Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

We’re All Enemies of the State: Draconian Laws, Precrime & the Surveillance State

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Foundation | August 6, 2019

We’ve been down this road many times before.

If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this: it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for power grabs under the guise of national security.

Cue the Emergency State, the government’s Machiavellian version of crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.

It’s all part of the grand plan for total control.

The government’s proposed response to the latest round of mass shootings—red flag gun laws, precrime surveillance, fusion centers, threat assessments, mental health assessments, involuntary confinement—is just more of the same.

It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power.

For instance, in his remarks on the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism.

Let that sink in a moment.

In a post-9/11 America, Trump’s promise bodes ill for whatever remnants of freedom we have left. With that promise, flippantly delivered without any apparent thought for the Constitution’s prohibitions on such overreach, the president has given the FBI the green light to violate Americans’ civil liberties in every which way.

This is how the Emergency State works, after all.

So what does the government’s carefully calibrated response to this current crisis mean for freedom as we know it? Compliance and control.

For starters, consider Trump’s embrace of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will only add to the government’s power.

Be warned: these laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

Seventeen states, plus the District of Columbia, now have red flag laws on their books. That number is growing.

In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.

With these red flag gun laws, the intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.

Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally, especially when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

After all, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

According to the FBI’s latest report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”

In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.

Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

You will be tracked wherever you go.

You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Connect the dots.

Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers which will attempt to “predict” crimes and identify so-called criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

See how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat, including those who challenge its authority?

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention.

All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Bars & Nightclubs Use A Secret Biometric Blacklist To Ban Customers

credit: PatronScan
MassPrivateI | June 4, 2019

Have you ever had too much to drink at a bar or nightclub and been asked to leave? Have you or your friends ever mouthed off to the staff or been hit on by a bartender? Have you ever Yelped or Tweeted about bad food or service?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you will be mortified to learn that Big Brother knows exactly who you are.

According to an article in OneZero, the service industry has been quietly using PatronScan to scan the IDs and faces of 500,000+ bargoers.

“PatronScan collected and retained information on over 10,000 patrons in Sacramento in a single day. Within a five month period, that added up to information on over 500,000 bargoers.”

PatronScan otherwise known as Servall Biometrics Inc. is first and foremost a biometrics company that makes its money collecting biometric data of service industry patrons.

Bars, nightclubs and pubs have used PatronScan to create a blacklist of 40,000+ customers. Who are, on average banned for 19 years from local establishments!

“Using PatronScan, our venues have placed over 40,000 people on our shared Banned Patron list.”

According to PatronScan’s Privacy Policy, the only way a person can be removed from their secret banned (blacklist) list is to contact the manager or head of security first; then and only then will PatronScan open up their own investigation.

PatronScan has such a cozy relationship with law enforcement that they warn customers, “their personal information may also be provided to us from a law enforcement agency.”

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and snugly, knowing your local bar or club could be working with law enforcement?

 Bars and nightclubs share blacklist of customers

According to OneZero,

“PatronScan logs where customers live, the household demographics for that area, how far each customer travelled to a bar, and how many different bars they had visited. OneZero readily shares the information it collects on patrons, both banned and not, at the request of police.”

Being banned from one bar in a city or town means you are banned (blacklisted) from other participating establishments.

When you see the notification that a patron has been banned from another venue you get a clear picture as to what happened so you can keep your venue and your patrons safe.”

To make matters worse, law enforcement has also created a national database, masquerading as a non-profit that tracks every alcoholic purchase you have made.

The database is called the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association or “Place of Last Drink.”

“NLLEA President Justin Nordhorn, said the NLLEA received federal money to develop a nationwide database that will allow law enforcement officers to input information about where an intoxicated person was drinking before a crime, incident or alcohol-related crash.”

With PatronScan, police will know who you are and which bars or clubs you frequent. With the NLLEA they will know what you had to drink. How is that for Orwellian?

Service industry is being turned into min-surveillance centers

When is the last time you entered a restaurant, bar or nightclub and asked the manager about their surveillance cameras? When is the last time you asked a doorman or the manager about what they do with your personal information?

