Facebook snoops on people just like NSA – Belgian watchdog to court
RT | September 21, 2015
Facebook is spying on people in “the very same way” that the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) does, said the Belgian data protection watchdog at a court hearing where the social network stands accused of violating the privacy of internet users.
“When it became known that the NSA was spying on people all around the world, everybody was upset. This actor [Facebook] is doing the very same thing, albeit in a different way,” said Frederic Debussere, a lawyer representing the Belgian privacy commission (BPC) at the Monday court hearing.
The Belgian watchdog has filed a lawsuit against the social network, accusing it of breaching EU law and violating the privacy rights of internet users. The BPC issued a report in March, arguing that Facebook tracked everyone, even users who had logged-out and people who don’t even have a Facebook account at all, via the use of cookies and the ‘like’ or ‘share’ buttons which can be found on more than 13 million websites worldwide.
This is possible, the report claimed, because the cookies are automatically installed on the computers of internet users each time they visit a page containing a Facebook plug-in, such as the ‘like’ button.
According to EU law, websites must ask for a user’s permission before installing any cookies. This is why Facebook’s policy is considered to in “violation of the European law” by the BPC.
The BPC is now threatening Facebook with a daily fine of €250,000 ($280,213).
“Don’t be intimidated by Facebook. They will argue our demands cannot be implemented in Belgium alone. Our demands can be perfectly implemented just in this country,” said Frederic Debussere, addressing the court.
Facebook has consistently denied all accusations and claimed that its practices are in compliance with EU law, accusing the BPC of presenting false reports.
“We will show the court how this technology protects people from spam, malware, and other attacks, that our practices are consistent with EU law and with those of the most popular Belgian websites,” a Facebook spokesperson said, as quoted by the Guardian.
Addressing questions about the company’s cookie policy, another Facebook representative, Paul Lefebvre, said that “they allow Facebook Ireland to identify bad faith attempts to gain access via the browser being used,” adding that if Belgium imposed a ban on this Facebook activity, the country “would become a cradle for cyber terrorism.”
Additionally, Facebook rejects the very idea it could be held accountable in Belgium as the company’s European headquarters are located in Dublin, Ireland, and its activities watched over by that country’s data protection authority.
The company does not rule out returning to talks with the BPC.
The case is now being closely watched by the rest of the EU’s 28 privacy watchdogs, including that of Holland, which has also started to question Facebook’s activities and privacy policy.
READ MORE:
Facebook ‘breaks EU laws’ tracking all visitors, even non-users – report
Fact: Facebook tracks non-users – says ‘fix already underway’
‘No respect for users, no precise answers:’ Facebook privacy policies slammed by Belgian watchdog
UN Condemns Ukrainian Government Cover-Ups
By Eric Zuesse | Aletho News | September 21, 2015
On September 18th, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights headlined “Statement of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns Ukraine: Lives lost in an accountability vacuum,” and condemned there the current Ukrainian Government in strong language, regarding not only the coup which had brought them to power in February 2014, but regarding also the massacre of the people who on 2 May 2014 had been peacefully demonstrating in Odessa against the coup. Specifically, the ongoing cover-ups by the Ukrainian Government concerning both of these matters were condemned by him.
The High Commissioner, Christof Heyns, said:
By allowing almost immediate access of the scene to ‘pro-unity’ protesters, members of the public or to municipal authorities, investigators lost a large proportion of potentially valuable forensic evidence. Meanwhile I am worried by indications that the Government has significantly reduced the size of the team investigating these events in the past year, before it has had an opportunity to report. The slow progress of the investigation and the lack of transparency with which it is being conducted have contributed to a great deal of public dissatisfaction and provided a fertile environment for rumour and misinformation. It is disconcerting that the Special Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that investigates the 2 May events cancelled our appointment in Odessa at short notice, without any explanation.
I am further concerned that administrative and personal impediments seem to have been imposed to prevent or at least discourage the families of those who died from obtaining the status of suffering or affected persons before the Courts. Meanwhile I am greatly alarmed by reports of the extent to which authorities are tolerating both verbal and physical intimidation both of families attending court proceedings and of the judges of those cases, not only outside the court building, but also inside it and in the court room itself.
