Angela Merkel, desperate to stay in power, is now claiming Russian hackers are ready to attack Germany’s 2017 elections
By Alex Christoforou | The Duran | December 12, 2016
Remember when the Obama administration spied on German media as well as the German government, and specifically Angela Merkel.
The Duran remembers.
In 2015 CNN‘s Jake Tapper reported…
An investigation by the German parliament is raising questions on whether the Obama administration not only spied on journalists in that country, but also interfered in the exercise of the free press under the guise of U.S. national security.
That the NSA was spying on German officials is not new, though it continues to upset free press advocates and those with memories of repressive governments both Communist and Nazi. In 2013, the German magazine Der Spiegel, using information gleaned from files stolen and leaked by Edward Snowden, first reported that the NSA was intercepting German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone communications.
On Thursday, WikiLeaks released more information, presumably from that surveillance, from a conversation between Merkel and her personal assistant in October 2011, saying the Chancellor “professed to be at a loss” between two courses of action to take in the Greek financial crisis. The WikiLeaks release also suggested that the NSA was spying on German ministers in addition to Merkel. The U.S. ambassador to Germany, John Emerson, was summoned to meet with the Chancellery chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, to discuss the news.
Less observed this week was news that the NSA was eavesdropping not only on Merkel, but also in some capacity on Germany’s free press, specifically Der Spiegel.
Merkel appears to have forgiven and forgotten the FACT that the US hacked and spied on Germany.
American “factual” hacking of Germany… no problem. Russian “imaginary” hacking of Germany… problem.
Following on Obama’s “Russian hacker” witch hunt, Germany is also sounding the alarm bells of Kremlin influenced hacking meant to weaken Germany and the European Union.
Reuters reports that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has reported an increase in Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns “aimed at destabilising German society, and targeted cyber attacks against political parties.”
The German agency’s statement to Reuters seems to be perfectly timed with the CIA claim of Russian election hacking. Coincidence?
“We see aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties,” Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV spy agency, said in statement.
Maassen, who raised similar concerns about Russian efforts to interfere in German elections last month, cited what he called increasing evidence about such efforts and said further cyber attacks were expected.
The agency said it had seen a wide variety of Russian propaganda tools and “enormous use of financial resources” to carry out “disinformation” campaigns aimed at the Russian-speaking community in Germany, political movements, parties and other decision makers.
The goal was to spread uncertainty, strengthen extremist groups and parties, complicate the work of the federal government and “weaken or destabilise the Federal Republic of Germany”.
The agency said it had seen a “striking increase” in spear-phishing attacks attributed to Russian hacking group APT 28, also known as “Fancy Bear” or Strontrium. It is the same group blamed for the hack of the U.S. Democratic National Committee this year and a cyber attack on the German parliament in 2015.
The attacks were directed against German parties and lawmakers and were carried out by government bodies posing as “hacktivists”, the agency said.
German officials have accused Moscow of trying to manipulate German media to fan popular angst over issues like the migrant crisis, weaken voter trust and breed dissent within the European Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow.
But intelligence officials have stepped up their warnings in recent weeks, alarmed about the number of attacks.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she could not rule out Russia interfering in Germany’s 2017 election through Internet attacks and misinformation campaigns.
*****
Russian officials have denied all accusations of manipulation and interference intended to weaken the European Union or to affect the U.S. presidential election.
For an economy in “tatters”, as Barack Obama famously noted, Russia sure has a lot of power in hacking election systems, and manipulating global media. Zerohedge adds…
Either Russian intelligence officials have suddenly become extremely efficient at disrupting national elections in the world’s largest democracies or the establishment leaders of those democracies have intentionally launched a coordinated, baseless witch hunt as a way to distract voters from their failed policies. We have our suspicions on which is more likely closer to the truth…
Like accusations made by Hillary and Obama in the U.S., German politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, have asserted that Russian intelligence agents and media outlets have attempted to spread “fake news” in an effort to “fan popular angst over issues like the migrant crisis.” Of course, it can’t simply be that voters disagree with Merkel’s “open border” policies which have resulted in a massive influx of migrants that have been linked to increasing crime, terrorist attacks and sexual assaults on German citizens… that would just be silly and racist and xenophobic.