OneZero’s article warns,

“Many bars also have internal surveillance systems, which track customer trends and catalog granular data on purchasing habits. Those tools are growing increasingly sophisticated, with obvious benefits to venue owners and law enforcement.”

NBC 6 warned that letting bars scan your drivers license puts all your personal information at risk.

“With just a swipe of your ID, computers can pull your personal information from it giving it to the companies and facilities you visit, including your date of birth, address, height and weight.”

According to the ACLU, drivers licenses contain much more information than you are being told.

Drivers license barcodes, “contain your name, address, date of birth, hair color, eye color, height, weight, gender, license expiration date, organ donor status, driver’s license number, fingerprint, medical information, and driver classification code.” (To see a detailed list of what drivers license barcodes contain, click here.)

The privacy implications for allowing your ID to be scanned by a bar or nightclub are clearly not worth the risks.

As NBC 6 warned, “the security experts we spoke to recommend you ask security to write down your information or take a photo of your ID instead of swiping it.”

Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties attorney with the ACLU of Northern California said, “When you create a confidential ban list, that’s an invitation for businesses to pretextually exclude people because of who they are.”

And that is the problem with companies like PatronScan, Suspect Technologies and law enforcement watchlists. Businesses and police do not need a reason to place someone on a banned list or watchlist and that should scare the hell out of everyone.

If Big Brother has its way — and it certainly appears like it does — Americans will soon find themselves living in a mirror-image of China where everything we do and everywhere we go is scrutinized.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

A.I. “RoboCops” Continue Rolling Out Across U.S. Collecting Biometrics and Creating Blacklists

By Nicholas West | Activist Post | August 6, 2019

The move toward using robots in law enforcement, private security, and even to scare away the homeless, has been a decade-long trend that is now becoming much more prevalent in everyday life.

“RoboCops” have now been launched coast to coast in 16 states. Last year, it was security robots deployed in New York City. As Aaron Kesel reported:

The robots are able to scan anyone walking on the sidewalks, record license plates, use infrared vision, and one of the scariest uses of this technology is the capability to detect cellphone serial numbers within a designated patrolling area.

Huntington Park, CA now has its own version that’s been added to the police force, the “HP RoboCop.” MassPrivateI sent out an alert a couple months ago that this particular model would be rolled out. At the time, we received the usual promotional statement from police advertising the many benefits that citizens would received.  This inspired Muckrock to file a records request from the HPPD to see what details might have been omitted from the original reporting. Last week, Muckrock received a cache of documents that they are now releasing to the public.

Muckrock highlights the added surveillance of the citizenry that they have the pleasure of funding with their own tax money to the tune of $8,000 per month, per robot, to operate. Once again the technology is being supplied by Knightscope, a leader in the field for supplying both governments and private security:

According to released marketing materials, HP RoboCop is a K5 model security robot produced by the Silicon Valley-based manufacturer Knightscope, Inc. […]

Interestingly enough, the HPPD goes further, and makes the claim that the K5 is a “fully autonomous security data machine” that can actually “differentiate between a harmless passer-by and potential criminal.”

As for how the K5 does that, the HPPD points to the robot’s many, many sensors, which are apparently capable of detecting faces, license plates, and even smartphones. Said faces, license plates, and smartphones can then be run against a “blacklist,” which would send an alert to the HPPD.

Here are some other bullet points that show the widespread applications for the new security robots:

Muckrock notes that the program is up for review after one year, which is about the only encouraging detail that is offered in Muckrock‘s extensive report.

The level of data collection, analytics and reporting smacks of yet more pre-crime efforts driven by artificial intelligence algorithms. As I’ve been reporting, these programs are coming under much greater scrutiny after other police departments have recorded failures across all three aforementioned parameters. The threat to privacy and overall liberty has become so grave that even the top university A.I. experts in the world have signed-off on a warning of “Technical Flaws” In Pre-Crime Police Systems. Other experts have said that A.I. police systems are “no better than a crystal ball” in predicting crime.