Here is an excellent video of the coup.
Here is a brief video on the massacre, on 2 May 2014, in Odessa’s Trade Unions Building.
Also of interest might be the following articles:
“Ukraine’s President Poroshenko Admits Overthrow of Yanukovych Was a Coup”
The Obama Administration has a strong record of installing anti-Russian governments — not only in Ukraine. Obama enabled the 28 June 2009 coup that overthrew Honduras’s progressive democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya to succeed, and enabled the coup’s junta to stay in power though no other head-of-state supported it; and the great investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reports on 21 September 2015 that there is strong reason to believe that the Obama Administration was actually behind the recent coup in Burkino Faso. Furthermore, the Obama Administration has been involved in unsuccessful coup-plots in Venezuela and Ecuador, according to a 12 March 2015 study by the Council On Hemispheric Affairs. In addition, the Obama Administration bombed Libya and removed Muammar Gaddafi from power there, and is bombing Syria in order to remove Bashar al-Assad from power there. The Obama Administration also has continued the Bush Administration’s policy of “unsigning” to the legal authority of the International Criminal Court, but doesn’t use the same rabid rhetoric against the Court that Obama’s predecessor did. The Obama Administration has also taken a strong anti-Russian position on virtually everything at the United Nations, such as by voting against a Russian-supported resolution condemning fascism in all its forms (including Holocaust-denial), which resolution passed overwhelmingly and was opposed by only three governments: U.S., Ukraine, and Canada.
Obama is highly critical of Russia, and of its leader, Vladimir Putin. The U.S. White House in February issued its National Security Strategy 2015, and it used the pejorative term “aggression” 18 times, 17 of which referred to Russia.
So, the U.N. High Commissioner’s statement condemning the Ukrainian Government’s cover-ups might be viewed in Washington as simply the UN’s taking the pro-Russian side. Psychopaths could view it that way. But other people will (like the UN) oppose cover-ups — and oppose Obama’s international policies (such as those described). Indeed, the only U.S. President who has been as hostile toward the UN as Obama is, was his immediate predecessor, whose policies Obama publicly opposed when running for the U.S. Presidency in 2008. And, then, in his 2012 re-election campaign, Obama vocally criticized his opponent Mitt Romney’s statement that Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe.” But, now, Obama cites Russia 17 out of 18 times for “aggression.”
Geir Lundestad, who was the Director of the Nobel Institute, and Secretary of the Peace Prize Committee, at the time when Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, recently said that “giving Obama a helping hand” was the reason why the Committee awarded Obama the Prize, but that doing this “did not achieve what the committee had hoped for.” However, he denied “that it was a mistake to give Obama the Peace Prize.” Even all of those coups and massacres don’t mean it was a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t much different from “what the committee had hoped for.” After all: Norway, and its Nobel Institute, is a U.S. ally. Unlike the United Nations, it only pretends to represent the interests of all people everywhere.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Chicago police spied on survivor of Chicago police shooting, Black political groups
PrivacySOS | September 20, 2015
Between November 2014 and January 2015, the Chicago Police Department monitored the First Amendment protected speech and political activity of dozens of groups and individuals, among them a victim of a Chicago police shooting, according to newly released documents.
Chicago based activist Freddy Martinez released the records after obtaining them through a public records request under the Illinois open government law. Among the groups monitored by CPD were:
Chicago Cop Watch, Let Us Breathe, Hands Up United, Occupy Chicago, We Charge Genocide, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Justice for Roshad, Black Youth Group, the Black is Back Coalition, the New Black Panther Party, and many others.
Among the individuals monitored were Corey Harris, who was shot by Chicago police, and anyone identifying as an activist or anarchist on social media.
The monitoring occurred during a period of intense agitation nationwide surrounding a Missouri grand jury’s finding that Officer Darren Wilson should not be tried for his killing of young Black Ferguson resident Mike Brown.
Freddy Martinez, the activist who obtained the records, told me:
“The resources of the government would be better served addressing the deep issues that BLM is highlighting. However the priority seem to be to criminalizing dissent and tracking activists through “fusion center” sharing of intelligence. It’s extremely important for groups to understand that this is the level of surveillance they will face when organizing against a racist police structure because we do have to organize.”
