DHS proposes MANDATORY facial recognition checks for US citizens at airports
RT | December 3, 2019
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pushing to impose mandatory facial recognition scans on all Americans entering or leaving the United States, moving to close a loophole that allows citizens to opt out.
Proposed in a recent filing, the DHS requested a change to the current rules in order to “provide that all travelers, including US citizens, may be required to be photographed upon entry and/or departure” from the US, citing the need to identify criminals or “suspected terrorists.” While not yet implemented, the rule change is in the “final stages of clearance,” a DHS official told CNN Business.
Under the existing guidelines, US citizens and other lawful permanent residents have the ability to avoid airport biometric scans and identify themselves by another means. While some travelers have found it difficult to opt out given opaque or inconsistent guidelines from airport to airport, the DHS would apparently like to cut down on the confusion by doing away with the exemption altogether.
The new rule was rejected by civil liberties groups and privacy advocates, who said it would only further erode Americans’ privacy and subject them to yet another layer of intrusive government surveillance.
“Time and again, the government told the public and members of Congress that US citizens would not be required to submit to this intrusive surveillance technology as a condition of traveling,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, adding that the rule raises “profound privacy concerns.”
“Travelers, including US citizens, should not have to submit to invasive biometric scans simply as a condition of exercising their constitutional right to travel.”
The DHS is currently set to outfit 20 of America’s largest airports with biometric scanners by 2021, despite a flurry of privacy issues and ongoing technical problems. Last year, an internal watchdog report found that the department’s facial recognition tech was not performing up to snuff and “may be unable to meet expectations” by its deadline. The DHS also piqued security concerns last year when it announced it would partner with Amazon for its all-seeing HART system, which will pass highly detailed information on some 250 million people to the tech giant for storage.
Recalling a data breach in June which saw 100,000 license plate and traveler images stolen from a private contractor hired to store information for the DHS, Stanley said the government simply “cannot be trusted” with the invasive technology.
UN: Israeli occupation costs Palestinians $48 billion
MEMO | December 2, 2019
A UN report found that the fiscal cost of Israeli occupation for the Palestinian people in 2000-2017 period is estimated at $47.7 billion, or three times the size of the Palestinian economy in 2017, reports Anadolu Agency.
Mutasim Elagraa, an economist with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), discussed the report Monday at a news conference in Geneva.
“In the last decade, several UNCTAD studies and reports have addressed the Palestinian fiscal leakage to Israel,” said Elagraa.
The report – entitled Economic cost of the Israeli occupation for the Palestinian people: Fiscal aspects – will be presented to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
“This fiscal leakage prompted other international organizations to bring this issue into question, which helped in retroactively retrieving part of the fiscal resources of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) from Israel,” he said.
The economist said the estimate comprises lost public revenues and interest payments.
According to the report, it includes $28.2 billion in estimated accrued interest and $6.6 billion of leaked Palestinian fiscal revenues to Israel, and the amount continues to rise.
“This estimated cumulative fiscal cost of occupation by Israel would not only have eliminated the Palestinian budget deficit estimated at 17.7 billion US dollars during the same period. It would have also generated a surplus nearly twice the size of the deficit,” Elagraa said.
Alternatively, it would have increased more than tenfold the Palestinian government’s development spending, pegged at $4.5 billion during the period under review, according to the report.
Remember traditional knowledge?
Climate Discussion Nexus | November 27, 2019
If not, don’t worry. Apparently Canadian authorities don’t either. Outgoing Environment Minister Catherine McKenna decided to reduce the number of polar bears the Inuit can hunt in Nunavik, in northern Quebec, despite their claim that from living on the land they knew there were lots. Now a judge has ruled that all that stuff about the wisdom of the ancestors was just virtue-signaling with forked tongue and that when it matters Eurocentric science elbows the ancestors aside. Which is ironic since even Eurocentric science actually says polar bears are flourishing, even if saying so out loud did get Susan Crockford fired.
