ban, so the employees use these bans to fill their monthly quotas. So many are simply a random pick
and click.
– A reason does not have to be internally attached to the account ban. Notifying the publisher for the
reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks.
– But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
amount of money accrued. Green Group: VIP Status (what employees refer to as the “untouchables”)
Any AdSense account associated with an incorporated entity or individual that can inflict serious
damage onto Google by negative media information, rallying large amounts of anti-AdSense support, or
cause mass loss of AdSense publisher support.
– Google employees wanting to use AdSense on their websites were automatically placed in the Green
group. So the database contained many Google insiders and their family members. If you work or
worked for Google and were placed in the category, you stayed in it, even if you left Google. So it
included many former employees. Employees simply had to submit a form with site specific details and
their account info.
– Sites in the Green Group were basically given “carte blanche” to do anything they wanted, even if they
flagrantly went against the AdSense TOS and Policies. That is why you will encounter sites with AdSense,
but yet have and do things completely against AdSense rules.
– Extra care is taken not to interrupt or disrupt these accounts.
– If an employee makes a mistake with a Green Level account they can lose their job. Since it seen as
very grievous mistake. New Policy 2012 Part 2:
Internal changes to the policy were constant. They wanted to make it more efficient and streamlined.
They saw its current process as having too much human involvement and oversight. They wanted it
more automated and less involved.
So the other part of the new policy change was to incorporate other Google services into assisting the
“quality control” program. What they came up with will anger many users when they find out. It
involved skewing data in Google Analytics. They decided it was a good idea to alter the statistical data
shown for websites. It first began with just altering data reports for Analytics account holders that also
had an AdSense account, but they ran into too many issues and decided it would be simpler just to skew
the report data across the board to remain consistent and implement features globally.
So what this means is that the statistical data for a website using Google Analytics is not even close to
being accurate. The numbers are incredibly deflated. The reasoning behind their decision is that if an
individual links their AdSense account and their Analytics account, the Analytics account can be used to
deflate the earnings automatically without any human intervention. They discovered that if an individual
had an AdSense account then they were also likely to use Google Analytics. So Google used it to their
advantage.
This led to many publishers to actively display ads, without earning any money at all (even to this day).
Even if their actual website traffic was high, and had high click-throughs the data would be automatically
skewed in favor of Google, and at a total loss of publishers. This successfully made it almost impossible
for anyone to earn amounts even remotely close what individuals with similar sites were earning prior
to 2012, and most definitely nowhere near pre-2009 earnings.
Other policy changes also included how to deal with appeals, which still to this day, the large majority
are completely ignored, and why you will rarely get an actual answer as to why your account was
banned and absolutely no way to resolve it.
—- The BIG Problem (which Google is aware of)
There is an enormous problem that existed for a long time in Google’s AdSense accounts. Many of the
upper management are aware of this problem but do not want to acknowledge or attempt to come up
with a solution to the problem.
It is regarding false clicks on ads. Many accounts get banned for “invalid clicks” on ads. In the past this
was caused by a publisher trying to self inflate click-throughs by clicking on the ads featured on their
website. The servers automatically detect self-clicking with comparison to IP addresses and other such
information, and the persons account would get banned for invalid clicking.
But there was something forming under the surface. A competitor or malicious person would actively go
to their competitor’s website(s) or pick a random website running AdSense and begin multiple-clicking
and overclicking ads, which they would do over and over again. Of course this would trigger an invalid
clicking related ban, mainly because it could not be proven if the publisher was actually behind the
clicking. This was internally referred to as “Click-Bombing”. Many innocent publishers would get caught
up in bans for invalid clicks which they were not involved in and were never told about.
This issue has been in the awareness of Google for a very long time but nothing was done to rectify the
issue and probably never will be. Thus if someone wants to ruin a Google AdSense publishers account,
all you would have to do is go to their website, and start click-bombing their Google Ads over and over
again, it will lead the servers to detect invalid clicks and poof, they get banned. The publisher would be
completely innocent and unaware of the occurrence but be blamed for it anyways.
—-
Their BIG Fear
The biggest fear that Google has about these AdSense procedures and policies is that it will be publicly
discovered by their former publishers who were banned, and that those publishers unite together and
launch an class-action lawsuit.
They also fear those whose primary monthly earnings are from AdSense, because in many countries if a
person claims the monthly amount to their tax agency and they state the monthly amount and that they
are earning money from Google on a monthly basis, in certain nations technically Google can be seen as
an employer. Thus, an employer who withholds payment of earnings, can be heavily fined by
government bodies dealing with labor and employment. And if these government bodies dealing with
labor and employment decide to go after Google, then it would get very ugly, very quickly ….. that is on
top of a class-action lawsuit.
Snowden made video to teach reporter how to speak with him securely
It explains how to use Public Key Encryption to scramble online messages
Privacy campaigners call on ordinary people to learn how to use the method
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Whistleblower: The tutorial Edward Snowden made for reporters on to avoid NSA email surveillance has been made public for the first time
Ordinary people must learn to scramble their emails, privacy campaigners said today, as an encryption how-to video made by Edward Snowden was made public for the first time.
The former NSA employee who blew the whistle on the agency’s all-pervasive online surveillance made the video to teach reporters how to communicate with him in secret.
The 12-minute clip, in which Mr Snowden has used software to distort his voiceover, explains how to use free software to scramble messages using a technique called Public Key Encryption (PKE).
The video’s description on Vimeo says: ‘By following these instructions, you’ll allow any potential source in the world to send you a powerfully encrypted message that ONLY YOU can read even if the two of you have never met or exchanged contact information.’
Mr Snowden made the video last year for Glenn Greenwald in an effort to get the then-Guardian reporter to communicate securely with him online so he could send over documents he wanted to leak.