Democratic Losers and their Media Backers Seek a Scapegoat for Their Own Disaster
The fake campaign to blame ‘the Russians’
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening! | December 11, 2016
The New York Times and Washington Post, the nation’s two top national newspapers, have been breathlessly reporting of late, with little sign of any appropriate journalistic skepticism, on a purported massive and successful Russian conspiracy to throw the US election to their “favored” candidate, Donald Trump. But the Chicago Tribune has weighed in with a more measured piece, suggesting that while the CIA, a particularly secretive and politically driven organization, may be making that claim, the FBI is not convinced.
While even the Tribune sometimes ignores inserting the requisite “alleged” that should precede any reference to unproven claims that Russia is behind the hacking of the Democratic Party’s (and the Republican Party’s) email server, the paper does also note that Democrats in particular are “frustrated” by the “murky nature” of the FBI’s analysis, with outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), calling on FBI Director James Comey to resign.
The reason for the Democrats’ frustration is also made clear. As the Tribune reports:
With so much of the evidence about Russia’s alleged role in the election shrouded in secrecy because of strict classification rules, Democrats and Republicans in Washington who have access to the underlying intelligence say they have struggled to make their respective cases, leaving an already deeply divided public convinced that both sides are shading their conclusions to help the candidate they backed on Election Day.
The reality is that the CIA has presented no hard evidence that Russia is behind the hacking of the DNC’s or or Clinton’s private home server. The excuse is given that the Agency doesn’t want to disclose any of its sources, so the reader is left with the pathetic plea, from both the Agency and the White House: “Trust us.”
But why would anyone trust the CIA or the White House on anything? We’re talking about an agency and a Executive Branch that between them are known to have lied (during the GW Bush years) about anthrax labs in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, lied about what were aluminum tubes imported to make irrigation equipment being evidence of missile-building, lied about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda, and (during the Obama years) lied about Syria’s government using Sarin gas on its own people in Damascus, lied about the details of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, lied about the role of a murderous CIA agent captured by Pakistani police while posing as a US consular employee, lied about the extent of National Security Agency Spying both at home and abroad, and lied about Russia invading Ukraine and shooting down a civilian Malaysian jumbo jet.
If one were to take a moment and think about what is being alleged here by Democrats — that a national presidential election was successfully subverted by the releasing of hacked emails showing major corruption and malfeasance by the Democratic Party leadership in undermining the fairness of the party’s presidential primary to benefit one candidate — Hillary Clinton — and to destroy the candidacy of her opponent Bernie Sanders — it should lead to one of two alternative conclusions.
Either the Russians did Americans a favor, by exposing the epic corruption of one of their two major parties and one of the candidates seeking to become president — something that a more independent and aggressive domestic media would have and should have done on their own, if not by hacking then by paying attention to, instead of ignoring and blacking out, what frustrated insiders like DNC Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who quit in disgust saying the DNC was undermining the primaries on behalf of Clinton’s campaign. Or alternatively, we’re being told that our 240-year-old democracy is so shriveled and weak that an outside government can easily undermine it and manipulate the outcome as if we were some corrupt and fragile banana republic.
Either conclusion is rather pathetic and depressing to contemplate.
Meanwhile, the media feeding frenzy over unsubstantiated claims over Russian subversion of our last election ignores the reality that this kind of thing is something the US has been doing abroad at least since the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War. Not content to just undermine elections through dirty tricks, fake news and secret payments in Europe, Latin America, later in Eastern Europe and Russia, and in Asia, the US has also fomented countless coups to overthrow or attempt to overthrow existing elected governments, most recently in Honduras, Ukraine, Venezuela and Brazil, and so has no grounds to complain by claiming that the Russians were allegedly doing the same thing here.