The back story is that the Makivik Corporation, which represents the Inuit of Nunavik in legal matters, launched a suit in 2016 saying “By and large, Nunavik residents have observed an increase in the polar bear population, and a particularly notable increase since the 1980s.” Despite which Stephen Harper’s environment minister, Peter Kent, had written to the local wildlife board in 2012 asking them to establish the first-ever quota to limit hunting of the big white cute really scary grizzly bears. (Yes, polar bears are a subspecies of grizzlies.) The board, charged with melding western and traditional ways of thinking, ended up establishing a quota of 28 which the federal and Nunavut governments both rejected, annoying the board, which said the federal decision “clearly disregards the extensive body of Inuit traditional knowledge” relying instead “solely on the scientific population estimate.”
Catherine McKenna then cut the quota to 23, prompting Makavik to accuse her of setting “aside entirely the Inuit traditional knowledge” and failing “to even attempt the integration of the two systems of knowledge.” Not that anyone ever said what to do if they seemed to disagree.
The government of course oozed the usual rhetoric about their great respect for Inuit knowledge and claimed the quota was actually above the sustainable harvest rate of 4.5% if the numbers were as western science claimed. And a Federal Court just upheld the decision, though calling for “better communication”, while a spokesman for the minister said “Indigenous peoples are key partners in conserving and protecting nature, and we recognize their unique perspectives, knowledge, rights and responsibilities that can improve conservation outcomes”. But when they say there are so many bears it’s dangerous, well, our global warming computer model says there aren’t and since we’re in Ottawa we’re not worried if we’re wrong.
‘Poisoner in Chief’: Scientist Behind CIA’s Disturbing Mind-Altering Techniques
By Lilia Dergacheva – Sputnik – 01.12.2019
Author Stephen Kinzer boasts stunning knowledge when it comes to writing about terror attacks and coup plots. His most recent work, however, seems to be the most hair-raising, focusing on the puppet master behind the CIA’s poisoning and torture schemes.
“I’m still in shock”, writer Stephen Kinzer says of what he learned about the horrid experiments conducted by a US government scientist that few know by name – Sidney Gottlieb.
“I can’t believe that this happened”, he recounted as his book with the suggestive title “Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control” saw the light of day.
This is a story about Gottlieb’s 22-year career, as the chemist continuously ran mind-control projects that aimed to assist the US in its fight against international communism from the 1950s to the 1970s.
“The investigation of drug effects on ego control and volitional activities, i.e., can willfully suppressed information be elicited through drugs affecting higher nervous systems? If so, which agents are better for this purpose?” the author cited a CIA memo on the project subsequently called Artichoke.
Kinzer writes that in the 50s and 60s, Gottlieb “directed the application of unknowable quantities and varieties of drugs into” hordes of people as he sought the most suitable conscience-altering recipe to effectively mold subjects’ thoughts and behaviours.
Stealthy Doses
Gottlieb has been widely reported to have performed LSD tests on prisoners, government employees, and hospital patients, with many of them kept in the dark about being fed narcotics.
One of the cited examples is the lethal case of a CIA officer who died in a highly suspicious manner after Gottlieb reportedly laced his drink with LSD. He later designed custom-made poisons when his seniors raised the question of “dealing with” a foreign leader, with the sinister doctor finally portrayed by actor Tim Blake Nelson in Errol Morris’ Wormwood in 2017.
However, Kinzer has outlined quite a few new details in his book, the first proper biography of the scientist. For instance, “Poisoner in Chief” depicts the way Gottlieb tried his hand in torture sessions at US military sites and allowed his colleague, a doctor, to give LSD to children.
Kinzer notes that when “Artichoke scientists came up with a new drug or other technique they wished to test… they asked the CIA station in South Korea to supply a batch [of] ‘expendable’ subjects'”.
One CIA memo suggested the subjects were needed for the testing of an unnamed but “important new technique”, adding: “technique does not, not require disposal problems after application”.
On Duty
Gottlieb’s project notably involved foreign heads of state that belonged to the communist camp. According to colleagues cited by Kinzer, he prepared “a pre-poisoned tube of toothpaste” meant for Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, although it was never used.