Viewers may find the video difficult to follow. Mr Greenwald himself admitted he wasn’t able to finish it. It took him seven weeks and help from experts to finally gather the expertise to get back to Snowden.
The video’s publication comes as more and more internet users are adopting encryption techniques after the alarm caused by Mr Snowden’s revelations about communications surveillance.
He leaked documents which showed the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ were able to spy on virtually anybody’s communications and internet usage, monitor social network activity in real time, and track and record the locations of billions of mobile devices.
There was outrage when it emerged that, contrary to promises the NSA made to Congress, these technologies were being used to track U.S. citizens without warrants and to tap the communications of leaders of allied countries.
One answer to the risks to freedom that such surveillance pose is to scramble online communications so that government agencies can no longer eavesdrop at will.
However, the encryption technologies currently available can be difficult to use and privacy activists have called on internet companies to include them in their products at the source.
Meanwhile, the campaign to end blanket surveillance continues as experts warn encryption tools are unlikely to make their way into the mainstream while internet firms continue to make their profits on the back of users’ personal information.
Scroll down for video
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How-to guide: The video begins with a basic outline of the theory behind Public Key Encryption. It is voiced over by Mr Snowden, who has disguised his voice to avoid detection by NSA or GCHQ spies
+4
Detailed: The video then explains how to use a free program called GPG4Win to scramble messages using Public Key Encryption then send them over Tor, software that allows people to use the internet anonymously
In Mr Snowden’s video, he explains how traditional emails are sent as plain text – unencrypted by default – across the internet, allowing anyone able to intercept them to easily read their contents.
‘Any router you cross could be monitored by an intelligence agency or other adversary [such as] a random hacker. So could any end points on the way there, a mail server or a service provider such as Gmail.
‘If the journalist uses a web mail service personally or its provisioned by their company, the plain text could always be retrieved later on via a subpoena or some other mechanism, legal or illegal, instead of catching it during transit. So that’s doubly dangerous
‘The solution to that is to actually encrypt the message. Now one of the problems with encryption typically is that it requires a shared secret, a form of key or password that goes between the journalist and the source.
‘But if the source sends an encypted file across the internet to the journalist and says “Hey, here’s an encrypted file. The passwork is cheesecake,” the internet is going to know the password is cheesecake.
‘But public key encryption such as GPG allows the journalist to publish a key that anyone can have based on the design of the algorithm, and it doesn’t provide any advantage to the adversary.’
The video goes on to specifically explain how to use a free program called GPG4Win to scramble messages using Public Key Encryption then send them over Tor, a piece of software that allows people to use the internet anonymously.
It’s lessons, as well as help from experts, allowed Mr Greenwald to communicate securely with Mr Snowden to publish what has since been called the most significant leak in U.S. history. It has been made public to coincide with the release of Mr Greenwald’s book, No Place To Hide, in which he tells the story of the scoop.
Privacy campaigners told MailOnline today that all internet users should be now using encryption technology to preserve their privacy and maintain freedom of speech in the face of government spying.
Javier Ruiz, director of policy at the Open Rights Group, said: ‘Emails are like postcards and encryption is a tamper-proof envelope.
‘It’s probably obvious that journalists, MPs, doctors, lawyers or anyone transmitting confidential information online should always encrypt their emails to keep that information secure.
+4
http://youtu.be/jo0L2m6OjLA
‘But since the Snowden revelations, more and more ordinary citizens are adopting encryption software to help keep their emails private.
‘If encryption is to be used on a mass scale, it will require companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft to embed encryption in their tools.’
But TK Keanini, chief technology officer at internet security firm Lancope, said that it was unlikely that major internet companies would begin including encryption functions in their services as standard.
‘PGP and similar programs are just too complicated for the masses,’ he said. ‘Managing key pairs, understanding revocation and all that stuff is too complicated for most, and thus adoption over the past 20 years has been limited to the highly technical – the uber geeks.
‘Now, if a service like gmail.com had an option in there to perform digital signing and encryption in a way that most people could use it, that would have a huge impact; but it will never happen because Google and other ‘free’ services make their money on the fact that your data is in the clear and they can use it to market services to you.
‘People need to understand that when people offer free services, you and your information are the payment.’
‘While people can use technology to empower themselves, we must also challenge the policies of Government and intelligence agencies to end the unlawful mass surveillance of people around the world’
Mike Rispoli, a spokesman for Privacy International, echoed those sentiments, but added that there needs to be more pressure on government to stop them from snooping on the private lives of ordinary people.
‘It is critical that people use all technology at their disposal to keep their communications private and secure,’ he said.
‘We should all support the creation and widespread use of these tools. Ultimately, however, people should never have to do more or go to extra lengths to protect their rights.
‘This is why we need political, legal, as well as technological, solutions to ensure that our privacy rights are protected.
‘While people can use technology to empower themselves, we must also challenge the policies of Government and intelligence agencies to end the unlawful mass surveillance of people around the world.’
The @YourAnonNews Twitter account has been at the centre of a major upheval in the Anonymous community in the last few days, centring on missing funds of $35,000. Twitter
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.” – John F. Kennedy
Anonymous is just such an idea.
However details about in-fighting, backstabbing and missing fundraising donations which were made public over the weekend, threaten to undermine the trust people have in the movement – and especially one of its most prominent voices.
Your Anonymous News (@YourAnonNews) is one of the best known and loudest voices within the Anonymous group of hacktivists, but the person most associated with its operation, Christopher Banks (aka Jackal) has been accused of stealing $35,000 (£20,720) from a fundraising campaign which was designed to help build a new website for the account.
The details about what has happened over the weekend and prior to the events beaming public are confusing and contradictory depending on who you talk to, so let’s first go back to the beginning.
