It is sometimes hard to know whether those in power adopt a policy of confusion purposely, or through grand design. When it comes to the flawed policy of data retention on a mass scale, a burden that is bound to fall on telecommunications companies, the problem is most acute of all. What is to be kept? What falls within that broad term metadata?
The Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, a somewhat challenged individual in twenty first century politics, is one such example. Here, dinosaur meets politician, and the result is far from pretty. It is less pretty for the fact that …
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the London Times refused to run an ad featuring Elie Wiesel speaking out against Hamas’ use of children as human shields.
The ad’s headline reads: “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.” Wiesel’s statement is a blatant lie and the London Times knew it.
Jews have never stopped sacrificing their children. The Hannibal Protocol is an IDF directive that orders soldiers to take ‘necessary measures’ to prevent their comrades from being captured by enemy forces. ‘Necessary measures’ include risking the life of the Israeli soldier and anyone who happens to be in his vicinity. Similarly, …
The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil. The various sects that lived in peace under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad are butchering one another, and a new group, ISIS, is in the process of creating a new state out of parts of Iraq and Syria.
The turmoil brought into the Middle East by the Bush and Obama regimes has meant death and displacement for millions and untold future deaths. As I write 40,000 Iraqis are stranded on a mountain top without water awaiting death …
A few days ago Dan Geer, the chief information security officer at In-Q-Tel, gave a keynote address at Black Hat USA. ((Kim Zetter, “CIA Insider: U.S. Should Buy All Security Exploits, Then Disclose Them,” Wired, August 6, 2014)) According to the company’s web site In-Q-Tel is a non-profit, but it’s a special sort of non-profit. It offers venture capital funding on behalf of the “intelligence community” (read government spies). During his presentation Geer proposed, among other things, that the U.S. government bolster internet security by dominating the market for zero-day vulnerabilities.
Zero-days are basically flaws, unpatched bugs, in software and …
Huron Historic Gaol was once a prison complex for the Huron County of Upper Canada. The prison was designed by Thomas Young and modeled after Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon, named after a hundred eyed giant watchman from Greek mythology called Panoptes, is an institutional structure where a watchman can observe all inhabitants anonymously. Although the Huron County Gaol Jail now serves only as a prison museum (and is a National Historic Site of Canada), the clandestine construction of a billion dollar headquarters in Ottawa for the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC), an obscure Canadian intelligence agency, is a …
Village Building Convergence (VBC) activists and their supporters from Cittaslow Sebastopol, Transition, the Grange, Permaculture Skills Center, and other groups recently packed the City Council meeting of small town Sebastopol in semi-rural Sonoma County, Northern California. Testimony in support of VBC came from enthusiastic advocates from 3-years-old to 70-years-old.
After an hour-long discussion at its August 5 regular meeting, the Council voted unanimously to permit the VBC to occur on public property from Sept. 12 to Sept. 21. Some local merchants have welcomed VBC to beautify their places. In addition to art and natural building “place-making” projects, there will be …
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the minority leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, just had her political consultants send out a mass mailing to women asking for money and responses to an enclosed survey of their opinions.
The mass mailing duly recites the truly horrible House Republican votes against a variety of women’s health, safety and family protections and seeks to survey women’s priorities for the Congressional Democrats’ legislative agenda. Under the category titled “Employment,” there is no mention of restoring the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, which Rep. Pelosi supports. The closest option to check was “inadequate/or …
Israel’s long-term goal is to cleanse all of the territory that it militarily controls, by whatever most-efficient means it can get away with, which is facilitated and funded by the USA.
Since 1948, the name of the game is genocide, and this is no secret. Israel’s plans have been explicitly expressed and Israel’s genocide against Palestinians follows exactly the pattern of Canada’s genocide against First Peoples, except that it is in full-throttle rather than being in end-phase as in Canada. (( “Israel’s attempted genocide must fail — Lessons from Canada’s genocide” by Denis G. Rancourt, Dissident Voice.))
On July 30, Dissident Voice published an article by Yves Engler remarking on increasingly strident support for Israel among sections of the Toronto Jewish community.
He describes aggressive Jewish support for the child-murderers of the Israeli Defense Forces, including attacks on protesters like himself, then contrasts this with what Jews were like before world war two:
The idea that Toronto’s Jewish community in 2014 would be front-and-centre in backing racist militarism is profoundly depressing and quite the historic reversal. Seven decades ago righteous Jewish youth fought back against fascist thugs terrorizing non-Anglo-Saxons in the 1933 Christie Pits Riot.
