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Does Long Term Use of Psychiatric Drugs Cause More Harm Than Good?

By Peter C Gøtzsche, Allan H Young, John Crace | British Medical Journal | May 15, 2015

We could stop almost all psychotropic drug use without deleterious effect, says Peter C Gøtzsche, questioning trial designs that underplay harms and overplay benefits. Allan H Young and John Crace disagree, arguing that evidence supports long term use.

Psychiatric drugs are responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people aged 65 and older each year in the Western world, as I show below.1 Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal.1 23 4 5 6

Summary of Article

Overstated benefits and understated deaths

The randomised trials that have been conducted do not properly evaluate the drugs’ effects. Almost all of them are biased because they included patients already taking another psychiatric drug.1 7 8 9 10 Patients, who after a short wash-out period are randomised to placebo, go “cold turkey” and often experience withdrawal symptoms. This design exaggerates the benefits of treatment and increases the harms in the placebo group, and it has driven patients taking placebo to suicide in trials in schizophrenia.8

Under-reporting of deaths in industry funded trials is another major flaw. Based on some of the randomised trials that were included in a meta-analysis of 100 000 patients by the US Food and Drug Administration, I have estimated that there are likely to have been 15 times more suicides among people taking antidepressants than reported by the FDA—for example, there were 14 suicides in 9956 patients in trials with fluoxetine and paroxetine, whereas the FDA had only five suicides in 52 960 patients, partly because the FDA only included events up to 24 hours after patients stopped taking the drug.1

For antipsychotics, I used a meta-analysis of placebo controlled trials in patients with dementia because they would be less likely to have been receiving psychiatric drugs before randomisation. The absolute death … Full article 

Peter C Gøtzsche, professor, Nordic Cochrane Centre, Rigshospitalet, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, Allan H Young, professor of mood disorders, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences, King’s College London, UK,  John Crace, psychiatric patient and parliamentary sketch writer, Guardian, London, UK 

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Revealed: Almost 3 Million Faces Stored On Met Police Database

RINF – June 24, 2015

As the result of a Freedom of Information request it has emerged that the London Met Police are compiling a database of almost 3 million people. To put this into perspective, there are currently 8 million people living in the capital.

The database, a bespoke system call the “Facial Recognition System (FRS)” began gathering images in 2009. The Met also acknowledges that they have never conducted a privacy impact assessment on the system.

It even stores pictures of those who have not been charged or found guilty of a crime, and they state:

“All custody images are kept indefinitely unless they are removed under the Early Deletion process.”

This follows on from the revelation in early 2015 that police had secretly built a massive national database that contains the faces of over 18 million people, without the approval of the Home Office or independent watchdogs.

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

How much did renewable electricity grow in China last year?

By Robert Wilson | Carbon Counter | June 25, 2015

Last year global renewable electricity – i.e. hydro, wind and solar – consumption grew by 193.7 TWh. This represented 55% of the total growth in global electricity consumption.

And China, where renewable electricity consumption grew by 174.9 TWh, made up a large part of the increase. A renewables revolution is clearly unfolding. Or maybe not.

Careful readers will have noted the word order in my first sentence – hydro, wind and solar. If you follow debates on energy closely you will regularly be astonished by how often commentators act as if wind and solar dominate renewable energy. The fact that bioenergy has grown by more in this century than wind and solar combined is not something you will ever be told.

The same is true for hydro-electricity.

A representative image of renewables in China is not this:

china_windor this:

china-solar-powerInstead it is this:

threegorgesBig hydroelectric dams, such as The Three Gorges shown above, dominate Chinese renewables. In fact, they dominate China’s total low carbon energy supply.

China gets five times more electricity from its hydroelectric plants than from wind and solar combined. Total hydroelectricity supply in 2014 was 1064.3 TWh, while wind was 158.4 TWh and solar was 29.1 TWh.

Most of these hydroelectric plants have been built this century. Total hydroelectric generation in 2000 was 222.4 TWh, one fifth of what it is today.