Anonymous’ powerful voice
As I said, Anonymous is an idea rather than a specific group of people, but certain voices within the movement came to the fore in the last few years.
Chief amongst these was the Twitter account @YourAnonNews which was created in April 2011 and was run primarily by a member of Anonymous known as Jackal.
Jackal was in fact Christopher Banks who lived in Denver, and over the next three years the account grew to become the most powerful voice within Anonymous. It currently has over 1.24 million followers.
While Jackal was in charge, running the account alone became too much work and so multiple members of Anonymous were brought on board to help out. At one point up to 25 people had access to the account and it was so well organised, it even had a highly detailed style guide.
Crowd-funding anarchy
In early 2013, Jackal and a few of the other prominent people running the account decided that they wanted to build a website with the goal of creating “a weekly news show, provide embedded coverage of direct actions, and run a new website to help ignite protest and DIY journalism around the world.”
The group turned to Indiegogo, the crowd-funding website and having set out with a goal of raising just $2,000, within weeks it saw 1,307 people donating a total of $54,668.
There were questions raised at the time about the logic of donating money to a project which was so ill-defined – and over a year later those concerns look to have been validated.
Truth and reconciliation
According to a Truth and Reconciliation document published this weekend, the donations were received by Jackal minus deductions from Indiegogo (4%) and credit card fees (3%).
The money was then used to pay for the merchandise which was promised in return for donations, including t-shirts, mugs, buttons, and stickers. The money was also used to buy laptops, broadband access and server time.
The total amount of money accounted for was $19,959, meaning that $34,709 remains unaccounted for.
This was to become the crux of a dispute among those who took charge of YourAnonNews in late 2013.
In October of 2013, Dell Cameron, a reporter with the Daily Dot and someone who had been involved with the Anonymous movement since the Arab Spring, got involved with the account and quickly realised there was something wrong.
None of the merchandise had been posted and there was no sign of the remaining money.
Cameron decided that he needed to get legal advice because, as he told IBTimes UK: “I was taking ownership of an account that had been used to commit a crime.”
Creating a non-profit
Cameron along with others involved with the account including Nicole Powers, Gregg Housh and lawyer Tor Ekeland, came together to form a de facto board to try and administer the account. Their plan was to move the intellectual property into a non-profit organisation which would run the account in the future.
The first point of business was to raise money in order to send out all the merchandise, which was done by raising private donations of $9,000.
At this point Banks still had access to the @YourAnonNews account and this was something Cameron was not happy with, but he was willing to let it be while the group tried to get answers from him about the missing money.
This situation continued until last week, when Cameron – along with Dan Stuckey, a reporter for Vice who was brought on board the @YourAnonNews account – told Ekeland at a meeting in New York that they were going to take control of the account and shut everyone else out.
Ekeland was able to talk them out of making a rash decision at the time, but in the middle of the night on Friday morning, Cameron went ahead with his plan and locked Ekeland, Powers and Housh out of the account, as well as Banks – a move Cameron claims was done with the consent of seven other YourAnonNews contributors.
Imploding
What followed was the cyber equivalent of mud-slinging with wild rumour and speculation being thrown around on social media channels.
Gabriella Coleman, professor at McGill University and an expert on Anonymous, told IBTimes UK that she has never seen anything like what happened on Thursday and Friday last week, when there were so many rumours being slung around various channels online.
It led the three exiled account members to publish the Truth and Reconciliation document on Saturday in an attempt to explain the situation.
By the time the document was published however, Cameron had already relinquished control of the account, following widespread criticism of his usurping of power. Control of the account was handed over to a group of Anonymous members based in Denver, who continue to operate it.
A deal with the devil
Speaking to both Cameron and Ekeland to try and find out exactly what happened, it’s clear there is a difference in opinion.
Cameron believes that Ekeland had done a deal with Banks which would simply brush the missing $35,000 under the carpet and allow him continue using the account – though without anyone knowing this publicly. This was unacceptable to Cameron.
Ekeland admitted he was indeed talking to Banks, but that they were only at the point of negotiation, and that any deal would have been brought to the board for approval, something Ekeland says Cameron was fully aware of.
A email sent by Cameron relating to the situation was also leaked over the weekend, in which Cameron makes potentially libellous and unsubstantiated claims about where the $35,000 went.
“You’re going to f**king regret it”
Cameron says he has personally asked Banks 12 times where the money is, and each time he has refused to give an answer. So far, Banks has remained silent on Twitter about anything to do with this debacle.
Cameron claims he was threatened by Ekeland before the email was leaked, saying: “He didn’t get specific, but he said if you publish a letter like this, you’re going to f**king regret it.”
Ekeland flatly denies that he threatened Cameron adding that he is happy to be no longer involved with the account, having immediately resigned from the board once Cameron locked him out of the account on Friday morning.
Ekeland likened the in-fighting over the @YourAnonNews account to the ring in The Lord of the Rings: “It drives people crazy, they get greedy for it, everyone wants it.”
Ekeland accused Cameron of wanting control of the feed for personal gain, something the Daily Dot reporter denies, claiming he only wanted “to do good” when he joined up.
Despite being the opposite side of the argument, Cameron echoes Ekeland’s sentiments:
“At the end, this is not about Anonymous, this is about a group of people fighting over a social media account. These are grown people squabbling like kids over the equivalent of a toy in the sandbox.”
The future of @YourAnonNews?
Coleman believes that YourAnonNews was close to imploding and that while the Truth and Reconciliation statement which was published on Saturday “may not be enough to save them, it is the wedge that gives them a chance [to survive].”
Numerous Anonymous accounts have been highly critical of the group over recent months for failing to make a public statement on the matter.