Now would be the time for residents of Huntington Park to get informed and begin asking serious questions about this new program during this one-year review period before more of their money is wasted on the pseudo-science of predictive policing.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Ministers Taken into Custody as India Scraps State’s Special Status

Sputnik – 05.08.2019

New Delhi – Former Chief Ministers of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are among several prominent leaders who have been reportedly taken into custody by the authorities.

The move came after the Indian parliament’s Upper House passed a Bill on Monday to split the State into two separate territories. Earlier, the Indian government had revoked the state’s special constitutional status under Article 370.

“Taking into consideration the current situation in Kashmir and strong security concerns, it has become imperative to take measures to prevent the law and order situation in Kashmir from deteriorating any further,” the Office of the Executive Magistrate in Srinagar said in an order addressed to Mehbooba Mufti.

On Sunday evening, both Mufti – the leader of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Omar Abdullah- Vice President of National Conference (NC) were placed under house arrest.

Mufti, the last serving Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir from 2016 to 2018, was taken from her home in the state capital of Srinagar to a nearby government guest house.
Revocation of Article 370

Article 370 provided Jammu and Kashmir with an autonomous constitution as well as key decision-making rights. But earlier in the day, the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said that the law was an impediment to the state’s growth, hampering the development of democracy and healthcare in the region, while fostering poverty and entrenching corruption in the state.

Relations between India and Pakistan have long been tense over competing claims to parts of the Kashmir region since the countries gained independence from Britain in 1947.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

UK teen claims forced to retract rape accusation against Israelis

MEMO | August 5, 2019

A 19-year-old British teen who was allegedly gang raped by 12 Israelis at a resort town in Cyprus has claimed she was forced to retract her accusation under pressure from local police.

Last month, 12 Israelis aged 15 to 18 were arrested on suspicion of raping a British teen in their hotel room in the popular tourist resort of Aya Napa, Cyprus. However, little over a week later all 12 teenagers were released and allowed to return to Israel after the British woman admitted to having fabricated her accusations against them.

The teen confessed that she had engaged in consensual sex with several of the Israelis but was filmed by them in the process, making her feel “angry and insulted” enough to file the rape accusation. She was subsequently arrested and could face up to a year in prison for misleading local authorities.

However, the unnamed British teen has now claimed that she was forced to retract her initial accusation against the Israelis under duress, arguing she was denied access to a lawyer and that Cypriot police threatened to arrest her friends if she did not recant her testimony.

According to an exclusive yesterday by British newspaper the Sun, the teen “says she was denied a lawyer and then pressurised to withdraw her complaint by [Cypriot] detectives, who threatened to arrest her friends for ‘conspiracy’ if she did not comply”.

“The teenager claims officers then dictated a statement in which she admitted faking allegations,” the British daily added, “and she reluctantly signed only because she was exhausted after eight hours at the police station.”

The British teen’s lawyer, Michael Polak, argued that “[the girl’s] confession was obtained under oppression given the threats made. She was not cautioned and was not given access to a lawyer as was her right under the European Convention on Human Rights.”

“It is also understood that unfortunately none of the proceedings at the Cypriot police station were recorded,” Polak added.

The Sun also claims to have seen police reports of the incident, including medical examinations of two Israelis which found “suspicious scratches” and “bruises on their backs and chests, as if they had been in a struggle”.

The newspaper added that the Israeli teens then “told detectives they had been attacked at the hotel by the girl’s friends,” but added that “the hotel’s manager insisted no such fight took place”.

The girl’s allegations add yet another element to an incident fraught with discrepancies and conflicting narratives, which has raised questions about the Cypriot authorities’ handling of the case and the early release of the Israeli teens.

Last week, seven of the accused teens returned to Israel, being greeted by fanfare and celebration at the country’s Ben Gurion Airport. As Israeli daily the Times of Israel reported at the time, the “teens were jubilant when they were greeted by their cheering families” and “loudly celebrated their release by opening champagne bottles, chanting ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ [the people of Israel live] along with ‘the Brit is a whore’.”

The teens did not express any regret about the incident, with one telling Hebrew-language media: “I feel great. The truth came out and I am happy.” Another teen called his release “a miracle from God” and vowed to sue the British teen for libel.