He also ran a scientific team working on a bizarre plot to disgrace Fidel Castro: believing that his strength was accumulated in his beard, Gottlieb reportedly sought to have thallium salts sprinkled in his boots to make his beard hair fall out, “leaving him open to ridicule and overthrow”.
Kinzer believes his 22 years with the agency left a significant imprint on the CIA as it is today: he says there is “a direct line between Sidney Gottlieb’s work and techniques that US agents taught to Latin American security services in the 1960s and 70s”.
“These techniques were also used in Vietnam—and then later on to the techniques of torture and so-called extreme interrogation that were used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo”, Kinzer added.
Given an “effectively unlimited supply” of LSD supplied by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to the CIA, Gottlieb became perhaps “the most powerful unknown American of the 20th century”, Kinzer states.
After the CIA, the father of four tried to reinvent himself, working with children who have speech problems. “Nobody had any idea of what he had done in the past, but he was tormented by it”, Kinzer assumes noting that when he passed away in 1999 no cause of death was officially announced.
World Jewish Congress: Billionaires, Oligarchs, Global Influencers for Israel
Billionaire Mikhael Mirilashvili and his son Yitzhakis with Israeli minister Yaffa Deri.
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | November 24, 2019
The World Jewish Congress (WJC), which calls itself “The Representative Body of over 100 Jewish Communities Worldwide,” held its annual gala at the Pierre hotel in New York City on Nov. 6.
It bestowed its annual Theodor Herzl Award (named after Israel’s founding father) on former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for her work on behalf of Israel. Some previous awardees have been Joe Biden and Henry Kissinger.
One of the WJC’s main issues is support for Israel. Among its many activities in this realm, it collaborates with the Israeli government to defend Israel from criticisms of its human rights abuses and discriminatory system.
The WJC defines many factual statements about Israel to be “antisemitic,” and labels legitimate opposition to Israeli violence and oppression against Palestinians “antisemitism.” As a result, its top issue, combating “antisemitism,” often consists of efforts to suppress information about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to combat efforts on behalf of Palestinian human rights.
At one of its recent international conferences to oppose this newly defined “antisemitism,” US Special Envoy Elan Carr proclaimed that every law enforcement office and every prosecutorial agency throughout the world must “force everybody who has even a hint of antisemitism to undergo a tolerance program.” … continue
Palestinian Journalist Loses Left Eye after Being Shot by Israeli Sniper
Palestine Chronicle – November 20, 2019
Doctors at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem yesterday removed the eye of Palestinian photojournalist Moath Amarneh who was shot by an Israeli sniper on Friday.
A committee of specialists decided that Amarneh’s left eye must be removed along with the bullet which is logged in it. Surgery to do this took several hours.
His family said they had contacted hospitals in a number of countries in the hope of saving his eye but no medical centers were hopeful that this could be done.
Meanwhile, a group of Palestinian journalists organized a protest in solidarity with Amarneh in Bethlehem, but the Israeli occupation forces used force to disperse them.
Amarneh, 32, was shot by an Israeli occupation soldier while he was covering Palestinian protests in Hebron, south of the occupied West Bank.
Witnesses said that he was shot by a sniper, but the Israeli occupation army said he was shot accidentally as he was standing among the “rioters”. … Videos
So much for the #Resistance! While all eyes were on impeachment hearing, House re-authorized PATRIOT Act
RT | November 20, 2019
House Democrats have slipped an unqualified renewal of the draconian PATRIOT Act into an emergency funding bill – voting near-unanimously for sweeping surveillance carte blanche that was the basis for the notorious NSA program.
A three-month reauthorization of the notorious PATRIOT Act was shoehorned into a last-minute continuing resolution (CR) funding the US government, bundling measures needed to avert yet another government shutdown with a continuation of the wildly-intrusive surveillance powers passed after the 9/11 terror attacks. Democrats voted almost unanimously for it, granting the far-reaching surveillance capabilities to the very same president they’re trying to impeach.
A roll-call vote on the bill was split exactly along party lines, with all 230 Democrats standing up for unconstitutional mass surveillance – including progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), who spoke out against it earlier. Two other Democrats opted not to vote, but not a single representative dared oppose party groupthink.