In the wake of the statement being made, while there is some appeasement, others believe that the YourAnonNews brand is tarnished forever and should be let to disappear completely.
Coleman counters that the rebirth like this should be expected:
“The strength of Anonymous is to have some points of stability but to be ad hoc and reborn. And it is definitely a great period to be reborn – whether that is going to happen or not is always an open questions.”
What the long-term impact this fiasco will have on @YourAnonNews – and more widely on the Anonymous movement – isn’t clear at this point.
What is clear is that $35,000 of donor’s money is still missing and unaccounted for, and the fight for control of the hugely popular and powerful @YourAnonNews account looks to be only just beginning.
* Use the hashtag #PayPal14. Respond to tweets from @Pierre and @ggreenwald. Don’t forget Greenwald’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/glenn.greenwald.5
PRESS RELEASE
The PayPal14 were arrested nearly three years ago on the front lines of the digital information war, helping put the hacktivist movement and specifically Anonymous on the map. Now the whistleblower/hacktivist culture they helped launch into the global spotlight is being co-opted by journalists and “tech bros” all over to advance their careers, most notably journalist Glenn Greenwald’s.
As Greenwald gets a book tour, the PayPal14 get sentencing hearings. He is traveling the world to promote his book about Snowden’s NSA leaks, and the 14 are struggling to raise more than $80,000 in court-ordered restitution for eBay/PayPal, companies ultimately overseen by Greenwald’s billionaire backer, Pierre Omidyar. The brand that popularized Pierre-Greenwald’s Snowden leaks is only so “edgy” and “cool” because heroes like the PayPal14 took direct action.
When PayPal, part of Pierre’s eBay, blocked donations to WikiLeaks, the 14 and many others saw that the company wasn’t just a means of transferring money. It was also a means of control. PayPal’s blockade attacked our ability to vote with our dollars. Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, and Western Union also participated in the financial blockade, a blatant corporate attempt at silencing dissent and suppressing information. The blockade destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks’ revenue.
The 14 along with countless others bravely launched DDOS attacks, the digital equivalent of sit-ins, against PayPal to protest the unjust blockade. They shut down PayPal’s public website briefly without interfering with backend financial transactions or causing lasting harm, contrary to Department of “Justice” claims in court. After having their lives disrupted for years, 11 of the PayPal14 still face federal charges. Greenwald faces applause.
Sure, Greenwald and Pierre occasionally express tepid “support” for the PayPal14. But where’s the $80,000? That’s lunch money to Greenwald or Pierre. For the PayPal14, it’s a crushing financial burden. Pierre, according to Forbes, rakes in $7.8 billion per year while the PayPal14 struggle to stay afloat. Pierre started off First Look, Greenwald’s news media outlet, with $50 million in funding–tens of millions more than $80,000.
Greenwald and Pierre aren’t just riding the hacktivist movement–they’re watering it down. As a consequence, most of Snowden’s NSA leaks go unpublished. What is published is heavily redacted, preventing more aggressive, non-celebrity journalists from finding answers and pro-freedom hackers from building better defenses.
Ask yourself, Why isn’t Greenwald facing charges? Why isn’t he asking countries for asylum?
The PayPal14 put themselves on the front lines for something genuinely revolutionary. They grabbed the mainstream media’s attention and helped establish the “digital information war” culture that boosts this new kind of journalism. But the mainstream media has finished enjoying the spectacle of the PayPal14’s arrests. Now they’re watching Greenwald sign books, while the PayPal14, largely forgotten, sign plea deals.
Some rising players in the digital information war have confided that they believe we should make noise for the
PayPal14 at Greenwald’s book tour stops. But they’ve also confessed that doing so would put their financial interests in jeopardy. The tentacles of Greenwald/Pierre/First Look are spreading and snatching up people right and left. Thanks to Jeremy Hammond’s Stratfor leak, we better understand how corporate interests isolate radicals who try to create change. The “Duchin formula,” continued by the private intelligence firm Stratfor, states that opportunists “by definition … take the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain” and bring the realists and idealists along with them, leaving the radicals exposed and unsupported.
We ask you to support the radicals and not the careerists. Your worst enemy is not the person in opposition to you. It is the person occupying the spot you would be fighting from and doing nothing.
The goal is to raise that $80,000. If we do that, we win this battle. For now, everything else is secondary. Supporting the PayPal14 doesn’t just mean one tweet and you’re done. It means constant effort.
Specifically, attend Greenwald’s book tour stops listed below. If they’re sold out–and most are NOT–still go and make noise outside (or get inside anyway!). For sold-out events, there are often stand-by lines in case extra seats become available. Take the steps below, inside or outside the event–or both!
1. This is crucial: Make sure people are equipped to record videos of the protest, including Greenwald’s responses, and upload them as soon as possible. Share them with the hashtag #PayPal14. If possible, videos should include the donation link – http://www.gofundme.com/PayPal14 – and text accompanying the video should include the link also.
2. Explain why you’re protesting the book tour, by mic-checking, passing out fliers, waving signs, or any other useful method. Get creative! “Pay Back the PayPal14” and “Obey eBay” and “Glenn Greenbacks” would make good slogans. Above all, make sure people get the donation link: http://www.gofundme.com/PayPal14 This can be done online, but it is critical that it be done in person at the book tour stops as well, making as much noise as possible. Occupy the book tour stops!