Last year China’s hydroelectric output increased by 144 TWh, but wind and solar increased by 30.8 TWh. Put together this made up roughly three quarters of the rise in China’s electricity generation.

So are renewables or, more accurately big hydro, taking over electricity generation?

Probably not.

First, growth in China’s electricity generation is slowing because its economy is having problems. In the decade before last year China’s electricity generation increased by an average of 350 TWh each year. If China’s economy returns to the growth levels the Communist Party believes is necessary to stop the risks of another Tiananmen, we aren’t likely to see such low growth continuing.

Second, hydroelectric output was artificially high due to the weather.

Hydroelectric dams operate on a simple principle. Flowing water is converted into electricity. More flowing water equals more power. So, roughly speaking, if it is wetter dams will produce more electricity.

And this is what happened in China last year. Official data shows that the capacity factors of China’s hydroelectric dams increased by 8.7% last year. In other words, had the climatic conditions been the same as in 2013, China’s hydroelectric output would only have grown by 48 TWh, and not 144 TWh.

The increase in China’s total renewable electricity generation was therefore double what it would have been had it not been for the wetter conditions.

So, not only does hydroelectricity dominate Chinese renewables, but we have to be incredibly careful interpreting year to year changes in production caused by rain conditions.

The same holds at the global level. If China’s hydroelectric output had stayed still last year, global hydroelectric output would have actually fallen by 67 TWh last year. Again, this was due to climatic conditions, not a decrease in hydroelectric capacity.

This fall in non-China hydroelectricity was greater than the increase in global generation from either wind or solar. Clearly lumping hydro, wind, and solar generation into one figure can lead to erroneous conclusions.

Note on data

Generation data taken from the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics | | Leave a comment

New rule could prevent website owners from protecting their identity

RT | June 25, 2015

A new rule over domain registration would prevent people from using a third party to sign up for a commercial website. People often use proxies to protect their contact information from the public, particularly when their work is controversial.

Under the new rules, people registering websites for non-personal purposes would have to disclose their name, address and phone number, all of which could be easily searchable by anyone. The plan has privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) opposed to the idea and alarmed that website owners could “suffer a higher risk of harassment, intimidation and identify theft.”

“The ability to speak anonymously protects people with unpopular or marginalized opinions, allowing them to speak and be heard without fear of harm. It also protects whistleblowers who expose crime, waste, and corruption,” wrote EFF in a statement.

At first blush, the change would seem to only affect commercial website registration. But a personally created website that offers a community benefit, but also features ads to help defray the costs of running the site, could be judged as commercial, and has been in past domain name disputes.

It is not clear yet if the organization that oversees the bureaucratic process of naming online domains, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will include the broader definition of commercial in the new rules.

ICANN has put up the rules for public comment until July 7. To date, thousands of people have logged comments.

One individual named Brad urged ICANN to “respect internet users’ rights to privacy and due process … Private information should be kept private.”

Another, Sarah Brown, told ICANN that her websites allow her to earn a living full-time online, but she has been stalked, harassed, and had content from her site stolen. She uses a third-party proxy to prevent people from finding her sites, her home address and phone number.

“I implore you to think through the consequences of removing our private WHOIS information. It serves as a buffer to protect us from the crazy people in this world,” wrote Brown. “We are living in unsafe times, where jealousy and greed overtake compassion and ethics. We are real people, with real lives, who can end up in real danger with our information in the wrong hands.” […]

ICANN said the rule change is being driven by discussions with law enforcement. EFF said it is also being driven by US entertainment companies and others who want new tools to discover the identities of website owners and then accuse them of copyright and trademark infringement, without a court order. US entertainment companies told Congress in March that privacy for domain registration should be allowed only in “limited circumstances”.

Read more: US anti-fraud law makes deleting browser history a crime punishable by 20yrs in jail

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

America Going To The Dogs (Of War)

By Sherwood Ross | Aletho News | June 25, 2015

“States Confront Cavernous Holes In Their Budgets” The New York Times headlined in a front page report June 8, 2015.

