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Obama Plans Cosmetic Surveillance Changes After All, Will Set Up Pretend Fight Over NSLs

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | January 6, 2014

Leaks coming out of the Obama administration suggest that the President is preparing mostly cosmetic changes to the intelligence community, following the recommendations from the intelligence task force — which were much stronger than many expected. The reports suggest things like putting a public advocate to represent the public’s views in certain cases before the FISC. This has been talked about for a while, and was the main concession plenty of people had been expecting anyway. That’s hardly anything big.

The article talks about two other potential reforms. The first is shifting the holding of phone call metadata from the NSA to the phone companies, allowing the NSA to still search through it after getting a court order. While this may be a marginal improvement, it still has tremendous problems. It will almost certainly come with some sort of data retention law — something that the feds have wanted for ages, and which civil liberties activists have been fighting against for years. Companies shouldn’t be required to hang on to data they don’t need, especially if getting rid of it can better protect their users’ privacy. Furthermore, while not letting the NSA hang onto the data is a good thing, there is a reasonable concern that if the telcos are hanging onto the data themselves, that they, too, might do bad things with it, with little to no oversight.

However, most of the article from the LA Times focuses on National Security Letter (NSL) reform. We’ve written about those for years. NSLs are the way that the FBI can demand information from companies without any judicial review at all and, even more insane, with a complete gag order that prevents the recipient from telling anyone (including, at times, your lawyer). The FBI has an incredibly long history of “serious misuse” of NSLs, and has shown little to no interest in fixing the process. Nearly a year ago, a court actually ruled them unconstitutional, but there’s an ongoing appeals process that will take quite a bit of time.

However, as the article notes, the DOJ/FBI and other surveillance maximalists are all horrified by the idea that Obama might actually require judicial approval of NSLs, for all but “emergency” situations. What this sounds like is that the President may suggest something along those lines, there will be a well coordinated press attack from surveillance hawks freaking out about the danger this puts us all in… and then he’ll back down on that one point. And we’ll be left with… basically nothing, but the President will go around insisting that he reformed the intelligence community, while everything more or less stays the same.

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January 7, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians schools must adopt Israeli narrative of the conflict

MEMO | January 7, 2014

Israel is to tell the Palestinian Authority to change the history syllabus used in its schools as a condition ahead of negotiating final status issues. According to a specialist in Israeli studies, Saleh Al-Na’ami, Israel’s defence minister has said that Palestinian schools must teach the Israeli narrative of events before and since 1948, when what Palestinians call the Nakba (Catastrophe) of the creation of the state of Israel took place.

“They [the PA] need to cancel the Palestinian narrative of the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” Moshe Ya’alon is alleged to have said.

Haaretz reported that the weekly ministerial meeting on Sunday included a discussion about such a change in the Palestinian school syllabus. Ya’alon is also reported to be insisting on an end to Palestinians using speeches in mosques to “incite” the population against the Israeli occupation.

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January 7, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Court Decision Exempts Secret Memo From FOIA, Sets Stage For Future Secret Laws To Go Unchallenged

By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | January 6, 2014

The “most transparent administration” received another win for continued secrecy, thanks to an appeals court decision that allowed it to continue to withhold a DOJ memo that created an exploitable loophole in consumer data privacy protections.

The document at issue is a classified memo issued by the Office of Legal Counsel on Jan. 8, 2010. A report later that year by the Justice Department’s inspector general at the time, Glenn A. Fine, disclosed the memo’s existence and its broad conclusion that telephone companies may voluntarily provide records to the government “without legal process or a qualifying emergency,” notwithstanding the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

The EFF has been engaged with the government over the release of this document since 2011, when a district court judge ruled the document was exempt from FOIA requests because it was part of executive branch “internal deliberations.” In other words, despite the fact that the OLC memos can be considered legally binding (and exempt those following the memos’ advice or instructions from legal repercussions), the memo is not considered “working law.” The EFF has argued that these memos are not “deliberative,” but are rather secret laws deployed in such a fashion as to avoid being exposed by FOIA requests.

The presiding judge explained his decision with this reasoning.

“Even if the O.L.C. opinion describes the legal parameters of what the F.B.I. is permitted to do, it does not state or determine the F.B.I.’s policy,” Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote in the decision on Friday. “The F.B.I. was free to decline to adopt the investigative tactics deemed legally permissible in the O.L.C. opinion.”

According to the FBI, it did decline to follow the memo’s parameters.

The bureau, which has abandoned exigent letters, said that it did not employ the legal theory outlined in the memo when using the letters, and that it had no plans to use it in the future.

But the DOJ’s arguments for keeping the memo secret calls the FBI’s assertion into question.

During the litigation, the Justice Department also told the court that parts of the memo contained classified information, “highly specific in nature and known to very few individuals,” about a secret intelligence-gathering technique that the F.B.I. is using against “hostile entities.”

Either the FBI is utilizing the memo’s legal theories or the memo covers so much ground that the FBI is using something entirely unrelated, making the first statement truthful as far as it extends to exigent letters only.

Judge Edwards’ rationale gives the government every reason to utilize the Office of Legal Counsel to provide it with the legal justification it needs to deploy questionable tactics and programs. (Previous OLC memos were used to justify warrantless wiretaps and “brutal questioning of detainees.”) The ruling makes it easier for any OLC memo to be exempted from FOIA requests, providing for even more government secrecy.

David Sobel, a lawyer for the EFF, called the ruling “troubling,” describing the office’s memos as a body of “secret law” that the public has a right to know about. He said he hoped the ruling would reinvigorate efforts among some lawmakers to enact a law opening such memos to greater scrutiny outside the executive branch.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine how a different case in the D.C. Circuit is likely to have a different outcome in light of this opinion,” he said.

Because the document remains a secret, its true significance remains a source of speculation. The New York Times says the memo is most likely the legal basis for the CIA’s voluntary agreement with AT&T, which allows the agency to search its massive database of international calls (and tip local numbers to the FBI for further investigation). And it’s not as if this secret memo is the only tool the government has for demanding data. The FBI may have abandoned “exigent letters” but it’s still using National Security Letters to obtain data without a court order. (No mention is made of the FBI’s exigent Post-It notes or over-the-shoulder database searches.)

The DOJ is understandably pleased with this decision as it plays to its obfuscatory tendencies. This is also a dubious win for this administration — and those that follow. Having an in-house agency on tap that can create new laws and interpretations of existing statutes without having to risk having its legally-binding memos scrutinized by the public will be a tool too powerful for many to ignore.

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January 7, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

FBI Admits It’s Not Really About Law Enforcement Any More; Ignores Lots Of Crimes To Focus On Creating Fake Terror Plots

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | January 6, 2014

A couple years ago, it was revealed that the FBI noted in one of its “counterterrorism training manuals” that FBI agents could “bend or suspend the law and impinge upon the freedoms of others,” which seemed kind of odd for a government agency who claimed its “primary function” was “law enforcement.” You’d think that playing by the rules would be kind of important. However, as John Hudson at Foreign Policy has noted, at some point last summer, the FBI quietly changed its fact sheet, so that it no longer says that “law enforcement” is its primary function, replacing it with “national security.”