3. When are Greenwald and Pierre donating? You find out!
BOOK TOUR STOPS AND LINKS FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE PAYPAL14:
1. New York City, Tuesday May 13. 7:00-8:30 pm
Cooper Union’s Great Hall, in the Foundation Building
7 East 7th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues
East Village in Manhattan
May 13, 2014 7:00 pm
Admission is free and open the public on a first-come first-served basis.
http://www.cooper.edu/events-and-exhibitions/events/authors-talk-glenn-greenwald-edward-snowden-and-nsa
2. Washington DC, Wednesday May 14. Doors at 6 pm, event at 7 pm.
Politics & Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20008
May 14, 2014 7:00 pm
Doors and Will-call open at 6pm
1 General Admission Ticket: $17.00
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/639084
3. Boston, Thursday May 15. 7 pm.
First Parish Church
1446 Massachusetts Avenu
Cambridge, MA 02138
May 15, 2014 7:00 pm
Ticket costs $5, stand-by only
http://www.harvard.com/event/glenn_greenwald2/
http://www.harvard.com/about/sold_out_event_faq/
4. Amsterdam, Tuesday May 20. 20:00-21:30
Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam – Rabozaal
Leidseplein 26
1017 PT Amsterdam
May 20, 2014 20:00 – 21:30
http://www.ssba.nl/page.ocl?pageid=3&ev=56684
https://shop.ticketscript.com/channel/web2/get-dates/rid/CC235T4A/eid/210218/language/nl/format/html
Tickets range from € 18,27 to € 26,27
5. Seattle, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and San Diego: Mid-June. (No information available yet.)
* Updated book tour information may become available here https://twitter.com/ggreenwald here https://www.facebook.com/glenn.greenwald.5 or here https://www.facebook.com/glenn.greenwald.5/posts/10152804684159112
MOST IMPORTANTLY, ask people to donate to the PayPal14 by going here:
http://www.gofundme.com/PayPal14
PayPal 14 Homepage (in progress):
http://thepaypal14.com/support.htm
Microfinancing by Pierre’s Omidyar Network is loan-sharking the world’s most vulnerable:
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/extraordinary-pierre-omidyar/
News articles about the PayPal14:
https://medium.com/quinn-norton/66077450917e
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/05/inside-the-paypal-14-trial.html
Pierre Omidyar profile on Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/profile/pierre-omidyar/
WikiLeaks on the financial blockade:
https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
Pierre started off First Look with $50 million in funding:
http://omidyargroup.com/firstlookmedia/pierre-omidyar-provides-initial-funding-of-50m-to-establish-first-look-media/
SPECIAL NOTE: This press release is intended to make sure people’s voices are heard in a way that educates the public.
The Florida State’s Attorney for the Orlando region, Jeffrey Ashton, yesterday released his conclusion at the end of a 10-month investigation into the FBI slaying of Ibragim Todashev, a suspected witness in the Boston bombing case, saying that he will not be prosecuting the agent. Ashton ruled that the killing, in which the agent, at the end of a nearly 5-hour May 21 interrogation in Todashev’s Orlando apartment, fired seven bullets into Todashev, killing him justifiably, after being attacked.
However the evidence submitted to Ashton’s office by the FBI, the local coroner’s office and his own investigators, on examination, actually leads to a different conclusion from the one of justifiable homicide which he, and the FBI in its own internal probe, have reached.
For one thing, the two accounts of what happened offered by the FBI agent who shot Todashev, and by a Massachusetts State Trooper who was also in the room at the time of the shooting, are significantly at odds.
Why should we care about the FBI slaying of a Russian Chechen immigrant during an investigation into a Boston murder case? Because, as I wrote recently in Counterpunch magazine, Todashev was actually also a close friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers suspected of being the Boston Marathon bombers. The FBI had started investigating Todashev a day after the bombing when it learned he was a friend of the elder brother, but perhaps were more interested in preventing him from talking about what he knew than in learning what he had to say.
First a scene setter: According to all witnesses who came onto the scene after the shooting, Todashev’s body ended up in a foyer leading to the front door from the apartment’s living room, where the interrogation happened, his feet pointing to the front door, and his head and shoulders on the floor in the living room. He was found positioned face down by an investigator from the local Medical Examiner’s office lying there on top of a red broomstick, a point made by every witness to the scene.
The Massachusetts State Trooper, in a May 29 interview with FBI internal investigators of the shooting, explains that stick in his account of the shooting. He says that late in the evening, towards midnight, Todashev had begun to confess to having been involved in a 2011 triple murder in Waltham, Mass., which the a Massachusetts prosecutor was investigating, and had agreed to write a confession, when he suddenly yelled, flipped the table he was writing on at the FBI agent questioning him, and raced towards the front door. He says Todashev, a martial arts expert, ran toward the door, but then “grabbed a rod, approximately five-foot-long pole that was lying against the wall near the door,” and then “raised the pole in his hands kind of with both hans which appeared to me to be a trained fighting position and charged me as if he was going to impale me with the pole.”
At that point the trooper says he heard shots fired from his right as he was standing in the living room facing the charging Todashev, and “saw Todashev make two movements which indicated he had been injured by the shots. “He fell to his hands and knees, and then, almost instantly, he sprang forward, coming up in a fighting stance. I heard more shots and he fell to the ground, this time apparently incapacitated.”
But the FBI agent who shot Todashev has a different story. Interviewed a day earlier in the course of same FBI investigation, he says Todashev was just at the point of writing out a confession and continues:
“I was reading my notepad when I heard a loud noise and suddenly felt a blow to the back of my head. I was knocked partially off my chair but I caught myself. I saw Todashev running past me and I tried to grab him. I removed my weapon from the holster and aimed the gun at Todashev, who had run towards the kitchen (actually a kitchen unit separated from the living room area by a waist-high counter). I shouted ‘Show your hands!’ I saw the trooper to my left, but didn’t know if he had his weapon. I stood in the middle of the room and saw Todashev partially in the kitchen. I constantly yelled for Todashev to show me his hands, but he did not comply. I heard the sound of metal banging together like knives in a very hurried fashion. I believe that Todashev was trying to retrieve a weapon and that he was successful in doing so. Todashev instantly ran at full speed from the kitchen towards me and the trooper. I saw Todashev’s left shoulder drop as he rounded the corner from the kitchen to the living room. It was obvious that Todashev was in an attacking pattern.”