Reporter Julie Bosman described the exasperation of governors unable to provide traditional public services: Wisconsin, short by $280 million; Kansas, short by $400 million; Alabama, short by $702 million; Louisiana, short by $1.6 billion; Illinois, short by $3 billion; and Alaska, short by $4 billion.

Governor Scott Walker, Wisconsin Republican, “has proposed closing the gap by decreasing funding to the public schools, the state’s university system, public workers’ health benefits and state parks,” Bosman writes.

While state budgets may be busted, and American taxpayers sink ever deeper into credit card debt, “defense” contractors are dining lavishly at the public trough.

“Defense” is in quotes because the U.S., with 900 overseas bases (so says Ron Paul, former Texas congressman) and a history of making wars may now be indisputably labeled an aggressor nation. In his “Rogue State,” Washington journalist Bill Bloom documents how the U.S. has overthrown scores of countries by force and violence around the world from Chile to Iran. The stance of America today—that it is being threatened everywhere by nations large and small–reminds very much of what economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote about ancient Rome:

There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented…The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. …The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies.

The eminent international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, Champaign, agrees. Boyle says that it is Obama who is beating the war drums. Boyle notes Obama funded the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine, and is now working “with neo-Nazis (there) and literally threatening Russia.” (Look for yourself: Are Russian troops taking up positions along America’s borders in Mexico and Canada or are American troops and their NATO allies taking up positions along Russia’s frontiers?)

According to Business Insider, Pentagon’s outlay of $682 billion for arms last year, was greater than the next 10 countries combined—China, Russia, UK, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy, and Brazil. That may sound like “defense,” but it smells like aggression. Prior to WWII, dictators Hitler and Stalin also built huge war machines [not to mention the UK and US, powers which sought and achieved war as a means to consolidating or expanding their dominance].

Christian Davenport reported in The Washington Post (April 30, 2014) that “The costs of the Pentagon’s major weapons systems have ballooned nearly half a trillion dollars over their initial price tags…”

He pointed to a report by the Government Accountability Office published during a congressional hearing “in which senators from both parties vented about continued cost overruns, billions of dollars wasted when contracts are canceled and a system that is plagued by a high level of turnover that prevents anyone from being held accountable.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) listed a series of failed programs, The Post said, including an attempt to replace the White House helicopters’ fleet. McCain called them examples of “really unacceptable cost overruns we’ve seen in the past, and apparently a failure to get a lot of it still under control.” Wild spending is what you get when you exempt the Pentagon from close audits. Abroad, it is running amok.

24/7 Wall Street’s Samuel Weigley wrote that, in recent year 2011, the 100 largest contractors sold $410 billion in arms and military services to the Pentagon. Of that sum, the top 10 “defense” contractors sold $208 billion. Much of that sum was paid to the contractors without competitive bidding, inflating costs.

The Big Ten, and their sales figures, are: (1) Lockheed-Martin, $36 billion; (2) Boeing, $32 billion; (3) BAE Systems, $29 billion; (4) General Dynamics, $24 billion; (5) Raytheon, $23 billion; (6) Northrop Grumman, $21 billion; (7) EADS, $16 billion; (8) Finmeccanica, $15 billion; (9) L-3 Communications, $13 billion; and (10) United Technologies, $12 billion.

In 2011, for example, the Pentagon with outlays of $878 billion, topped America’s spending charts, showing again that the chief business of America is w-a-r. The Washington Post termed the U.S. “defense” budget “staggering.” And this is no idle choice of words.

Economically, the country is staggering. America has the largest army, the largest air force, and the largest navy in the world. In most categories it is stronger than the next five or 10 nations combined. Meanwhile, American states and cities are going broke and public works—from highways to water pipes to bridges—are crumbling.