Meanwhile Israeli journalists, social media activists and onlookers criticised the boys’ “hero’s welcome”, pointing out that had the alleged incident taken place in Israel, the teens would have faced criminal charges for filming the sex act, which was made illegal in Israel in 2014.

It is not yet clear whether there is now any recourse to re-investigate the Israelis should the British teen’s accusations against the Cypriot police be proven. She currently remains in custody and is slated to appear in court on Wednesday, though could wait several months until being brought to trial.

August 5, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

London council cancels pro-Palestine event over anti-Semitism claims

MEMO | August 5, 2019

London Borough of Tower Hamlets refused to host the closing rally of the annual bike ride raising money for Palestinian children in the besieged Gaza over claims it would breach the IHRA’s anti-Semitism criteria, the Guardian reported on Saturday.

The council told the Big Ride for Palestine, which was established on the first anniversary of Israel’s 2014 offensive on Gaza and which has raised nearly £150,000 for sports equipment for children in the enclave, that the event could not go ahead in the borough “without problems”.

However, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign won a Freedom of Information battle in an effort to discover the reasons behind the council’s refusal to host the event. Internal emails revealed that council staff agreed not to make public “anti-Semitism concerns”.

While the council officials, according to the Guardian, told the organisers that there was a risk speakers might express views which contradicted the council’s policies on community cohesion and equality, behind the scenes the council attributed the reasons to “real risk” of violating IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism.

The council’s concerns were linked to the Big Ride’s website describing Israel’s illegal occupation and siege of the Gaza Strip as “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing”.

When considering how to explain the decision, the Guardian said, one council official said it would be wise to “avoid the anti-Semitism aspect… as this could open a can of worms and come back to bite us”.

The Guardian reported a council spokesman saying: “The council gave the application careful consideration and decided not to host the event, because we do not host rallies with political connotations, albeit without direct links to political parties.”

However a spokesperson for the charity said its work was focused on helping the 300,000 children in Gaza showing signs of severe psychological distress.

The spokesperson added: “It’s a dreadful thing when an over-scrupulous interpretation of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is used behind closed doors to prevent awareness raising of the situation in Palestine and the need for humanitarian support.”

It’s not too late to donate, follow this link and give what you can.

August 5, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t Let Mass Shooters and the New York Times Destroy Freedom of Speech

By Thomas L. Knapp | Garrison Center | August 5, 2019

“Online communities like 4chan and 8chan have become hotbeds of white nationalist activity,” wrote the editors of the New York Times  on August 4 in the wake of a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. Then: “Law enforcement currently offers few answers as to how to contain these communities.”

Wait, what? Is the Times really implying what it looks like they’re implying? Yes.

“Technology companies have a responsibility to de-platform white nationalist propaganda and communities as they did ISIS propaganda,” the editorial continues. “And if the technology companies refuse to step up, law enforcement has a duty to vigilantly monitor and end the anonymity, via search warrants, of those who openly plot attacks in murky forums.”

Translation: The New York Times has announced its flight from the battlefield of ideas. Instead of countering bad ideas with good ideas, they want Big Tech and Big Government to forcibly suppress the ideas they disagree with.

Not so long ago, the Times‘s editors endorsed a very different view:

“One of the Internet’s great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft’s home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like.”

Now the Times says providers have a “responsibility” to block access to sites the Times doesn’t like. That’s quite a change. And an ugly one.

There are plenty of good reasons, both moral and practical, to oppose the suppression of white nationalist and other “extremist” web platforms.

Free speech is a core moral value for any society that aspires to freedom of any kind and to any degree. We must — MUST — have the right to form our own opinions, and to express those opinions, no matter how ugly others may find those opinions. Without that freedom, no other freedoms can survive.

As a practical matter, “extremists,” like everyone else, will choose to state, promote, and argue for their beliefs. If they can do so in public, those beliefs can be engaged and argued against. If they can’t do so in public, they’ll do so in private, without anyone to convince them (and those they quietly bring into their circles over time) of the error of their ways. The rest of us won’t have a clue what might be in the offing — until the guns come out, that is.