Not only did Democrats unanimously stand for the bill, they backed the waiver of a rule that would have at least allowed members of Congress to read it.
Aside from renewing the PATRIOT Act for another three months and keeping Washington’s lights on, the bill hikes military pay and tosses extra funding to the Commerce Department and state highways. Republicans had hoped to pass a “clean” funding bill without add-ons of any kind, so their opposition to the measure did not necessarily hinge on its inclusion of the surveillance provision. Still, the PATRIOT Act was born from a Republican administration and its rejection by the same party, 18 years later, suggests a dramatic shift in the US political landscape.
It’s not just domestic surveillance that has driven Democrats and Republicans together. Despite the contrarian stance of the “Squad” and other outspoken #Resisters against President Donald Trump, House Democrats have largely gone along with Republicans in giving the president all the money he wants to wage war. Just 16 Democrats voted against the near-record ‘defense’ budget in July, a bloated $1.48 trillion over two years that dwarfs US defense spending at the height of the wars in Korea and Vietnam and gives the Pentagon more money than the rest of government combined.
Nor is Tuesday’s vote the first time Democrats have voted with, or to the right of, their colleagues across the aisle to back domestic surveillance programs, despite casually comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler and other fascist bogeymen.
Even the creators of the PATRIOT Act didn’t expect the post-9/11 police state to last forever, and included a ‘sunset provision’ that would have allowed the bill to expire – to die a natural death, legislatively-speaking – when it has outlived its usefulness. Yet Congress has kept the program on life support for years, with bipartisan support.
With impeachment in full swing, mainstream media carefully avoided using the phrase “PATRIOT Act” in their coverage of the vote, aware that the measure that allowed the government to treat its citizens like terrorists doesn’t have many fans.
Also on rt.com:
Facebook hires ‘co-writer’ of the pro-surveillance Patriot Act amid growing concerns over privacy
The Kimberley Process: Israel’s multi-billion dollar blood diamond laundry
By Sean Clinton | MEMO | November 19, 2019
Last week there was a callous, brutal attack on a sleeping family in their home in Gaza which killed a husband and wife, blowing their shredded bodies across a street; the ensuing bombardment killed 34 people including a family of eight. That this was all done by a leading member of the global diamond industry illustrates starkly the magnitude of the “conflict free” fraud perpetrated by that industry.
Few people are aware that diamonds are Israel’s number one manufacturing export, a “cornerstone” of its economy. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that economy “generates 88 per cent of the vast security budget that funds the Israel Defence Forces, [and security agencies] Mossad and Shin Bet.”
The Jerusalem Post indicates that, “Israel turns over about $28 billion in diamonds a year. The value of exported diamonds is so significant (about a fifth of total industrial exports) that the government reports its figures sans diamonds to ensure the gems do not skew the values.”
All this week, members of the Kimberley Process (KP) diamond regulatory body are meeting in New Delhi to conclude a three year period of review and reform aimed primarily at expanding the definition of a “conflict diamond” in order to outlaw diamonds linked to human rights violations by government forces. That effort is certain to fail. Not a single motion has been tabled to outlaw blood diamonds that enter the supply chain downstream of the mining sector.
Despite the bloodshed, violence and unregulated nuclear weapons funded by its revenue, the jewellery industry claims brazenly that diamonds processed in Israel are responsibly sourced and conflict free. Given the unwavering political, financial and economic support given to Israel by the USA, EU, India, Canada and Australia, and their influence in the KP, none of these countries are ever going to allow the body to ban Israeli blood diamonds; to do so would sound the death knell for Israel’s number one manufacturing industry.
The jewellery industry also wants to keep the lid firmly shut on this Pandora’s Box. Israel is a key player in the diamond supply chain. Unless forced by consumer pressure, corporations and companies won’t cut ties with the Israeli diamond industry without direction from international bodies such as the KP or the UN; that will never happen given the impunity that Israel enjoys and exploits.
This was made clear by Anglo American chairman Stuart Chambers at the company’s AGM in London in April. When I asked why De Beers and Forevermark continue to trade with companies in Israel that generate revenue used to fund war crimes and crimes against humanity he said, “Certainly as a company we would, as you would expect, always respect the political community in their sitting in judgement of national states or countries where they are deemed to have done something which the international community does not accept, they would then be subject to international measure including potential embargoes to trade. Where that happens of course we as an international company would need to take that into account and comply with that. But we as a company cannot sit in political judgement on something which is very difficult to get to the bottom of until such time as the international community has decided that.”
Anglo American thus tries to absolve itself by framing the issue as a political problem rather than an issue of human rights and corporate fraud.
De Beers and Forevermark sell diamonds crafted in Israel and claim that they are 100 per cent conflict free even though the industry there is a significant source of revenue (€1bn/yr) for a regime guilty of human rights violations. Indeed, De Beers sightholders companies ABT Diamonds Ltd and the Steinmetz Group company, Diacore, directly fund the Israeli military. Since this was raised at the Anglo American AGM in April the page confirming this on De Beers’ website has been removed from public view, but an archive of it can be found here. ABT and its owner have “made significant contributions to the Israeli military”.
The Steinmetz Foundation “adopted” a unit of the notorious Givati Brigade. This Israeli army unit was responsible for the Samouni family massacre in Gaza, a war crime documented by the UNHRC and other human rights organisations. Diacore manufactures Forevermark diamonds which frequently adorn the stars of the most prestigious high society red carpet events worldwide.
This page has been removed from the Steinmetz Foundation website
Governments that benefit from the diamond trade have controlled the KP from the outset. Instead of outlawing all blood diamonds they restricted the scope of the KP regulations to “conflict diamonds” which are narrowly defined as “rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments”.
Blood diamonds, both rough and polished, that fund human rights violations by government forces were given a free pass and remain fully legal. This was a major coup for the industry as it kept media and the public focused on “conflict diamonds” and away from the high value cut and polished diamond sector which conceals a blood diamond trade worth over $10 billion each year.
The World Diamond Council (WDC), which represents all sectors of the diamond supply chain from mine to market, moved to cover up the glaring gap in the KP regulations by introducing a bogus System of Warranties (SOW). The WDC claims that the SOW “extends the effectiveness of the KP beyond the import and export of rough diamonds”, an utterly false assertion.
Using the SOW, sellers can declare blood diamonds that aren’t funding rebel violence “conflict free” simply by including a printed statement to that effect with each invoice. Jewellers tell patrons that the Kimberley Process and System of Warranties guarantee that a diamond is conflict free, which is another blatant falsehood.
Of course, the term “conflict free” has never been defined. Cecilia Gardner, the former Counsel General of the WDC, said this about it: “As for ‘conflict free’ – well this claim is so vague as to have no real meaning.”
Those who promote the KP emphasise the overarching cooperation between governments, industry and civil society facilitated by the body’s tripartite structure, but that too is a gross deception. The governments involved are guided by what the WDC will agree to. The KP scheme was originally designed by the WDC and it was the latter that put forward the latest proposal which continues to limit the remit of the KP to rough diamonds in the mining sector.
The skeletal KP Civil Society Coalition (KP CSC) which is supposed to represents the interests of civil society is now little more than a threadbare veil. Global Witness, Impact Transform and others have withdrawn from the KP. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declined to join and have published reports scathingly critical of the KP’s failure to outlaw diamonds that fund government violence.
The KP CSC is now led by the Antwerp-based IPIS Research, a supposedly independent non-governmental organisation with a budget of over €1.4 million in 2018. When I asked for a breakdown of the source of its funding I was referred to its 2018 Annual Report, which doesn’t actually provide any such details. The IPIS website indicates that it receives structural funding from a number of Belgian government bodies. It also received funding from EU agencies and other bodies on whose behalf IPIS carries out research.
Biting the hand that feeds can be a difficult proposition for any organisation that isn’t funded independently. This is especially so for IPIS, given that Antwerp is one of the world’s leading diamond trading centres.
The other members of the KP CSC are poorly resourced local civil society groups from countries in Africa impacted by diamond mining. Their participation is supported by a voluntary fund from KP members.
Even though Palestinians are the biggest victims of the diamond industry there isn’t a single voice in the KP CSC to represent them. Diamonds that fund the shredding of their bodies, the sundering of their limbs, their imprisonment without trial, the demolition of their homes, the bombing of their hospitals, schools, libraries, theatres, water and sewage treatment plants, electric generating stations and other vital civic amenities aren’t blood diamonds according to the KP CSC.
The coalition’s latest report, Real Care Is Rare, doesn’t require forensic scrutiny to discover the limit of its tether. The opening sentence of the executive summary spells out the boundaries the coalition dare not breach: “brutal human rights abuses, including killings, torture and sexual violence… in certain diamond mining areas… ” (emphasis added). Blood diamonds in the supply chain downstream of mining are a bridge too far.
The report refers to blood diamonds as “diamonds obtained using serious violence irrespective of who the perpetrator is” (emphasis added). Diamonds that fund “serious violence”, though, aren’t considered blood diamonds, apparently.
The KP CSC report lists the usual suspects at the mining end of the supply chain: Zimbabwe, Angola, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Lesotho, which the industry hold up to public scrutiny, but it has nothing to say about Israel. And yet, in 2018, Israel exported $2.9 billion of rough diamonds, twice the combined value of the aforementioned African countries. According to a UN monitoring group, in 2018 Israel also killed 295 Palestinians and wounded 29,000 others. These jaw-dropping facts are conveniently absent from the KP CSC report.
The KP CSC is a captive coalition that is tightly embraced by the WDC and governments which need it to provide the KP with a veneer of public accountability. It is beyond farcical that those who profit from blood diamonds should have a veto over reform of the system. That is the situation which exists within the WDC and the KP.
When the WDC tried to broaden the definition of a conflict diamond in 2015, Shmuel Schnitzer, then president of the Israeli Diamond Exchange and uncle of the Magnitsky Act-sanctioned Dan Gertler, blocked the reform as “it would be disastrous… especially for Israel”.
The KP is a clear example of corporate capture. The diamond industry has used its political and economic influence to neuter civil society efforts to end the trade in blood diamonds. However, civil society by way of consumer pressure can bring the change needed to curtail this bloody industry. Just as the slave trade, the ivory trade and the fur trade have been curtailed greatly by public rejection of such inhumane enterprise, so too will the blood diamond industry.
Israel justice ministry contradicts police on killing of Palestinian
MEMO | November 18, 2019
Israel’s Justice Ministry has contradicted the police’s account of the killing of a Palestinian, stating that officers shot the man after he had emerged from his vehicle, reported Haaretz.
The ministry’s department responsible for investigating police misconduct announced yesterday that the police officer who shot Fares Abu Nab, from Ras Al-Amud in occupied East Jerusalem, did not in fact shoot the suspect during a car chase, as previously claimed by police.
A gag order has been placed on releasing the name of the police officer involved.
According to police, officers were chasing suspected car thieves when one of the drivers “endangered the lives of policemen and other users of the road”, without specifying how.
“He was shot in order to neutralise the threat he posed,” the original police statement added.
According to Haaretz, yesterday three other Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem were arrested “on suspicion of belonging to the gang of alleged car thieves that included Abu Nab”.
The three men arrived in court “with signs of violence on their bodies”, and their lawyers “said they had been beaten by policemen”.
The paper noted that “six people have died so far this year in incidents that involved the use of force by the police”, but that “none of the policemen involved has yet been indicted”.
Furthermore, “only in two of the six cases did the Justice Ministry department that investigates police misconduct question the policemen as suspects.”
One of these cases was closed, while the other, “the shooting of Ethiopian-Israeli Solomon Teka by an off-duty policeman in Kiryat Haim in June”, is awaiting a decision by the State Prosecutor.
Cyprus police seize former Israeli intelligence officer’s surveillance vehicle
MEMO | November 18, 2019
Police in Cyprus confiscated a van on Saturday with high-tech surveillance equipment inside, news agencies have reported. Police officers took its Israeli owner for questioning after reports that the vehicle was used to spy on people.
According to the Cyprus Times, police took an interest after reports by Forbes magazine in August that a high-tech surveillance vehicle was in Larnaca with the capability of intercepting WhatsApp messages, Facebook chats, telephone calls and all the content of smartphones. This prompted the main Cypriot opposition part, Akel, to ask on Friday how and why such a vehicle was present in Cyprus and whether it had been inspected at customs.
Officials said that the vehicle is owned by a former senior Israeli intelligence officer called Tal Dilian. It is said that he operates in Cyprus through a registered company with Cypriot shareholders.
The vehicle and equipment are together said to be valued at around $9 million. It was apparently confiscated and taken to police headquarters.
Arab48.com reported that police in Israel have said that they have not received any information about the case from their Cypriot counterparts. The Israeli Foreign Ministry made no comment.
According to Haaretz, Dilian said that his services are intended to track terrorists and criminals, but his company merged in 2014 with NSO Group, whose malware has been used to target activists and journalists, including a close friend of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
New Legislation Will Throw People in Jail for Disrespecting Cops—Seriously
By Matt Agorist – The Free Thought Project – November 15, 2019
Albany, NY — In the land of the free, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits the government from abridging the freedom of speech. However, we’ve seen citizens pepper-sprayed, assaulted, and arrested for there acts of free speech, showing just how little law enforcement cares about upholding the oaths they swore to this very Constitution. Now, a new piece of legislation that is quickly passing through the legal process in New York goes one step further.
If you annoy a police officer in upstate New York, you could find yourself facing massive fines and even jail time. Seriously.
In a vote this week, lawmakers in the Monroe County Legislature passed a proposal in a 17-10 vote to fine and/or jail a person who annoys, alarms or threatens the personal safety of an officer. The jail sentence is up to one year and the fine is up to $5,000.
According to the legislation, the anti-disrespecting applies to all first responders, not just cops.
Naturally, those who have respect for the constitution and freedom of speech in general, are up in arms over the passage of such a tyrannical piece of legislation.
As PIX 11 reports, “Iman Abid with the New York Civil Liberties Union said it will have a chilling effect on complaints against police. Abid said she is also concerned over what the legislation could mean for communities of color.”
“Members of the community have every right to challenge police officers, particularly those that engage in unnecessary behavior,” she said in a statement. “At a time when more accountability of police departments is needed, this law takes us incredibly backward.”
But advocates for this tyranny claim that it “looks after those who look out for us” — because people need to be jailed if they talk back to a cop.
“This local law aims to crack down on behaviors of disrespect and incivility toward law enforcement and first responders in the hopes that these smaller incidents do not escalate,” County Legislator Kara Halstead said in a statement.
According to PIX 11:
Delores Jones-Brown, professor emerita at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said courts have found that the use of the words annoying or alarming in statue is overbroad and unconstitutionally vague.
The legislation, she said, could create a situation where people are scared to exercise their First Amendment rights. An officer could be annoyed by a person who asks them their badge number or who records them with a cellphone while on the job, Jones-Brown said.
“This statue definitely has the capacity to make people afraid to do that,” she said
We agree. This legislation is nothing short of tyranny and is paving the way for abuse by snowflake cops who cannot handle citizens talking back or disrespecting their authority. Instead of making respect a two-way street and earning it, this legislation sets out to mandate it through the threat of violence and kidnapping.
In the land of the free, a person can be kidnapped and thrown in a cage for arbitrary sounds made with their mouth or raising their middle finger that causes harm to no one.
Aside from this being clearly asinine, it’s well established by the Supreme Court that arresting someone for swearing and raising the middle finger is unconstitutional.
In Cohen v. California, the U.S. Supreme court upheld a citizen’s First Amendment right to wear a jacket to court that read “F**k the Draft,” the court held:
“WHILE THE PARTICULAR FOUR-LETTER WORD BEING LITIGATED HERE IS PERHAPS MORE DISTASTEFUL THAN MOST OTHERS OF ITS GENRE, IT IS NEVERTHELESS OFTEN TRUE THAT ONE MAN’S VULGARITY IS ANOTHER’S LYRIC. INDEED, WE THINK IT IS LARGELY BECAUSE GOVERNMENTAL OFFICIALS CANNOT MAKE PRINCIPLED DISTINCTIONS IN THIS AREA THAT THE CONSTITUTION LEAVES MATTERS OF TASTE AND STYLE SO LARGELY TO THE INDIVIDUAL.”
What’s more, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in City of Houston v. Hill, that police must tolerate even more abusive speech than an average citizen—which certainly includes looking at someone’s middle finger. The court concluded that “in the face of verbal challenges to police action, officers and municipalities must respond with restraint,” and added that, “the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers.”
Here at the Free Thought Project, we feel there are no such things as ‘bad words’ but, rather, certain words some people don’t like to hear. The same goes with raising random fingers.
The arbitrary nature of government enforcing laws that dictate what vocabulary a person can use and which finger they can display to a cop is as ridiculous as it is tyrannical. Sadly, it remains a part of society and as this legislation illustrates, it is getting worse.
Have we learned nothing from history?
Telling people what words they can and can’t say or which fingers they can raise, to ‘protect’ a cop’s feelings is chilling. Freedom of speech does not come with terms and conditions.
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US murdering 1 million Iraqis is democracy, Iran giving yogurt to Iraq is “domination”
By Ali Salaam | American Herald Tribune | July 31, 2017
The New York Times, owned by the Zionist Jewish supremacist Ochs-Sulzberger family, has no problem with Iraqi suffering as long as Iran is not the one behind it.
The Iraq War was a genocide of the Iraqi people by Zionist supremacists in the Bush administration. Over 1 million innocent people were killed based on a lie. American soldiers died in an Israeli war and now an average of 22 soldiers commit suicide every day because their consciences cannot cope with the fact they committed crimes in an illegal war that served no purpose other than to benefit Israel, not America.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, once said “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”
Paul Wolfowitz had his sights on Iraq since his time in the first Bush administration. Former Israeli official and Bush administration official Richard Perle had his eyes on Iraq since at least his authorship of the Clean Break white paper. The Zionist regime had their eyes on Iraq since the 1980s when strategist Oded Yinon wrote his white paper in support of dividing the Arab-Muslim world along ethnic and sectarian lines. The global Zionist lobby has had their eyes on Iraq since Theodor Herzl stated that Eretz Israel’s true borders go from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Huckabee aide goes to ‘unusual lengths’ to portray ‘Israel’ positively
- Trump Announces Diesel Supply Deal With Putin Following Phone Call
- MEP blasts ‘Euro-Gestapo’ for lecturing Russia on democracy
- Syria May Send Troops to Saudi Arabia Amid War with Ansar Allah
- UK whines about losing billions to ‘Putin tax’
- Baghaei to Rubio: Distorted narratives cannot erase US record of broken commitments
- Houthis Don’t Have to Conquer Saudi Arabia to Make It Pay
- MOE: Nearly 22,000 Students and Education Workers Killed
- Guterres in Islamabad: Genocide, cowardice, and the cage of Imran Khan
- Johnson, Marandi say Yemen holds upper hand over Saudi Arabia
- If Americans Knew
- Gaza ceasefire exists in name only, say more than 100 organizations
- Nearly 2 Million in Gaza Need Urgent Shelter Assistance as Winter Looms: IOM Chief Warns
- Suppressing Palestinian resistance: US charity under fire for AI monitoring of Gaza classrooms
- Thousands Are Held in Israeli Torture Camps. This Is What Happens Inside
- Israel puts Gaza’s sick, injured, newborn in peril – Daily Update
- Report claimed Mark Levin used by Israeli government to influence Trump
- Over 2,000 Gazans have died awaiting medical evacuation amid Israel’s continued siege
- How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel
- 5 Palestinians Die from Israeli Strikes in Gaza as Relentless Attacks Continue
- Report: Ceasefire Slows Killing but Leaves Devastation Intact
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