Of course, I thought we already had a “national security” agency — known as the “National Security Agency.” Of course, while this may seem like a minor change, as the article notes, it is the reality behind the scenes. The FBI massively beefed up resources focused on “counterterrorism” and… then let all sorts of other crimes slide. Including crimes much more likely to impact Americans, like financial/white collar fraud.

Between 2001 and 2009, the FBI doubled the amount of agents dedicated to counterterrorism, according to a 2010 Inspector’s General report. That period coincided with a steady decline in the overall number of criminal cases investigated nationally and a steep decline in the number of white-collar crime investigations.

“Violent crime, property crime and white-collar crime: All those things had reductions in the number of people available to investigate them,” former FBI agent Brad Garrett told Foreign Policy. “Are there cases they missed? Probably.”

The article correctly notes that this has had a big impact:

The reductions in white-collar crime investigations became obvious. Back in 2000, the FBI sent prosecutors 10,000 cases. That fell to a paltry 3,500 cases by 2005. “Had the FBI continued investigating financial crimes at the same rate as it had before the terror attacks, about 2,000 more white-collar criminals would be behind bars,” the report concluded. As a result, the agency fielded criticism for failing to crack down on financial crimes ahead of the Great Recession and losing sight of real-estate fraud ahead of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.

… So… what has the FBI been doing? Well, every time we hear anything about the FBI and counterterrorism, it seems to be a case where the FBI has been spending a ton of resources to concoct completely made up terrorism plots, duping some hapless, totally unconnected person into taking part in this “plot” then arresting him with big bogus headlines about how they “stopped” a terrorist plot that wouldn’t have even existed if the FBI hadn’t set it up in the first place. And this is not something that the FBI has just done a couple times. It’s happened over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And those are just the stories that we wrote about that I can find in a quick search. I’m pretty sure there are a bunch more stories that we wrote about, let alone that have happened.

All of these efforts to stop their own damn “plots” screams of an agency that feels it needs to “do something” when there’s really nothing to be done. Thousands of agents were reassigned from stopping real criminals to “counterterrorism” and when they found there were basically no terrorists around, they just started making their own in order to feel like they were doing something… and to have headlines to appease people upstairs. The government seems to have gone collectively insane when it comes to anything related to “terrorism.

January 6, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

The Left after the Failure of Obamacare

By Shamus Cooke | Worker’s Compass | January 4, 2014

It’s satisfying to watch rats flee a sinking ship. This is because onlookers knew the ship was doomed long ago, and swimming rats signify that the drawn-out tragedy is nearing an end. A collective sense of relief is a natural response.

The rats who propped up the broken boat of Obamacare are a collection of liberal and labor groups who frittered away their group’s resources—and integrity— to sell a crappy product to the American people.

Those in the deepest denial went “all in” for Obamacare— such as some unions and groups like Moveon.org— while the more conniving groups and individuals—like Michael Moore— playacted “critical” of Obamacare, while nevertheless declaring it “progressive”, in effect adding crucial political support to a project that deserved none.

But of course Obamacare was always more barrier than progress: we’ve wasted the last several years planning, debating, and reconstructing the national health care system, all the while going in the wrong direction— into the pockets of the insurance mega corporations. A couple progressive patches on the sails won’t keep her afloat. It’s shipbuilding time.

It was painful to watch otherwise intelligent people lend support to something that’s such an obviously bad idea. So it’s with immense relief that liberals like Michael Moore, labor groups, and others are finally distancing themselves from Obamacare’s Titanic failure. Now these individuals and groups can stop living in denial and the rest of us can proceed towards a rational discussion about a real health care solution.

The inevitable failure of Obamacare is not due to a bad website, but deeper issues. The hammering of the nails in the coffin has begun:  millions of young people are suddenly realizing that Obamacare does not offer affordable health care. It’s a lie, and they aren’t buying it, literally.

The system depends on sufficient young people to opt in and purchase plans, in order to offset the costs of the older, higher-needs population. Poor young people with zero disposable income are being asked to pay monthly premiums of $150 and more, and they’re opting out, inevitably sinking Obamacare in the process.

Those young people who actually do buy Obamacare plans—to avoid the “mandate” fine— will be further enraged when they attempt to actually use their “insurance”. Many of the cheapest plans—the obvious choice for most young people— have $5,000 deductibles before the insurance will pay for anything. For poor young people this is no insurance at all, but a form of extortion.

At the same time millions of union members are being punished under Obamacare: those with decent insurance plans will suffer the “Cadillac” tax, which will push up the cost of their healthcare plans, and employers are already demanding concessions from union members in the form of higher health care premiums, co-pays, deductibles, etc.

Lower paid union workers will suffer as well. Those who are part of the Taft Hartley insurance plans will be pressured to leave the plans and buy their own insurance, since they cannot keep their plans and get the subsidy that the lowest income workers get. This has the potential to bust the whole Taft Hartley health care system that millions of union members benefit from, which is one of the reasons that labor leaders suddenly became outraged at Obamacare, after having wasted millions of union member’s dollars propping it up.

Ultimately, the American working class will collectively cheer Obamacare’s demise. They just need labor and other lefties to cheer lead its destruction a little more fiercely.

Surprisingly, most of the rats are still clinging to Obama’s hopeless vessel, frantically bailing water. Sure they’ve put on their life preservers and are anxiously eyeing the lifeboats, but they’re also preaching about how to re-align the deckchairs.

For example, in his “critical” New York Times op-ed piece, Michael Moore called Obamacare “awful”, but also called it a “godsend”, singing his same tired tune. Part of Moore’s solution for Obamacare—which was cheered on in the Daily Kos— is equally ludicrous, and follows his consistently flawed logic that Obamacare is worth saving, since its “progress” that we can build on. Moore writes:

“Those who live in red [Republican dominated] states need the benefit of Medicaid expansion [a provision of Obamacare]…. In blue [Democrat dominated] states, let’s lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange — a health plan run by the state government, rather than a private insurer.”

This is Moore at his absolute worst. He’s neck deep in the flooded hull of the U.S.S Obamacare and giving us advice on how to tread water.

Of course Moore doesn’t criticize the heart of Obamacare, the individual mandate, the most hated component.

Moore also relies on the trump card argument of the pro-Obamacare liberals: there are progressive aspects to the scheme—such as the expansion of Medicaid— and therefore the whole system is worth saving.

Of course it’s untrue that we need Obamacare to expand Medicaid. In fact, the expansion of Medicaid acted more as a Trojan horse to introduce the pro-corporate heart of the system; a horse that Moore and other liberals nauseatingly continue to ride on.

But Moore’s sneakiest argument is his advice to blue states to  “…lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange…”

Again, Moore implies that it’s ok if we are “mandated” to buy health insurance, so long is there is a public option. But that aside, the deeper scheme here is that Moore wants us to further waste our energy “reforming” Obamacare, rather than driving it to the bottom of the sea.

Moore surely knows that very few people are going to march in the streets demanding a public option at this point; he therefore knows that even this tiny reform of the system is unachievable. He’s wasting our time. Real change only happens in politics when there is a surge of energy among large sections of the population, and it’s extremely unlikely that more than a handful of people are going to be active towards “fixing” Obamacare— they want to drown it.

Moore’s attempt to funnel people’s outrage at Obamacare towards a “public option” falls laughably short, and this is likely his intention, since his ongoing piecemeal “criticisms” of the system have only served to salvage a sunken ship.