It’s appalling to see the New York Times endorsing an end to the freedom that undergirds its very existence and the prerogatives of every other newspaper and soapbox speaker in America. The only substantive difference between the editors’ position and that of the El Paso shooter, allegedly one Patrick Crusius, is that the shooter did his own dirty work.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).

August 5, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

8chan: Another Mass Shooting, Another Internet Purge

This is the third “mass casualty event” in less than a year that was immediately followed up by censorship of the internet

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | August 5, 2019

Last year, after the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the new social-media platform Gab was attacked in the press and bullied off the internet. Earlier this year, following the Christ Church mosque attack, New Zealand briefly totally blocked access to several websites.

Yesterday, two men allegedly killed 30 people at a store in Dayton Ohio, and a mall in El Paso Texas.

Today 8chan has been totally shut down.

If you don’t know what 8chan is, well it’s like 4chan but without the sense of decency. If you don’t know what 4chan is, it’s like reddit went off its medication.

Both places could be, can be, kinda gross. But they could – can – also be amazing. Insightful. Useful. Free speech is like that. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly. If you cut off the ugly parts it’s not “free speech” anymore. This is something we all know, but the media is trying to force us to forget.

The boot-licking justification of this move was, of course, spear-headed by The Guardian: 8chan: the far-right website linked to the rise in hate crimes

The hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers in the media are happy to pretend this is about “hate” and “safety”, which is obviously not true.

Take the thrust of the Guardian article:

8chan… why is a website linked to such a high death count allowed to exist on the open internet?

Wouldn’t this question be better asked of www.cia.gov?

Or maybe one of these…

www.defense.gov
www.lockheedmartin.com
www.army.mil
www.mi5.uk

Hell, going by this absurd definition of “death count” – meaning, apparently, “someone who allegedly posted there, allegedly committed a crime” – then all Facebook and twitter have staggering “death counts”.

Known war criminals use twitter every single day. The alleged Christ Church shooting was live-streamed on Facebook (but it was 8chan that got blocked).

The Guardian itself published an opinion piece, a week ago, written by Alastair Campbell. A man with a body count 50,000x higher than the Texas shooting. That’s an El Paso every day for 137 years.

This isn’t about hate, they’re fine with hate. This isn’t about blood, they love blood.

8chan was no more hateful or bloody than any website on that list, so what was the real problem with it?

It was anonymous, fringe and uncontrollable.

It was free. Now it’s not. Any one of us could be next.

August 5, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

India strips Kashmir of autonomous status; Pakistan warns of ‘all options’

Press TV – August 5, 2019

The Indian government has scrapped the special autonomy status for the disputed region of Kashmir as part of attempts to fully integrate the Muslim-majority region with the rest of the country.

The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs announced on Monday that India’s President Ram Nath Kovind had signed a decree abolishing Article 370 of the constitution that grants a measure of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, including the right to draft its own laws.

The decree declared the measure came into force “at once.”

The president also moved a bill proposing that the Indian-administered part of Kashmir be divided into two regions directly ruled by New Delhi.

The government in New Delhi lifted a ban on property purchases by people from outside Jammu and Kashmir, opening the way for Indians to invest and settle in the disputed region like any other part of India, a measure likely to provoke a backlash in the territory.

The controversial move came after large parts of the Muslim-majority territory was placed under lockdown, with mobile networks, internet services and telephone landline services having been cut.

Moreover, prominent political leaders in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir were placed under house arrest and the Indian paramilitary forces deployed thousands of extra troops across the region, raising fears of a crackdown.

Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had earlier pushed for radical political changes in Jammu and Kashmir even before he won a re-election in May.

Modi said the old laws had hindered Kashmir’s integration with the rest of India.

Pakistan slams ‘illegal’ India move in Kashmir

The Indian government’s move on Monday to strip Kashmir of the special autonomy it has had for seven decades prompted a furious response from nuclear-armed rival Pakistan.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry denounced the move as “illegal” in a statement, saying, “as the party to this international dispute, Pakistan will exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps.”

Meanwhile, a senior Pakistani security source said that a meeting of the Pakistani military’s top commanders had been called for Tuesday.