Paternalism is rarely a pretty thing. In many cases, it is fair to say it is a downside grotesque feature of human relations. One person, or entity, extends a hand that does not so much help the individual in trouble as slap the person in question across a grieving face. When it comes to international relations, the image gets even uglier. Here, states can assert the ultimate entitlement to assert control over a regime, or a state, which has fallen foul of appropriate conventions. The modern dress code of the humanitarian interventionist is simple in its absurdity: the Responsibility …
• I am Palestinian. My ancestors have lived in Palestine and were called “Palestinians” for 100 generations. I still have my parents’ Palestine passports.
• Before history is completely rewritten by Zionists, research plainly shows that the land has been called “Palestine” and her inhabitants “Palestinians” since 500 BCE.
• The United Nations partitioned “original Palestine” into two states: Israel (55%) and Palestine (45%) – (U.N. Resolution 181 – 11/29/1947).
Conclusion: Palestine has existed (by that name) for over 2500 years. Although the Zionist state of Israel was illegitimately formed on 78% of the land (which was …
A while back, I saw an addition to a roadside sign that stated “Welcome to GREATER VICTORIA.” Appended underneath was another sign which read “LOCATED ON COAST SALISH TERRITORY.” The upper sign makes a colonialist statement. The lower sign signifies that the territory belongs to the Coast Salish, that includes Xwsepsum, Songhees, T’Sou-ke, W̱SÁNEĆ, Scia’new, and Malahat, to which one Nuu-chah-Nulth First Nation, the Pacheedaht, could also be added.
Well, look, there’s no doubt that a robust, interventionist foreign policy on behalf of certain principles, ideals or international rules is not a tradition that most countries embrace. And in the 20th century and in the early stages of the 21st century, the United States continues to be the one indispensable power that is willing to spend blood and treasure on that.
— Barack Obama in interview with The Economist
On the eve of Obama’s meeting with African politicians, he gave an interview with obsequious editors and reporters from The Economist. He used it to attack Russia and Putin once again. …
Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that the Arabs had gotten the better of the Israelis in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and after years of conflict, all that was left of Israel was the Gaza strip.
Assume for a moment that instead of Palestinians, over 1.8 million Jews were crammed into the 11 mile Gaza strip and the state of Palestine, subsidized and supported by a superpower, was administering the calories to the Jews in Gaza, keeping them to a limit of 2,300 a day.
Imagine that instead of Palestinian children, it was Jewish children living under a Palestinian embargo that …
There’s a wide and mysterious chasm between the stated intentions of the Israeli government as depicted by the U.S. media and what the Israeli government has been doing in Gaza, even as recounted in the U.S. media.
With the morgues full, Gazans are packing freezers with their dead children. Meanwhile, the worst images to be found in Israel depict fear, not death and suffering. Why the contrast? If the Israeli intent is defensive, why are 97% of the deaths Gazan, not Israeli? If the targets are fighters, why are whole families being slaughtered and their houses leveled? Why are schools and …
Even as an international drive against the data merchants is gathering force and voice (see, for instance, those “nature walks” by Germans from Griesheim to the Dagger Complex, stacked with spooks), the Australian side of the Five Eyes spy arrangement is being shored up. If there is one place in the Western world that has shown conspicuously little administrative and policy reform on the subject of bulk surveillance and whistleblowing, Australia is it.
The whistleblowing reform drive has been tardy at best, retarded at worst. Edward Snowden is more than a nuisance ‘down under’. He is …
“Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!,” was the title of an article by Jo Ehrlich published in Modoweiss.net on Dec 21, 2009. That was almost exactly one year after Israel’s concluded a major war against Gaza. The so-called Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009) was, till then, the deadliest Israeli attack against the impoverished strip for many years.
Ehrlich was not in the least being belittling by raising the question about the ‘Palestinian Gandhi’ but responding to the patronization of others. Right from the onset, he remarked: “Not that I’m …
… In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Judith Miller’s Co-author, Michael R. Gordon, on false 2002 NYT “report” on Iraq WMD continues his lying
by John V. Walsh / August 5th, 2014
There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
Those in the U.S. who are enthralled by relentless reports of the most demonic acts attributed to President Vladimir Putin and the rebel Eastern Ukrainian federalists in the NYT (New York Times), NPR, ETC. would do well to look at the track record of the “reporters” dishing out this stuff. What they will find is a trail of deception that is piled …
I often don’t write about the things that make me angry. Mostly that’s because I’ve written previously on something similar, and I don’t like repeating myself. Sometimes it’s because it’s very draining to spend time and energy trying to write relatively lucidly and without hysteria on something that almost no one will read and because I know it won’t make any difference what I think and say. So I think why bother?