On the other hand, if the Democratic Party leadership had kept its hand off the scale during the primaries, and had not made such heavy-handed efforts to get major news organizations like the Times, MSNBC, the Daily News, Post and others to help it undermine Bernie Sanders, Sanders would have won both the party’s nomination and the presidency, and probably the Congress also into the bargain, and we wouldn’t be looking at a looming Trump presidency and Republican Congress.
Not only that, but with a genuinely popular candidate running for president in both parties (like it or not Trump was wildly popular among a significant segment of the population), no Russian propaganda campaign would have had a prayer of impacting voter opinion or the results of the voting.
If indeed there really was a Russian effort to swing this recent election, it could only have succeeded in a situation where the electorate was disgusted by its choices and was voting negatively for a lesser evil. And that situation only could arise where the two major parties were so corrupted that they were trying desperately to keep genuinely popular candidates from winning the nomination.
In fact that is what happened. The Republican leadership tried mightily to keep Donald Trump, a loose cannon who has disavowed many basic and long-held Republican principles, such as backing US empire and Israel, supporting any and all trade agreements, and viewing Russia as an existential enemy, from winning their party’s nomination. They failed, but not for lack of trying. The Democratic leadership tried everything, too, to prevent insurgent self-described “socialist” candidate Sanders from winning the nomination, and thanks to underhanded manipulation of the primaries, corrupt meddling in media coverage of Sanders, an anti-democratic voting block of locked-in “super delegates,” committed to backing Clinton whatever the result of the primaries, and some crooked efforts to depress voting in key primary states including New York and California, they succeeded in throwing the nomination to Clinton. She of course was doomed, by their very ham-handed interference in the primaries, to go on to lose the general election.
That corrupt fiasco has left Democratic Party leadership hacks and their backers in the corporate media with nothing to do but find a scapegoat for their disastrous performance, hence the fake “Russia-did-it” claims.
It’s a sad commentary on the pathetic decline of democracy in the United States, but is also a clarion call for a rebirth of grassroots democratic resurgence.
If there’s a bright spot in the new situation, it’s that progressives, socialists, radicals and disaffected citizens of all kinds now should have a clear understanding of how corrupt the Democratic Party really is.
One of two things must happen. That party must be completely swept clean of the hacks, frauds, crooks, compromisers and charlatans who populate its leadership and who hold most of the elected posts remaining in Democratic hands in Congress. Alternatively, the Democratic Party must be abandoned as unsalvageable, with progressive forces, from labor organizations, advocates of the poor and elderly, environmental activists, human rights and peace groups, women’s rights and minority rights organizations, civil libertarians and others rallying both to create something new to replace it, and organizing in the street to resist the new Trump government.
Any new left party needs to abandon the fraudulent tactics of so-called “identity politics,” in which a basically pro-corporate Democratic Party has sought to appease and cajole support for its corporatist candidates and agenda by catering to individual issues of various groups leaning its way by default. Instead, the really big issues need to be tackled head on: expanding Social Security, making Medicare universal for everyone of all ages, restoring genuine progressive taxation on the wealthy, ending foreign wars, closing overseas bases and slashing the military, obeying international law (including treaties with sovereign Native American nations), making public college free to all, nationalizing support for primary and secondary education so that all communities have well-funded, quality public schools, declaring a national mobilization to quickly end reliance upon fossil fuels to combat climate change, and creating jobs for everyone through a massive public spending program on job training and infrastructure repair and modernization.
These and other ideas are things that most Americans can and would get behind, not simply efforts to pander to various specific interest groups.
Do this and the Russians — assuming they even have been trying to manipulate our elections — wouldn’t have a chance of influencing anyone.
THE CIA MOVES TO INVALIDATE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS BY BLAMING RUSSIAN HACKING
By The_Real_Fly | ZeroHedge | Dec 10, 2016
It’s happening. After careful analysis of all the media punditry and the ‘leaks’ coming out from the CIA, I can only conclude that there is a concerted effort taking place to invalidate the U.S. elections, in an effort to unseat Donald Trump. Last night the Washington Post reported a leak from inside the CIA, saying they had a report that showed evidence that Russia hacked the elections in order to elect Donald Trump. They’re being very specific about that point. Pay attention.