Instead of wasting energy trying to pry Obamacare out of the grip of the corporations, Moore would be better served to focus exclusive energy towards expanding the movement for Medicare For All, which he claims that he also supports, while maintaining that somehow Obamacare will evolve into Single Payer system.

Most developed nations have achieved universal health care through a single payer system, which in the United States can be easily achieved by expanding Medicare to everybody. Once the realities of Obamacare directly affect the majority of the population and exacerbates the crisis of U.S. healthcare, people will inevitably choose to support the movement of Medicare for All, the only real option for a sane health care system.

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January 6, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

France-UAE satellite deal shaky after US spy tech discovered onboard – report

RT | January 6, 2014

The sale of two intelligence satellites to the UAE by France for nearly a billion dollars could go south after they were found to contain American technology designed to intercept data transmitted to the ground station.

The equipment, costing 3.4 billion dirhams ($930 million), constitutes two high-resolution Pleiades-type Falcon Eye military intelligence satellites, which a top UAE defense source has said contain specific US-made components designed to intercept the satellites’ communications with their accompanying ground station, Defensenews.com said in a report.

“The discovery [of the US-made components] was reported to the deputy supreme commander [Sheikh Mohamm ed Bin Zayed] in September,” an unnamed defense source said. “We have requested the French to change these components and also consulted with the Russian and Chinese firms.”

“If this issue is not resolved, the UAE is willing to scrap the whole deal,” said the source, adding that the incident has seen an increase in talks with Moscow, which – along with Beijing – has also been a frequent defense tech supplier to the Gulf state.

However, it is not clear whether the US equipment can be taken off of the French satellites.

The satellites come courtesy of prime contractor Airbus Defence and Space and payload manufacturer Thales Alenia, neither of whom could be reached for comment.

The system, comprised of satellites and a ground station, will require 20 trained engineers to operate. Under the July 22 deal, signed by Sheikh Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai and deputy supreme commander of the armed forces, and French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, delivery of the satellites and the ground station was to be made sometime in 2018.

A total of 11 international bidders were competing in the Flacon Eye race for more than a decade to ship their technologies to the UAE, which in late 2012 announced that they had chosen to go with the French and the Americans.

According to the source, the French won because of the filters which their rival Americans imposed on the use of the equipment – a policy dubbed “shutter control.” The US government restricts sale of commercial high resolution satellite images from spacecraft it licenses, if they are deemed a threat to its national security.

One French defense specialist found it surprising that France had had US spy technology on board its equipment, especially when France’s use of the Pleiades surveillance system is considered to be of critical importance to its national security.

According to Defensenews, UAE threats to call off the deal are seen by some commentators as a way to secure a better bargain from the French, because “the satellites would be part of a big package deal… it’s not surprising the UAE drives a hard bargain. They’re using it as a layer of power.”

The unnamed defense specialist referred to the possibility that the Emirates may wish to drive the price down for other equipment, such as the Dessault Aviation Rafale fighter jet.

January 6, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon Data on Student Testing Program Rife with Errors and Contradictions

Student Privacy Compromised by Massive Program

By Pat Elder | War is a Crime | January 4, 2014

In late December, 2013 the Department of Defense released a database on the military’s controversial Student Testing Program in 11,700 high schools across the country.  An examination of the complex and contradictory dataset raises serious issues regarding student privacy and the integrity of the Student Testing Program in America’s schools.

The data was released after a protracted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

See the State ASVAB Databases and the National Database.

The DoD’s Freedom of Information office reports that 678,000 students participated in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Career Exploration Program (ASVAB-CEP) during the 2012-2013 school year, down nearly 10% from the previous school year. The three-hour test is the linchpin of the Pentagon’s school-based recruiting program and provides the Military Entrance Processing Command (USMEPCOM) an invaluable tool in prescreening candidates for military service.

The ASVAB is the military’s entrance exam that is given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. Since 1968 the test has also been used as a recruiting tool in high schools. It’s used by USMEPCOM to gain sensitive, personal information on high school students, the vast majority of whom are under the age of 18. Students typically take the test at school without parental consent and often without parental knowledge.

The Pentagon admits military testing in the nation’s schools is a crucial component of maintaining an “all-volunteer” force. In recent years military recruiting has evolved into an exceptionally sophisticated psychological campaign aimed at enticing high school children to enlist. From a myriad of social websites and a host of other sources, recruiters may know, before first contact, that a young man reads wrestling magazines, weighs 155, can bench press 230, drives a ten year-old truck, listens to “classic rock,” and enjoys fly fishing.  They know where his girlfriend stands on his looming decision to enlist. But the ASVAB opens the door to a student’s cognitive abilities, something recruiting services can’t purchase or find on line. A child’s virtual social being, his intellectual capabilities, and mechanical aptitude are combined to create a precise, virtual portrait, all before a recruiter’s first contact.

In 1974 The Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) stood in the way of the DoD’s carte blanche access to student education records. The law, which is still in effect today, requires a signed parental release statement before “education records” are released to third parties.  The Pentagon’s position, explained in the ASVAB Counselor Guide (See page 14)  is that the ASVAB is proctored by DoD personnel and that ASVAB results become education records only after the test is scored by the DoD and returned to the school.  This way, the brass argues, ASVAB results are not education records. Instead, they’re “military records”. ASVAB results are the only information about students leaving American schools without providing for parental consent.

USMEPCOM Regulation 601-4 (Section 3) identifies several options schools have regarding the administration and release of ASVAB information. These options range from Option 1, which permits test results and other student information to be released to military recruiters without prior consent, to Option 8, the only one that prevents test results from being used for recruiting purposes. The problem is that many, if not most school administrators are unaware the release options exist and USMEPCOM officials are not going out of their way to tell them. Coalition partners in several states report telling hundreds of school officials who did not know about release options.

Inaction on the part of a school will cause USMEPCOM to automatically select Option 1.
53% of all students taking the ASVAB across the country did so under Release Option 1. Students and parents may not determine which release option is used; therefore they cannot opt out of releasing the information individually.  Just 15% of students taking the ASVAB had Option 8 selected by school officials.

DoD officials wash their hands of the privacy issue. “Whether or not a school official seeks students’ or parents’ or guardians’ permission is entirely up to that school, and we don’t have anything to say about that at all,” said Curtis Gilroy, the Pentagon’s prior Director of Accession Policy during an NPR Interview in 2010.

Meanwhile, the DOD markets the ASVAB in high schools without revealing its tie-in to the military or its primary function as a recruitment tool. School counselors and administrators encourage students to take the test that many claim assists students in matching their abilities with certain career paths. It is terribly deceptive.

A Snapshot of the data

=========================================

INDICATOR                        2011-2012                   2012-2013

Total Tested                  752,758                       678,248

Total Schools                  11,754                         11,741

# Students Option 8     122,636                      105,222

% Option 8                         16.29                           15.51

# Schools Option 8           2177                            2408

# Schools Mandatory        1219                              938

==========================================

Mandatory Testing

Pursuant to the FOIA request, the data released by the DoD contains a column that identifies whether the test was mandatory for students. The data shows that 931 schools required nearly 50,000 students to take the test.