The document listing the protests, groups, and individuals monitored by the Chicago police during this time period is called a First Amendment Worksheet. Officers must fill out these forms when they intend to monitor protected speech or associational activities. The form disclosed to Martinez is an order to terminate the surveillance. Martinez told me that the initial authorization to conduct form was probably written outside the time period for which he requested records. It would be useful to see that document to understand exactly why the Chicago police, in its own mind, viewed these Black organizing initiatives with such apprehension and apparent fear.
Late last year, Chicago police used a controversial stingray device to track protesters’ cell phones. Earlier this year, records revealed that CPD officers were picking through the trash of opponents to the Chicago Olympic bid.
MI5 Paying British Muslims ‘Decent Money’ to Spy on Mosques
Sputnik – 21.09.2015
Britain’s intelligence agency is paying Muslims to spy on people living in their own community to try and avert terrorist attacks from homegrown Islamist extremists, the Guardian has revealed.
An anonymous source told the newspaper that MI5 is employing people across the UK in Muslim communities on temporary contracts to gather intelligence on specific targets attending the same mosque. The source also stated that they knew of one Muslim informant who had been paid £2,000 by the security services to spy on a specific mosque for six weeks.
“It’s been driven by the [intelligence] agencies, it’s a network of human resources across the country engaged to effectively spy on specific targets. It’s decent money.”
But MI5’s method of paying money to Muslims to spy on people in their own communities has come under criticism. Salman Farsi, spokesman for the UK’s largest mosque in East London suggested that the offer of money could corrupt the intelligence:
“If there’s money on the table, where’s the scrutiny or the oversight to ensure whether someone has not just come up with some fabricated information? Money can corrupt.”
Following the terror attack in London in 2007, the government spent millions on its ‘Prevent’ program to counter radicalization — but eight years later it has been accused of failing to prevent terrorism and radicalization, instead alienating Muslim communities in the UK further.
According to the Islamic Human Rights Commission: “The Prevent regime of attempting to stop young Muslims from being radicalized is not working and is simply alienating Muslims in Britain by serving as a cover for intelligence gathering on the community.”
But with around 650 young men, women and children who have fled the UK to join ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria and 3,000 radicalized terrorists being monitored by the MI5 — it appears that the British government’s approach to preventing terror isn’t working — and could be the reason behind this new push for for more powers.
The UK government and intelligence agency MI5, however, appear to agree on one thing — big Internet and social media companies should do more to help the authorities by reporting suspect users and sharing swathes of encrypted data with intelligence officers.
In what seems to be another round in the public relations exercise pushing for more support for the government’s Communications Data Bill or Snooper’s Charter, as it is also known, the head of the MI5 told British media that Internet and social media companies should inform the authorities if any users are a cause for concern.
“Some of the social media companies operate arrangements for their own purposes under their codes of practice which cause them to close accounts.”
Andrew Parker also wants the companies to pass on those account details to the intelligence agencies.
The Snooper’s Charter, would grant police and intelligence services more power to intercept and monitor almost every channel of terrorist communication online and offline. It could also force Internet companies to hand over users’ private data.
UK Home Secretary Theresa May is seeking support from Internet and telecoms companies for the controversial surveillance bill, whilst the head of MI5 publicly calls for more powers to monitor potential threats amid revelations his officers are paying Muslim informants ‘decent money’ to spy on their own mosques.
Guantanamo prisoner tells of release trauma in first meeting with lawyer
Reprieve | September 21, 2015
A Guantanamo prisoner released to his native Morocco has spoken of the terror he felt at the way he was treated by US authorities on his flight home.
Younous Chekkouri — released from Guantanamo last week having been held in the US prison for more than a decade without charge or trial – was blindfolded, forced to wear ear-defenders, and had his arms shackled to his legs during the ten hour flight to Morocco. In a testimony given today to his local lawyer in Casablanca, where he remains detained, Younous described how the flight replicated the total sight and sound deprivation he experienced when he was first rendered to Guantanamo.