In round numbers, the U.S. is short $1.6 trillion for unmet public works—water mains, highways, bridges, etc.—95 million Americans have housing problems, including 3.5 million homeless (a third of them families with children); 46 million people are on food stamps; 30 million people are unemployed or underemployed; 44 million people lack medical insurance; one in six Americans goes to bed hungry; etc., etc. Yet, the Military-Industrial Complex is awash in prosperity.

When President Obama attacked Libya in 2011, he justified his crime by stating there are times “when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and values are.” Here’s an admission in his own words that he is attacking nations that do not directly threaten America! And doing so in flagrant violation of Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution, which confers the right to make war only on Congress, not the White House. Usurping that power is the act of a dictator.

As for the cost, The Los Angeles Times on June 16, 2011, reported, “The Obama administration is spending almost $9.5 million every single day to blow things up in Libya because the president has determined that is in the country’s national interest, this country’s national interest, not Libya’s.” Might that money have been better spent in Camden, N.J. or Vallejo, Calif, two of our many hard-pressed cities?

And the billions devoted to blowing apart Libya in the first six months of that war is nothing compared to what Obama is quietly spending on nuclear weapons.

Obama, who pledged in 2009 “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” is upgrading the lethality of an atomic arsenal already so deadly it can destroy all life on Earth! Price tag: (says one Federal study) $1-trillion. And he perpetuated a war he inherited in Iraq, helping build up a $3 trillion price tag.

But Mr. Obama’s secretive war-making, (all of it illegal), goes far beyond what is reported in the press. As Kevin Gosztola wrote in Firedoglake on May 16, 2013, “The reality is current US wars are not limited to the one winding down in Afghanistan and the other one that recently ended in Iraq. There are numerous wars going on unannounced, undeclared and in secret. The world is literally a battlefield with conflicts being waged by the US (or with the “help” of the US). And, no country is off-limits to US military forces.”

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D.-Wis.) speaking at the time of the Libya attack, declared, “Our troops must be brought home safely and soon from Afghanistan and Iraq; and Congress must return its focus to creating jobs, educating our children, and ensuring access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans.” (Somebody’s got it right!)

On July 10, 2010, reporter Bob Woodward was told by President Obama, “To quote a famous American (Civil War General Sherman) ‘War is hell.’ And once the dogs of war are unleashed, you don’t know where it’s going to lead.” By no stretch of the human imagination can it be said that Mr. Obama is taking General Sherman’s warning to heart. He has unleashed the dogs of war over and again–actions that justify his impeachment.

Another warning Mr. Obama is also disregarding comes from founder James Madison, who in 1795 famously wrote, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” And this nation hasn’t—or haven’t you noticed?

© 2015 Sherwood Ross

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Foreign investments in Israel cut by half in 2014

Palestine Information Center – June 25, 2015

NAZARETH – Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Israel dropped by nearly 50% in 2014 compared to 2013, a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reveals.

The report tracks a sharp decrease in percentages of foreign investments in Israel. In 2014 $6.4 billion were invested in Israel, whereas in 2013 $11.8 billion were invested – a decline of about 46%.

Moreover, Israeli FDI investments abroad also decreased from $4.67 billion in 2013 to $3.97 billion, a decrease of 15%. These figures are significantly lower than the corresponding figures from 2007 to 2005, before the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008.

“We believe that what led to the drop in investment in Israel are Operation Protective Edge [in reference to Israel’s military aggression on blockaded Gaza] and the boycotts Israel is facing,” Roni Manos of the College of Management and one of the authors of the report’s summary told Ynet.

According to Manos, there is another reason for the decline.

“In the past there were large transactions such as Waze and ISCAR Metalworking which boosted investment, but over the past year there were not enough such deals.”

According to the UN report, world FDI investments during the past year amounted to only $1.23 trillion, a 16% drop compared to 2013 ($1.47 trillion dollars).

The main reason for this, according to the report’s authors, is weak global economic growth and uncertainty regarding economic and business policy in many countries, which deterred many investors. Among others, the uncertainty due to the rate of quantitative easing in the US and Europe, the Greek debt crisis and its impact on stability in the Eurozone, and the pace of economic growth in China.