The appalling genocide being perpetrated in Gaza at the moment is one such subject. The obscenity of it is so extreme, and writing about it so enrages me and …
The extension of the Iran nuclear negotiations for another four months surprised many in the political elite and the news media. The consensus was that the talks were failing, because as U.S. officials had said repeatedly, Iran was refusing to agree to reduce its enrichment capabilities radically to assure the P5+1 that the nuclear program was solely for peaceful purposes.
That U.S. official line has shaped media coverage of the talks for months. But that picture of the state of the negotiations assumed that public statements about the positions of the two sides reflected the whole reality of the negotiations. …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / August 5th, 2014
This is an excellent news piece from the The Real News examining something marginalized by mass media: hatred — mass hatred. [DV ed.] The Real News looks into who are the groups chanting “death to Arabs” throughout Israel and attacking anti-war demonstrators.
What is the nation? Should we be asking what, or perhaps who? Is it the land? The odd space shown within some contours drawn on a map by dead white men centuries ago?
Are they the people born on a particular side of the border? A gender? A race? An ancient tribe? A conquering army in the Eleventh Century? A raging Parisian mob in the Eighteenth? The government and the local authorities? Is he the taxman? Is she the Queen?
This week a look into Israel’s racism, riots in Paris in solidarity with Gaza, resistance to oil and gas infrastructure in Turtle Island, including actions in Utah, Vermont, Washington, 6 Nations and Unist’ot’en, the defense of Pizzeria Anarchia in Austria, PETA’s latest asshole move, new music by Rob Hustle, and an interview with Doug Gilbert on his book the I saw fire.
Israeli deceptions revealed in story of ‘kidnapped’ soldier
by Jonathan Cook / August 4th, 2014
A single incident at the weekend – the reported capture by Hamas on Friday of an Israeli soldier through a tunnel – illustrated in stark fashion the layers of deception Israel has successfully cast over its attack on Gaza.
On Sunday, as the army indicated it would start limited withdrawals, Israel claimed Hadar Goldin was dead, possibly buried in a collapsed tunnel as Israel bombarded the area in which he was seized. His family said he was being left behind.
Israeli officials or media did not view Hamas’ operation dispassionately. Goldin was not “captured” but “kidnapped” – as though he was …
Oh the horror of it, the Tony Blair-Clinton Bear-Obama Osama-Kissigner-Pelosi-Feinstein of it all!
Interesting, the stuff Felicity Arbuthnot (August 2nd, 2014) wrote about Tony Blair and the Mafia Middle Easterners known in some circles as Stockholm Syndrome Nazis – can you imagine Jews in Israel taking their marching orders from the Third Reich, from the Final Solution pharmacists, from the entire project on usury, militarism, and atrophied hearts and sociopathic economics, cultural crassness and genocide that define what it is to be a Zionist there, here, anywhere?
Tony Blair? What is it about language? What is it about this neutering of heart, …
“Protection Standards for Nuclear Power Operations” means what?
by William Boardman / August 3rd, 2014
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States is a full blown oxymoron when it comes to protecting U.S. residents from the danger of increased exposure to ionizing radiation. That’s the kind of radiation that comes from natural sources like Uranium and the sun, as well as unnatural sources like Uranium mines, nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants (even when they haven’t melted down like Fukushima). The EPA is presently considering allowing everyone in the U.S. to be exposed to higher levels of ionizing radiation.
In 1977, the EPA established levels of radiation exposure “considered safe” for people …
“In the period between the end of World War Two and Marshall’s meeting with Truman [May 12, 1948], the Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued no less than sixteen (by my count) papers on the Palestine issue. The most important of these was issued on March 31, 1948 and entitled “Force Requirements for Palestine.” In that paper, the JCS predicted that “the Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the United States] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” The JCS speculated that these objectives included: initial Jewish sovereignty over a portion of …
Researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia may have found an entry-way to the cure for AIDS.
Once the HIV virus enters the body it can lie dormant for years. It can also evolve into AIDS. But, until now, it could never be removed.
It’s far too early to claim an AIDS cure—there still has to be several years of clinical trials— but this may be as close to a solution as scientists have come.