He continues:
“In the split second available to me to assess the threat posed by Todashev’s wholly non-compliant actions I was in fear for my life and the life of the trooper. In order to stop the threat I shot Todashev three to four times. Todashev fell backwards (my emphasis) but did not go to the ground. He then re-established his footing and suddenly rushed toward us. I then shot him three to four more times in order to stop his clearly deadly threat. This time, Todashev fell to the ground face first and I believed the threat had been eliminated.”
These two tales don’t work together of course. Either one taken alone, if true, would certainly justify the shooting of the suspect, but when they diverge so wildly — in one version Todashev remains in the foyer, and grabs the red broomstick, while in the other he rummages through a drawer in the kitchen and evidently finds a weapon, presumably a knife — it’s a red flag that something’s amiss.
And when the only two eye-witnesses to this killing, only a week after the event, cannot get their stories straight, we have to assume that something is badly wrong with the whole scene.
It’s also worth noting that an expert from the Medical Examiner’s Office, who arrived only at about 2 am on May 22 almost two hours after the shooting, was prevented from entering the room until an FBI unit, which had arrived at 12:30 am, shortly after the agent shooting of the suspect, had finished “documenting the room.”
If the FBI’s agent were telling the truth, there would be no broom handle lying under Todashev’s dead body. Perhaps “documenting the room” meant slipping that rod under Todashev’s body?
On the other hand, if the Massachusetts State Trooper was telling the truth, how did Todashev get shot three times in the back and once in the top back of the head — a shot that the Medical Examiner says would have immobilized him instantly?
It is agreed by most witnesses, including those outside the apartment, that the sequence of shots was three and then four. According the Medical Examiner’s report, two shots hit Todashev in the arm. One hit him in the chest near the right nipple, which perforated the left ventricle of the heart and the aorta. And two hit his left upper arm, also from the front — one a bullet that re-entered the chest cavity and also perforated the left ventricle.
The head shot was clearly among the last or the last shot to hit Todashev, as it would have caused his total collapse instantly, according to the Medical Examiner. Yet if Todashev were first shot as he was charging the trooper, running through the foyer from the direction of the door with his arms raised holding a broomstick, the shots hitting him would have had to come from the front. That would necessarily be the one shot to the chest, which perforated not just his heart, but his aorta and esophagus, plus the two shots to the left arm, one bullet of which also ricocheted hitting his left ventricle. That would explain Todashev dropping to his knees, but makes the claim that he rose again and attacked hard to imagine. The aorta, remember, is the main artery out of the heart carrying blood to the body under maximum pressure. Ruptured, it causes an almost instant precipitous and debilitating drop in blood pressure. But even if Todashev somehow managed through sheer will to rise from his hands and knees and charge his antagonists again after those grievous wounds, how did the three subsequent shots end up hitting his back?
We could imagine the head shot if he were charging low down, but not the other three bullets to the back in that scenario.
Meanwhile, back to the agent’s quite different account. He claims Todashev, not armed with a five-foot pole, but with whatever he succeeded in finding in a kitchen drawer, was shot as he ran at the agent and staggered backwards, clearly indicating that he had been hit from the front. Again we had three shots, so it had to be the chest and the left arm. Now he “rights himself” and charges forward again, taking four more shots. But these, remember, are all either into the back, near the centerline of the body, or into the top of the head. The head shot couldn’t have been number one in the second volley, because that would have been the shot that dropped him. So what would have caused his body to turn around exposing his back?
Never mind. The FBI investigators (who have managed to exonerate 150 out of 150 agent shootings of suspects and witnesses over the last 18 years) managed to conflate the two accounts, subtly shifting each, and changing some of the witness statements, to create one smooth “alternative reality” in which the shots all fit together nicely.
Here’s the FBI’s summary of what happened, in a document provided to the Medical Examiner and the State’s Attorney’s Office by the Bureau:
“When Todaschev ran to the kitchen he frantically grabbed at the counter but came out empty handed and instead grabbed a long metal pole, similar to a mop handle next to the kitchen.”
And the shooting itself? From the FBI internal investigation, as provided to the State’s Attorney on a “do not share” basis:
“He flipped the table he was writing on which was believed to have struck BS SA [the Boston Special Agent] in the head and ran to the kitchen. Todaschev was heard frantically grabbing items in the kitchen and reappeared in the doorway wielding a long metal handle of a mop or broom. He took an attack stance with the weapon, [Special Agent BLANK] issued verbal commands, to which Todaschev did not comply, and violently lunged towards SA and MSP Trooper . Having already been wounded and fearing for his safety, [Special Agent] fired 3-4 rounds striking Todaschev. Todaschev went down on his knees momentarily then “sprang” to his feet and launched to attack again. [Special Agent] fired another 3-4 rounds dropping Todaschev to the floor. SA fired seven shots in total, Todaschev was hit seven times with fatal shots to his head and piercing his heart. He was instantly incapacitated and died on the scene.”
There are so many things wrong with this merged and massaged account it is hard to see how Florida State’s Attorney Ashton could have accepted them, but he apparently has. Firstly, Todashev wasn’t just “heard” grabbing items in the kitchen, he wasvisible over the countertop, according to the agent’s initial report of the incident. And in that initial account he never grabbed that broom handle, which the trooper said had been leaned against the front door jamb, not “next to the kitchen.” In any case, the trooper never said anything about Todashev going into the kitchen area, but rather had him running straight to the front door for the stick. He also claimed Todashev had fallen on hands and knees, not just his knees, while the agent had him staggering backwards, not falling forward.