Other factors influencing the decline in global FDI were geopolitical risks such as the conflict in Ukraine, which has calmed down in recent months, the worsening of relations between the West and Russia, and revolutions and regime changes in several countries in the Middle East.

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US Senate votes to prevent boycotting Israel

Press TV | June 25, 2015

The US Senate has passed a controversial trade bill that contains provisions opposing the growing international boycott movement against Israel.

The Senate passed the measure as part of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation. The legislation was already passed by the House of Representatives and can now be signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The bill was passed under massive pressure from the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.

The provisions require US negotiators to oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel during the ongoing free trade negotiations with the European Union.

The BDS campaign seeks to increase economic and political pressure on Israel until the regime ends the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands and respect the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

“Today, for the first time in nearly four decades, Congress sent legislation to the president’s desk to combat efforts to isolate and delegitimize the ‘state’ of Israel,” US Representative Peter Roskam wrote in a statement released shortly after the Senate vote.

“After today, discouraging economic warfare against Israel will be central to our free trade negotiations with the European Union,” said Roskam, one of the lawmakers who sponsored the provisions.

This comes as several groups and organizations in the European states have already supported the campaign against Israel.

The boycott campaign against Israel began in July 2005 by 171 Palestinian organizations, calling for “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law.”

In 2013, two US academic groups — the American Studies Association and the Association for Asian American Studies — supported the boycott.

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | 4 Comments

Palestine to submit hundreds of documents to ICC for 1st time

Ma’an – June 25, 2015

BETHLEHEM – Palestinian Authority foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki is scheduled to make the State of Palestine’s first submission to the International Criminal Court in the Hague on Thursday in pursuit of war crime charges against Israel.

The PA foreign minister and a high-profile delegation are expected to arrive at the office of the prosecutor of the ICC at 3 p.m. and will deliver hundreds of pages of documents describing in detail Israeli breaches of international law, Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands Nabil Abu Zneid told Ma’an.

“It will take the ICC a long time to take action, possibly 5-10 years as this is one out of a hundred steps,” Abu Zneid said.

The PLO will continue to collate information and testimonies to later be submitted to the ICC as evidence of Israeli crimes.

The report due to be submitted Thursday was prepared by a 45-member committee appointed by President Mahmoud Abbas in February and chaired by PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat.

The Higher National Committee includes PLO Executive Committee Members, political parties, security forces, unions, ministries and senior Hamas official in Gaza Ghazi Hamid.

A team led by five senior international lawyers commissioned by the PA guided the drafting of the report.

Committee member Mustafa Barghouthi, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Ma’an that Thursday is just the first step in removing Israel’s immunity for violations of international humanitarian law.

The documents will include violations committed by Israel from June 13, 2014 to May 31, 2015 in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.

Among the specific cases is the mass Israeli crackdown on the Hebron district in 2014, the war on Gaza last summer, and ongoing settlement activities and crimes against Palestinian prisoners, including administrative detention.

“Our goal is to prove that crimes were committed so as to convince the general prosecutor to start investigations,” Barghouthi said.

“We are also seeking to remove the immunity of Israel and its leaders as we seek to reach justice, protect the Palestinian people and make sure criminals do not avoid punishment.”

Such achievements will strengthen international solidarity with the Palestinian people, including the BDS movement, he added.

On Monday, a UN Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict announced it had gathered “credible allegations” that both sides had committed war crimes during the conflict, which killed more than 2,140 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.

The PLO has been seeking to open criminal proceedings against Israel at the ICC as part of an increased focus on diplomatic maneuvering and appeals to international bodies.

June 25, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Saudi Arabia’s War on Yemen Comes Home

By Eric Draitser – New Eastern Outlook – 24.06.2015

When Saudi Arabia launched its war against Yemen in March 2015, it presumed that a short, quick, and clean air war would be enough to degrade the alliance of Houthi forces and those loyal to former President Saleh, thereby giving the Saudi-backed government of former President Hadi the necessary space to regain control of the country. However, that simply has not been the case. In fact, not only has the Saudi campaign not achieved these objectives, it has instead precipitated a much more dangerous war which has now spread to Saudi Arabia itself.