Lawyers for Younous at international human rights NGO Reprieve, have raised concerns about his ongoing detention in Morocco and the effect that the behaviour of the US authorities, during his transfer, would have had on his fragile mental state.
In 2010, Younous was cleared for release from Guantanamo – a process involving unanimous agreement by six US federal agencies including the CIA, FBI and Departments of State and Defense. He has never faced a trial or been charged with a crime.
Cori Crider, attorney for Younous and strategic director at Reprieve, said: “Younous was tortured and brutally mistreated for years during his Guantanamo ordeal. As if this weren’t enough for a man the US government would later declare should never have been imprisoned in the first place, he then spent the flight back to Morocco blindfolded and with his arms shackled to his legs. We are very concerned for Younous’ health during his ongoing detention in Morocco and urge the authorities to release him as soon as possible.”
Native American 2nd grader kicked out of class for traditional Mohawk haircut
RT | September 21, 2015
It was a banner week for kicking children out of class. Along with Ahmed Mohamed and his homemade clock, a Native American student in Utah was told to lop off his Mohawk or leave school… until tribal leaders were forced to step in.
Jakobe ‘Kobe’ Sanden entered his second-grade classroom rocking a ‘hawk, not because it looked cool but because of his Native American roots. But the 7-year-old was kicked out of class because the “distracting” hairstyle was a potential violation of Arrowhead Elementary School’s dress code.
His mother, Teyawwna Sanden, was shocked when Susan Harrah, the principal of the Santa Clara school, called her to say she needed to pick up Kobe and get his hair cut.
“We had the students that weren’t used to it,” Harrah told KSTU. “They had called that out. So the teacher brought the student to my attention.”
The school’s online handbook stipulates only that “hair color should be within the spectrum of color that hair grows naturally.” The school district’s dress code goes further, stating: “Students have the responsibility to avoid grooming that causes a distraction or disruption, interrupting school decorum and adversely affecting the educational process.” It also notes that “Extremes in body piercings, hair styles and hair colors may be considered a distraction or disruption.”
Mrs. Sanden expressed her frustration with the school’s reaction on Facebook.
“So f’n irritated right now,” she wrote. “I get a call from the boys’ school and she said Kobe’s not allowed to have a Mohawk … that’s it’s school policy. WTH! Really? It’s hair!”
Kobe’s father, Gary Sanden, was traveling on business, but reached out to the Washington County School District’s superintendent of primary education.
“I was sympathetic to what they were saying ‒ that it was not conducive to learning,” he told the Washington Post. “But I couldn’t understand how it could be a distraction to the kids.”
The superintendent told Mr. Sanden to obtain letters from tribal leaders supporting the family’s claim that the hairstyle is part of their heritage.
“That’s like calling up the governor of our state,” he said. “But I called and got the letter. My wife did too.”
Mr. Sanden is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, which is based out of New York. Mrs. Sanden belongs to the Kaibab Band of Paiutes Indians.
“It is common for Seneca boys to wear a Mohawk because after years of discrimination and oppression, they are proud to share who they are,” Seneca Nation Tribal Councilor William Canella wrote. “It’s disappointing that your school does not view diversity in a positive manner, and it is our hope that Jakobe does not suffer from any discrimination by the school administration or faculty as a result of his hair cut.”
Canella told Native News Online that it was “ironic” that he had to step in to address such a situation at a school named Arrowhead. The Utah school is near several Indian reservations, including the Shivwits Band of Paiutes, which is less than 10 miles from the school, and the Kaibab Paiutes near the Utah-Arizona border.
Harrah told the Salt Lake Tribune that she felt the school had handled the hairstyle hubbub with aplomb, though she was surprised by the attention it received because “It took about a half hour of my time.”
“If there’s any kind of a hairstyle that is a distraction, then we have to tell the parents that we’ve got a problem,” she said. “There’s a protocol that we go through, and I felt like it was handled efficiently and that we respected their culture.”
Mr. Sanden disagreed, however, noting that Kobe had to sit by himself in Harrah’s office for part of the day.
“That’s the sad part of the whole situation,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune. “To ostracize him like that ‒ that’s stuff from the ’50s.”