Interestingly, military regulations forbid recruiters from suggesting the ASVAB be made mandatory. According to USMEPCOM Regulation 601-4, “School and student participation in the Student Testing Program is voluntary. DOD personnel are prohibited from suggesting to school officials or any other influential individual or group that the test be made mandatory. Schools will be encouraged to recommend most students participate in the ASVAB CEP. If the school requires all students of a particular group or grade to test, the Military Entrance Processing Command will support it.”

School officials in several states are under the impression that ASVAB testing is mandated by federal law.  For instance, counselors in Nebraska have reported they’ve been told by recruiters that testing is required.

Kevin Haake of the Nebraska Coalition to Protect Student Privacy explains it this way, “We’d rather not have the military actively recruiting in our schools but I don’t see an egregious violation of civil rights when a couple of  kids voluntarily sign up to take this military test.  It’s another matter when entire classes of children are told they’ve got to take this thing and all their information is shipped to the Pentagon without mom and dad knowing about it.”

The line between mandatory and voluntary testing is blurred with U.S. Army Recruiting Command Regulation  601-107 page 25 Item 8 which ranks each high school based on how receptive it is to military recruiters. Schools are awarded extra points when they make the ASVAB mandatory.

Regardless of the perceptions of school officials concerning the voluntary or mandatory nature of the testing regime many principals and counselors are sold on the utility of the ASVAB as a useful career exploration program that assists students in determining career paths.  Critics claim 16 year-olds are generally clueless regarding the “careers” they may eventually choose. They say the test fails miserably in this regard – and they’re not alone.

The U.S. Marine Corps Military Personnel Procurement Manual contains the following, “The ASVAB is used by the Armed Forces for recruiting purposes and by school counselors for vocational guidance counseling. The ASVAB’s ability for determining civilian job skills has not yet been proven.” See Sec. 4104 3b (pg 237 of this document)

It’s mind boggling.

Once the test is administered and scored, the recruiting command sends recruiters to the schools after the tests are scored to discuss “career paths” with students.

The military has done a tremendous job marketing the program in high schools across the country.   American high schools are blanketed with posters and announcements that read like this: “Explore your interests. Expand your horizons. Realize your strengths. Realize your dreams. Start opening doors to your future. Participate in the ASVAB Career Exploration Program on (DATE). It’s free! See your counselor to register today.”  See ASVAB Snippets.   The Pentagon’s marketing to students in the high schools never explains what “ASVAB” stands for and never mentions the primary purpose of the testing regime, which is to procure leads for recruiters. Its website, http://www.asvabprogram.com/ looks nothing like a DoD site and buries any mention of the military.

Do huge numbers voluntarily take the test?

The database purports to reflect the number of schools and students that participate in mandatory testing but there are several problems with its accuracy.

The ASVAB provides the first, massive, national litmus test for enlistment.  Consider five schools in the Miami area. North Miami Beach HS tested 855. It has a minority population of 96%..  Coral Gables HS tested 695 with a minority population of 90%.   Coral Park HS had 429 take the test. It has a minority population of  96% Miami Central High School tested 645 and Miami Northwestern HS sat down 642. Both have minority populations of 99%.  None of these five schools are listed in the DoD database as having “mandatory” testing and there’s no evidence online that students were required to take the test.

Voluntary?

A web search of seven Michigan high schools listed in the newly released data as “Not Mandatory” clearly shows that students are required to take the ASVAB.  Pickford, Watersmeet, Goodrich, Manistique Lake Linden, Rapid River, and Ironwood High Schools all force students to take the test.

Munford High School in Munford Tennessee tested 855 but is listed in the database as not mandatory.  Perhaps patriotism is rampant in Munford, but how, exactly, do they manage to get 855 teenagers to voluntarily sit for three hours to take a military exam?

Scranton High School in Arkansas is listed as being mandatory for all grades but only 11 students took the test, according to the data.  Scranton has a total enrollment of 181.  It begs the question: Just how many students are required to take the test in Arkansas? Last year the state led the nation with more than 10,000 students being forced to take the ASVAB. After a robust email campaign to school officials, that number has dropped to 7,333 although 140 schools still require students to take the test.  (That’s an average of 52 per school.)  One school counselor explained that the test has always been required and no one had ever complained. Certainly there have been no complaints from the Military Entrance Processing Command in Little Rock, until now, perhaps.

Two important questions remain concerning mandatory testing, despite the data. How can we tell from the statistics furnished by the DoD exactly how many are taking the test and how do we know if a school requires students to take the ASVAB?  If the Pentagon admits there are nearly a thousand schools that require military testing, how many are there, really? There’s never been outside accountability. This is tragically ironic because we’re dealing with the most sensitive information the state can possess regarding our children.

According to the data, 6,536 schools or 56% of the total nationally, tested ten or fewer children, comprising just 6% of the total number of students tested.  Most of these children, it may reasonably be assumed if the data is accurate, were offered the opportunity to participate, rather than being required to do so.

The average American high school has an enrollment of 595 students and the average junior class has about 120 students.  If our hypothetical high school has 120 juniors what number of juniors tested might provide us a clue that the test was required?  Alternately, how small must the number of test takers be to reasonably demonstrate the voluntary nature of the exam?

There have been numerous press reports concerning student and parent dissatisfaction with mandatory military testing. Often, juniors and seniors use these ASVAB testing days to simply skip school, reducing the numbers of those being tested.  3,600 schools tested more than 50 students. Is it reasonable to assume that these students were required to do so?   Is it a stretch to suggest that the number of children in America that are forced to take the ASVAB is substantially higher than what the Pentagon publicly admits?

The U.N. weighs in on mandatory testing

In early 2013 The UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child called on the Obama Administration to “Ensure that schools, parents and pupils are made aware of the voluntary nature of the ASVAB before consenting to the participation into it.”  See the  Concluding observations on the Second Report of the United States of America, Adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child at its sixty-second session (14 January–5 2013) regarding the  Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict
http://www2.ohchr.org/English/bodies/crc/docs/co/CRC_C_OPAC_USA_CO_2.doc

The Committee had previously found that “Parents and children are often unaware of the voluntary nature of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test organized in schools or its links to the military and that in some instances students were reportedly informed that the test was mandatory.” Members of the Committee in Geneva found it incredulous that a thousand American schools force underage children to take this military test without parental consent. 

The United States ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC) in 2002.  Article 3.3 of OPAC states that recruitment practices involving minors should be voluntary. Forced military testing in American public schools for recruitment purposes without parental consent violates the treaty. In late 2012 the Obama Administration denied the mandatory nature of the testing regime. The US replied to the Committee,“Participation in the ASVAB CEP is entirely voluntary. DOD does not require schools to participate, nor does it require schools to test all students within a participating school.”

The ASVAB is “free”

There is a compelling financial reason why so many take the ASVAB.  It is often the only “free” assessment on “test day”.   A third of all high school students are not college bound.  If these students are offered a choice between taking the PSAT which is a college entrance exam and involves paying a fee — or taking the ASVAB which is free, they’ll typically pick the ASVAB.  The military will list these children as voluntarily taking the ASVAB, although they’re actually forced to do so.

At Crown Point HS in Indiana, “11th grade students that wish to take the PSAT, and potentially qualify for national merit scholarships, will be required to pay $14.00.  Juniors may register to take the PSAT in room c-203 from September 7-14th.   11th grade students that do not wish to take the PSAT will be administered the ASVAB exam. The ASVAB exam is free of charge.”