Reports from Yemeni sources have confirmed that the Houthis and their allies have launched a number of rockets into Saudi Arabia’s Jizan province while also launching an assault on three military bases in various parts of the country. Of course, the attacks have sent an unmistakable message to Riyadh that there will be a price to pay for the continued bombardment of Yemen; that the Saudis cannot simply act with impunity.

War Spreads Beyond Yemen’s Borders

The fact that Houthi and Saleh forces are able to successfully attack key Saudi military installations has undoubtedly rattled a few nerves in Riyadh. While the recent assaults have not been the first, they have been perhaps the most open demonstration of the military capacity of the Yemeni forces to strike at Saudi assets.

It has been reported that the Houthi-Saleh combined forces have attacked and possibly taken control of a military base in the Southwestern province of Jizan, strategically located on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. While of course embarrassing for the Saudi government, this development is far more than simply a public relations nightmare; it is a strategic disaster. While Yemeni forces have pounded the base in Jizan, there have been scattered reports of Yemeni attacks against other Saudi military installations, including in the East of the country, as well as in the Northwest. If these reports are to be believed, then nearly the entirety of Saudi Arabian territory is within the range and capability of Yemeni rockets.

There is clear progress from the perspective of the Ansarullah movement (aka the Houthis) and their military allies if one compares the attacks they launched back in April, and those they are carrying out today. While there were a number of high profile attempts to break through Saudi defenses on the borders and make significant gains at the time, all such attacks were either entirely repelled or were mostly unsuccessful; however today, less than two months later, Houthi offensives are becoming increasingly sophisticated and, quite predictably, increasingly effective. Although Ansarullah has fired rockets and made offensive moves towards a number of key Saudi installations throughout the country, their major breakthroughs have come in the strategic Jizan province, right near the Yemeni border.

And it remains the areas closest to the border with Yemen where the real concrete gains have been made by the anti-Saudi coalition. Whether the Houthis and their allies are able to take operational control of the Saudi bases, or merely to attack them and flee is somewhat secondary. What is of primary importance is the simple fact that essentially the entire southwestern portion of Saudi Arabia is now under direct threat from the combined Houthi-Saleh forces, in addition to newly formed militias quietly developing inside Saudi Arabia in the area near the Saudi-Yemeni border.

A Saudi Civil War?

The formation of militias committed to waging war against the House of Saud may be the single most troubling development for Riyadh. Perhaps the most significant of these is the so called ‘Ahrar al-Najran’ Movement, a coalition of regional tribes in the southwest of the country that have combined forces with anti-Riyadh Saudi political activists to create an independence movement that has taken up arms against the Saudi government.

Ahrar al-Najran presents a complex problem for the Saudis because it is comprised primarily of tribes whose lands were originally within Yemeni territory until they were occupied by Saudi forces in 1934. According to Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) :

[The] Ahrar al-Najran Movement [is] calling for independence from Saudi Arabia…Abu Bakr Abi Ahmed al-Salami, a leader of Ahrar al-Najran, says the movement which brings together different tribal groups is set to launch its first battle in parts of south Najran occupied by the Saudi army… There are four main reasons why the movement wants to declare independence from Saudi Arabia:

1. General dissatisfaction in Saudi Arabia with the way officials in Riyadh handle day-to-day administration of affairs,

2. Riyadh’s policy to keep the south impoverished,

3. Aggression against Yemen and the massacre of defenseless people there by the Saudi regime,

4. Failure of the Saudi government to view the residents of the south as first-class citizens, thus violation [sic] of their legitimate rights.

Needless to say, from the perspective of the Saudis, a nascent independence movement within their borders is just about the worst possible outcome of their decision to wage war on Yemen. And considering the already tense situation in the majority Shia province of Qatif, it seems Saudi Arabia has become a political powder keg just waiting for a spark. Undoubtedly the Ansarullah Movement understands this perfectly well, and is now preparing to make its move, matches in hand.

Indeed, while the Saudis will likely move quickly to assert control over the southwestern regions, the Shias of the east – undoubtedly with a bit of tacit and/or overt support from the Houthis – might find this an opportune moment to begin organizing themselves into more than just periodic demonstrations and upsurges of righteous indignation to be quickly met with vicious force.

It should be remembered that recent months have seen violent raids and clashes between Saudi security forces and residents throughout the Qatif province of Eastern Saudi Arabia, the most violent of which having taken place in the town of Awamiyah. In response to protests against Riyadh’s war on Yemen, the regime’s security forces unleashed a brutal crackdown that perhaps most accurately could be called violent suppression. As one activist and resident of Awamiyah told the Middle East Eye back in April, “From 4pm until 9pm the gunfire didn’t stop… Security forces shot randomly at people’s homes, and closed all but one of the roads leading in and out of the village… It is like a war here – we are under siege.” A number of videos uploaded to YouTube seem to confirm the accounts of activists, though all eyewitness accounts remain anonymous for fear of government retribution.

Such actions as those described by activists in Awamiyah, and throughout Qatif, are nothing new. Over the last few years, the province has repeatedly seen upsurges of protests against the draconian policies of the government in Riyadh. Were such protests to once again erupt, and were they to coincide with the burgeoning Sunni independence movement in the Southwest, one could then rightly characterize the unrest as a general uprising: truly a nightmare scenario for the Saudi government.

Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen has taken a tremendous toll on that impoverished country, with untold thousands of casualties, countless families displaced, infrastructure devastated, and the delivery of basic services slowed to a trickle, if not cut off altogether. The Saudis have perpetrated a flagrantly illegal aggression against the nation and people of Yemen, committing a laundry list of war crimes that the world has, by and large, completely ignored. But the Saudis may have to pay a price for this crime, a price far higher than they likely ever imagined.

The House of Saud may have control over the oil, and thereby control over the peninsula, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it does not have total control over its people. And, while no one knows whether a true general uprising in Saudi Arabia will come to pass, the war in Yemen might possibly be the spark that finally sets the oil drum ablaze.

June 24, 2015 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

EU drafts plan to counter Russian media ‘disinformation’, targeting RT

RT | June 24, 2015

The EU has drafted a plan to counter what it sees as “Russian disinformation activities” calling for the promotion of EU policies in the post-Soviet space and the implementation of measures against Russian media, including RT.

The nine-page paper drafted by the EU Foreign Service and obtained by EUobserver was prepared ahead of the June 25-26 summit and is set to be voted on by EU leaders on Thursday.

The plan is aimed at tackling Russia’s “use and misuse of communication tools” and the “promotion of EU policies” in former Soviet states as well as support for “independent media” and “increased public awareness of disinformation activities by external actors,” the report says.

It specifically mentions RT, which according to the report broadcasts “fabrications and hate speech from their bureaus in EU cities.”

“The EU … will work to improve co-operation between national regulators, including through meetings of the European Regulators Group”, it adds.

The European Commission also plans to “table a new legislative proposal to improve the regulatory environment and take account of current challenges,” according to the draft.

The plan says that the EU Foreign Service will create a special cell to spearhead the activities called East StratComTeam by September. It will distribute information in Russian and in local languages in the EU’s eastern neighborhood, in countries such as Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry lashed out at the EU over the report, saying that the proposed plan is violating the right to freedom of expression and creating conditions of total discrimination against Russian media.

The draft plan presented on Tuesday is “clearly aimed at pushing out Russia’s presence in the international media field,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. “Following the introduction of restrictive measures against Russian journalists the EU is trying to create conditions for the total discrimination of Russian media.”

While the Western media is speaking in one voice, the EU is trying to push out one of the few alternative sources of information, said RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

“The EU is actively trying to shut out RT, to stifle a rare alternative voice in international news media,” she said.

“It’s not enough that there are hundreds of Western newspapers, TV channels, websites and radio stations, all beaming the same take on what is going on in the world. The UK has created a 1,500-strong army unit to, among other things, fight Russia in the social media space. NATO has a special taskforce dedicated to countering Russia’s influence. Deutsche Welle just launched a 24-hour English-language news channel that’s supposed to compete directly with RT – despite the global presence of Euronews, BBC World News and CNN International.”

“If despite all these efforts the EU is still concerned with “losing the information war” to Russia, perhaps the time has come for it to realize that people around the world simply no longer believe their same tired, one-sided narratives of current events,” said Simonyan.

The EU project was previously discussed in March, however no details were revealed at the time. The EU announced its plans following US Secretary of State John Kerry’s plea to lawmakers for more money to tackle the so-called Russian propaganda in February.

Speaking before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on February 26, he urged for the setting up of “democracy promotion” programs around the world.

“Russia Today (sic) can be heard in English, do we have an equivalent that can be heard in Russian? It’s a pretty expensive proposition. They are spending huge amounts of money,” Kerry said apparently forgetting that Voice of America has been broadcasting in Russian since 1947.

Though the US government media receives $721 million a year, in the budget proposal submitted by Kerry, the Department of State asked for “$639 million to help our friends in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova as they seek to strengthen their democracies, withstand pressure from Russia, and to integrate more closely into Europe.”

By contrast RT’s budget for 2015 is about $225 million. The BBC World Service, which complained about RT “winning the information war” in January, is funded to the tune of $375 million a year.

June 24, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 2 Comments

Not OK, Google! Covert installations of ‘eavesdropping tool’ raise alarm

RT | June 24, 2015

Open source developers and privacy campaigners are raising concerns over the automatic installation of a shady “eavesdropping tool” designed to enable ‘OK Google’ functionality but potentially capable of snooping on any conversation near the computer.

When one installs an open source Chromium browser, as it turns out, it “downloads something” followed by a status report that says “Microphone: Yes” and “Audio Capture Allowed: Yes,” according to an article by Rick Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party founder, published on the website Privacy Online News.

While the Chromium, the open source basis for Google’s browser, at least shows the code and allows user to notice it and turn it off, the same installation is included by default in the most popular browser Chrome, used by over 300 million people.

The code was designed to enable the new “OK, Google” hot word detection, which lets the computer do things like search or create reminders in response to human voice. Yet, some users are worried that the service could be activated without their permission, eventually sending recorded data to Google. The worried users describe the Chrome Hotword Shared Module as an audio-snooping “black box”, with only the corporation that provided it fully aware of what the injected pre-compiled code is capable of.

“Without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that – according to itself – had turned on the microphone and was actively listening to your room,” wrote Falkvinge.

“Which means that your computer had been stealth configured to send what was being said in your room to somebody else, to a private company in another country, without your consent or knowledge, an audio transmission triggered by … an unknown and unverifiable set of conditions.”

“We don’t know and can’t know what this black box does,” he added.

The users’ complaints were received with the Google developers’ words that: “While we do download the hot word module on startup, we do not activate it unless you opt in to hot wording.” They also underlined the fact that “Chromium is not a Google product. We do not directly distribute it, or make any guarantees with respect to compliance with various open source policies”.

However, according to Falkvinge, the default install will still “wiretap your room without your consent, unless you opt out, and more importantly, know that you need to opt out, which is nowhere a reasonable requirement.”

While the fact that the voice recognition module is always listening does not mean it transmits all the data to Google’s servers, Falkvinge argues that no one knows what other keywords could trigger the feature on.

The only reliable measure against mass surveillance, according to the first Pirate Party leader, is a manual disabling of the microphone and camera on the computer with a hardware switch.

The latest voice search functions have raised the concerns of privacy advocates, as their use presupposes the sending of voice recordings to company servers, as well as the controversy over the continuous recognition to catch the moment a user says the ‘hot’ phrase.

June 24, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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