Source: Reuters
The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.
The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning the election.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”
The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week.
The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, the Post quoted officials as saying on condition of anonymity.
In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.
President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.
A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.
In response to the Washpo article, the Trump campaign issued the following statement.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s representatives said in a statement attributed to the transition team. “The election ended a long time ago … It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”
Bob Baer, former CIA and current ‘Hunting Hitler’ shill, said in an interview today that if the evidence regarding Russia hacking the elections are true, then the only logical thing to do is to hold new elections.
‘If the evidence is there, I don’t see any other way than to vote again.’
Bear in mind, this is all in response to the Wikileaks revelations about the abject corruptness of both the DNC and the Hillary Clinton camp, via the Podesta emails. Instead of offering an explanation for their egregious actions, the elite cadre inside of the Clinton camp have instead gone on the offensive to blame the messenger. The media is running with this story with long strides, not only suggesting that Russia hacked the elections, but also saying Trump was — in fact — a ‘witting asset’ of Moscow. What’s next, an arrest order for Trump and his campaign staff for being covert Russian spies?
‘This nation was attacked by a cyber warfare operation.’
Whatever happened to the smug certainty that the elections wouldn’t be rigged? I suppose what Obama meant was they wouldn’t be rigged had Hillary won, yes?
Paul Joseph Watson offers some valuable insight, in regard to the naked hypocrisy of America’s ruling elite:
Russia interfered in the election! (no evidence).
LEFT FREAKS OUT.
Saudi Arabia provably bankrolled Clinton’s campaign
MEH
Facebook is rolling out its censorship initiative
By Guilherme Schneider | The Duran | December 11, 2016
According to the latest news, Facebook began testing new tools to carry out its “censorship plan” with the convenient name of “tackling fake news.”
One of the tools being tested will enable users to inform Facebook if certain news stories are using “misleading language”. Some users posted images of a Facebook survey asking them the following question: “To what extent do you think that this link’s title withholds key details of the story?”
It is still unclear what kind of actions will be carried out after this additional user data is collected, but it is likely that some sort of a database, containing the list of “misleading” news websites, will be generated.
In a not so distant past, content curators from Facebook confirmed that they received direct orders from the company to decrease the relevance or even hide from the newsfeed stories and content with conservative language. While this happened in the US, similar stories have been reported in Brazil, the United Kingdom around the time of the Brexit, and in other countries.
Recently, there were other reports that Facebook developed a special software for the Chinese market, that would enable “third parties” to authorize the contents before posting it to the users’ timelines. The initiative would aim to lift the current ban of the social network in the country.
The main difference between this new software and the current content restrictions in some countries is that instead of reacting to a government request to hide some specific content, Facebook would be giving the option to some parties to censor and take down content before it is even posted on the network.
It is true that when you create a profile on Facebook or any other social network, you have to accept their terms and conditions in exchange of the “non-paid” use of their platforms. Most of these terms and conditions allow the social networks to analyze the information you are publishing and reading for several proposes, including targeted advertisements and many others, but is it ethical to take advantage of this information in order to define what content you should or should not see?
Since Snowden’s NSA information leak we know that we can be monitored at any given time by government agencies. The realization of this fact, however, didn’t stop us from using the same networks, nor did it prompt the closure of the NSA or other agencies involved in the perpetual recording and storage of our data.
But now we are entering a whole new level in which companies and governments will attempt to define what is right and wrong for us to see, read and talk about. What’s even more bizarre is that the CEO of Facebook could potentially run for office, while retaining control over one of the most popular social networks in the world, with the capability of retrieving and accessing anyone’s data without any sort of legal process or request.
This Orwellian trend is truly scary and we should really start questioning ourselves about the extent to which we are willing to continue handing out personal data and information to these networks.
Law Enforcement Uses Border Search Exception as Fourth Amendment Loophole
By Sophia Cope | EFF | December 8, 2016
In recent months, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have sought access to private data on the cell phones of two journalists. Such incidents are offensive because they threaten the independence of the press and pose specific risks to confidential sources. This government overreach also highlights how weak legal protections at the border for digital devices threatens the privacy of all travelers to and from the U.S., including Americans.
