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Israel attorney general joins lawsuit against Palestinian filmmaker

MEMO | December 21, 2017

Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit has joined a lawsuit by an army reservist against Palestinian filmmaker Mohammad Bakri, over the latter’s 2002 film “Jenin, Jenin”.

According to a report in Haaretz, “the unusual move” will see the top legal official support Nissim Meghnagi’s defamation of character suit against the acclaimed director due to the “public interest in the case”. The paper says this is a “rarely exercised” privilege of the Attorney General.

Meghnagi is a veteran of “Operation Defensive Shield”, which saw Israeli occupation forces conduct large-scale attacks on Palestinian population centres. In Jenin refugee camp, more than 50 residents were killed, including some two dozen non-combatants.

In 2016, Meghnagi sued Bakri for 2.6 million shekels ($0.74 million), claiming that “he appears in and was named in the movie, and that the film libelled Israeli soldiers by presenting them as war criminals”.

“Bakri argues that the purpose of the suit is persecution and political silencing, and says the case is without merit”, reported Haaretz, since Meghnagi only appears on camera for a few seconds, and “he cannot be identified as the person behind the deeds described in the movie”.

Haaretz says that “Mendelblit’s announcement throwing his weight behind the suit followed requests from Meghnagi himself and from Israel Defence Force Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot.”

Five years ago, a district court rejected a lawsuit by five other soldiers who participated in “Operation Defensive Shield”, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court.

Then Attorney General Menachem Mazuz sided with the soldiers, but Mendelblit said in his announcement that “in contrast to the previous proceedings, this plaintiff actually appears in the movie while the narrator accuses the Israeli soldiers of looting”.

December 21, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

French Public Activists Demand RT France’s Broadcasting License Be Revoked

Sputnik – December 20, 2017

PARIS – Several French public figures on Wednesday called on the county’s broadcasting watchdog to recall RT France’s license for operating on the country’s territory.

The letter was signed by author Galia Ackerman, historians Antuan Arzhakovskii and Wladimir Berelowitch, journalist Michel Eltchaninoff, as well as teachers and translators.

“In the context of the hybrid war, authorization for broadcasting in France, given to Russia Today, is a very grave issue, because it can lead to confusion of minds and dissension within the French … We are asking you in the name of preserving civilian peace to recall Russia Today’s license for operation on France’s territory,” the letter, published by Le Monde newspaper, read.

This comes two weeks after the Russian Justice Ministry labelled nine foreign media, including US government-backed Voice of America and Radio Liberty, as “foreign agents” for receiving foreign funding after the US Justice Department did the same to RT America.

Meantime, a senior Russian lawmaker has told Sputnik that french media working in Russia would face the kind of restrictions some US media have been targeted with if the recently accredited RT France broadcaster loses its license.

“If its license is recalled, French media in Russia will undoubtedly get a response – the same kind of measures that were taken against US media,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chair of the upper-house Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, said.

RT France started broadcasting on Monday. In a letter to Olivier Schrameck, the president of the country’s Conseil superieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), 11 public figures said that RT was accused by high-level officials in the United States and Europe of sowing discord and undermining democracy. Earlier, Schrameck said that the CSA would follow closely RT France’s activities.Over the past months, RT has faced pressure and allegations from a number of Western states. Particularly, in November, RT America registered as a “foreign agent” in the United States under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) upon the request of the Department of Justice. Other foreign state media outlets in the United States, such as the United Kingdom’s BBC, China’s CCTV, Germany’s Deutsche Welle and others, have not been requested to register under FARA. RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said the broadcaster was choosing between registering or being charged in a criminal case by the US government.

The request to register as a “foreign agent” in the United States followed months of claims about the broadcaster’s alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election. The outlet, as well as the Russian authorities, have repeatedly denied the allegations of meddling.

December 20, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

The Information-Industrial Complex

corbettreport | December 18, 2017

Half a century ago, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term “military-industrial complex” to describe the fascistic collusion between the Pentagon and America’s burgeoning armaments industry. But in our day and age we are witnessing the rise of a new collusion, one between the Pentagon and the tech industry that it helped to seed, that is committed to waging a covert war against people the world over. Now, in the 21st century, it is time to give this new threat a name: the information-industrial complex.

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=25128

December 19, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

A Good Year for Israel and Its Friends

A bad year for the U.S. Constitution

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 19, 2017

The unfortunate Donald Trump Administration decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel serves no visible American interest, in spite of what some of the always-loyal-to-Israel punditry has been suggesting. Israel is already moving to exploit the situation in its usual fashion. Immediately after the announcement was made, Israeli Ambassador in Washington Ron Dermer suggested that the decision on Jerusalem could now be extended to include other disputed areas, most particularly Syria’s Golan Heights that were occupied in 1967. And the decision on Jerusalem itself will quite likely prove elastic as the Israeli government has already prepared legislation to incorporate large chunks of settlements into the city limits, far beyond the historic boundaries.