Crown Point tested 469 students last year and they’re listed as not mandatory. All had their results shipped to recruiting services without parental consent.

It’s the same deal at Woodridge High School in Ohio, “Juniors may take the PSAT or the ASVAB.  The cost of the PSAT is $14, Students register for the PSAT in Guidance and the deadline is September 16, 2013. There is no cost for the ASVAB.”  The DoD lists Woodridge as “not mandatory”.

Administrative and Legislative Inroads by the DoD

New Jersey allows the ASVAB to be used as a substitute for mandatory graduation tests.  The guidelines call for receiving a 31 on the AFQT, the Armed Services Qualifying Test. The ASVAB is used to calculate the AFQT.  A 31 is the minimum score for enlistment in the Army.  A 31 on the AFQT  is roughly comparable to 5th or 6th grade proficiency in reading and math.

Kentucky calls for a 55 on the AFQT for a student to earn a diploma. A 55 on the AFQT is the same as a composite SAT score of 840, according to the widely distributed ASVAB Concordance Table provided by the recruiting command.  An 840 on the SAT won’t open college doors. It represents the bottom 5th of national SAT scores. A 55, however, opens the door to a host of military occupations.  Kentucky, it should be noted, allows the military access to all student academic records upon request by any agency of the federal or state government for the purpose of determining a student’s eligibility for military service. It’s the worst law in the nation.

Mississippi’s Department of Education is close to allowing students who score a 36 or better on the ASVAB in addition to a passing score on a state vocation test or approved industry certification to receive a high school diploma. The Magnolia State’s board of education is seeking public input and is widely expected to approve the changes in January of 2014. The proposed policy does not address privacy concerns.

In Minnesota a new policy allows students to take the ASVAB to meet graduation assessment requirements in reading, mathematics and writing.

Missouri schools now encourage the universal use of the ASVAB and track all ASVAB scores as an integral part of the state’s school improvement program.

Missouri and Kentucky alone tested 21,000 more students than they did last year.  The rapid decline in the popularity of the testing regime nationally is somewhat arrested by these developments. Meanwhile, the vast majority of these new test takers had their personal information sent to military recruiting services without parental consent, undermining the efforts of privacy advocates.

The Military Entrance Processing Command is also aided by a dozen state governors who have issued proclamations calling on all students to take the ASVAB.  In 2008 Alaska’s Governor Palin became one of the first to proclaim ASVAB Career Exploration Month although no arrangements were made in Alaska or any other state to protect student privacy.

We’re witnessing the institutionalization of a direct informational pipeline to the Military Entrance Processing Command.

Psychology 101

School officials often ask, “What’s the problem with sharing student information with the recruiting command?”

Some aren’t too smart and they can get killed would be the answer.

Military recruiting is an exceptionally sophisticated psychological program aimed at enticing high school children. The American Public Health Association (APHA) has called for the cessation of military recruiting in the nation’s high schools, citing the vulnerable stage of brain development of youth and their “limitations in judging risk at this stage in life. They are unable to fully evaluate the consequences of making a choice to enter the military.”  The APHA specifically calls for the end to military testing in the high schools.

=========

Patterns of Obfuscation

In 2010 Maryland became the first state to pass a law requiring the universal selection of Option 8 for all high school students taking the ASVAB.  When the bill was working its way through the legislature, the USMEPCOM Battalion Commander at Fort George G. Meade warned school officials and legislators of a “disinformation campaign” regarding the school testing program.  The Colonel wrote that the efforts to encourage schools to select Option 8 are “bent on disrupting any effort to build, support, or sustain the military.”

It is apparent the Pentagon has orchestrated a “disinformation” campaign of its own.

Guidance counselors in high schools in a dozen states across the country have said they were told by MEPS personnel that privacy concerns are misplaced because students sign a “Privacy Act Statement” that is part of the ASVAB answer sheet.  It is a very familiar refrain.  The counselors are led to believe that the Privacy Act Statement gives students notice of the release of test results to military recruiters and provides student consent for the release of information.  The statement, however, says nothing about recruiter contact. The statement is not a proper waiver of rights because it does not disclose that ASVAB test results may be used for recruitment purposes, and it does not do away with the obligation to obtain consent from a parent or guardian when a student is under age 18. This is precisely where the program runs afoul of state laws.

See the 2013 report Best Practices for ASVAB-CEP Administrationfrom Rutgers Law School. The report makes a compelling case that high school counselors have both legal and professional responsibilities to ensure that ASVAB student test information is not automatically released to military recruiters.

Another misperception spread by the recruiting command is the notion that the “Opt Out” law covers ASVAB testing.  Every fall parents of American high school children are provided the opportunity to “opt out” of information being forwarded to recruiting services pertaining to their children. If parents haven’t “opted out”, the reasoning goes, their kids are fair game for the ASVAB.   The “opt out” law is found in Section 9528 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and is limited to the release of a student’s name, address, and phone number.  The ASVAB, on the other hand, provides an in-depth cognitive picture of a student, along with detailed demographic information and social security number. ESEA doesn’t regulate ASVAB testing.

Still, another obfuscation practiced by USMEPCOM is the use of ASVAB Test Request Forms that are distributed to high school administrators that purposely leave off Option 8.  See this form distributed by the recruiting command to school administrators in Prince George’s County, Maryland.  School officials were so incensed they supported an effort that resulted in passing a law that mandates the selection of Option 8 across the state.

Another reprehensible practice involves recruiters who lurk on internet chat rooms like Yahoo Answers. It’s a way for Staff Sergeants to procure leads to meet their monthly quotas and sometimes it’s laughable. Consider this post in mid-December, 2013, “I’m a junior in high school (17) and I took the ASVAB. When I was taking the test it didn’t seem hard. Yes it was timed, and I have test anxiety. I think that’s why I did so poorly. I made a score of 16. I cried afterwards because one, I felt stupid, and two, I want to join the military and I know getting a 16 won’t qualify me for any jobs. I am planning on joining the Marine Corp. I know you’re probably going to tell me to study. But can you give me some good advice on what to do to keep my head up and keep trying?” 

A score of 16 would mean our Yahoo friend is functionally illiterate. A 16 roughly equates to a 2nd grade level and is half of the score necessary to enlist in the Army.  Several of the comments alluded to the contradiction between the claimed score of 16 and the rather well written question.  Yahoo Answers enforces Community Guidelines.  Under the heading “Exploiting the Community” Yahoo requires participants “to be responsible and don’t misrepresent yourself or claim false credentials… Yahoo Answers is a place to gain knowledge, not customers.”

Yahoo is quick to remove these miscreants and has done so a dozen times.
The question has been deleted.

The greatest fallacy perpetrated by the Pentagon is their insistence that ASVAB testing is not subject to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It is ludicrous to suggest that ASVAB results are not education records because the military, instead of the school, proctors the test. Although the recruiting command may send one civilian employee to officially administer the exam, it is school employees who market the test over several weeks, assemble and keep track of students, and provide much of the work controlling a large group of teenagers for a few hours.

It’s unconscionable that ASVAB results are the only information leaving American schools regarding children without providing for parental consent, but the tide is turning.

Diane Wood with the Texas Coalition to Protect Student Privacy reflects common sense Lone Star State attitudes, “I support the military but I got fired up when I discovered this egregious violation of civil liberties that’s been going on entirely unnoticed.  I don’t care if it’s the Department of Defense or who ever. The thing that’s surprised me is that this privacy campaign has resonated with Tea Party activists down here.  We all see ASVAB testing as an unwarranted and illegal federal incursion into our lives.”  It’s a peculiar campaign that attracts allies on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Wood’s tireless organizing and her testimony to the nationally maligned Texas State School Board probably contributed to Texas testing 6,600 fewer students in 2012-2013 than the year before.  In Texas Option 8 rates increased from 14.7% to 15.5% while the number of students forced to take the test shrunk from 15,805 to 4,825 and the number of  schools requiring students to take the ASVAB decreased from 181 to 70.

In many states, smart, targeted community activism has been shown to translate into quantifiable results.

Barbara Harris with the New York Coalition to Protect Student Privacy has been at it for years and has helped to eliminate mandatory testing in the Empire State. “We’ve witnessed several trends here in New York. The number of test takers continues to drop, the percentage of schools that have selected Release Option 8 continues to rise, and mandatory testing has disappeared. I’m hopeful we’ll soon get the Board of Regents to mandate Option 8 across the state.”

It’s the same in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Seth Kershner with the Connecticut Coalition to Protect Students Privacy reports, “Testing numbers in Connecticut and Massachusetts have plummeted in recent years to about 4,000 in each state. There’s no mandatory testing. Nearly half of the students being tested do so under Option 8.  We’re hoping to duplicate successes in Hawaii and Maryland and have policies or laws enacted that mandate Option 8.”

Oregon’s school officials have responded to our campaign.  Don Chapin with the Oregon Coalition to Protect Student Privacy reports that 57.2 % of students taking the test have Option 8 selected. See the statistics on the National Coalition’s website www.studentprivacy.org

Will Hopkins with the Coalition in New Hampshire has lobbied to introduce a bill in the New Hampshire. HB 1321 mirrors Maryland’s law.

Outreach to moderate school board members in the north citing privacy concerns are often taken into consideration, resulting in policy changes.  In the South and the Midwest, however, many responses have been hostile, especially after school officials consult with their local military entrance processing command.

If the Pentagon called the shots across the country every high school student would be subjected to taking the ASVAB for enlistment purposes.  The program is fraudulent but it is sponsored by the military, a sacrosanct institution that remains above constitutional restraint and the rule of law in the view of many American school officials and state legislators.  We must convince them otherwise.

Pat Elder is the Director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy. www.studentprivacy.org      Email: pelder@studentprivacy.org

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January 5, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Who Benefits from the Shatah Assassination?

By RANNIE AMIRI | CounterPunch | January 3, 2014

The burial of former Lebanese Finance Minister Mohammed Shatah next to assassinated ex-premier Rafic al-Hariri in Beirut’s Muhammad al-Amin mosque was as striking and deliberate in symbolism as the towering structure itself.

Last Friday’s assassination of the Hariri family’s senior advisor and one-time U.S. ambassador was by similar method: a massive car bomb detonated under his convoy as it drove through the heart of Beirut’s upscale downtown district. As if to purposefully underscore the parallels and frame the post-assassination narrative, it also occurred just a few hundred yards from the site where the billionaire Hariri was murdered in February 2005.

Just as after Hariri’s killing, the calculated recriminations of the March 14 coalition, led by the Future Movement, came fast and furious. Blame was laid squarely at the feet of Hezbollah. March 14 supporters were quick to point out that the crime took place less than three weeks before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL; the U.N.-established court tasked with investigating the Hariri assassination) was set to open proceedings against four accused Hezbollah members.

The shoddy STL investigation, relying heavily on telecommunications data wholly compromised by Israeli intelligence and their captured agents, has been previously discussed.

Did the masterminds of the Shatah assassination hope the Lebanese population would turn against Hezbollah, already facing strong rebuke for its intervention in Syria by March 14 politicians (despite that the latter have implicitly lent support to radical takfiri elements involved in the Syrian conflict since its earliest days)?

As with all political upheavals in Lebanon, the question that must be asked is, “who benefits?” Does Hezbollah? Although Shatah was a stalwart March 14 operative who decried Hezbollah’s role in Syria, he was nevertheless regarded as a relative moderate. But the increasingly virulent sectarian discourse of those on the fringes of this political alliance (and many at its center) and the cover they have extended to extremists like fugitive Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, cannot be ignored. Beirut after all, is still reeling from recent twin suicide car bombings at the Iranian embassy followed shortly thereafter by the assassination of Hezbollah senior commander Hassan al-Lakkis. On Thursday, innocent Lebanese civilians were again victims of a car bomb detonated in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs, known as the dahiyeh.

“Moderate” Sunni politicians like Shatah are viewed as expendable, for their killing only serves to polarize the wider Sunni community by inciting sectarian hatred and thereby marginalize more reasoned voices. Even Lebanon’s Grand Mufti was not spared as he was accosted after mourners’ passions were stoked by Sheikh Ahmad al-Omari, the cleric who delivered the sermon at the funeral of a young man also killed in the assassination. As Al-Akhbar reports, “Omari attacked Hezbollah, describing it as the ‘party of the devil.’ He called on the Shia to ‘disown’ Hezbollah ‘if they are true believers,’ and stressed the ‘patience of the persecuted Sunni sect is running out.’”

Again, does Hezbollah achieve any gain, political or otherwise, with Shatah’s demise?

The irony is that the inflammatory rhetoric and policies of March 14 parliamentary bloc members have led to the exponential growth of radical forces in the country. One only has to recall how former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Bahia Hariri and others insinuated the Lebanese Army was responsible for provoking Salafist cleric al-Assir’s armed forces to launch an attack against them this past summer in Sidon, killing 18.

Son of the late prime minister and Future Movement head Saad Hariri also did not waste any time in essentially blaming the victims themselves for Thursday’s attack: “They are at the same time victims of [Hezbollah’s] involvement in foreign wars, particularly in the Syrian war.”

The northern city of Tripoli and the Ain al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon have provided extremist groups with safe refuge. Details have now emerged pointing to a possible link between those in the camp and recent events.

Just as in Iraq, moderate Sunni politicians have been singled out for assassination by takfiris who seek to exploit their spilled blood, provoke co-religionists into committing crimes against civilians and stir a simmering sectarian pot.

Who are the likely perpetrators behind Mohammed Shatah’s assassination and the dahiyeh bombing?

The very same ones the U.S. and Saudi-backed March 14 coalition have emboldened.

Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on Middle East affairs.

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January 5, 2014 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

British MPs raise alarm over drug trials, say only half data published

RT | January 5, 2014

British MPs have voiced concern that doctors and researchers are being denied access to around half the results from all clinical trials. An influential parliamentary committee has condemned the selectiveness as damaging medicine as a whole.

This apparently standard practice of withholding critical medical test information impairs decision-making by professionals, worsens patients’ treatment and prevents independent assessment of medicines, the MPs wrote. And the practice, they say, dates back all the way to the 1980s.

In the report, the MPs write that they are “surprised and concerned to discover that information is routinely withheld from doctors and researchers about the methods and results of clinical trials on treatments currently prescribed in the United Kingdom. This problem has been noted for many years in the professional academic literature, with many promises given, but without adequate action being taken by government, industry or professional bodies.”