State’s Attorney Ashton’s office declined to take a call asking for a chance to ask questions about his report.
A key witness in this case was never questioned. That is Khusen Taramov, who even the two agents and two state troopers who went to Todashev’s home to interrogate him agree was there for most of the evening, being kept at bay from the interview by a local Orlando FBI agent known to Todashev and his friends as agent “Chris.” Taramov had said on several video interviews including one with a local television station, that he had gone to the apartment at the request of Todashev, who wanted him around when the agents came, as he suspected “something bad” might happen to him.
He reported that Agent “Chris” had kept him in the parking lot from 7:30 to 11:30, talking about meaningless things (a claim the agent supports in his own interview). Then, according to Taramov, “Chris” told him he had to leave, and, as I wrote earlier, accompanied him in his car to a remote restaurant, then calling another car to return to the scene. When Taramov himself, concerned about his friend, drove back, arriving after midnight, he found a crime scene and Todashev dead.
He wasn’t questioned by Ashton because when he went back to Russia to attend Todashev’s funeral he found upon trying to return to Orlando that the FBI had gotten him barred from re-entry to the US, despite his having a valid Green Card and no criminal record. He is only one of many Todashev friends and family members who were driven out or deported from the the US by the FBI and ICE following Todashev’s slaying, rendering them all unavailable for questioning.
Taramov’s unavailability to Ashton, assuming the State’s Attorney really wanted to conduct an independent inquiry, is a critical issue. This is because it gets to the question of why, if the FBI was investigating Todashev, who was a close friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombing suspects, only one agent was in that apartment doing the questioning, along with a state trooper. The FBI always works interviews and interrogations in pairs because the agency doesn’t tape interviews. It has the interrogating agent fill out a Form 302 report, and the second agent witnesses the interview and signs the first agent’s write-up verifying it as accurate.
Perhaps, as the troopers claim, this was all about their case — a three-year-old unsolved triple murder of three small-time drug dealers in Waltham in which Tsarnaev, and possibly Todashev, was a suspect. But if that was the case, why was the FBI doing the questioning and not a trooper? The FBI had been investigating Todashev as at least a witness in the Boston Marathon bombing. Indeed one document sent to Ashton’s office by the FBI is from the Supervising Agent for the case, who is listed as being the supervisor of the Tampa Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Suspiciously, the troopers too didn’t seem too concerned about documenting their interview of Todashev. They say they brought along a JVC recorder, but its battery ran out of juice well before the confession, and just when they claim Todashev was getting to the good stuff in his alleged “confession” prior to allegedly writing it down, one of the two troopers in the room, who said he had been recording the session on his cell phone as a backup, turned off the recording function and went outside to use his phone to call the Massachusetts Assistant Attorney on the murder case “for instructions.”
So there is no confession, oral or written, except for the word of the trooper and the FBI agent who witnessed and participated in Todashev’s slaying.
As for that fatal head-shot, the FBI claims, in its investigation into its agent’s shooting of Todashev, that everything comports with the official merged story of how the shooting went down. Indeed, they write:
“The Chief ME advised the trajectory of the head and shoulder wounds, the combination of the seven entrance wounds to include the paths of the bullets, were inconsistent with other possible scenarios. First, due to the extreme downward trajectory of the wounds to the head and upper shoulder were inconsistent with the shooter being behind Todashev as if Todashev was running away. Rather, those extreme downward trajectories could have occurred when Todashev had his back to the shooter, only if:
1.) Todashev leaned backwards at a severe angle toward the shooter; or
2.) Todashev was standing below a shooter who was above him; or
3.) Todashev was shot while both he and the shooter were prone on the floor.”
They left out one other possibility, though: namely that Todashev, who fell face forward in the foyer, with his head and shoulders ending up protruding inside the living room, was shot by the FBI agent one more time, with the agent firing that final shot from his position five to 10 feet into the living room, straight into the back of Todashev’s head.
Aspartame has been renamed – AminoSweet – and is now being marketed as a natural sweetener
Aspartame, the artificial sweetener linked to cancer, heart palpitations, seizures, weight gain and other severe medical issues, is now going by the name AminoSweet. The toxic sweetener, Aspartame, has been around over 25 years after it was accidentally discovered by chemist, James Schlatter while working for the drug company G.D. Searle & Company. It was created as an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug, but the chemist discovered it had a sweet taste, so the drug company switched its application to the FDA from a drug to a food. It was none other than Donald Rumsfeld, who was the CEO of Searle who pushed for Aspartame to be sold on the market in 1985. If that name sounds familiar, your right, he is the same Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense who served under George W. Bush. He is a perfect example of someone taking advantage of the “revolving door” between our government and corporations.
AminoSweet is Aspartame, it changed its name to fool the public, and I am guessing it did so because consumers figured out that their product made them sick. Aspartame is made up of three chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. The book Prescription for Nutritional Healing, by James and Phyllis Balch lists aspartame under the category of “chemical poison.”
WARNING! Read labels before buying foods with the name Phenylalanine. I will go one step further — if you need to bring along a chemistry book to the store in order to understand the ingredients on the labels — DO NOT BUY IT!
Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid (that is, an amino acid which our bodies cannot make and which we must obtain from our diet). It is also one of the amino acids which is used to make aspartame. Phenylalanine is found in all protein-containing foods including milk, cheese, eggs, meat and fish.
Products which contain aspartame have a label which says ‘Contains a source of phenylalanine’. This label is there to help people with a rare inherited genetic disorder called phenylketonuria (PKU). These people cannot metabolise phenylalanine from any source and need to follow a strict diet to control their intake of this amino acid. The disorder affects approximately 1 in 10,000 babies, and is identified by screening shortly after birth. [Source]
Ten percent of this sweetener contains methanol. When it is absorbed by our intestines, it breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a deadly neurotoxin that causes cancer, retinal damage, interferes with DNA replication and causes birth defects.