The currently popular among Zionists argument that recognizing Jerusalem will somehow perversely accelerate a drive for a final peace settlement with Israel as it will demonstrate to the Palestinians just how hopeless their cause is has little merit as desperation is more likely to lead to increased violence than a political solution. A more intriguing reading suggests that Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia are conniving at squeezing even more Palestinians into a slightly enlarged prison-camp in Gaza, leaving the rest of the West Bank open for absorption by Israel. Again, such an outcome is not very likely as the 2.5 million Palestinians remaining in the region will likely have some say regarding the issue no matter how much pressure is exerted by the Saudis and Jared Kushner for them to submit.

Nothing good will come out of the Trump decision as the situation in the region is already starting to unravel. The Turks are talking about opening an Embassy to Palestine in East Jerusalem and the 56 other Muslim countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation might follow suit. Israel, which has physical control of the entire city, would use force to prevent that, creating some interesting new points of conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. would, of course, become involved given its role as Israel’s patron and protector. The evolving situation is likely to develop into Israel and the United States versus the rest of the world, with unfortunate consequences as the conflict will spill over into normally unrelated issues like trade and otherwise innocuous international agreements, while American travelers and businesses will increasingly become targets for terrorism.

If you want to understand the reason why the United States cannot pursue sensible objectives in the Middle East or anywhere else, one has to look no farther than the all too often Israel-centric neocons who have become adept at advising nearly everyone in the government from the White House on down regarding what should be done, particularly in foreign policy. The Trump Administration’s slowness in filling senior positions has meant that there are many vacancies, which has opened the door to eager neoconservative-leaning nominal Republicans to re-enter government. At the State Department Brian Hook of the neocon John Hay Initiative is now chief of policy planning, courtesy of Margaret Peterlin, Tillerson’s chief of staff. They have recently hired David Feith, the son of the infamous Pentagon Office of Special Plans head Doug Feith, to head the Asia desk. And Wes Mitchell, whose policies are largely indistinguishable from his predecessor, has replaced Victoria Nuland as Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. While Elliot Abrams, Eliot Cohen, the Kagans and other prominent neocons have been blocked, second-tier activists carrying less political baggage have quietly been brought in.

And Congress is to a certain extent the source of all evil, as its numerous committee meetings gorge on advice from experts who are frequently anything but, reflecting the hardline views of many of the legislators themselves with nary a contrary opinion in sight. A recent session of the Senate Armed Services Committee featured a statement by leading neocon Eric Edelman. His presentation is hawkish in the extreme, with particular focus on Iran and Russia. It can be summarized briefly by citing some of the section headings: “Adopt a post-ISIS Strategy for Syria and Iraq,” “Develop Credible Military Leverage Against Iran,” “Recognize Russia as an obstacle, not a partner,” “Increase internal pressure against the Iranian regime,” and “Enforce nuclear restrictions on Iran.”

So it’s garbage-in and garbage-out on how much of the government gets a large percentage of its information. And given the White House track record relating to Iran and Jerusalem over the past several months, one might also reasonably come to the conclusion that Israel will get whatever it wants, including a catastrophic war with Iran, because it’s also garbage-in at the White House by way of son-in-law Jared Kushner’s view of the Middle East.

But there is a second story playing out about Israel right here in the United States which should be even more concerning as what is happening on the ground in Palestine and Syria. You see, the problem that Israel has is that it is indeed an apartheid state based on race and religion. The 320,000 Palestinians attempting to hang on in and around East Jerusalem have no rights whatsoever and are being systematically forced out by being denied building permits and through arbitrary oversight by the Israeli military and police. Christian churches and foundations are also under pressure from the Israeli authorities but you won’t hear much about that from Congress or the White House.

The truth about Israel is quite unpleasant, so it has been necessary to construct a completely untrue but compelling counter-narrative which relies psychologically on cultivation of claims of perpetual victimhood linked repeatedly to the holocaust. The false narrative usually starts with the myth about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East, that it is a tolerant place where all religions can worship and where everyone enjoys freedom under law. But, alas, poor Israel is treated unfairly by the international community solely because it is Jewish.

The reality of life in Israel is quite different if one bothers to ask any Palestinian Christian or Muslim who has the misfortune to live there. Or if one reads about the essentially racist de-humanization of Arabs by Israelis, which has led to the killing, beating and imprisonment of children as well as an army sniper’s recent shooting dead of a legless Palestinian protester in a wheelchair.

And once you construct the false narrative you have to protect it by making sure that no one can easily pose a challenge to it. Much of the national media is on board this effort, voluntarily limiting or eliminating any coverage that is negative about Israel. And major players in the alternative media community have come around also, with increasing direct censorship and other manipulation of material appearing on sites like Facebook and Google. The ultimate objective of the Israel Lobby is to follow the example in some European countries, where criticism of Israel is equated to anti-Semitism and is therefore categorized as a hate crime, with both civil and criminal penalties attached.

I have previously reported on how 24 states are now requiring statements pledging not to boycott Israel from those citizens and organizations that receive government funding or even seek local government employment. And there is the reported progress in Congress of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which constitute two major steps forward in the same direction. Both seek to define as anti-Semitism any criticism of Israel. On December 12th the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was approved by the House of Representatives with 402 affirmative votes and only two libertarian-leaning congressmen voting “no.” The Israel Anti-Boycott Act that is also currently making its way through the Congress would far exceed what is happening at the state level and would set a new standard for deference to Israeli interests on the part of the national government. It would criminalize any U.S. citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce” who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes about “requesting the furnishing of information” regarding it, with penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of 1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison. According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, the Senate bill was drafted with the assistance of AIPAC.