“This has ramifications for the whole of medicine. The ability of doctors, researchers and patients to make informed decisions about treatments is being undermined,” said Richard Bacon, a senior member on the committee that published the report.

The MPs argue that this is a great problem also because the issue of access to clinical trials from previous years is absent from all new proposals. And test results on humans provide researchers with key evidence to support or oppose the use of a given medicine. There are unprecedented dangers when this framework is not operating as intended, they said.

Compounding the problem further, MPs say, is that aside from the non-publication of all clinical trial tests, for some reason positive results started popping up twice as much as negative ones. This is bad when all trial results on all uses of all chemicals should be provided, the report argues.

As a result, the committee’s MPs have given strong recommendations to the government and the country’s health bodies – among them, firstly, that the full results of clinical trials from now on be disseminated to all doctors and researchers in the UK, with full audits carried out regularly to check for transgressions; and secondly, that the Department of Health and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) ensure that all past and future trial results and the methods used to achieve them be published in a unified register for further use.

Bacon expressed alarm that the absence of past results invariably impact doctors’ decisions on treatment. “Regulators and the industry have made proposals to open up access, but these do not cover the issue of access to the results of trials in the past which bear on the efficacy and safety of medicines in use today,” he said.

The worrying implication here is that so much medicine has been tested and approved over the past few decades, but only half of it we know the full truth about, it turns out.

One particular medicine that became a focus for alarm was Tamiflu – the popular flu medicine that gained popularity in 2009-10 during the great flu pandemic. Apparently, the UK Department of Health, without having access to exhaustive information on the medicine, had made a 424-million-pound decision to stockpile it between the years 2006-7 and 2012-13.

That kind of attitude, the MPs argue, is predicated on judgment, rather than real science. There is still no agreement on how the popular medicine works and disagreement on whether full information was provided to regulators by the MHRA during the licensing process. As it turns out from studies conducted by the non-profit NGO, Cochrane Collaboration, Tamiflu “did not reduce influenza-related lower respiratory tract complications.”

The organization is now in talks with Roche to receive the full details of Tamiflu’s testing, which will be included in a thorough upcoming review on its effectiveness. Both the government and the medical bodies will take part, as MPs share the think tank’s concern when it wrote that “we find it perplexing that the regulators continue to state that they had all the available evidence.”

Regarding Tamiflu and the wider practice as a whole, Bacon recommended that “before spending money in future to maintain the stockpile, the department needs to review what level of coverage is appropriate. It should look at the level of stockpiling in other countries, bearing in mind that the patent for the medicine runs out in 2016.”

January 5, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Case of the Missing Recovery

By Paul Craig Roberts | Dissident Voice | January 4, 2014

Have you seen the economic recovery? I haven’t either. But it is bound to be around here somewhere, because the National Bureau of Economic Research spotted it in June 2009, four and one-half years ago.

It is a shy and reclusive recovery, like the “New Economy” and all those promised new economy jobs. I haven’t seen them either, but we know they are here, somewhere, because the economists said so.

Congress must have seen all those jobs before they went home for Christmas, because our representatives let extended unemployment benefits expire for 1.3 million unemployed Americans, who have not yet met up with those new economy jobs, or even with an old economy job for that matter.

By letting extended unemployment benefits expire, Congress figures that they saved 1.3 million Americans from becoming lifelong bums of the nanny state and living off the public purse. After all, who do those unemployed Americans think they are? A bank too big to fail? The military-security complex? Israel?

What the unemployed need to do is to form a lobby organization and make campaign contributions.

Just as economists don’t recognize facts that are inconsistent with corporate grants, career ambitions, and being on the speaking circuit, our representatives don’t recognize facts inconsistent with campaign contributions.

For example, our representative in the White House tells us that ObamaCare is a worthy program even though those who are supposed to be helped by it aren’t because of large deductibles, copays, and Medicaid estate recovery. The cost of this non-help is a doubling of the policy premiums on those insured Americans who did not need ObamaCare and the reclassification by employers of workers’ jobs from full-time to part-time in order to avoid medical insurance costs. All it took was campaign contributions from the insurance industry to turn a policy that hurts most and helps none into a worthy program. Worthy, of course, for the insurance companies.

Keep in mind that it is the people who could not afford medical insurance who have to come up with their part of the premium or pay a penalty. How do people who have no discretionary income come up with what are to them large sums of money? Are they going to eat less, drive less, dress less? If so, what happens to people employed in those industries when demand falls? Apparently, this was too big a thought for the White House occupant, his economists, and our representatives in Congress.

According to the official wage statistics for 2012, forty percent of the US work force earned less than $20,000, fifty-three percent earned less than $30,000, and seventy-three percent earned less than $50,000. The median wage or salary was $27,519. The amounts are in current dollars and they are compensation amounts subject to state and federal income taxes and to Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. In other words, the take home pay is less.

To put these incomes into some perspective, the poverty threshold for a family of four in 2013 was $23,550.

In recent years, the only incomes that have been growing in real terms are those few at the top of the income distribution. Those at the top have benefitted from “performance bonuses,” often acquired by laying off workers or by replacing US workers with cheaper foreign labor, and from the rise in stock and bond prices caused by the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing. Everyone else has experienced a decline in real income and wealth.

As only slightly more than one percent of Americans make more than $200,000 annually and less than four-tenths of one percent make $1,000,000 or more annually, there are not enough people with discretionary income to drive the economy with consumer spending. When real median family income and real per capita income ceased to grow and began falling, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan substituted a credit expansion to take the place of the missing growth in income. However, as consumers became loaded with debt, it was no longer possible to expand consumer spending with credit expansion.

World War II left the US economy the only undamaged industrial and manufacturing center. Prosperity ensued. But by the 1970s the Keynesian demand management economic policy had produced stagflation. Reagan’s supply-side policy was able to give the US economy another 20 years. But the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an era of jobs offshoring to large Asian economies that formerly were closed to Western capital. Once corporate executives realized that they could earn multi-million dollar performance bonuses by moving US jobs abroad and once they were threatened by Wall Street and shareholder advocates with takeovers if they did not, American capitalism began giving the US economy to other countries, mainly located in Asia. As high productivity manufacturing and professional service jobs (such as software engineering) moved offshore, US incomes stagnated and fell.

As real income growth stagnated, wives entered the work force to compensate. Children were educated by refinancing the home mortgage and using the equity in the family home or with student loans that they do not earn enough to repay. Since the December 2007 downturn, Americans have used up their coping mechanisms. Homes have been refinanced. IRAs raided. Savings drawn down. Grown children, now adults, are back home with parents. The falling labor force participation rate signals that the economy can no longer provide jobs for the workforce. In such a situation, economic recovery is impossible.

What the Treasury and Federal Reserve have done, with the complicity of the White House, Congress, economists, and the media, is to focus on rescuing a half dozen banks “too big to fail.” The consequence of focusing economic policy on saving the banks is rigged financial markets and massive stock and bond market bubbles. To protect the dollar’s exchange value from quantitative easing, the price of gold has been forced down in the paper futures market, with the consequence that physical gold is shipped to Asia where it is unavailable as a refuge for Americans faced with currency depreciation.

At a time when most Americans are running out of coping mechanisms, the US faces a possible financial collapse and a high rate of inflation from dollar depreciation as the Fed pours out newly created money in an effort to support the rigged financial markets.