Kashmir has been split between India and Pakistan since it was partitioned in 1947. Both countries claim all of Kashmir and have fought three wars over the territory.

Indian troops are in constant clashes with armed groups seeking Kashmir’s independence or its merger with Pakistan. India regularly accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants and allowing them across the restive frontier in an attempt to launch attacks. Pakistan strongly denies the allegation.

In recent years, southern Kashmir has seen intense fighting between Indian forces and armed Kashmiri fighters, who are demanding independence for the Himalayan region.

The conflict has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians.

August 5, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard vs Google Goliath

By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | July 31, 2019

Introduction

The Tulsi Gabbard presidential campaign has filed a major law suit against Google. This article outlines the main points of the law suit and evidence the the social media giant Google has quietly acquired enormous influence on public perceptions and has been actively censoring alternative viewpoints.

Tulsi Now vs Google

Tulsi Now, Inc vs Google, LLC was filed on July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The attorneys demand a jury trial and seek compensation and punitive damages of “no less than $50 million”. Major points and allegations in the 36 page complaint include:

* Google has monopolistic control of online searches and related advertising.

“Google creates, operates, and controls its platform and services, including but not limited to Google Search, Google Ads, and Gmail as a public forum or its functional equivalent by intentionally and openly dedicating its platform for public use and public benefit, inviting the public to utilize Google as a forum for free speech. Google serves as a state actor by performing an exclusively and traditionally public function by regulating free speech within a public forum and helping to run elections.” (p. 22)

“Google has used its control over online political speech to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate millions of Americans want to hear from. With this lawsuit, Tulsi seeks to stop Google from further intermeddling in the 2020 United States Presidential Election….. Google plays favorites, with no warning, no transparency – and no accountability (until now).” (p. 2)

* At a critical moment Google undercut the Tulsi Gabbard campaign.

“On June 28, 2019 – at the height of Gabbard’s popularity among internet researchers in the immediate hours after the debate ended, and in the thick of the critical post-debate period… Google suspended Tulsi’s Google Ads account without warning.” (p. 3)

* Google has failed to provide a credible explanation.

The Tulsi campaign quickly sought to restore the account but “In response, the Campaign got opacity and an inconsistent series of answers from Google… To this day, Google has not provided a straight answer – let alone a credible one – as to why Tulsi’s political speech was silence right when millions of people wanted to hear from her.” (p. 4)

Google started by falsely claiming “problems with billing”. Later, as reported in the NY Times story  a Google spokesperson claimed, “Google has automated systems that flag unusual activity on advertiser accounts – including large spending changes – to prevent fraud…. In this case, ‘our system triggered a suspension.’ ”

* Google has a corporate profit motive to oppose Tulsi Gabbard.

“Google has sought to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a presidential candidate who has vocally called for greater regulation and oversight of (you guessed it) Google.” (p. 5)

“During her career in Congress, Gabbard has moved to limit the powers of big tech companies like Google and has fought to keep the internet open and available to all. Gabbard has co-sponsored legislation that prohibits multi-tiered pricing agreements for the privileged few, and she has spoken in favor of reinstating and expanding net neutrality to apply to Internet firms like Google.” (p. 8)

* Google’s Actions have caused significant harm to the Gabbard campaign and violate the U.S. and California constitutions and California business law.

“Through its illegal actions targeting Tulsi Gabbard, Google has caused the Campaign significant harm, both monetary (including potentially millions of dollars in forgone donations) and nonmonetary (the ability to provide Tulsi’s important message with Americans looking to hear it).” (p. 6)

“Google engages in a pattern and practice of intentional discrimination in the provision of its services, including discriminating and censoring the Campaign’s speech based not on the content of the censored speech but on the Campaign’s political identity and viewpoint.” (p. 27)

* The public has an interest in this case.

“Unless the court issues an appropriate injunction, Google’s illegal and unconstitutional behavior will continue, harming both the Campaign and the general public, which has an overwhelming interest in a fair, unmanipulated 2020 United States Election cycle. (p. 34)

Google Explanation is Not Credible

The Tulsi Gabbard Google Ads account was abruptly suspended at a crucial time. The question is why. Was it the result of “unusual activity” triggering an “automatic suspension” as claimed by Google? Or was it because someone at Google changed the software or otherwise intervened to undermine the Tulsi campaign?