“It could have been handled 10 different ways,” he added.
Kobe’s removal from class happened less than three weeks after Malachi Wilson, a 5-year-old member of the Navajo Nation, was sent home on his first day of kindergarten at F.J. Young Elementary in Seminole, Texas because his long hair violated that district’s dress policy. The school required Malachi’s mother, April Wilson, to obtain documentation proving her son’s indigenous heritage, Indian Country Today reported.
In Louisiana last August, a Rastafarian teenager was suspended for three weeks from South Plaquemines High School for his dreadlocked hairstyle. The unnamed student claimed that not cutting his hair was a religious mandate, and his mother presented a letter from the 1st Church of Rastafar I explaining the religious significance of not cutting one’s dreadlocks. He eventually received an exemption from the school.
Anonymous general who predicts anti-Corbyn mutiny should be named by GCHQ – SAS veteran
RT | September 21, 2015
A former SAS soldier has blasted the anonymous British Army general who predicted a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn is elected prime minister. He said the comments threaten democracy and that the military has no excuses for declining to investigate.
Ben Griffin, who served in the Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Service in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now a member of anti-war group Veterans for Peace UK, told RT the general’s comments published in the Sunday Times are an affront to democracy.
“Why is this General cowering behind a reporter?” he said.
“He should go public with his statement. He is threatening the democratic will of the British people and he exposes the lie that the armed forces exist to protect our freedoms.”
After calls for an investigation began, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is reported to have told the Independent newspaper it would not launch a leak investigation due to there being too many generals to investigate.
There are around one hundred generals currently serving in the British Army.
Asked if this excuse was feasible, Griffin pointed out that the government had something of a monopoly on surveillance.
“GCHQ could tell the MoD today which general it was,” he said, referring to the government’s world-leading signals intelligence agency.
“GCHQ collect the metadata of all phone calls and emails so they will have a record of which generals have been in touch with the journo who wrote the story,” he added.
The general in question, who is said to have served in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, told the Sunday Times a Corbyn general election victory in 2020 would precipitate “mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.”
“Feelings are running very high within the armed forces,” the individual said. “You would see a major break in convention with senior generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn over vitally important policy decisions such as Trident, pulling out of NATO and any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.”
He appeared to pledge a military rebellion, with the army directly intervening in democracy.
“The Army just wouldn’t stand for it,” the general claimed.
“The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardize the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that.
“You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.”
Down the Memory Hole: NYT Erases CIA’s Efforts to Overthrow Syria’s Government
By Adam Johnson | FAIR | September 20, 2015
FAIR has noted before how America’s well-documented clandestine activities in Syria have been routinely ignored when the corporate media discuss the Obama administration’s “hands-off” approach to the four-and-a-half-year-long conflict. This past week, two pieces—one in the New York Times detailing the “finger pointing” over Obama’s “failed” Syria policy, and a Vox “explainer” of the Syrian civil war—did one better: They didn’t just omit the fact that the CIA has been arming, training and funding rebels since 2012, they heavily implied they had never done so.
First, let’s establish what we do know. Based on multiple reports over the past three-and-a-half years, we know that the Central Intelligence Agency set up a secret program of arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces. This has been reported by major outlets, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and, most recently, the Washington Post, which—partly thanks to the Snowden revelations—detailed a program that trained approximately 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year, or roughly 1/15th of the CIA’s official annual budget.
In addition to the CIA’s efforts, there is a much more scrutinized and far more publicized program by the Department of Defense to train “moderate rebels,” of which only a few dozen actually saw battle. The Pentagon program, which began earlier this year and is charged with fighting ISIS (rather than Syrian government forces), is separate from the covert CIA operation. It has, by all accounts, been an abysmal failure.
One thing the DoD’s rebel training program hasn’t been a failure at, however, is helping credulous reporters rewrite history by treating the Pentagon program as the only US effort to train Syrian rebels–now or in the past. As the US’s strategy in Syria is publicly debated, the CIA’s years-long program has vanished from many popular accounts, giving the average reader the impression the US has sat idly by while foreign actors, Iranian and Russian, have interfered in the internal matters of Syria. While the White House, Congress and the Pentagon can’t legally acknowledge the CIA training program, because it’s still technically classified, there’s little reason why our media need to entertain a similar charade.