Perhaps more dangerous than current and pending legislation, which is already being challenged in courts as a violation of First Amendment rights, are the bureaucrats being put in place by the Trump Administration to interpret and enforce laws and regulations. As we have discovered from the James Comey experience and the activities of some of his associates, senior bureaucrats have considerable freedom to interpret how they should carry out their responsibilities, making the “rule of law” standard for ethical government somewhat mythical. In that light, the recent naming of Kenneth Marcus as head of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education should be raising red flags for those who are concerned about civil liberties.

Marcus is currently head of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which he founded in 2011. The Center has been involved in serial litigation with one objective – stopping protests staged by students at colleges and universities against Israeli policies. Marcus is focused on silencing the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has been gaining in popularity among young Americans, and which the Israeli government sees as a major threat to its legitimacy. The Brandeis Center mission statement is clear: “The leading civil and human rights challenge facing North American Jewry is the resurgent problem of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism on university campuses.”

For those who respond “So what? Marcus has a right to promote his viewpoints by whatever means,” the response might well be that his appointment is putting someone with a clear agenda in charge of an organization established to make sure there are no agendas relating to the civil rights of students. To be sure, Marcus has never won a case in court, but that is not what he is seeking to do. He is more interested in creating trouble, bad publicity and in driving up the costs due to litigation. As he describes it, “These cases – even when rejected – expose administrators to bad publicity… If a university shows a failure to treat initial complaints seriously, it hurts them with donors, faculty, political leaders and prospective students.”

Marcus will have the power and authority to deny federal funds to colleges and universities that do not meet his standards for action to quell the rising tide of Israel criticism, making him little different than the journalist who writes puff pieces on Israel or the politicians who takes PAC money and stands up twenty-nine times to applaud the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, at Marcus’ confirmation hearing not one Senator asked him about his full-time advocacy for Israel.

Many universities are dependent on federal dollars and have already taken administrative steps to distance themselves from Israel criticism or to ban it altogether. Marcus will be able to move the bar even lower, putting pressure on colleges to drive the “Israel haters,” as he refers to them, out of the educational system. It is possible to foresee a future in which students will be free to criticize the United States on campus while discussing the foreign state of Israel with any candor will be forbidden.

December 19, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five Broken Cameras

Five Broken Cameras from Ahmad Al-Bazz

December 18, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why America’s Law Enforcement Empire Resembles Secret Police in a Dictatorship

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 14.12.2017

Secret police are characteristic of dictatorships, or so goes the conventional thinking on the subject. Police in democracies operate for the most part transparently and within a set of rules and guidelines that limits their ability to gratuitously punish citizens who have done nothing wrong. If a policeman operating under rule-of-law steps out of line, he can be held accountable. That is also conventional thinking.

But what happens when an ostensibly “democratic” police force becomes corrupted and starts doing things that are outside its zone of responsibility, and does so to benefit a political relationship that will in turn protect those who have broken the law under cover of carrying out their official duties? That is the characteristic of what we have been calling a “deep state,” where forces drawn generally from the political class and security services conspire together to control what the public is allowed to know while also manipulating nuisances like elections to make sure that the “correct” outcome emerges.

Indeed, deep state operating in a democracy or republic is far more dangerous that the secret police in a dictatorship. That is because in a system where the forces of the state are all-powerful, nearly everyone expects that what they read and what the government says is all a lie. In a democratic system there is what intelligence officers would refer to as plausible denial, which means that even when the government is behaving very badly much of the public will believe that it is acting honorably because they want to trust that the system works. And when the deep state includes management of the media, many citizens will likewise believe what they are reading or hearing is honest reporting, even when it is not.

Due to the events of the past year in particular, many Americans have become convinced that there now exists something like a secret police operating in the United States that is a fusion of some political dealmakers with certain politicized elements in the intelligence and security services. However one regards President Donald Trump and his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, there is nevertheless something odd in terms of how they have been investigated and, in the case of Flynn, legally entrapped to convict him of lying to the FBI to force him to cut a deal with the Special Counsel inquiry headed by Robert Mueller.

Consider how, even though meeting with Russians is not illegal, Trump and his associates have been subjected to secret investigation of their Russian ties for nearly two years without any revelations apart from the fact that it was Israel, not Russia, that colluded to undermine White House policy. FBI Director James Comey’s antics during the primaries and electoral campaign, in which he first exonerated and then complained about Hillary Clinton while at the same time validating a dossier full of largely questionable information about Donald Trump’s dealings with Russia provides clear evidence of an organization that has lost its bearings and has become a politicized agent of an incumbency that has itself become corrupted and believes itself to be above the law. And then there is the Central Intelligence Agency’s own John Brennan working with the FBI to undermine the Trumps, illegally digging up dirt from the liaison intelligence partners in Europe and the Middle East.