In October 2016, CBP airport agents denied Canadian photojournalist Ed Ou entry into the country, after detaining him for over six hours and seizing his three cell phones. According to Mr. Ou’s ACLU attorney, “When the officers returned the phones to him several hours later, it was evident that their SIM cards had been temporarily removed because tamper tape covering the cards had been destroyed or altered.” Similarly, in July, CBP airport agents detained U.S. citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Maria Abi-Habib for an hour and a half. When they asked for her cell phones, she refused and referred them to the newspaper’s lawyers. Fortunately, the agents eventually released her without seizing or searching her devices.
Regular travelers are also at risk. We wrote an amicus brief in the case of Ali Saboonchi, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Iran whose cell phones and flash drive were seized at the U.S.-Canadian border after returning from a vacation to Niagara Falls. Mr. Saboonchi had been under investigation for violating the trade embargo with Iran and federal agents took advantage of his presence at the border to invoke the border search exception to the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment generally requires the government to obtain a warrant from a judge, based on probable cause that evidence of a crime will be found, before seizing and searching personal property. Thus, if federal agents had wanted to confiscate and rifle through Mr. Saboonchi’s digital devices while he was at home in Maryland, they would have needed to obtain a probable cause warrant to do so.
Decades ago, as we discussed in our brief, the Supreme Court created the border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, permitting government agents to search travelers’ luggage, vehicles or persons without a warrant and almost always without any individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.
The Supreme Court made clear, however, that a warrantless and suspicionless search must be for a discrete public interest purpose. Should a search instead be for the purpose of ordinary law enforcement, the government must first secure a probable cause warrant. For example, the government may set up a warrantless and suspicionless vehicle checkpoint to find drunk drivers for the narrow purpose of roadway safety (notwithstanding the fact that drunk drivers may be arrested and prosecuted)—but the government may not set up a warrantless and suspicionless vehicle checkpoint to find illegal narcotics, which amounts to uncovering “evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.”
Thus the Supreme Court created the border search exception only for the narrow purposes of enforcing the immigration and customs laws, including ensuring that duties are paid on imported goods and that harmful people (e.g., terrorists) and harmful goods such as weapons, drugs, and infested agricultural products do not enter the country.
As we discussed in our Saboonchi brief, there is serious doubt as to whether searches generally of cell phones and similar digital devices meaningfully advance the narrow purposes of the border search exception so as to justify the categorical rule that no warrant or suspicion is required, especially in light of the significant privacy interests at stake.
The seizure and search of Mr. Saboonchi’s digital devices specifically was egregious because CBP agents used the border search exception as a loophole around the general Fourth Amendment rule. CBP agents were not acting to enforce the immigration and customs laws—but instead used Mr. Saboonchi’s presence at the U.S.-Canadian border as an excuse to conduct a warrantless search for the purpose of advancing a preexisting law enforcement investigation. Similarly, CBP agents seemed to use the journalists’ presence at international airports as an excuse to gather intelligence. CBP agents interrogated Mr. Ou about the “extremists” he had come into contact with as a journalist. And as Ms. Abi-Habib recounted, the CBP agent who asked for her cell phones stated, “We want to collect information,” presumably related to her foreign reporting.
Warrantless and suspicionless searches of digital devices at the border (or the functional equivalent of the border, such as international airports and other ports of entry) are particularly invasive given the vast amounts of personal information they can store or connect to in the “cloud”—beyond what any piece of traditional luggage can hold.
Courts have recognized the significant privacy interests in today’s digital devices, placing the law related to the border search exception in flux.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in U.S. v. Cotterman (2013) held that border agents needed to have reasonable suspicion—somewhere between no suspicion and probable cause—before they could conduct a “forensic” search, aided by sophisticated software, of the defendant’s laptop. Unfortunately, the court held that a manual search of a digital device is “routine” and so the standard border search rule applies (i.e., no warrant or suspicion is needed)—even though the privacy interests in any given device do not change.