Let’s start with Peter Baker’s New York Times piece from September 17 and some of its improbable claims:
Finger-Pointing, but Few Answers, After a Syria Solution Fails
By any measure, President Obama’s effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting.
Notice the sleight-of-hand. There may only be “four or five American-trained fighters… fighting” expressly against ISIS, but there is no doubt thousands more American-trained fighters are fighting in Syria. The DoD’s statement is manifestly false, but because the New York Times is simply quoting “the military”—which, again, cannot not legally acknowledge the CIA program—it is left entirely unchallenged. This is the worst type of “officials say” journalism. The premise, while ostensibly critical of US foreign policy, is actually helping advance its larger goal of rewriting US involvement in the Syrian civil war. A four-year-long deliberate strategy of backing anti-Assad forces–which has helped fuel the bloody civil war and paved the way for the rise of ISIS–is reduced to a cheesy “bumbling bureaucrat” narrative.
Baker went on:
But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place — a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
At briefings this week after the disclosure of the paltry results, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, repeatedly noted that Mr. Obama always had been a skeptic of training Syrian rebels. The military was correct in concluding that “this was a more difficult endeavor than we assumed and that we need to make some changes to that program,” Mr. Earnest said. “But I think it’s also time for our critics to ‘fess up in this regard as well. They were wrong.”
In effect, Mr. Obama is arguing that he reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to combat the Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now has been vindicated in his original judgment. The I-told-you-so argument, of course, assumes that the idea of training rebels itself was flawed and not that it was started too late and executed ineffectively, as critics maintain.
The sleight-of-hand continues: The article presents the training of rebels as a “way to combat the Islamic State,” but repeatedly speaks in general of training Syrian rebels as something “Obama always had been a skeptic of”–which flies in the face of the fact that he did so, to the tune of $1 billion a year over four years, with 10,000 rebels trained.
But the piece goes on to make clear that when it’s talking about “training Syrian rebels,” it’s referring not only to the anti-ISIS program but to efforts to overthrow Syria’s government as well:
The idea of bolstering Syrian rebels was debated from the early days of the civil war, which started in 2011. Mrs. Clinton, along with David H. Petraeus, then the CIA director, and Leon E. Panetta, then the Defense secretary, supported arming opposition forces, but the president worried about deep entanglement in someone else’s war after the bloody experience in Iraq.
In 2014, however, after the Islamic State had swept through parts of Syria and Iraq, Mr. Obama reversed course and initiated a $500 million program to train and arm rebels who had been vetted and were told to fight the Islamic State, not Mr. Assad’s government.
This is outright false. These two paragraphs, while cleverly parsed, give the reader the impression Obama parted with the CIA and Mrs. Clinton on arming opposition forces, only to “reverse course” in 2014. But the president never “reversed course,” because he did exactly what Panetta, Petraeus and Clinton urged him to do: He armed the opposition. Once again, the Pentagon’s Keystone Kop plan is being passed off by journalists who should know better as the beginning and end of American involvement in the Syrian rebellion. Nowhere in this report is the CIA’s plan mentioned at all.
The whitewashing would get even worse:
Some Syrian rebels who asked for American arms in 2011 and 2012 eventually gave up and allied themselves with more radical groups, analysts said, leaving fewer fighters who were friendly to the United States.
But the US did get arms to Syrian rebels in 2012. In fact, Baker’s own publication reported this fact in 2012 (6/21/12):
CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition
Indeed, according to a rather detailed New York Times infographic from 2013 (3/23/13), shipments began, at the latest, in January 2012:
Note that this map accompanied an article headlined “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From CIA.”
The CIA’s program, when discussing a fraught foreign policy issue like Syria, is simply thrown down the memory hole. How can the public have an honest conversation about what the US should or shouldn’t do in Syria next when the most respected newspaper in the US can’t honestly acknowledge what we have done thus far?