America’s law enforcement empire has all the characteristics of secret police in a dictatorship. It is not transparent in its actions, has a history of bending the rules to obtain convictions, and its officers are rarely held accountable. It has also been politicized. And to be sure, one should recognize that there are two additional factors driving the growth and transformation of the national security state in the U.S. First is the intense dislike that the top levels of the American intelligence and police agencies have for Donald Trump personally, a contempt that Trump himself has largely earned by his scorn for much of the government that he inherited. Second is the “trust the authorities” culture that has grown up since 9/11, reinforced by fearmongering on the part of the government to justify executive overreach and enabled through anti-terror legislation that has unleashed the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) to act with impunity while suffering no consequences whatsoever.

December 14, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Marwan Barghouthi ordered to solitary confinement after statement on Intifada

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – December 13, 2017

Marwan Barghouthi, member of the Fateh central committee and a prominent Palestinian national leader, was transferred by Israeli prison officials into solitary confinement at Hadarim prison, reported the campaign for his release on Tuesday, 12 December 2017.

The campaign said that “this decision to isolate him comes to prevent him from communicating with his people in the homeland and diaspora at a time when Palestine and the capitals and cities of the world are protesting widely against the decision of U.S. president Donald Trump to declare his country’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Israeli occupation state. This decision to isolate is a form of retaliation for a statement issued by Marwan Barghouthi on the anniversary of the great popular intifada a few days ago.” The statement, issued from Hadarim prison, emphasized the rights of the Palestinian people to return, self-determination and their capital, Jerusalem, and urged the expansion of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and international solidarity with Palestine.

Barghouthi has been ordered to solitary confinement on 27 occasions and spent several years in solitary confinement in the past, especially after his imprisonment in April 2002. He was held in solitary confinement in April-May 2017 because of his role in leading a mass hunger strike for 51 days in Israeli prison; he has also been barred from visits by his wife, the lawyer Fadwa Barghouthi, until the end of 2019.

Recently, a French delegation to Palestine, including a number of mayors involved with the campaign to free Barghouthi, was told that its members would be denied access to Palestine for their role in supporting Palestinian prisoners and the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The delegation sought to meet with Barghouthi in Hadarim prison.

December 13, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

The Deep State’s Christmas Present to America: Surveillance That Never Ends

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | December 11, 2017

“He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!”
—“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

Just in time for Christmas, the Deep State wants to give America the gift that keeps on giving: never-ending mass surveillance.

I’m not referring to the kind of surveillance carried out by that all-knowing and all-seeing Jolly Old St. Nick and his informant the Elf on the Shelf (although, to be fair, they have helped to acclimate us to a world in which we’re always being watched and judged by higher authorities).

No, this particular bit of Yuletide gift-giving comes courtesy of the Deep State (a.k.a. the Surveillance State, Police State, Shadow Government and black-ops spy agencies).

If this power-hungry cabal gets its way, the government’s power to spy on its citizens will soon be all-encompassing and permanent.

As it now stands, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the legal basis for two of the National Security Agency’s largest mass surveillance programs, “PRISM” and “Upstream”—is set to expire at the end of 2017.

“PRISM” lets the NSA access emails, video chats, instant messages, and other content sent via Facebook, Google, Apple and others. “Upstream” lets the NSA worm its way into the internet backbone—the cables and switches owned by private corporations like AT&T that make the internet into a global network—and scan traffic for the communications of tens of thousands of individuals labeled “targets.”

Just as the USA Patriot Act was perverted from its original intent to fight terrorism abroad and was used instead to covertly crack down on the American people (allowing government agencies to secretly track Americans’ financial activities, monitor their communications, and carry out wide-ranging surveillance on them), Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution to allow the government to collect the actual content of Americans’ emails, phone calls, text messages and other electronic communication without a warrant.

Under Section 702, the government collects and analyzes over 250 million internet communications every year. There are estimates that at least half of these contain information about U.S. residents, many of whom have done nothing wrong. This information is then shared with law enforcement and “routinely used for purposes unrelated to national security.”

Mind you, this is about far more than the metadata collection that Edward Snowden warned us about, which was bad enough. Section 702 gives the government access to the very content of your conversations (phone calls, text messages, video chats), your photographs, your emails. As Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., warned, “This is not just who you send it to, but what’s in it.”

Unfortunately, Big Brother doesn’t relinquish power easily.

The Police State doesn’t like restrictions.

And the Surveillance State certainly doesn’t look favorably on anything that might weaken its control. Even after Congress limited the NSA’s ability to collect bulk phone records, the agency continued to do so, vacuuming up more than 151 million records of Americans’ phone calls last year alone.

A government that doesn’t heed its constituents, doesn’t abide by the law, and kowtows to its police and military forces? That’s a dictatorship anywhere else.

Here in America, you can call it “technotyranny,” a term coined by investigative journalist James Bamford to refer to an age of technological tyranny made possible by government secrets, government lies, government spies and their corporate ties.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead.

For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government.

This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.

The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins.

The short answer: they have become one and the same entity.

The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state.

Having already transformed local police into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are preparing to turn the nation’s soldier cops into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more.

This is the new face of policing in America.

Enter big data policing which gives the nation’s 17,000 police agencies access to a growing “investigative” database that maps criminal associates and gangs, as well as their social and familial connections.

As Slate reports, “These social network systems, which target ‘chronic offenders,’ also include information about innocent associates, family members, and friends, creating extensive human maps of connections and patterns of contacts.” Those individuals then get assigned a threat score to determine their risk of being a perpetrator or victim of a future crime.

In Chicago, for example, “individuals with the highest scores on the Chicago Police Department ‘heat list’ get extra attention in the form of home visits or increased community surveillance.”

In Baltimore, police are using Cessna planes equipped with surveillance systems to film entire segments of the city, then combining that footage with police reports in order to “map the comings and goings of everyone—criminals and innocents alike.”

In this way, big data policing not only expands Big Brother’s reach down to the local level, but it also provides local police—most of whom know little about the Constitution and even less about the Fourth Amendment—with a new technological weapon to deploy against an unsuspecting public.

The end result is pre-crime, packaged in the guise of national security but no less sinister.

All of those individuals who claim to be unconcerned about government surveillance because they have nothing to hide, take note: pre-crime policing—given a futuristic treatment in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report—aims to treat you like a criminal before you’ve ever even committed a crime.

This hasn’t fazed President Trump who, much like his predecessors, has thus far marched in lockstep with the dictates of the police state.

For months, the Trump Administration has been actively lobbying Congress to reauthorize Section 702 in its entirety. Now, according to The Intercept, Trump is actively considering a proposal to establish his own global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies and answer directly to the White House.

If approved, this would be yet another secret government agency carrying out secret surveillance and counterintelligence, funded by a secret black ops budget that by its very nature does away with transparency, bypasses accountability and completely eludes any form of constitutionality.

According to The Washington Post, there are more than a dozen “black budget” national intelligence agencies already receiving more than $52.6 billion in secret government funding. Among the top five black ops agencies currently are the CIA, the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Program, and the General Defense Intelligence Program.

A significant chunk of that black ops money has been flowing to Silicon Valley since before there was an internet, itself a creation of the military/security industrial complex.

Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it would be storing classified information for U.S. spy agencies in its digital cloud, part of a $600 million contract with the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Two decades earlier, America’s spy agencies tapped Silicon Valley to spearhead research into ways of tracking individuals and groups online. That research, as documented by Jeff Nesbit, the former director of legislative and public affairs at the National Science Foundation, culminated in the creation of a massive public-private surveillance state that hinged on a partnership between the NSA, the CIA and Google.

“The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called ‘birds of a feather,’” writes Nesbit. He continues:

Their research aim was to track digital fingerprints inside the rapidly expanding global information network, which was then known as the World Wide Web… By working with emerging commercial-data companies, their intent was to track like-minded groups of people across the internet and identify them from the digital fingerprints they left behind, much like forensic scientists use fingerprint smudges to identify criminals. Just as “birds of a feather flock together,” they predicted that potential terrorists would communicate with each other in this new global, connected world—and they could find them by identifying patterns in this massive amount of new information. Once these groups were identified, they could then follow their digital trails everywhere.

The problem, of course, is that the government always sets its sights higher.

It wasn’t long before the government’s search for criminal “birds of a feather”—made much easier with the passage of the USA Patriot Act—lumped everyone together and treated all of the birds (i.e., the public) as criminals to be identified, tracked, monitored and subjected to warrantless, suspicionless surveillance.

Fast forward to the present moment when, on any given day, the average American is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government’s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.

Whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking you. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. These corporate trackers monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere and share the data with the government.

Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to collect data and spy on the American people. Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power.

These government snoops are constantly combing through and harvesting vast quantities of our communications, then storing it in massive databases for years. Once this information—collected illegally and without any probable cause—is ingested into NSA servers, other government agencies can often search through the databases to make criminal cases against Americans that have nothing to do with terrorism or anything national security-related. One Justice Department lawyer called the database the “FBI’s ‘Google.’”

In other words, the NSA, an unaccountable institution filled with unelected bureaucrats, operates a massive database that contains the intimate and personal communications of countless Americans and makes it available to other unelected bureaucrats.

Talk about a system rife for abuse.

Ask the government why it’s carrying out this warrantless surveillance on American citizens, and you’ll get the same Orwellian answer the government has been trotting out since 9/11 to justify its assaults on our civil liberties: to keep America safe.

Yet warrantless mass surveillance by the government and its corporate cohorts hasn’t made America any safer. And it certainly isn’t helping to preserve our freedoms. Frankly, America will never be safe as long as the U.S. government is allowed to shred the Constitution.

Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying program because they’re only looking to get the “bad” guys who are overseas.

Don’t believe it.

The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale. They are conducting this mass surveillance without a warrant, thus violating the core principles of the Fourth Amendment which protects the privacy of all Americans.

Warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens is wrong, un-American, and unconstitutional.

Clearly, the outlook for reforming the government’s unconstitutional surveillance programs does not look good.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, whenever the rights of the American people are pitted against the interests of the military/corporate/security complex, “we the people” lose. Unless Congress develops a conscience—or suddenly remembers that they owe their allegiance to the citizenry and not the corporate state—we’re about to lose big.

It’s time to let Section 702 expire or reform the law to ensure that millions and millions of Americans are not being victimized by a government that no longer respects its constitutional limits.