It remains to be seen whether the chickens can be kept from coming home to roost for another year.

~

Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist, author, columnist, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and former editor and columnist for corporate media publications. He is the author of The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.

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January 4, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

The Guardian Laments Sharon

By Gilad Atzmon | January 4, 2014

In a uniquely dishonest piece, The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland paid a tribute today to Israel’s veteran PM Ariel Sharon.

According to Freedland, Sharon, “as one of Israel’s founders… had the credibility to give up occupied territory – and even to face the demons of 1948”. Freedland speculates also that “Sharon’s final mission might well have been peace.” This is indeed a big statement, but how does Freedland support his creative historical account?

“Sharon’s final act” says Freedland,  “was to dismantle some of the very settlements he had sponsored. In 2005 he ordered Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, seized in the 1967 war in which Sharon had been a crucial, if maverick, commander.”

Let alone the fact that Freedland comes short of reminding his readers about Sharon’s colossal war crimes, he actually completely distorts the political narrative that led Sharon to the 2005 unilateral disengagement.

Did Sharon have a plan to reconcile with the Palestinians and to address their plight or their right to return to their land? Not at all, we do not have any evidence of Sharon’s remorse. The logic behind Sharon’s disengagement is simple on the verge of banal. Sharon knew very well that if Israel insisted to maintain itself as the ‘Jewish State’, it would have to rid itself immediately of Arabs. Late Sharon was becoming aware of the possible implications of the ‘Palestinian demographic bomb’. The Palestinians were becoming a majority in areas controlled by Israel.

Ridding Israel of the highly populated Gaza strip was a perfect start. In a single political and territorial move, Sharon freed Israel of 1.5 million Palestinians and liberated Israel of growing complex security issues. Sharon was a pragmatist politician, he’s always been one and his disengagement wasn’t at all an attempt to “face the demons of 1948” as Freedland suggests: It was a Judeo-centric attempt to maintain the Jewishness of the Jewish State.

Freedland’s biased inclinations continue till the end of today’s piece: “an intriguing habit of Sharon’s was to refer to places in Israel by their original, Arabic names – thereby acknowledging the truth that usually lies buried beneath the soil.” Is this right? Did Sharon really pay tribute to the eradicated Palestinian civilisation by uttering some words in Arabic? Not at all: Sharon was born in the British Mandate of Palestine. He was raised in a country scattered with Palestinian villages and cities. Sharon and Israelis of his generation tended to pepper their Hebrew with a few Arabic words because such an act filled their existence with an authentic sense of belonging and a bond to an imaginary soil. I hope in that context, the laughable Freedland doesn’t also think when Israelis eat Falafel they try to express empathy towards 6 million Palestinian refugees: After all, Falafel also belongs to Palestine.

Freedland probably waited for Ariel Sharon to die in order to spread his laughable reading of history, just to make sure that the ‘immortal Sharon’  would not bounce back and dismiss this gross interpretation as complete nonsense.

The only question that is still left open is why The Guardian, once a respected paper, is publishing such low quality Hasbara drivel?  Is it really The Guardian of the truth or has it become The Guardian of Zion?

January 4, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

When Your Phone Is Not Your Friend

By Peter Lee | China Matters | January 2, 2014

Gadzooks!  They’ve cracked the iPhone!?

Newly leaked documents from the National Security Agency highlight Dropout Jeep, a piece of software that could target one of the country’s most popular devices — the iPhone.

According to documents published by the German news website Spiegel Online and dated Oct. 1, 2008, Dropout Jeep would give the NSA the ability to retrieve contact information, read through text messages, listen to voicemails and even turn on the iPhone camera and microphone.

The document goes on to say that while Drop Jeep was currently limited to installation through “close access methods,” the NSA would research ways to install the program remotely in future versions.

If you’re wondering how the NSA developed this fiendish capability, fingers are being pointed at Apple, but a trip through the Wayback machine suggests another possible culprit:

From a 2011 article by Mark Elgan at Computerworld:

Cellphone users say they want more privacy, and app makers are listening.

No, they’re not listening to user requests. They’re literally listening to the sounds in your office, kitchen, living room and bedroom.

A new class of smartphone app has emerged that uses the microphone built into your phone as a covert listening device — a “bug,” in common parlance.
…
The issue was brought to the world’s attention recently on a podcast called This Week in Tech. Host Leo Laporte and his panel shocked listeners by unmasking three popular apps that activate your phone’s microphone to collect sound patterns from inside your home, meeting, office or wherever you are.
…
The new apps are often sneakier about it [than older apps, which were activated by users in order to identify a song that was playing, etc.–CH]. The vast majority of people who use the Color app, for example, have no idea that their microphones are being activated to gather sounds.

Welcome to the future.
…
[M]arketers love cellphones, which are viewed as universal sensors for conducting highly granular, real-time market research.

Of course, lots of apps transmit all kinds of private data back to the app maker. Some send back each phone’s Unique Device Identification (UDI), the number assigned to each mobile phone, which can be used to positively identify it. Other apps tell the servers the phone’s location. Many apps actually snoop around on your phone, gathering up personal information, such as gender, age and ZIP code, and zapping it back to the company over your phone’s data connection.

Methinks it would behoove consumers wondering how the NSA might get into their iPhones to hie themselves to their local App Store.

A little further back in the Wayback machine brings us to the analog era, my favorite, when all that was needed to turn your home phone into a microphone was some fiddling at the telco switch.  From Bloomberg in 1999:

It’s hardly a secret that phone taps are a favorite ploy of industrial spies as well as law-enforcement agencies. What isn’t well-known is that the phone doesn’t even have to be off the hook to be tapped. It’s possible to activate a hung-up phone remotely and use it to eavesdrop. This techno-trick recently came to light as a result of a drug dealer’s court case in the Netherlands–but it is said that the technique will work on virtually any phone anywhere.

I remember reading somewhere that this was a much-cherished technology for various British intelligence outfits working through British Telecom and its previous incarnation, Post Office Telecommunications.

And from Mark Bowden’s book on the US-assisted manhunt for Pablo Escobar in the early 1990s, Killing Pablo, here is a nugget from the analog cell phone era which, I expect, still applies today:

There was another nifty secret feature to Centra Spike’s capability [a US Army sigint outfit that, unlike the NSA, was tasked with providing tactical intelligence to special operations–CH].  So long as their target left the battery in his cell phone, Centra Spike could remotely turn it on whenever they wished.  Without triggering the phone’s lights or beeper, the phone could be activated so that it emitted a low-intensity signal, enough for the unit to get a fix on its general location…

With this background, the extravagant cybercaution of Brookings China wonk Kenneth Lieberthal is understandable:

When Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a China expert at the Brookings Institution, travels to that country, he follows a routine that seems straight from a spy film.

He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings “loaner” devices, which he erases before he leaves the United States and wipes clean the minute he returns. In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns off his phone but also removes the battery, for fear his microphone could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, because, he said, “the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop.”

I have a feeling that Mr. Lieberthal’s countermeasures are informed both by awareness of PRC perfidy, and knowledge of the immense penetration and surveillance capabilities the industrial-security partnership has brought to the telecom and networking game around the world.

If you’re in China–or anywhere else–that phone in your pocket: it’s not your friend.

January 3, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

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