The New York Times wouldn’t be alone. Comcast-funded Vox would also ignore the CIA rebel training program in its almost 4,000-word overview of the Syrian civil war. Again, the Pentagon’s program would be the sole focus in regards to funding rebels, along with reports of Gulf states doing so as well. But the CIA funding, training and arming thousands of rebels since at least 2012? Nowhere to be found. Not mentioned or alluded to once.
Reuters and the Washington Post’s reports on the US’s Syrian strategy revamp, while they didn’t fudge history as bad as the Times and Vox, also ignored any attempts by the CIA to back Syrian opposition rebels. This crucial piece of history is routinely omitted from mainstream public discourse.
As the military build-up and posturing in Syria between Russia and the United States escalates, policy makers and influencers on this side of the Atlantic are urgently trying to portray the West’s involvement in Syria as either nonexistent or marked by good-faith incompetence. By whitewashing the West’s clandestine involvement in Syria, the media not only portrays Russia as the sole contributor to hostilities, it absolves Europe and the United States of their own guilt in helping create a refugee crisis and fuel a civil war that has devastated so many for so long.
Scientist leading effort to prosecute climate skeptics under RICO ‘paid himself & his wife $1.5 million from govt climate grants for part-time work’
Climate Depot | September 20, 2015
Leader of 20 scientist effort to prosecute climate skeptics under RICO revealed as ‘Climate Profiteer’! ‘From 2012-2014, the Leader of RICO 20 climate scientists paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for part-time work.
George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla ( jshukla@gmu.edu) a Lead Author with the UN IPCC, reportedly lavishly profits off the global warming industry while accusing climate skeptics of deceiving the public. Shukla is leader of 20 scientists who are demanding RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges be used against skeptics for disagreeing with their view on climate change.
Shukla reportedly moved his government grants through a ‘non-profit’. The group “pays Shukla and wife Anne $500,000 per year for part-time work,” Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. revealed.
“The $350,000-$400,000 per year paid leader of the RICO20 from his ‘non-profit’ was presumably on top of his $250,000 per year academic salary,” Pielke wrote. “That totals to $750,000 per year to the leader of the RICO20 from public money for climate work and going after skeptics. Good work if you can get it,” Pielke Jr. added.
UK Labour leader to unveil rail nationalization plan
Press TV – September 20, 2015
UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is set to announce his plan for the full renationalization of the railways as his first major policy, reports say.
Corbyn will make the announcement at the Labour conference in Brighton next week, the Guardian says.
He will put forward plans for this to be one of the first acts of any Labour government led by him in 2020, meaning a third of the railways would be in public hands by the end of his first parliament in 2025, the report added.
Corbyn is not likely to have any difficulty getting the proposal through party conference which has voted for rail renationalization many times.
The Labour chief’s policies include spending more on public services like schools and hospitals, scrapping nuclear weapons, renationalizing industries like the railways, according to reports.
Since 1983, he has been member of parliament for the London constituency of Islington North. He is also a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition.
During his three decades in parliament, Corbyn has spent much of his time championing causes such as the Stop the War coalition, campaigning against the private finance initiative and supporting peace efforts in the Middle East.
The Plot Against Harold Wilson
Army plots against British PMs are not new
By Jonathon Cook | The Blog From Nazareth | September 20, 2015
There has been some debate about the significance of a warning issued this weekend through Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times by a British general that the army would “mutiny” and use “whatever means possible, fair or foul” should the new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ever get near 10 Downing Street.
Here is what the general says:
Owen Jones has wondered whether this is tantamount to a threat of a coup by the military. I think it would be foolhardy indeed to read it as anything else.
None of us should be surprised either. We have been here before. In the late 1960s and early 1970s serving British generals, former generals, members of the royal family and the British security services regularly spoke in such terms to each other – and even occasionally on prime-time television.
More than that, when they believed their privileges were under serious threat, as they did during Harold Wilson’s various governments of that period, they actively plotted for “regime change”, or a military takeover.
In what became a self-serving vicious spiral, the establishment’s fears were further stoked by the stream of black propaganda being fed to the British media by MI5, Britain’s version of the FBI. It painted Wilson’s government and the trade union movement as overrun with Communists trying to bring down the UK. One can imagine a Corbyn government will receive no better treatment from the UK media than Wilson’s did.