Mark my words: if Congress votes to make the NSA’s vast spying powers permanent, it will be yet another brick in the wall imprisoning us within an electronic concentration camp from which there is no escape.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at http://www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

December 11, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

John Lennon Was Right: The Government Is Run by Maniacs for Maniacal Means

By John W. Whitehead | Rutherford Institute | December 07, 2017

Not much has changed in the 37 years since John Lennon was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet.

All of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, corruption, harassment, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were used against Lennon, who never refrained from speaking truth to power and calling for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.

Little wonder, then, that the U.S. government saw Lennon as enemy number one.

A prime example of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority, Lennon was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), in an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose.”

Years after Lennon’s assassination, it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of surveillance files on him. As the New York Times notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”

Such government-directed harassment was nothing new.

The FBI has had a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures, including Martin Luther King Jr.

In Lennon’s case, the ex-Beatle saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change. Yet while Lennon believed in the power of the people, he also understood the danger of a power-hungry government. “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people,” observed Lennon. “It controls them.”

By March 1971, when his “Power to the People” single was released, it was clear that Lennon was ready to participate in political activism against the U. S. government, the “monster” that was financing the war in Vietnam.

The release of Lennon’s Sometime in New York City album, which contained a radical anti-government message in virtually every song, only fanned the flames of the government’s war on Lennon.

In 1972, Nixon had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.” Despite the fact that Lennon was not plotting to bring down the Nixon Administration, as the government feared, the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in and fought back. Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country. By 1980, the old radical was back and ready to cause trouble.

Unfortunately, Lennon’s time as a troublemaker was short-lived.

Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows on Dec. 8, 1980, just as Lennon was returning to his New York apartment building. As Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman dropped into a two-handed combat stance, emptied his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point bullets into Lennon’s back and left arm.

John Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Much like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and others who have died attempting to challenge the powers-that-be, Lennon had finally been “neutralized.”

Yet Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his efforts to speak truth to power.

Even so, his work to change the world for the better is far from done.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, peace remains out of reach. Activists and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives. And those who do dare to speak up are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship or, worse, involuntary detention.

As Lennon shared in a 1968 interview:

I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means. If anybody can put on paper what our government and the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I think they’re all insane. But I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”

So what’s the answer?

Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”

“Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders….You have to do it yourself.”

“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”

“War is over, if you want it.”

In other words, fighting the evil of the American police state can only come about by way of conscious thoughts that are put into action.

Do you want an end to war? Then stop supporting the government’s military campaigns. Do you want government violence against the citizenry to end? Then demand that your local police de-militarize. Do you want a restoration of your freedoms? You’ll have to get the government to recognize that “we the people” are the masters in this relationship and government employees are our public servants.

The choice is ours.

The power (if we want it), as Lennon recognized, is in our hands.

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people,” concluded Lennon. “The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”

For the moment, the choice is still ours: slavery or freedom, war or peace, death or life.

The point at which we have no choice is the point at which the monsters—the maniacs, the powers-that-be, the Deep State—win.

As Lennon warned, “You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.”

December 7, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Jackboots in The Canadian Academy. Freedom of Expression And Inquiry Under Threat … Again. University of Lethbridge, Alberta.

Prof. Anthony Hall. Image credit:  Jeremy Rothe-Kushel/ YouTube
By Robin Mathews | American Herald Tribune | December 4, 2017

Freedom of Speech battles in universities often mirror problems in the larger community, and the one being fought at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, is no exception. It is conducted, on one side, by convinced believers as a response to alleged Anti-semitic positions which have surfaced there and which, the believers think, need relentless, radical, extreme responses. Conversely, the conflict looks, to some others, perhaps, as a program to create a huge smokescreen behind which representatives or friends or sympathizers of the State of Israel can attempt to cut off any examination of that State’s activities which might bring it into disrepute. And the quickest method is to brand any adverse references to the accounts of history held by the State of Israel as well as to any of its actions and policies as acts of Anti-semitism.

Forces wishing to dominate and to dictate inquiry and to control “freedom of expression” always seek to repress certain kinds of knowledge, investigation, and expressions of opinion.

In the late 1980s I was proposed for a year’s exchange with a professor in Simon Fraser University’s English Department – at the time dominated by U.S. immigrants holding U.S. citizenship. They rejected my presence at SFU – and were backed belligerently by SFU’s Canadian president who was quoted in the Vancouver Sun saying that he wouldn’t have Robin Mathews on his campus and he didn’t know a university president in Canada who would! (Amusing slander, but slander nonetheless.)

(If William Saywell’s comment sounds like an utterance by present University of Lethbridge president Michael Mahon it may be because both men appear to have fallen to thinking they could dispose of human persons in any way a passing whim suggested … and to make no bones about it!)

The U.S. citizen chair of the SFU English Department wrote me a letter saying that many people in the Department disliked my views on literary and cultural nationalism in Canada and did not want to give me a place at SFU to utter them. That was a ban on free (scholarly) expression. I took it to mean, also, that U.S. citizens intended to decide what Canadians could say to Canadians in British Columbia.

There was a battle. It was long … months and months. The national faculty body (the CAUT) was strong. It declared SFU in violation of academic freedom. At that point, SFU admitted it had lost. The intensity of the battle is hard to think of now – the basis of it is so apparently minor. Reports, however, were that “grown men” at SFU interviewed on the matter almost burst into tears. And, indeed, passions were running so high the SFU Administration asked me if I would teach from the Centre for Canadian Studies rather than from the bent, bleeding, and discountenanced English Department.

That battle was won at SFU for freedom of expression and inquiry! But the personal victory was muted because president Saywell and a few of his closest underlings, I believe, did everything they could in the next years to limit my effectiveness. No surprise. “The fortunes” one might say “of (academic) war”.

At the University of Lethbridge twenty-six-year professorial veteran of Native American Studies, Liberal Arts, Globalization Studies … and more … Anthony Hall has responded with invention, far-reaching research, and creativity to the hugeness of the body of knowledge he has taken as his province. In two large, scholarly, and fascinating works (The American Empire and the Fourth World (2003), and Earth Into Property (2010) Hall traces the oppression and exploitation of the globe’s indigenous peoples since the historic voyage to “the new world” of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

As a result of his wide-ranging research (and travel) Anthony Hall couldn’t fail to see the power and to observe the participation of the U.S.A. in what he names “imperial globalization”. Nor could he evade the intimate ties between the State of Israel and the U.S.A. Nor, of course, could he fail to see the huge influence the State of Israel has upon U.S. policy in the Middle East (a region populated with indigenous peoples, like the Palestinians).

He is, moreover, a scholar who believes genuinely that no subject worthy of study can be declared ‘off limits’ – whether Canadian culture and literary nationalism or the complex “Holocaust” in Nazi Germany operated preceding and during what we choose to call The Second World War (1939-1945). Donning the apparel of true scholars everywhere, Professor Hall accepts that there is no historical, scientific, or cultural fact – however apparently sunk in concrete – that cannot be revisited, re-opened, re-weighed, re-examined, reassessed.

Closer to home, professor Hall has paid attention to the rising tide of voices in the U.S.A. and Canada which claims the “official” account of 9/11 (of, that is to say, the destruction of the Trade Towers in New York on September 11, 2001) was, has been, and is the product of a huge Conspiracy by complex powers (involving U.S. government) producing a Conspiracy Theory created to mislead everyone and to place the blame for the event on people of Islam, especially in the Middle East … people, incidentally, who have become, it would seem, ‘by the accident of history’, enemies  – in fact – of both the U.S.A. and the State of Israel.

And so … if more and more authentic voices are saying “the official account” of 9/11 was created by government and Secret Intelligence Conspiracy Theorists wanting to pin onto Islam the guilt of 9/11 … a question forces itself forward.  If the formally accused did not … then who did organize and carry out the destruction of the buildings of the World Trade Centre (and of the building which, a little later, simply appeared to collapse into rubble without any apparent cause)?

Also, since September 11, 2001 an increasing number of so-called “terrorist” events and attacks have occurred all over the Western World and have (by persistent and often careful and scholarly non government-approved examination) been called by investigators arising in the population “faked events” or what is called “False Flags” undertaken (it is alleged) to terrify innocent Western populations and to condition them to accept “Islam” (in a hundred different forms) as the over-arching enemy of the peace-loving and (mostly) Christian West. In answer to the very active, very numerous, and wholly ‘un-government’ on-going operations and investigations into those “terrorist” events, Anthony Hall has found himself a co-host of “The False Flag Weekly News”.

It is hugely relevant to the whole subject (and especially to Canadians) that in July, 2016, Madam Justice Catherine Bruce in the B.C. Supreme Court declared that an apparent attempted “Islamic Terrorist Event” at the B.C. legislature grounds on July 1, 2013, was, in fact, wholly the work of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, [a major False Flag event] entrapping socially challenged converts to Islam, counselling them, coaching them, assisting them, giving them money, and delivering them to the terrorist site … and then arresting them as terrorist criminals … caught in the act! For all those who say that people questioning terrorist events are ‘conspiracy theorists’ making up lies – the highly organized RCMP criminal action proves absolutely that at least one State – Canada – has engaged in a major False Flag event in order to slander Islam. It did so employing hundreds of RCMP and millions of dollars of Canadian taxpayers’ funds (during the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper).

Subsequently, in answer to a call for a Public Inquiry into the RCMP, (Liberal) Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Ralph Goodale, responding for the Liberal, Justin Trudeau cabinet, expressed, in effect, approval of organized criminal activity on the part of the RCMP… what he calls in his letter the RCMP’s “major crime technique”. Nowhere in the letter does he refer to the request for a Public Inquiry, instead urging understanding and support for the Force he gives evidence of accepting as a criminal organization….

If the officially declared Islamic men did not plan, organize, and carry out what we call 9/11 … then who did?  All possibilities are open for consideration. One of them is that the State of Israel was involved, wanting to influence the U.S.A. towards an aggressive policy in the Middle East. The claim may be completely false. Naturally, the hosts running The False Flag Weekly News, Kevin Barrett and Anthony Hall, would air the possibilities (among many others) on their weekly program.  And they did … and, apparently Professor Hall was not unsympathetic to the idea that the State of Israel may have had a hand in the events of 9/11.