Google’s explanation of an “automatic suspension” from “unusual activity” is dubious. First, the timing does not make sense. The sudden rise in searches on “Tulsi Gabbard” began the day before the suspension. Gabbard participated in the first debate, on June 26. Her presence and performance sparked interest among many viewers. Next morning, June 27, media reported that, “Tulsi Gabbard was the most searched candidate on Google after the Democratic debate in Miami“. The second debate took place in the evening of June 27. With discussion of the Democratic candidates continuing, Tulsi Gabbard continued to attract much interest. Around 9:30 pm (ET) on June 27 the Google Ads account was suddenly suspended. If the cause was “unusual activity”, the “automatic trigger” should have occurred long before.

Second, Google was fully aware of the “unusual activity”. In fact, Google was the source of the news reports on the morning of June 27. Reports said:

According to Google Trends, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the most searched candidate heading into the debate… After the debate, Gabbard vaulted into first.

Third, it is hard to believe that Google does not have any human or more sophisticated review before suspending a major Ads account on a politically intense night. It should have been obvious that the cause of increased interest in Gabbard was the nationally televised Democratic candidates debate and media coverage.

Fourth, the changing explanation for the sudden suspension, starting with a false claim that there were “problems with billing”, raises questions about the integrity of Google’s response.

Google Secretly Manipulates  Public Opinion

Unknown to most of the public, there is compelling evidence that Google has been secretly manipulating search results to steer public perception and election voting for years.

Dr. Robert Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, has been studying and reporting on this for the past six years. Recently, on June 16, 2019 he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Constitution. His testimony is titled “Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat”.

Epstein has published 15 books and over 300 scientific and mainstream media articles on artificial intelligence and related topics. “Since 2012, some of my research and writings have focused on Google LLC, specifically on the company’s power to suppress content – the censorship problem, if you will – as well as on the massive surveillance the company conducts, and also on the company’s unprecedented ability to manipulate the thoughts and behavior of more than 2.5 billion people worldwide.”

As shown by Dr. Epstein, Google uses several techniques to manipulate public opinion. The results of an online search are biased. Search “suggestions” are skewed. Messages such as “Go Vote” are sent to some people but not to others.

Epstein’s written testimony to Congress includes links to over sixty articles documenting his research published in sites ranging from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to Huffington Post. Epstein’s testimony describes “disturbing findings” including:

“In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton”. (Epstein notes that he supported Clinton.)

“On Election Day in 2018, the ‘Go Vote’ reminder Google displayed on its home page gave one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes than it gave the other party.”

“My recent research demonstrates that Google’s ‘autocomplete’ search suggestions can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split without people’s awareness.”

“Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015. This is because many races are very close and because Google’s persuasive technologies are very powerful.”

Google is Censoring Alternative Media  

In August 2017 TruePublica reported their experience and predictions in an article titled The Truth War is Being Lost to a Global Censorship Apparatus Called Google“. The article says:

60 percent of people now get their news from search engines, not traditional human editors in the media. It is here where the new information war takes place – the algorithm. Google now takes 81.2 percent of all search engine market share globally…. Google has the ability to drive demand and set the narrative, create bias and swing opinion.

In 2017, the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) reported that:

In April, under the guise of combating ‘fake news’, Google introduced new procedures that give extraordinary powers to unnamed ‘evaluators’ to demote web pages and websites. These procedures have been used to exclude the WSWS and other anti-war and oppositional sites. Over the past three months, traffic originating from Google to the WSWS has fallen by approximately 70%…. In key searches relevant to a wide range of topics the WSWS regularly covers – including the U.S. military operations and the threat of war, social conditions, inequality and even socialism – the number of search impressions … has fallen dramatically.

In essence, Google has “de-ranked” and is screening searchers from seeing alternative and progressive websites such as truepublica, globalresearch, consortiumnews, commondreams, Wikileaks, truth-out and many more. WSWS reported numerous specific examples such as this one: “Searches for the term ‘Korean war’ produced 20,932 impressions in May. In July, searches using the same words produced zero WSWS impressions.”