The Supreme Court held in Riley v. California (2014) that the police may not invoke another exception to the warrant requirement, the search-incident-to-arrest exception, to search a cell phone possessed by an arrestee—instead, the government needs a probable cause warrant. The Court stated, “Our holding, of course, is not that the information on a cell phone is immune from search; it is instead that a warrant is generally required before such a search, even when a cell phone is seized incident to arrest.” The Riley Court focused on the vast amount of personal information stored on or accessible via modern devices: “The United States asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is ‘materially indistinguishable’ from searches of these sorts of physical items. That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon… Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse.”
While Riley was not a border search case, the Court’s ruling was reasonably broad, thus we argued in our Saboonchi brief that the border search exception should not apply to cell phones and similar digital devices.
In light of these decisions, CBP’s 2009 policy related to searching digital devices at the border is woefully out of date and should be updated.
However, we are eager to further the law in this area—to make it clear that the Riley decision applies at the border. So we are interested in hearing about instances where CBP agents search cell phones, laptops, tablets, or similar digital devices without consent (including whether they access “cloud” content such as social media profiles), either manually or with the aid of software, either at the land borders or following international flights and cruises.
In the meantime, to protect your data when traveling consider some of our quick tech tips, our longer border search whitepaper, our more recent set of tech tips related to encountering the police during protests, and our very comprehensive guide to Surveillance Self-Defense.
Washington Post, State Dept. ‘Fake News’ Lists Threaten Freedom of Speech in US
Sputnik – 10.12.2016
The lists of alleged “fake news” sites being disseminated by the Washington Post and other corporate media outlets as well as bureaucrats at the US Department of State are a direct threat to continued freedom of speech in the United States, US analysts told Sputnik.
According to Beau Grosscup, California State University Professor Emeritus of Political Science, the lists of fake new promoted by The Washington Post and State Department “are direct threats to free speech and critical thinking and independent journalism.”
On Thursday, defeated US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned about the dangers of fake news. In a call for censorship, Clinton insisted that leaders in both the private and public sectors needed to aggressively expand their efforts to crack down on alleged fake news sites — necessarily involving independent and alternative media — in order to protect democracy in the United States.
US analysts reacted with alarm to possible congressional allocations for State Department and other bureaucrats to determine what is fake news, especially given the fact that the now discredited corporate media, in collusion with the establishment, have knowingly spread fake news for years.
Grosscup pointed out that the US corporate mainstream media had systematically disseminated fake news on behalf of both, the US government and big business for generations.
“As powerful corporate and government institutions long in the business of ‘fake news’ on behalf of powerful people and institutions, the hypocrisy and political nature of their effort [to accuse independent news sites] is self-evident,” Grosscup said.
The US government and major corporations had constantly sought to discredit or make invisible “non-establishment” news outlets and investigative journalists especially of the political Left, Grosscup recalled.
The new blacklists went one step further in narrowing the scope of “responsible journalism” by institutional fiat, Grosscup explained.
“Unlike fake news lists produced by individual citizens, due to their corporate/government power base, these essentially secret ‘official black lists’ have instant credibility to many citizens,” he warned.
The new blacklists now being circulated were products of powerful self-anointed guardians of constitutional freedoms and so-called “responsible journalism” who had long sought to control critical discourse, Grosscup observed.
“Their effect is immediate and unless challenged, will further escalate the assault on what is left of North American democracy,” he predicted.
Pittsburgh University Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner recommended that clear thinking and sensible US policy on the fake news issue should be based on some simple premises:
“Social media, in functional terms, are no different from the telephone. They are a neutral instrument that should be treated as a public utility,” Brener stated.
Grosscup recommended that technical means should in no way be compromised because of its potential use in criminal activity.
He also noted that communications between two or more parties were no business of anyone, least of which State Department or other government bureaucrats, except those participating — unless they were illegal.
“If party ‘X’ doesn’t like the communications they receive, they should have the means to shut it off [through] unlisted phone numbers [or] putting down the receiver,” Brenner said.
It was up to public authorities to determine whether illegal activity had taken place — not Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg or any other party, Grosscup cautioned.
Hundreds of torture complaints against Shin Bet, no investigations
MEMO | December 9, 2016
Hundreds of complaints of torture against Shin Bet agents have produced not a single criminal investigation, according to a report in Haaretz.
Of the 598 complaints filed between 2001 and 2008, every single case was closed by the Israeli authorities without a criminal investigation.
A department within the Ministry of Justice, Mivtan, is responsible for handling such complaints, yet employs just one investigator.
According to Haaretz, “the unit does not interfere with the Shin Bet’s work, even though complainants have reported harsh and prohibited forms of torture – including severe beatings and extensive sleep deprivation.”
The paper adds that while “Mivtan does not reveal how many complaints it receives, only how many inquiries it conducts; however, attorney Efrat Bergman-Sapir of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel said her organisation had submitted more than 1,000 complaints since 2001.”
Clinton to Congress: Take action against ‘epidemic of fake news’
Press TV – December 9, 2016
Defeated US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called on Congress to take action against the “epidemic of malicious fake news” that she said represents a “danger” to the “lives of ordinary people.”
“Let me just mention briefly one threat in particular that should concern all Americans,” Clinton said on Thursday speaking at a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, honoring retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike — especially those who serve in our Congress.”
“The epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year — it’s now clear the so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” she added.
Some Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have argued that Clinton lost the presidential election to President-elect Republican nominee Donald Trump because of the spread of fake news online against her.
Obama had been worried about cropping up of multiple pro-Trump fake news websites in the run-up to Election Day and spoken about it with his advisory team before the presidential election, The Independent reported on November 18.
According to reports, hundreds of invented articles had surfaced which promoted Trump and slandered Clinton, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
This week, police said a gunman entered a pizzeria in Washington, DC, after he read online that it was tied to a pedophilia ring linked to the Clintons.
“This isn’t about politics or partisanship,” Clinton said during her speech Thursday.
“Lives are at risk — lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days, to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly,” she said.
Clinton’s speech was the second public appearance she has made since suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of Trump in the November 8 election.
In her first appearance after the defeat on November 16, Clinton expressed her disappointment of losing to Trump, saying there were times when she wanted to “curl up… and never leave the house again.”
Israeli police say singing event was organized to ‘sympathize with terrorists’
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
Ma’an – December 8, 2016
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces raided the Palestinian National Theatre in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah Thursday evening, preventing organizers from holding an event titled “Sing with Us” for allegedly being organized by the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in order to “sympathize with terrorists.”
Witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli special forces, police, and intelligence raided the theater, also known as al-Hakawati Theater, during the event, which was organized by the Milad Fund for University Education.
Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri said in a statement that Jerusalem police chief Yoram Halevy signed an order on Thursday “to prevent holding a conference for the terrorist PFLP group,” citing Article 9 of the newly minted anti-terrorism law of 2016 — that members of Israel’s parliament have referred to as “draconian and unacceptable.”
“The chief’s decision was made after receiving intelligence information that the aforementioned terrorist group plans to hold a conference in order to sympathize with terrorists and other issues,” al-Samri’s statement continued.
“After the decision, a police unit headed to the designated place in East Jerusalem and prevented the holding of the conference without any exceptional incidents.”
The Israeli law, which was passed in June, includes a provision expanding the definition of terrorist organization membership to include “passive members” who are not actively involved in any group, but can now be indicted by Israeli authorities. It applies only inside Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, but not the occupied West Bank.
Head of the Joint List of Israel’s parliament Ayman Odeh said at the time of the legislation’s passage that it will damage Israel’s security cooperation with the PLO and Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, pointing out that Israel considers the majority of political parties within the PLO — including the PFLP — to be terrorist organizations.
For Palestinians, the PFLP — founded by a Christian doctor, George Habash — is the most popular political faction for secular leftists.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported last month that al-Hakawati, after operating for three decades as a leading cultural center for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, faced closure by Israeli authorities as a result of unpaid bills to the Jerusalem municipality amounting to $150,000, citing Palestinian commentators who believed Israeli authorities were pressuring the theater in order to “marginalize Arabic cultural and arts institutions.”
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
German lawmaker warns Facebook to censor “hate speech” or face consequences
By Alex Christoforou | The Duran | December 8, 2016
The German neo-liberal class of lawmakers continue to push the “hate speech” agenda, which is really just the beginning of the German government (and eventually the entire European Union) censoring speech that they deem inappropriate in terms of their world view and agenda.
Who defines what “hate speech” is? Where does hate speech end, and full on government censorship begin? German lawmakers could never answer these questions, nor do they want to. They simply want to get the ball rolling on curbing dissenting voices, so as to have complete control of the media and social narrative.
Expecting Facebook to be judge, jury and executioner when defining “hate speech” is unrealistic, and sets a very dangerous precedent. It is also intrinsically anti-internet. The web was founded on freedom of expression. Germany lawmakers wish to break a core function of what makes the internet work.
Speaking at a party conference of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), Volker Kauder suggested German politicians were running out of patience with efforts by social media companies to censor hate speech.
“I expect from big companies like Facebook that they adhere to laws. If they are not respected then we must think about new possibilities, fines for example.”
“They say there is too much. But a big auto manufacturer that produces millions of cars can’t say: ‘I produce so many cars that I can’t guarantee they are all secure.’ No, that is not on. I expect and demand from Facebook that laws are upheld.”
Very smart analogy by Mr. Kauder… comparing social media posts to building automobiles. We all know that building a car is exactly the same as composing a tweet.
Facebook declined immediate comment on Kauder’s remarks.
Reuters reports…
Germany is seen as a forerunner when it comes to forcing Facebook to step up efforts to police online hate speech, which has risen here following an influx of almost one million migrants, mainly from the Middle East, last year.
Politicians are also worried about how hate speech and fake news could sway public opinion ahead of elections next year in which Merkel will be running for a fourth term and facing an increasingly popular far right.
Last year, Justice Minister Heiko Maas set up a task force made up of representatives from Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Twitter as well as nonprofit groups to discuss ways to combat the rise in online hate speech.
The platform providers signed up to a voluntary code of conduct to take action to remove hate posts within 24 hours.
Results of a survey published in September by a group that monitors hate speech found Facebook removed about 46 percent of illegal content reported by users within 24 hours, significantly more than YouTube and Twitter which deleted just 10 percent and about 1 percent respectively.
Maas has repeatedly warned that he will propose legislation if the social media networks do not remove at least 70 percent of hate speech by March next year.
Kauder said Maas, a member of the Social Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partner, was being too easy on social media.
“We have a roundtable and now we must wait … but after the Christmas break is the end of the roundtables. We’ve sat at roundtables long enough. Now we want to see actions.”
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From the Archives
Neocons confess: “We did 9/11-anthrax”
By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | September 6, 2014
As the 13th anniversary of the crimes of September, 2001 approaches, the neoconservatives are shrieking from the rooftops – and effectively confessing that they were the real perpetrators of the 9/11-Anthrax false flag operation. (The neocons, you may recall, openly called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in September, 2000 – and got one exactly one year later.)
Every year at this time, the neocons orchestrate and hype a series of public relations stunts designed to magnify fears of “radical Islam” and reinforce their crumbling 9/11-Anthrax cover story. But this year’s propaganda campaign is so extreme that it represents a tacit confession: The neocons know that the truth about the 9/11-Anthrax operation is slowly closing in on them; so they are over-reacting by desperately trying to stoke the dying embers of the so-called War on Terror, in order to maintain the myth that Muslims (rather than neoconservative Zionists) attacked America in the autumn of 2001.
When a hysterical person exhibits guilty demeanor by trying too hard to blame a crime on someone else, that person is almost certainly the real perpetrator. As the neocons try much too hard to blame Islam for 9/11 and “terrorism” in general, their hysteria inadvertently reveals their own culpability. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth, the neoconservative movement has blood on its hands and “doth protest too much.” … continue
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