Then: in an astonishing event on Friday, August 26, 2016 when Anthony Hall was out of Canada, someone placed a despicable, violently Anti-semitic cartoon on his Facebook Page … completely unknown to Hall.  With truly remarkable speed, organizations and individuals, some apparently supporting the State of Israel went to work as if Anthony Hall was wholly guilty of the posting on his Facebook Page. People from outside the University, a few who would normally be thought of as related to the State of Israel in one way or another, pressed upon the University Administration, the police, officers of the Alberta government… and more. (The Alberta government, it seems, has insisted upon keeping secret some of the names of those complaining.)

If one were to suggest the possibility that a carefully staged campaign was unleashed against Anthony Hall, one might not be wrong to so suggest. The University Administration filed a complaint against Hall with Alberta Human Rights. The complaint was rejected. And so the University Administration filed another one.

In an action (some believe) marked by intemperance and folly – without having exchanged a single word with Professor Hall, a senior academic colleague – president Michael Mahon of the University of Lethbridge ordered Hall off every University of Lethbridge campus and suspended him without pay. He did those things while completely ignoring ALL carefully constructed processes within the university for managing complaints against professorial staff. The processes are written into almost every university faculty/administration agreement in Canada and have been honed and improved over many decades.

Slander and libel filled the Lethbridge air to match the wholly unacceptable actions of the University of Lethbridge Administration and Board of Governors. Nonetheless, the national faculty body, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and the local Faculty Association held firm – the CAUT naming the University of Lethbridge in Violation of Academic Freedom, not a light designation in the university world in Canada. In a court procedure weighing the actions, a little later, the Administration of the university won over neither the judge presiding nor the Alberta government represented at the process.

And so on November 23, 2017, the University of Lethbridge Administration reinstated Professor Hall, lifting all sanctions against him and announcing it would also withdraw its complaint against him to Alberta Human Rights. After fifteen months of attempted Jackboot Justice, the Administration at the University of Lethbridge agreed to use the processes long set up to provide fair and impartial judgements of complaints against faculty members. At one level the return to civility by the University of Lethbridge Administration is a victory for democratic forces in Canada. But at another level its long hold-out, a period filled with injustice to Anthony Hall as well as being filled with violent language and slander, will long remain a scandal in the Canadian Academy.

On the same day – November 23, 2017 – a top B’nai Brith official declared that B’nai Brith is “outraged” at Professor Hall’s full reinstatement which is coupled with the move to due process in the examination of complaints against him.

December 4, 2017 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Australia to probe Facebook & Google

RT | December 4, 2017

Australia’s competition regulator has begun an inquiry into whether the influence of the US tech giants Facebook and Google has harmed the media sector. The probe is part of the country’s broader media reforms.

“We will examine whether platforms are exercising market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of consumers, media content creators, and advertisers,” said Rod Sims, the Chairman of Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

He added that the inquiry would study how Facebook and Google operated to “fully understand their influence in Australia.”

The government has reportedly ordered the investigation due to concerns about the future of the media sector following years of falling profits, newsroom job cuts and the rise of fake news.

The inquiry will have the power to demand information from Google, Facebook and other firms, as well as hold hearings.

Since 2000, European regulators have investigated tech giants Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon over a range of antitrust issues. Google is currently facing more than a €1 billion fine from the EU for abusing search practices. The penalty could become the largest in the history of monopoly abuse cases.

In another case, the EU is investigating whether Google unfairly banned competitors from websites that used its search bar and advertisements. It is also examining how the firm pays and limits mobile phone providers who use its Android software and Play app store.

In September, Spain’s data protection watchdog fined Facebook, saying the social network breached laws designed to protect people’s information and confidentiality. It said the company collected personal data from its users in Spain without obtaining their ‘unequivocal consent’ and without informing them how such information would be used.

The social media giant has also been slapped with a €150,000 fine by the French data protection watchdog for the way the company targeted advertising and tracked users. The penalty was part of a wider probe carried out in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany into some of the corporation’s practices.

December 4, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

German Minister Drafts Law Allowing Intelligence to Spy on Citizens – Report

Sputnik – December 1, 2017

Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière worked out a draft proposal that might force automotive and tech corporations to provide the country’s intelligence agencies with “back door” access to any digital device, including smartphones, laptops, private cars and smart TVs, the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) reported.

The politician has justified his idea by the fact that the country’s security services are increasingly facing difficulties breaking through the systems that protect digital items.

For instance, the locking systems on cars have become so advanced and intelligent that their owners are informed via messenger even about the slightest movements of their vehicles. With the new law, De Maizière wants to prevent these automatic notifications if the law-enforcement services believe it to be justified by their investigation.

The initiative also goes further and intends to provide the German intelligence agencies with “backdoor” access to any device connected to the internet. In this case, they would only require the authorization of a judge to demand the secret data from tech corporations and hack into someone’s phone. The move, which is considered a preventive measure to ensure security and quickly find criminals, “dramatically extends” the state’s capability to conduct espionage against its citizens, RND wrote.

The initiative has caused severe criticism among activists and the country’s politicians, especially due to Germany’s previous espionage record.

In 2015, German intelligence agencies were reported to have been spying on European politicians and companies at the behest of the US National Security Agency (NSA).

 

December 1, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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