I went to the AminoSweet website to see what kind of “spin” they are putting on their repackaged product to entice shoppers to buy their so-called “natural” sweetener and here is their selling point:
AminoSweet aspartame is the low calorie sweetener that tastes just like sugar. It is made from two building blocks of protein just like those found naturally in many everyday foods. Aspartame is digested by the body in exactly the same way as these other protein foods and so does not bring anything new to our diet.
Makers of this artificial sweetener claim it is made from protein found “naturally” in many everyday foods. So what is the meaning of ‘natural’ when it comes to the labeling of food? The FDA’s website writes:
“From a food science perspective, it is difficult to define a food product that is ‘natural’ because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth. That said, FDA has not developed a definition for use of the term natural or its derivatives.” [Source]
The word ‘natural’ is being thrown around to describe all sorts of genetically modified foods and AminoSweet is genetically modified. There is nothing natural about it. Why do you think these drug companies buy patents? They create them in a lab and they own it. And they know exactly what they are doing and choose to fool consumers into thinking their foods are safe when science proves differently.
In June 2013 Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and Campbell’s Soup became defendants in class action lawsuits that allege they misrepresented the nature of the ingredients on their product labels. The Campbell’s Soup Company is currently being sued by Florida residents for misrepresenting the genetically modified (GMO) corn in its soup as “natural.” Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop using genetically modified ingredients as a result of their suit.
Ben & Jerry’s used to be known for their healthy ‘natural’ ice creams, but I guess when they sold out to British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever, they sold their souls along with it. It looks like they haven’t updated their website since the sale either, even though Unilever has owned them since 2001. They portray themselves as another American success story — but according to the lawsuit, they are just another corporation choosing to deceive the public — much like another American success story — Monsanto who purchased Searle & Company in 1985– who make Aspartame now called AminoSweet.
Videos have sprung on YouTube alleging that the US private security service formerly known as Blackwater is operating in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Western press is hitting back, accusing Russia of fabricating reports to justify “aggression.”
The authenticity of videos allegedly made in downtown Donetsk on March 5 is hard to verify. In the footage, unidentified armed men in military outfits equipped with Russian AK assault rifles and American М4А1 carbines are securing the protection of some pro-Kiev activists amidst anti-government popular protests.
The regional administration building in Donetsk has changed hands many times, with either pro-Russian protesters or pro-Kiev forces declaring capture of the authority headquarters. In the logic of the tape, at some point the new officials appointed by revolutionary Kiev managed to occupy the administration, but then – as the building was surrounded by angry protesters – demanded to secure a safe evacuation.
This is where the armed professionals come in. The protesters, after several moments of shock, start shouting, “Blackwater!,” and “Mercenaries!,” as well as “Faggots!,” and “Who are you going to shoot at?!” But the armed men drive off in the blink of an eye without saying a word.
Surely these men were not Blackwater – simply because such a company does not exist anymore. It has changed its name twice in recent years and is now called Academi.
The latest article on the case, published by the Daily Mail, claims that though these people did look like professional mercenaries, they conducted the operation too openly.
“On the face of it, the uniforms of the people in the videos are consistent with US mercs – they don’t look like Russian soldiers mercs. On the other hand, why run around in public making a show of it?” said DM Dr Nafeez Ahmed, a security expert with the Institute for Policy Research & Development.
“I think the question is whether the evidence available warrants at least reasonable speculation.”
Ahmed also added that “Of course the other possibility is it’s all Russian propaganda.”
Why would Russia need to make such provocation? The Daily Mail explained that “any suggestion that a US mercenary outfit like Blackwater, known now as Academi, had begun operating in east Ukraine could give Russian President Vladimir Putin the pretext for a military invasion.”
Other western media outlets are maintaining that a “Russian invasion” has already began, because the heavily armed military personnel now controlling all major infrastructure in Crimea are “obviously” Russians.
Armed men march outside an Ukrainian military base in the village of Perevalnoye near the Crimean city of Simferopol March 9, 2014.(Reuters / Thomas Peter )
The Daily Beast media outlet went even further. On the last day of February, it published an article alleging that “polite Russians” in Crimea are actually…employees of Russian security service providers.
While there are indeed several military-oriented security service providers in Russia, it however appears highly unlikely that all of them combined could provide personnel for such a wide-scale operation.
At the beginning of the week, Russian state TV reported that several hundred armed men with military-looking bags arrived to the international airport of Kiev.
It was reported that the tough guys are employees of Greystone Limited, a subsidiary of Vehicle Services Company LLC belonging to Blackwater/XE/Academi.
Greystone Limited mercenaries are part of what is called ‘America’s Secret Army,’ providing non-state military support not constrained by any interstate agreements, The Voice of Russia reported.
But they are not the only ones. A Russian national that took part in clashes in Kiev was arrested in Russia’s Bryansk region this week. He made a statement on record that he met a large number of foreigners taking active part in the fighting with police.
He claimed he saw dozens of military-clad people from Germany, Poland, and Turkey, as well as English speakers who were possibly from the US, Russkaya Gazeta reported earlier this week.
September 30th, 2014
a food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma. The perpetrator, a black man named Alton Nolen, is said to have been fired from his job at Vaughan Foods. Nolen “recently started trying to convert some of his co-workers to the Muslim religion,” according to a police spokesperson.[12]
In order to help local police officers protect themselves while fighting the largely unsuccessful War on Drugs, the federal government passed legislation in 1994 allowing the Pentagon to 
re be “walled off” from defendants, court systems and the public.