Like Corbyn today, Wilson was seen in the 60s and 70s as a major threat to the entrenched privileges of British elites.
There is a wealth of evidence for all this, though perhaps unsurprisingly many sources, including Wikipedia, casually dismiss these accounts as “conspiracy theories” – the ultimate way to shut down scrutiny.
But the evidence was so compelling even the BBC, hardly a risk-taking broadcaster at the best of times, girded its loins back in 2006 to make a documentary called “The Plot Against Harold Wilson”. In fact, as the 90-minute film makes clear by interviewing many of those directly involved, there was not one plot but many against Wilson.
It probably all seemed like old, slightly quaint history to the BBC nine years ago. Now it sounds frighteningly relevant again.
Here is a fascinating line from one plotter, Sir General Walter Walker, at about 1hr 2 mins in. Speaking in the early 1970s, he says on film:
If you plot to destroy this present system, what are you doing? You are committing a form of treason. I have taken an oath of allegiance to my Queen and I am not prepared to see that oath interfered with.
For me at least, that puts the ludicrous current debate about Corbyn refusing to sing the national anthem in an even more sinister light. It also makes me wonder how the armed forces read the recent comment from the prime minister, David Cameron, that Corbyn poses a “threat to national security”.
Lord Mountbatten, the Queen’s cousin, a mentor to Prince Charles, and the chief of the defence staff at the time, became a figurehead for this group (45.30) and even approached the Queen Mother to seek her blessing for a military takeover. Walker says Mountbatten told him: “If you want help from me, will you let me know?”
David Stirling, the founder of Britain’s most elite military unit, the SAS, also confirmed to journalists that a coup against Wilson was seriously being considered (1.03). He contemplated bumping off trade union leaders to foment so much anger among workers that the military would be forced to move in to restore order.
Soon, the army, members of the royal family and the intelligence services were all considering how they might launch a military coup to stop a Communist takeover (the one that had been created in MI5’s lurid imagination). Brian Crozier, a former intelligence officer who supported a coup, says there was a “widespread attitude” in favour of it among the military (1.05)
It culminated in a show of force by the armed forces, which briefly took over Heathrow airport (1.06) without warning or coordination with Wilson’s government. Marcia Williams, Wilson’s secretary, called it a “dress rehearsal”. Wilson resigned unexpectedly soon afterwards, apparently as the pressures started to get to him.
As the BBC concludes:
The actions of Lord Mountbatten and senior military and intelligence officers undermined democracy and brought this country to the brink of a coup. Yet no one has been held accountable, there has been no proper inquiry.
Such an inquiry might have served at least as a small deterrent for those, like the general who approached the Sunday Times, who are thinking once again in terms of a coup.
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The Curious Case of the Missing Professor Mifsud
By Johanna Ross | August 13, 2019
In The Times newspaper on July 30th, appeared a short and succinct article, easily missed were it not for its intriguing headline: ‘Missing academic Joseph Mifsud at heart of Mueller investigation’. The academic in question, one may or may not have heard of, depending on the extent to which one is reliant on mainstream media for keeping abreast of the news. But anyone attempting to keep up with the complex and murky world of the Mueller investigation, may be familiar with the name of this mysterious and elusive figure.
For it is none other than Professor Mifsud, affiliated with both the Universities of Stirling and East Anglia in the UK, that was identified by the FBI as being the source of the information that Russia had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. And intriguingly, the same Professor Mifsud who disappeared in October 2017 and has been missing ever since.
It was in April 2016 that Mifsud, who was qualified in education but somehow managed to find his way into the world of international diplomacy (becoming director of the London Academy of Diplomacy in 2012), reportedly met George Papadopoulos, foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, where he is said to have told him that the Russian government had ‘dirt on Hillary Clinton’. This information was then allegedly passed by Papadopoulos to the Australian High Commissioner in London, before being repeated to US authorities; that effectively Papdopoulos had known about the DNC hack prior to it being carried out. In short, Mifsud was the key to the whole ‘Russiagate’ scandal. … continue
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