“The policy guiding these actions is made absolutely clear in the April 25, 2017 blog post by Google’s Vice President for Engineering, Ben Gomes, and the updated ‘Search Quality Rater Guidelines’ published at the same time. The post refers to the need to flag and demote ‘unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and conspiracy theories’ – broad and amorphous language used to exclude any oppositional content…. “The ‘lowest’ rating is also to be given to a website that ‘presents unsubstantiated conspiracy theories or hoaxes as if the information were factual.’”

Tulsi Gabbard has not only called for much stricter regulations on high tech and social media giants. She has also challenged the Democratic Party and foreign policy establishment.  In late February 2016 she resigned as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee to support candidate Bernie Sanders against the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton. Gabbard has issued sharp criticisms of US foreign policy.  Recently she said:

We hear a lot of politicians say the same argument that we’ve got to stay engaged in the world otherwise we’ll be isolationists as though the only way the United States can engage with other countries is by blowing them up or strangling them with economic sanctions by smashing them and trying to overthrow their governments. This is exactly what’s wrong with this whole premise and the whole view in which too many politicians, too many leaders in this country are viewing the United States role in the world.

Conclusion

Did Google take the next step from silently censoring websites the corporation does not like to undercutting a presidential candidate the corporation does not like?

This is a David vs Goliath story. Google/Alphabet is the 37th largest corporation in the world with enormous political influence in Washington. Whether or not the law suit succeeds, it may serve the public interest by exposing Google’s immense monopolistic power and illustrate the need for much more regulation, transparency and accountability. It may also generate more interest in Gabbard’s message and campaign in the face of efforts to silence her.

Investigative Journalist Rick Sterling can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com.

August 1, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Human Sacrifice: A Grand Old American Political Tradition

By Thomas L. Knapp – Garrison Center – July 31, 2019

On July 25, US Attorney General William Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to update its execution protocol and schedule five executions starting this December.

Whether you support the death penalty or not — I don’t because I prefer limited government and the power to kill disarmed prisoners in cold blood and with premeditation is by definition unlimited government — it’s worthwhile to ask:  Why? More to the point, why now?

Politics, that’s why.

There’s a presidential election next year. US president Donald Trump’s re-election strategy, for lack of ability to grow his electoral “base,” is to keep that base energized and enthused so that they’ll turn out to vote instead of sitting at home catching up on re-runs of their favorite TV shows. And that base overwhelmingly supports capital punishment.

With this move Trump is quite literally throwing his supporters some red meat.

There’s nothing new about the idea. Indeed, the history of public human sacrifice for political purposes runs all the way back to ancient history in the Americas.

The last large-scale pre-Columbian example of the practice, that of the Aztecs, involved removing the beating heart of the victim atop a pyramid temple before flinging his or her corpse down the steps to the approval of a roaring crowd.

In this way, Aztec kings not only maintained support from their own populace through religious appeals, but kept smaller tribes too busy raiding each other (for sacrificial captives to be given to the Aztecs in tribute) to ally with each other against the Aztecs themselves.

If these five executions occur, they will be the first federal executions since 2003. There have only been three since 1963.

So, again, why? And why now?

Deterrence isn’t an answer that fits. Overall, violent crime (including murder) in the US has trended downward, not upward in recent decades (from 758 per 100,000 population in 1992 to 383 per 100,000 in 2017).

Neither is reducing the costs of incarceration. Of the more than 200,000 federal prisoners, only 61 are on “death row.” It’s unlikely that killing every last one of them would make a big dent in the Bureau of Prisons’ $7.3 billion annual budget.

Speaking which, if money was the problem, all five of the prisoners to be killed could as easily have been left to the justice systems of the states in which their crimes were committed and would have likely been sentenced to either death or life imprisonment without involving federal tax dollars in the first place.

The same is true regarding any moral “eye for an eye” imperative.  Handling this kind of crime, and this kind of criminal, was never supposed to be the federal government’s job.

That leaves politics. Trump is playing Montezuma in hopes of holding on to his adoring crowd.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).

July 31, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment