You Got Served, or Rather, Censored

September 5, 2014
by Kat |
Source: Everyday HP

I’d like to think I live in a country where I am free to learn, research and civilly discuss health options for myself and my family. I’d like to believe that information that comes from organizations designed to safeguard and promote the health and welfare of our populace is trustworthy, unbiased and without the influence of special interests. I’d like to think that we are encouraged to be a free thinking people who are free to gather, question perceived authority and determine the best course of action with any unadulterated information gathered.

As an HP parent, I am concerned that such freedoms are, in fact, threated in our great country, right here, right now, in our present day and in regard to something so fundamental as our health.

A local news station here in Austin, TX performs a monthly public service by hosting town hall meetings. The topics address concerns of citizens. The meetings are presented in panel formats for discussion and optimal information gathering, overall, a great, diplomatic format. This month’s topic revolved around the growing numbers of Central Texas parents who question the safety of vaccines and who choose not to vaccinate and in so doing, Central Texas numbers of unvaccinated children are growing. The four panelists included: two pediatricians; our state NVIC director and president of PROVE (Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Information); and the founder and chief homeopath at Austin Clinic of Homeopathy. As you can imagine, this HP parent was excited to cheer on a loved one as he represented and explained homeoprophylaxis for the public, and of course, as an HP parent, was also more than happy to attend and testify publically to the viability of HP for promoting and educating the immune system. We have direct experience with Little Man on our side.

On a national level, the recent revelations by a Dr. Thompson about the overt cover-ups perpetrated by officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the dangers of the MMR in the population, and particularly the African American population, has concerned citizens up in arms. Rightly so, questions about how well we can trust these organizations and the science they generate regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines should be asked, and frequently, particularly when there is special interest involved. When the board that licenses and governs vaccine manufacture is also the board that purportedly analyzes the risks and safety for the population is one and the same, absolute power corrupts and does so absolutely. Censorship on this topic is often swift and unyielding, sites and professionals are discredited, studies vanish and previously public documents disappear.

Censorship on this topic is far reaching but never before have I witnessed it so close to home and to have loved ones involved.

Interestingly enough, only days before the town hall meeting, we received word that two of the panelists had to cancel and the venue could no longer agree to be the location for this type of discussion. No detailed explanations were offered, there was no room for conversation. In essence, there was pressure to cancel discussions and information sharing regarding alternatives to the vaccine paradigm and open questioning of its authority. There are no motions for rescheduling the event as of yet.

What is so dangerous about parents and interested citizens gathering to discuss options for health? Why can we not have an open information for such important topics as the prevention of infectious disease? 

The take home from this personal experience - HP parents already question, they seek, they dig, they do not accept on blind faith the words espoused by the vaccine industry. My hope is that all citizens begin to wonder that if something is so wonderful and safe, why are we not encouraged to gather, to discuss, or to know the specifics and the details. Many parents want to believe that their best interests and the interests of their children are taken into account when these local, statewide or national decisions in the name of health are made. These types of censorship tactics serve only to increase the sentiment that we are not being told the full vaccine story.

Parents, no matter what road you choose to educate your child’s immune system, know the full story, dig and discuss. Don’t let them feed you a tag line, find out the unadulterated facts. While we are never guaranteed immunity to any disease by the nature of our humanity, we can still make informed decisions. We are the ripple effect that will change the tides of our culture.
Cheers to your health and wellbeing.

Link  everydayhp.com/censorship/.

37 lies Americans tell themselves to avoid confronting reality

September 07
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Source: Natural News


(NaturalNews) Have you noticed the incredible detachment from reality exhibited by the masses these days? The continued operation of modern society, it seems, depends on people making sure they don't acknowledge reality (or try to deal with it). "Denial" is what keeps every sector of civilization humming along: medicine, finance, government, agriculture and more.

The trouble with the denial approach is that eventually the lies collide with reality. Until that day comes, however, happy-go-lucky Americans are merrily enjoying their courtship with self delusion, repeating the following 37 lies to themselves as if they were true:

Lie #1) All FDA-approved medications are safe to consume in any combination, because the FDA protects the public.

Lie #2) Food prices keep going up because inflation is a natural force that can't be halted.

Lie #3) The mainstream media is telling me the truth when it reports on world events.

Lie #4) Chemical food additives are tested for their safety before being widely used across the food supply.

Lie #5) We can all pump groundwater out of the ground forever, and it will never run out.

Lie #6) We can also pump fossil fuels out of the ground forever, and they will never run out, either. Why worry?

Lie #7) If anything bad happens in terms of a national emergency or natural disaster, the government will take care of me.

Lie #8) It doesn't matter where my food comes from as long as it's cheap and delicious.

Lie #9) GMOs must be safe to eat because a bunch of scientists paid by the biotech industry all tell each other that GMOs are safe and therefore have reached "scientific consensus."

Lie #10) Government debt doesn't matter because the government can simply create more money any time they want.

Lie #11) Mercury in vaccines must be safe to inject into children, otherwise the CDC and FDA wouldn't allow it to be used in vaccines.

Lie #12) Organic produce is a waste of money. I'll buy conventional produce treated with pesticides and herbicides because the cost of all the cancer treatments I'll need 20 years later will be covered by Obamacare anyway.

Lie #13) The history taught to children in public schools is a true and accurate history. Columbus was best friends with the Indians, too!

Lie #14) Swallowing fluoride chemicals is good for babies and children, and that's why cities put fluoride into public water supplies.

Lie #15) Flu shots prevent the flu. That's why the package inserts for flu vaccines openly state there is no scientific evidence to support any conclusion that influenza vaccines prevent influenza.

Lie #16) Whatever is backed by "science" must be true. Science is never falsified by corrupt scientists or corporate agendas, and scientific conclusions are never wrong.

Lie #17) The global ecosystem can handle unlimited human pollution without any negative consequences. We can all continue to dump unlimited toxins into the environment.

Lie #18) Cell phone radiation is harmless. The reason we know that is because the cell phone companies hired scientists to say so.

Lie #19) If everybody else is doing something, it must be the right thing to do. After all, how could so many people be wrong?

Lie #20) We don't need to store food for emergencies because there will always be more food available at the grocery store.

Lie #21) There's no need to be concerned about Ebola or other infectious diseases in America because the vaccine companies can always and instantly create a new vaccine that works 100% of the time, with zero side effects.

Lie #22) Local police departments need battlefield military weapons, armored cars and body armor because the drug war demands it.

Lie #23) If I buy something at Whole Foods, it must be healthy and free from contaminants like toxic heavy metals. (Or is it really?)
Lie #24) My vote really counts in national elections. We live in a democracy where the People have power over the government.

Lie #25) My checking and savings accounts are perfectly safe no matter what happens because my bank is FDIC insured.

Lie #26) Raw dairy products are dangerous and deadly because the FDA told me so. Those horrible farmers selling raw dairy products should be locked away in prison.

Lie #27) My oncologist recommends chemotherapy treatment for me only because he cares about my wellbeing, not because his clinic sells the chemotherapy drugs at a huge profit.

Lie #28) The government isn't secretly recording my phone calls or reading my emails. Why would they? I've done nothing wrong!

Lie #29) Commercial dog food is healthy and nutritious for dogs. Dog treats made in China are also trustworthy and free from contaminants like lead.

Lie #30) The only way to prevent infectious disease is with a vaccine. Vitamin D and healthy immune support have nothing to do with it.

Lie #31) After I pay off my house, I own it free and clear. (Think again: Property taxes mean you're only "leasing" it from the county. Stop paying those taxes and you'll find out very quickly who really owns your home.)

Lie #32) Google will do no evil, and the fact that the company is developing humanoid battlefield robots, autonomous drones and super-human quantum computing brain chips is nothing to worry about.

Lie #33) Cancer is caused entirely by bad luck (or smoking) and has nothing to do with the food I eat or chemicals in my personal environment.

Lie #34) The radiation release from Fukushima wasn't that bad. Sure, it was many times larger than the Chernobyl disaster, but authorities say we have nothing to worry about.

Lie #35) Autism isn't caused by vaccines, and the way we know is because the CDC scientist who admitted to a massive conspiracy of scientific fraud to bury the evidence linking vaccines to autism should not be believed.

Lie #36) All foods certified as "organic" are automatically free of toxic heavy metals and contaminants.

Lie #37) Human civilization is the only intelligent civilization in the entire galaxy. Anything else would simply be too scary to contemplate.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/046776_popular_lies_Americans_state_of_denial.html#ixzz3CjCX75wz

Greenwald To Publish Full List Of Names Targeted By NSA Surveillance

May 27, 2014
 By: Annabelle Bamforth
Source: benswann.com

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who worked with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to expose deceitful United States surveillance practices, said that he plans to publish a full list of individuals that the NSA has actively spied on.

“As with a fireworks show, you want to save your best for last,” Greenwald told GQ Magazine regarding the upcoming revelations. “This will be the finale, a big missing piece.” Greenwald has been in the press promoting his new book ”No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State” and affirmed to The Sunday Times that the list of NSA targets will be the “biggest” disclosure yet.

“One of the big questions when is comes to domestic spying is, ‘Who have been the NSA’s specific targets?’” Greenwald mused to The Sunday Times. “Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we’d regard as terrorists?”
Greenwald went on to belittle the NSA for its failure to intercept Snowden’s acquisition of nearly 2 million classified files, as well as its failure to stop Snowden from releasing the damning information, saying,

Read more: http://benswann.com/greenwald-to-publish-list-of-names-targeted-by-nsa/#ixzz334vhLToA

Sen. Leahy blocks U.S. aid to Egypt to protest nation’s ‘appalling abuse of justice system’

April 30 

By Ernesto Londoño

Source: The Washington Post

The Obama administration’s plan to keep military aid flowing to Egypt ran into significant opposition Tuesday as a key senator blocked the next batch of shipments and other lawmakers criticized the White House for not responding more forcefully to the military-led government’s crackdown on opposition groups.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the head of the panel that appropriates foreign aid, called the administration’s intended release of $650 million worth of military aid unconscionable in light of a recent wave of death sentences handed down by courts in Egypt after hasty mass trials.

“It is an appalling abuse of the justice system,” Leahy said from the Senate floor Tuesday morning. “It shows a dictatorship run amok.”
 
His move set the stage for the first clash between the executive and legislative branches over the future of the annual $1.5 billion aid package Cairo has counted on for decades. If the senator does not release it, the Obama administration probably would face a series of legal and contractual quandaries as a result of the complex way the aid is administered.

“I think this is an important moment,” said Stephen McInerney, the executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, which has advocated for an overhaul of the Egyptian aid package. “It highlights just how troublesome events in Egypt have been as viewed from Washington.”

Leahy’s announcement coincided with a visit by Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy to Washington and a hearing before a House foreign affairs panel during which members of Congress took the administration to task for attempting to keep the aid flowing.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) criticized the administration’s recent decision to move forward with the delivery of 10 Apache attack helicopters to Egypt. Connolly and other lawmakers noted the killing of hundreds of demonstrators and the death sentences imposed on 700 Egyptians since a military coup last year.

“How in the world do we continue to justify decisions, such as that made recently by Secretary Kerry nonetheless to go forward with the delivery of Apache helicopters to that military?” Connolly demanded.

The tone on the Hill was starkly at odds with the welcome Nabil received at the State Department. Secretary of State John F. Kerry opened a joint appearance with a joke, noting that Nabil, who was born in New York, probably learned English before Arabic. Kerry avoided a direct mention of the death sentences, referring instead to “disturbing decisions within the judicial process — the court system — that have raised serious challenges for all of us.”

Kerry also did not publicly touch on Egypt’s recent move to outlaw the April 6 movement, a youth group that played a key role in the popular revolt that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.
Fahmy responded that the country’s court system is “completely independent” from the government, an assertion at odds with a long history of collusion between Egypt’s judicial branch and its autocratic leaders. “I’m confident that due process is allowed, and that the legal system will ultimately end up with proper decisions in each of these cases,” the minister said.

At the Pentagon, where Fahmy received a rare “honor cordon” welcome, Rear Adm. John Kirby said the administration is “following a very measured, balanced, deliberate approach here on how we assess and pursue military assistance to Egypt.” Kirby, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said the administration will consult with members of Congress and “keep them informed as much as possible as we move forward.”

The future of Egypt’s military aid package became the subject of spirited debate last year after the country’s generals overthrew Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Since the 1980s, Egypt has been allowed to place orders with U.S. defense contractors under a system that works like a credit card, enabling Cairo to request equipment and weapons before Congress has appropriated the money to buy them.

After the military-run government unleashed a brutal crackdown on Morsi’s group, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Obama administration decided to block the delivery of Apache helicopters and tanks to show its disapproval. In January, Congress allocated the $1.5 billion that typically goes to Egypt each year but imposed conditions. The spending bill says the administration must certify that Egypt is abiding by the 1979 peace treaty it signed with Israel and maintaining a strategic relationship with Washington.

Beyond that, it calls on the administration to certify that Egypt is making progress on governing democratically and respecting human rights, setting specific benchmarks for the delivery of aid.

The White House announced last week that it would resume shipping Apache helicopters to Cairo and start processing $650 million in aid.

In extemporaneous remarks on the Senate floor, Leahy said he is “dismayed” by the situation in Egypt.
“We can’t stand here and say, ‘Golly, gee whiz, we’re disturbed by hundreds of people being sentenced to death after a few minutes in a mass trial,’ ” he said. “ ‘But actually, we’ve been friends for so long, we’ll send you some money, but you should stop doing that.’ ”

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sen-leahy-blocks-us-aid-to-egypt-to-protest-nations-appalling-abuse-of-justice-system/2014/04/29/4d5fe0fc-cfe3-11e3-937f-d3026234b51c_story.html.

 

Georgia Expands Gun Rights, But does the bill go far enough?

Apr 27, 2014
By: Joshua Cook
Source: benswann.com

Atlanta, Ga. - Gun owners and supporters of the Second Amendment can cheer for Georgia as the state’s governor signs into law a bill that expands, not limits, gun rights.

The National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm called the bill “the most comprehensive pro-gun reform legislation introduced in recent state history.”

The bill widens the scope of public places where licensed gun owners are allowed to carry.

According to Fox News, changes to state law include allowing those with a license to carry a gun into a bar without restriction and into some government buildings that don’t have certain security measures. It also allows religious leaders to decide whether it’s OK for a person with a carry license to bring a gun into their place of worship.

Under the bill, school districts would now be able, if they wanted, to allow some employees to carry a firearm under certain conditions. The bill also eliminates the fingerprinting requirement for renewing weapons carry licenses.

Does this bill fully restore 2nd Amendment rights to it’s citizens? No.

But recently, Gun rights activists have been losing pro-gun legislation in Republican controlled states like Tenn. (see here) and in S.C. (see here).

It’s refreshing to see the momentum moving in the right direction in Georgia. There is more work to be done in Georgia. Hopefully, S.C. and Tenn. will follow Georgia’s example but with the current legislators in power that’s not going to happen.

Link:  http://benswann.com/georgia-expands-gun-rights-but-does-the-bill-go-far-enough/.

How Vaccines Harm Child Brain Development - Dr Russell Blaylock MD

US funded anti-Morsi protests last year: Documents

Apr 02, 2014
Source: Press TV


Newly revealed documents show senior Egyptian opposition leaders who called for the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, had the financial backing of the US.
US President Barack Obama had claimed that Washington did not take sides in the Egyptian political crisis that ousted Morsi in July last year.

According to Aljazeera TV channel, a review of dozens of US federal government documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley shows that Washington quietly funded opposition groups in Egypt that worked against the Morsi government.

Washington channeled the funding through a State Department program which is part of a wider effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-US secularists and defeat the Islamic movements in the Middle East.

The program was dubbed by US officials as a "democracy assistance" initiative.

The move is in contradiction to the US government regulations that ban the use of taxpayers’ money to fund foreign politicians and activists that target democratically-elected governments.

The Egyptians launched a revolution against the pro-US regime of former President Hosni Mubarak in January 2011, which eventually ended the 30-year dictatorship of Mubarak in February 2011.

In June 2012, Egyptians voted in the country's first free and fair presidential election, electing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi as their leader.

But about a year later, the Egyptian army toppled Morsi, suspended the constitution and launched a violent crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.

On December 25, 2013, the military-appointed government listed the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization over alleged involvement in a deadly bombing, without investigating or providing any evidence.

In January 2014, Amnesty International criticized Egyptian authorities for using an “unprecedented scale” of violence against protesters and dealing “a series of damaging blows to human rights.”

According to the UK-based rights group, at least 1,400 people have been killed in the political violence since Morsi’s ouster in July 2013, "most of them due to excessive force used by security forces."

GJH/GJH

Link:  presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/30/356515/us-sponsored-coup-against-morsi-report/.

Saudi Arabia Isn't America's Friend

Mar 26, 2014
By The Editors
Source: Bloomberg View


Comments: The title of this article is misleading. Both the regimes of Arabia and The United States are members of the same team-the team of the NWO (New World Order). Just as the Democrats and Republicans are team mates within the team of NWO-the regimes of different nation states (which sometimes behave like they are hostile towards each other) are also team mates within the NWO team. The NWO play mind games against the public-both domestically within the U.S.-as well as internationally. "Bloomberg"  is obviously one of many mouthpieces of the NWO. With this article it is being an active player in the mind games of The New World Order (a.k.a. The Illuminati). There is some interesting information within the article itself. It is for this reason that I am sharing it in this blog. Here is the article:

"U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah tomorrow, and the president's critics have been sounding a warning: By parting with the Saudis on Egypt, Syria and Iran, they say, his administration is endangering a vital alliance. The truth is, the relationship with Saudi Arabia is overdue for a recalibration.

"The U.S. and Saudi Arabia still have common interests -- in fighting terrorism, for example -- and Saudi Arabia's oil wealth means it will hold disproportionate sway in Washington for years to come. But neither Obama nor his critics (nor, for that matter, Saudis themselves) should kid themselves. Saudi Arabia is not a natural ally of the U.S., and probably never has been.

"The current landscape puts in stark relief just how anomalous the relationship is. When the Saudis look around the region, they see rebellions that unseated autocrats, like them, in Tunisia and Egypt. The U.S. generally welcomed these developments. Meanwhile, the one uprising that Saudi's Sunni royalty supports -- in Syria, against Syria's non-Sunni dictator -- is failing, and the Saudis resent the U.S. for not intervening decisively.

"On Iran, the Americans and Saudis stood together when the country's government was led by the pugnacious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. President Hassan Rouhani's election, however, created an opening for a diplomatic resolution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, splitting U.S. and Saudi interests. The U.S. wants the talks to succeed to avoid a war with Iran. The Saudis hope they fail so its Shiite archrival will remain the subject of sanctions if not attacks.

"By complaining that Obama turned his back on Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak after Egyptians rose up against him, Saudi leaders betray both an exaggerated sense of U.S. influence and an unwillingness to consider what democratic reforms they might make to avoid Mubarak's fate. Might they consider, for example, allowing national elections? How about peaceful demonstrations? How about giving women equal rights to men?

"For decades, Saudi rulers have been able to rely on their oil wealth both to pacify their population and smooth their relationship with the U.S. This tool, however, is not what it used to be. Increasing internal demand means the Saudis have less oil to sell abroad. And the U.S., by importing more crude from sources such as Canada and Mexico and exploiting its own shale oil reserves, has reduced its reliance on Saudi oil.

None of this is to argue that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have nothing in common. It is in U.S. interests for the Saudis to continue supplying oil to U.S. allies that need it, and for the Saudis to use their spare production capacity to keep prices stable. For their part, the Saudis have to sell oil to someone, as oil revenue supports 80 percent of their budget, and keeping prices reasonable discourages investments in shale oil and alternative energy sources.

"The two countries also share a strong interest in combating terrorism, particularly by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the most serious terrorist threat to both. It benefits neither to scale back their close counterterrorism cooperation, which includes U.S. drone operations out of a base in Saudi Arabia.

The U.S.-Saudi relationship is one the region's oldest, and has a storied past. Obama and Abdullah can be expected to celebrate that history at their meeting. The future of the partnership, however, will require a realistic accounting of their mutual and divergent goals.

Link: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-26/saudi-arabia-isn-t-america-s-friend?cmpid=yhoo.

US government considering 'lucrative' offer to Israel to save peace talks

23 March 2014
Source: Middle East Monitor

Instead of exercising pressure on Israel, the US administration is currently considering a "lucrative" offer to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to save the peace process and release a fourth round of prisoners, the Israeli radio channel Reshet Bet reported.

The Israeli broadcaster quoted Western diplomats as saying that the US administration is worried about a potential collapse in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and that it is seeking to submit a proposal that would enable Netanyahu to convince his government to approve the release of the fourth round of Palestinian prisoners, including 1948 Arabs.

The Western diplomatic sources added that the US administration does not categorically reject Netanyahu's request to free the Israeli spy Pollard in return for adopting the Framework agreement and freeing Arab Israeli prisoners.

Furthermore, Israeli officials told Reshet Bet that talks are facing a real danger, and that if an agreement is not reached regarding prisoners, the peace talks may collapse altogether. They added that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has not softened his stance on the issue of prisoners despite US President Barack Obama's request, but rather adopted an even more hardline stance.

Link: middleeastmonitor.com/news/americas/10462-us-government-considering-lucrative-offer-to-israel-to-save-peace-talks.

Sophisticated Surveillance Lets Gov't Watch Every Movement

13 March 2014
 by  Joe Wolverton, II, J.D
Source: The New American

On March 10, Apple, Inc. released its latest update to its iOS mobile operating system (iOS 7.1). Within hours 6 percent of users had already downloaded the upgrade.
It was a bug discovered in the previous versions, however, that caused some to suspect the NSA had a hand in the hole, however.

A "vulnerability" in iOS 7 potentially left iPhone users' encrypted data accessible to hackers, or to NSA agents, if the opinions of some are to be believed. The story connecting the NSA to the Apple operation system flaw was explained by Jacob Siegal:

John Gruber gathered the evidence over at Daring Fireball and has come to a startling conclusion — the NSA might have something to do with the bug.

According to a tweet from Jeffery Grossman, this vulnerability has been present in the software since iOS 6. Based on the leaked PowerPoint document which exposed PRISM, Apple and its devices were added to the NSA program in October 2012, just one month after the release of iOS 6. Whether or not the NSA planted the exploit itself, Gruber believes there is a chance the government agency was aware of it and took advantage of it to gain access to private information.

“Once the bug was in place, the NSA wouldn’t even have needed to find the bug by manually reading the source code,” wrote Gruber. “All they would need are automated tests using spoofed certificates that they run against each new release of every OS. Apple releases iOS, the NSA’s automated spoofed certificate testing finds the vulnerability, and boom, Apple gets “added” to PRISM.”

While millions of iPhone and iPad owners rejoice over each new iOS update, they pay little if any attention to the shocking level of sophistication of the government’s surveillance of all Americans.

To overcome some of the under-reporting, we present a brief outline of the various surveillance tactics in use by our own government.

First, there is the social media surveillance.

In a report published in August, 2013 by In-Q-Tel (IQT), the technology research and development company founded by the CIA, the government’s use of social media as a tracking device is highlighted:

Governments are increasingly finding that monitoring social media is an essential component in keeping track of erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters, not to mention global trends.

And then, this, regarding In-Q-Tel’s efforts to infiltrate social media companies (investing money in them, for example) in order to make information gleaned from these accounts more accessible to government:

IQT has made several investments in the social media space, and we will continue to refine our social media investment strategy to focus on providing relevant social media data and technologies to our government customers. We will keep exploring the social media landscape, looking for ways these technologies can be used to effectively address government challenges.

Challenges, one imagines, such as how to keep track of everybody all the time using data the targets themselves willingly provide on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Have you updated your Facebook or Twitter accounts lately? If so, the government likely knows what you posted, when you posted it, and who read what you wrote.

According to a statement posted on Facebook’s website on June 14 of last year, government agencies — including federal, state, and local authorities — requested user data on between 18,000 and 19,000 account holders.

The remarkable disclosure of government requests for users’ private information follows successful negotiations between Facebook and other tech giants and the federal government.

Last year, Facebook, Google, and other technology companies who were implicated in the revelations of the covert NSA surveillance program known as PRISM petitioned the feds to allow them to disclose their level of participation in surveillance requests received from government entities.

Under PRISM, the NSA and the FBI are “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time,” as reported by the Washington Post.

One document in the Snowden revelations indicated that PRISM was “the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports.” Snowden claimed that the program was so invasive that the NSA and the FBI “quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type.”

Most of these requests by the government are made under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Not surprisingly, when the government asks the special surveillance court to approve their snooping, judges give them the go-ahead.

In fact, in April, 2013 the Department of Justice revealed to Congress the number of applications for eavesdropping received and rejected by the FISA court: In 2012, of the 1,789 requests made by the government to monitor the electronic communications of citizens, not a single one was rejected.

Following the negotiations that opened the way for Facebook to report its cooperation with requests to hand over user information, Microsoft made a similar surveillance disclosure. A blog post on the Redmond, Washington-based company’s website declared:

For the six months ended December 31, 2012, Microsoft received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal).

According to the information Snowden released, both companies that disclosed government surveillance requests — Facebook and Microsoft — were giving the government access to the private information of millions of users.

They were not alone, however. Yahoo, Google, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple all allowed the agents of the federal surveillance state to secretly snoop on their users.

What’s perhaps most disturbing is the information revealed in The New American recently that intelligence agents in Britain developed and shared with their American counterparts a plan “to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction.”

In a nutshell, the governments of the United States and Great Britain currently employ teams of agents whose responsibility is to ruin the lives of those individuals who’ve had the misfortune to run afoul of the establishment.

Then, there is the telephone monitoring.

Among the most disturbing disclosures found within the reams of former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden’s revelations was the surrender by major telecommunications companies of the otherwise private phone records of millions of Americans — none of whom was, as required by the Constitution, suspected of committing any sort of crime.

According to a court order labeled “TOP SECRET,” federal judge Roger Vinson ordered Verizon to turn over the phone records of millions of its U.S. customers to the NSA.

The order, issued in April by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and leaked on the Internet by The Guardian, compels Verizon to provide these records on an “ongoing daily basis” and to hand over to the domestic spy agency “an electronic copy” of “all call detail records created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

This information includes the phone numbers involved, the electronic identity of the device, the calling card numbers (if any) used in making the calls, and the time and duration of the call.

In other words, millions of innocent Americans have had their call records shared with a federal spy agency in open and hostile defiance of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of the right of the people to be free from such unreasonable searches and seizures.

What is reasonable? Legally speaking, “the term reasonable is a generic and relative one and applies to that which is appropriate for a particular situation.”

Even if the reasonableness threshold is crossed, though, there must be a warrant and suspicion of commission of or intent to commit a crime. Neither the NSA nor telecommunication companies have asserted that even one of the millions whose phone records were seized fits that description.
E-mails are being read, too.

On July 31, 2013, Glen Greenwald published another drip in the ocean of Snowden leaks. Under a program known as “XKeyscore,” the NSA monitors and records every e-mail written by every American, again without a warrant and without probable cause, in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment.

Greenwald, after examining a PowerPoint presentation included in the information he received from Snowden, explained the scope of XKeyscore: “One presentation claims the [XKeyscore] program covers ‘nearly everything a typical user does on the internet,’ including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.” “Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing ‘real-time’ interception of an individual’s internet activity,” he added.

How does it work? Greenwald explained that, too: “An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages. Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.”

Cyberspace isn’t the only area of human life under constant surveillance by the government, however.
Beyond the internet and electronic communications, the federal government’s capacity for keeping an eye on the real world comings and goings of citizens is immensely more jarring and far less publicized.

The U.S. government exercises control over a massive and technologically advanced camera-based surveillance system that has the capacity to keep the urban population of this country under the watchful eye of government 24 hours a day.

TrapWire is the name of this network of cameras and other surveillance tools. Unlike other elements of the central government’s cybersurveillance program, word about TrapWire was not leaked by Obama administration insiders. The details of this nearly unbelievable surveillance scheme were made public by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group founded by Julian Assange.

Exactly what is TrapWire? According to one description of the program, from the online Russia Today:

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

For a fuller report on TrapWire and similar "real world" surveillance schemes, see this article from The New American.

Link: 
 http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/17755-sophisticated-surveillance-lets-gov-t-watch-every-movement.


 

Moazzam Begg: the real reason my passport was confiscated

February 28, 2014
by Moazzam Begg
islam21c.com 
Source: muslimvillage. com. 


Moazzam Begg reveals why the British government has been continually harassing him since his return from Guantanamo, and took his passport for the second time in eight years.

In the summer of 2012 I wrote about the first of my two visits to Syria to investigate leads into cases of British and American complicity in the rendition of terrorism suspects to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
This followed on from something I learned first-hand from CIA and US military intelligence agents who threatened to send me to Egypt or Syria if I failed to co-operate with them during my time in the Bagram prison. I made British MI5/MI6 agents, who were present at every leg of my unlawful imprisonment, fully aware of these threats. Their response was that I had to co-operate with their US counterparts.

On my eventual return to the UK from Guantanamo, along with three other British citizens I received a letter from the Home Office informing me that my ability to apply for a passport had been restricted by the Home Secretary under the powers of the ‘Royal Prerogative’.

Having returned from three years of separation from my loved ones, spent mostly in solitary confinement and after suffering the effects of regular human rights violations, I didn’t challenge the decision immediately. Instead, I tried to rebuild my lost connection to a traumatised family, including a son I’d never seen.

UK torture complicity
As part of my work for CagePrisoners, however, I soon began campaigning for prisoners detained at Guantanamo and others held in secret detention sites or who had disappeared after being rendered to countries like Libya, Egypt, and Syria. We conducted numerous investigations into recurrent reports of extreme torture carried out by the Syrian regime and discovered the complicity of the governments of the US, Canada, France, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Britain.

I was also constantly being invited to speak all over the world about issues pertaining to Guantanamo, torture, the rule of law and the war terror. Thus, in 2009 I mounted a successful challenge to get my passport back.

My subsequent extensive travel abroad was greeted simultaneously by meetings with people in power—including unexpected praise from US ambassadors in Luxembourg—to armed police escorting me off planes in order to deny me entry to Canada (where I’d gone to meet with Canadian rendition victims sent to Syria).
Returning to the UK airports was often an ordeal in its own right as I would be stopped almost every time and questioned under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. This happened even on visits to Brussels where I was invited to speak at the European Parliament by British MEPs as well as trips to Malaysia where I had been giving evidence in war crimes tribunals set up by the former prime minister there. Often British police would ask me if I had gone to these places to further my claims about British complicity in torture.

During this period three very important things happened which I believe the British intelligence services have been unable to recover from:

1. A major civil action was taken by 16 former Guantanamo prisoners against the British government and intelligence services for complicity in torture and false imprisonment.

2. Prime Minister David Cameron ordered a judge-led inquiry to be launched into allegations that the UK was complicit in torture

3. The Metropolitan police began a criminal investigation against British intelligence services into recurrent allegations of complicity in kidnap, torture and false imprisonment

In 2010 we won an out-of-court settlement against the government after it was compelled to hand over documents that showed how British government ministers had decided we should be consigned to Guantanamo, despite evidence of mistreatment.

At the end of the discussions with the government the then Justice Minister, Kenneth Clarke QC, sat with us and listened. Several of the world’s supposedly most dangerous terrorists sat in a room with a senior Tory minister discussing the previous government’s wrongs. I handed Clarke a copy of my book hoping there might be some proper understanding after this but, all the while the government was preparing the Justice and Security Bill[11]—which was passed as law earlier this year—that would ensure damaging and embarrassing civil actions such as ours would henceforth be heard in secret under colour of ‘national security concerns.’
The inquiry into torture by Sir Peter Gibson was shelved last week in favour of the Intelligence and Security Committee but in his interim report Gibson concluded that MI5 had at best ‘turned a blind eye’[12] to our abuse.

The criminal investigation is still on-going but I have sat for hours with the Metropolitan Police giving testimony to them about what happened in Bagram and Guantanamo and, they have gone to meet with rendition victims in Libya[13] and continue to investigate the claims of Shaker Aamer[14] who has been in Guantanamo without charge for twelve years.

Last year several former Guantanamo prisoners, including me, met with Asa Hutchinson, who had served as US Undersecretary for Homeland Security while we were captives. In a report by the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, which included him and two former senior US generals, the practice of torture by the US administration was described as “indisputable”. The report[15] also stated bluntly that our treatment and indefinite detention was “abhorrent and intolerable”. There was also no escaping the fact that the British government had colluded in sending and keeping us there.

Visiting Syria
Following the uprisings of the ‘Arab spring’ I was able to make several visits to the Arab world and follow up cases of rendition, including the shocking case of a man whose tortured false testimony[16] was used as a justification by both the US and UK to invade Iraq.

In July last year, I visited Syria where I met numerous former prisoners who had been held by the Assad regime as well as a few victims of US and UK rendition. One of the men, a Libyan who had resided in Syria, had been rendered to Libya after a phone call by a British Libyan dissident had been intercepted by MI5 and its contents disclosed to Assad’s Mukhābarāt (intelligence agency). Documents[17] found in the headquarters of Gaddafi’s Mukhābarāt after the fall of Tripoli clearly prove British involvement.
A few months later, in October 2012, I was called by an MI5 officer who said they wanted to talk to me about my views on the situation in Syria after having read my article[18]. I told them that they must be aware that I was investigating several leads regarding British and American complicity in rendition and torture in Syria. They called back after consulting with their lawyers and said they understood that and would still like to meet. I agreed to speak to them and meet at a hotel in East London. Both MI5 and I had our lawyers present.

MI5 was concerned about the possibility of Britons in Syria being radicalised and returning to pose a potential threat to national security. I told them that Britain had nothing to worry about, especially since British foreign policy, at the time, seemed in favour of the rebels. At the end of the meeting I was assured by MI5 that my proposed return to Syria to continue my work would not be hindered, and it wasn’t.

 Subsequently, I travelled to Syria without incident. I spent much time accumulating testimony and information for a report on the situation of the current prisoners as well as the accounts of those who had been detained and tortured in the past. I witnessed the squalid refugee camps, I visited the wounded, young and old, some of whom I buried, I saw the carnage of Assad’s killing machine and I saw the beautiful young faces of children aged beyond their years. I witnessed the harsh winter and saw farmers chop down their olive trees to warm themselves and I heard the horror stories of torture under the rule of both Bashar and Hafiz al-Assad. However, I also saw aid coming in from all over the Muslim world which included British ambulances, British fire engines, British garbage disposal trucks; British aid centres and hospitals with British doctors (one of whom was killed[19] saving lives a few months ago) and volunteers from Britain’s Muslim community. And yes, there were some British fighters too. I do not believe any of them posed any kind of threat to the UK.

I returned home without hindrance, except for the customary Schedule 7 stop. I was briefly questioned about my visit by border police and returned home shortly after. I came back ‘radicalised’ enough to speak at numerous events for various charities working out in Syria. I also conducted interviews[20] with people on the ground that are close to the fighters to answer questions about any tangible threat to the UK to help allay the fears of the British public and intelligence services.

Schedule 7 stops
Since then I have been ‘randomly’ stopped[21] more times than I can recall under Schedule 7 while travelling.

The last time this happened, last month, I was en route to a conference[22] in Turkey about the mass-imprisonments and torture occurring in Egypt following the military coup. British police suggested that I might be going to Syria, despite showing them details of itinerary and return flights for the following weekend.
I was made to miss my flight but the police were prepared to rebook me for the next available one meaning that they were neither preventing me from going to Turkey, or even potentially to Syria. I refused their offer as I would have had missed the conference by then and opted to returned home. However, they took possession of my iPad and phone and kept them for a week. Both items contained sensitive information and documents pertaining to CagePrisoners’ investigations on both complicity in torture and responses to the British government’s measures in tackling extremism.

In anticipation of future harassment at airports I began legal proceedings to challenge the constant harassment at airports under Schedule 7 and informed the Home Office, the border police and British airports about my intended travel via my lawyers. We received a response from their lawyers, which acknowledged the letter but did little else.

Change of language

The language and attitude of the British government has steadily changed towards the Syrian opposition especially since much of it has openly chosen an Islamic path, something the west has been unwilling to engage with and unprepared to accept. Britain went to war based on the falsehood that Iraq may have possessed weapons of mass destruction. Clear evidence of the use of chemical weapons, in addition to over 120,000 dead through the use of conventional ones in Syria has not elicited any such response, and most people are grateful for it. No one wants to see British involvement in Syria, especially the Syrians who know well what happened next door in Iraq.

As a result, however, the Assad regime is now regarded as the better of the two choices. That is why last month the decision to stop[23] even non-lethal aid for western-backed factions in Syria was taken by Britain. But, despite there being no evidence of a tangible threat from British fighters returning from Syria (the contrary[24] in fact) and certainly not the type that might have been posed from the same in Iraq or Afghanistan because of the presence of British troops, the government now wants to remove not just the passport but the nationality[25] of Britons suspected of being involved in fighting in Syria. The government’s myopic insistence on this point cannot fathom that this is simply about Syria, not Britian. The counterterrorism industry, it seems, has too many vested interests for the language to be tempered with reason.

Instead of easing the arduous journeys for the numerous convoys leaving with aid from Britain for Syria every month, border authorities detain the aid workers for hours on end—both on exit from and re-entry to the UK. On several occasions volunteers have been turned back, vehicles confiscated and money and goods collected by the community for the beleaguered Syrian people seized.

Britain has refused[26] to take any Syrian refugees despite the unprecedented crisis facing millions fleeing the war. It also did next to nothing for the British Muslim Dr. Abbas Khan[27] and has been heavily criticised for shirking its duty regarding one of its own citizens while he was horrifically tortured and murdered.

Simply speaking, the British government has lost all touch with the reality on the ground and the enormous sentiments in the Muslim community, and beyond, regarding the Syrian conflict.

Losing my passport – again

After a trip to South Africa[28] last month—which had coincided with the funeral of Nelson Mandela—where I spoke extensively about the complicity of the British government in rendition and torture, I was met upon arrival at Heathrow by officials who served me with a notice to seize my passport under the ‘Royal Prerogative’ stating that it was assessed my previous visits to Syria had constituted involvement in terrorism. No explanation other than that was given.

I am certain that the only reason I am being continually harassed—something that began long before any visit to Syria—is because CagePrisoners and I are at the forefront of investigations and assertions based on hard evidence that British governments, past and present, have been wilfully complicit in torture.

How logical is it to stop me from travelling anywhere in the world simply because they want to prevent me from going to Syria? Numerous British citizens have been prevented from entering Turkey (the key entry point to Syria) at the behest of the British authorities. They could have done the same with me.

It is these government-shaking issues that are the real reason why I have been continually harassed and targeted by the authorities in this country. I am not and never have been in anyway a threat to them, unless words seeking accountability are a threat.

At a time when Islam and the Muslim community is facing an unprecedented attack via politicians, the media and ultimately some sections of the public susceptible to this onslaught, it has been the aim of CagePrisoners and myself in trying to empower the community that is being purposefully undermined.
The struggle for reason and justice is clearly a longer one than I once imagined but since our aim is a good and just one, I do not believe our detractors will succeed.

Link:  :http://muslimvillage.com/2014/02/28/50644/moazzam-begg-real-reason-passport-confiscated/.

Obama makes it official: U.S. planning for full Afghan withdrawal

February 25, 2014
By Olivier Knox
Source: Yahoo News

After giving him the silent treatment for eight months, President Barack Obama on Tuesday called Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The message? A blunt warning that all U.S. troops will leave his war-torn country by 2015 unless Karzai or his successor sign a bilateral security agreement (BSA) with the United States.

The president had not spoken to Karzai since a June 25, 2013, video conference, and the two had had no contact since a Nov. 21, 2013, letter from Washington to Kabul.

Obama has said repeatedly that he hopes to leave a residual force of some 8,000-12,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan to train local security forces and target extremists after most combat forces depart in 2014. But U.S. officials had warned that Obama would pull all American troops absent a BSA that gives American and allied forces immunity from local prosecution.

Karzai refused, saying his successor should be the one to make that commitment. He continued to say no even after Afghanistan’s “loya jirga” assembly of elders approved the agreement.

On Tuesday, Obama bluntly delivered that warning to Karzai himself, according to a White House statement on the call.

Obama told Karzai that he has “asked the Pentagon to ensure that it has adequate plans in place to accomplish an orderly withdrawal by the end of the year should the United States not keep any troops in Afghanistan after 2014.”

“Going after the remnants of core Al Qaeda could be in the interests of the United States and Afghanistan,” the White House readout continued. “Therefore, we will leave open the possibility of concluding a BSA with Afghanistan later this year.”

But “the longer we go without a BSA, the more challenging it will be to plan and execute any U.S. mission” and “the more likely it will be that any post-2014 U.S. mission will be smaller in scale and ambition,” the White House statement said.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel hammered home the message in a statement of his own released after the Obama/Karzai call, calling plans for a total pullout “a prudent step.”

"At President Obama's direction, and with my strong support, the Department of Defense will move ahead with additional contingency planning to ensure adequate plans are in place to accomplish an orderly withdrawal by the end of the year should the United States not keep any troops in Afghanistan after 2014,” Hagel announced.

Hagel also underlined why Obama’s Afghan policy is at a crossroads: Defense ministers from NATO and other countries with a presence in Afghanistan are due to meet in Brussels this week to discuss the future of the alliance’s policy. The White House and its allies face increasing pressure to make decisions about the withdrawal, a complex undertaking requiring significant military resources that can’t all be mobilized instantly.

White House aides have increasingly sounded as frustrated with Karzai as their predecessors in George W. Bush’s administration were. At one point, a senior Bush foreign policy aide joked to reporters that Karzai’s first name should permanently be changed from Hamid to something unprintable here.

Faced with his refusal to sign despite an all-out pressure campaign, the United States is now looking ahead to April elections that will pick Karzai’s successor.

While some prominent Republicans have sharply criticized Obama's handling of Afghanistan, the war-weary U.S. public has largely turned against the conflict, now America's longest war.

While it’s likely too late to repair the Obama/Karzai relationship, it’s not like things were going swimmingly under Bush, either.

At a December 2008 press conference with Bush, the Afghan leader drew nervous laughter when he offered up this description of the relationship between Washington and Kabul:

"Afghanistan will not allow the international community [to] leave it before we are fully on our feet, before we are strong enough to defend our country, before we are powerful enough to have a good economy, and before we have taken from President Bush and the next administration billions and billions of more dollars — no way that they can let you go."

 

Israeli premier rejects Kerry's boycott warning

 3 hours ago
 By ARON HELLER and MOSHE EDRI
Source: Yahoo News

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's warning against a growing boycott movement against the Jewish state should peace talks with the Palestinians fail, saying the stance undermined Israel's legitimacy and the chances of reaching a peace agreement.

The latest brush-up with the United States comes as Israel is negotiating with the Palestinians against a backdrop of increasing international pressure to reach a deal, coupled with a growing call for boycotting Israel over its settlements in areas it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

 

A small but growing number of European businesses and pension funds have begun to drop investments or limit trade with Israeli firms involved in the West Bank settlements. At a security conference in Germany this weekend, Kerry warned that a breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian talks would accelerate this trend and could threaten Israel's economic prosperity and its safety.

"You see for Israel there's an increasing de-legitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it. There are talk of boycotts and other kinds of things," Kerry said. "Today's status quo absolutely, to a certainty, I promise you 100 percent, cannot be maintained. It's not sustainable. It's illusionary. There's a momentary prosperity, there's a momentary peace."

At the opening of his weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said international pressure on Israel would backfire and only cause the Palestinians to harden their positions.

"Attempts to impose a boycott on the State of Israel are immoral and unjust. Moreover, they will not achieve their goal," he said.

While Netanyahu refrained from taking aim at Kerry, some of his ministers were harsher. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, of Netanyahu's ruling Likud party, called Kerry's comments "offensive, unfair and insufferable."

"You can't expect the state of Israel to conduct negotiations with a gun pointed to its head," he said.

Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, from the religious, pro-settler Jewish Home party, said all "the advice givers" should know that Israel will not abandon its land because of economic threats.

"We expect our friends around the world to stand beside us, against anti-Semitic boycott efforts targeting Israel, and not for them to be their amplifier," said Bennett, a fierce critic of the Kerry-led talks. "Only security will bring economic stability, he said.

Tzipi Livni, Israel's chief negotiator, came to Kerry's defense, saying he was merely expressing concern for Israel's future.

Aiming to clarify, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Kerry's only reference to a boycott was a description of actions undertaken by others that he has always opposed.

"Secretary Kerry has a proud record of over three decades of steadfast support for Israel's security and well-being, including staunch opposition to boycotts," she said in a statement. "Secretary Kerry has always expected opposition and difficult moments in the process, but he also expects all parties to accurately portray his record and statements."

Over the past six months, Kerry has held endless back-and-forth talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in hopes of reaching a framework for a peace agreement. He is expected to present his ideas in the coming weeks and both sides have balked at some of his expected proposals.

Israeli nationalist leaders like Bennett, for instance, oppose a Palestinian state that is based on the pre-1967 borders. More than 500,000 settlers live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 war and which the Palestinians now hope will be part of their future state. Known to religious Jews as Judea and Samaria, they are parts of the biblical land of Israel and hard-liners object to ceding either area on both spiritual and security grounds. Any expected peace accord would put the fate of dozens of settlements at risk.

But European officials have warned that Israel could face deepening economic isolation if it presses forward with the construction of more settlements. In the latest example, Denmark's largest bank, Danske Bank, blacklisted Israel's Bank Hapoalim because of its links to settlement construction.

Once dismissed as a fringe issue, the boycott threat is now increasingly taking center stage in Israeli public debate.

Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid recently said that even in the case of a limited boycott that reduces Israeli exports to the European Union by 20 percent, the damage would amount to about 20 billion shekels ($5.7 billion) in exports annually.

In a related development, Lapid also ordered that all payments to settlements be stopped until their use is clarified. The move followed a TV report that said funds were allegedly being illegally transferred to the Yesha Council — an umbrella groups of settlers — that was illicitly using the money for political purposes.

____

Heller reported from Kfar Saba, Israel. Associated Press Writer David Rising contributed to this report from Munich, Germany.

Frosted: Health Department Shuts Down 11-year-old’s Cupcake Business

31 January 2014
Written by  Michael Tennant
Source: The New American

Until Monday, 11-year-old Chloe Stirling of Troy, Illinois, was an American success story. She goes to school, plays soccer, and has — or, rather, had — not one but two part-time businesses, one of which brought in about $200 a month. The success of her cupcake business, Hey, Cupcake!, caught the attention of the Belleville News-Democrat, which published a story about it on Sunday.
This being 21st-century America, however, such achievement could not go unpunished. And so, on Monday, the Madison County Health Department “called and said they were shutting us down,” Chloe’s mother, Heather Stirling, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Chloe had been selling her cupcakes primarily to friends and family for $10 a dozen or $2 for a specialty cupcake. Her treats proved so popular that she occasionally donated them for fundraisers, including one for a classmate who was suffering from cancer in 2012. Helped by her mom’s generous offer to double whatever she earned, she was saving up for a car at age 16 and, eventually, her own bakery. (She also has a pet-sitting business with about a dozen clients.)

Health department spokeswoman Amy Yeager told St. Louis’ KMOV that her department shuttered Hey, Cupcake! because it violated the county’s food ordinance and the Illinois State Food Sanitation Code. It seems that Chloe, under the mistaken assumption that she lives in a free country, had not first paid for the privilege of selling her cupcakes by getting a permit.

That’s not all. Heather Stirling told the Post-Dispatch that she was willing to pay for a permit or any other licenses necessary to keep Chloe in business. Then the health department bureaucrats dropped another bomb: In order for Chloe to continue hawking her wares, the family would have to “buy a bakery or build her a kitchen separate from the one we have,” Stirling said.

The Stirlings had already gone to the expense of buying a second refrigerator and extra shelving for the business, and Chloe’s grandparents had given her a stand mixer.

“But a separate kitchen?” Stirling asked incredulously. “Who can do that?”

Stirling’s remark inadvertently highlighted one of the main reasons for such regulations: They stifle competition against large, established businesses, who can afford expensive permits and separate kitchens.

Yeager, in typical bureaucrat fashion, insisted the health department was just doing its job in shutting down Hey, Cupcake! “The rules are the rules. It’s for the protection of the public health,” she told the Post-Dispatch, dismissing concerns over the public’s response to her department’s actions.
Not everyone is buying the public-health rationale, however.

Post-Dispatch columnist Pat Gauen dug into the Illinois Food Handling Regulation Act and discovered a loophole: A person is permitted to prepare food, including cake, in his home kitchen for sale to the public provided he sells it at a farmers’ market. “Where is the logic in a law that prevents the sale of Chloe’s cupcakes in one venue but seems to make it perfectly legal to sell them in another?” Gauen perceptively inquired.

Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids, also found Yeager’s excuse a bit wanting. “If you are buying cupcakes from a kid, you KNOW they’re not being baked at Entenmann’s headquarters,” she wrote. “And that’s a ‘risk’ you are taking.” Even if one is taking a very small gamble in consuming homemade cupcakes, she added, “a society that doesn’t even allow microscopic risks is a society more obsessed with rules and liabilities than gumption and frosting.”

Besides, if Chloe’s cupcakes ever did start sickening people, they would stop buying from her, and she’d be out of business in a hurry, health department or no health department. Meanwhile, despite the existence of the bureaucracy, people still occasionally get bad food from places that have jumped through all the mandated hoops. Gauen recalled that he’d “suffered a nasty case of food poisoning on Thanksgiving — probably from buffet food at a very nice restaurant in Wisconsin,” though, oddly, he hastened to praise the health department “watchdogs” for “keeping us safe.”

It is to be hoped that Chloe can get her business up and running again in spite of the government’s hurdles. But time is money, and she’s already lost out on some significant business. Her mom told KMOV that Chloe “received an additional 12 or 14 orders on Sunday after the article ran, and she couldn’t fill any of them” after the health department’s crackdown. In the future, customers may be wary of placing orders that might also go unfilled should the bureaucrats take a notion to cite Chloe for some other infraction of their Byzantine regulations.

And surely the next time this young lady hears “The Star-Spangled Banner,” she will cringe a little at the notion that the United States is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” No, we’re a bunch of micromanaged drones so fearful of the slightest risk that a girl with traits we should be encouraging instead sees her dreams shattered the moment she gets her first taste of success.

Link:   http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/17521-frosted-health-department-shuts-down-11-year-old-s-cupcake-business.

 

More Snowden leaks - and this time Al Qaeda is the surveillance target

January 30, 2014
By Dan Murphy
The Christian Science Monitor
Source: Yahoo News 

Earlier this week The New York Times and other newspapers, relying on power point slides stolen from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden, reported that the US and Britain have been trying to develop better means to spy on the massive amounts of data filtering through smart phones and into the world's telecommunications networks.

A particular target has been smartphone apps – everything from the popular game Angry Birds to photo uploading tools. As the Times wrote:

According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified documents, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from the smartphone identification codes of users to where they have been that day.

The NSA. and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters were working together on how to collect and store data from dozens of smartphone apps by 2007, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former NSA. contractor. Since then, the agencies have traded recipes for grabbing location and planning data when a target uses Google Maps, and for vacuuming up address books, buddy lists, telephone logs and the geographic data embedded in photographs when someone sends a post to the mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and other Internet services.

The paper also uploaded some of the slides, but with one problem: Amateurish redaction of some details, designed to hide the identity of an NSA employee and make it harder for terrorist groups to make good use of the information, that was no redaction at all. The paper quickly rectified the error but not before the original uploads were snatched by the anti-secrecy website Cryptome – at least according to a Twitter account linked to the website.  (The person who controls the account has since deleted this claim, as well as an assertion that he'd do any redactions himself when "hell freezes over.")

This error highlights the risks of the tens of thousands of Snowden documents that are now floating around among at least a dozen journalists: Promises that all documents will be handled carefully and be fully vetted by responsible reporters are just that. The more documents and different organizations involved, the greater chances for error – and there is little point in closing the barn door after the horses have bolted. 

But what caught my eye in one of the unredacted slides was the mention of Al Qaeda in Iraq being a particular target of the NSA's efforts. The slide reads: "Visual Communicator – Free application that combines Instant Messaging, Photo-Messaging, and Push2Talk capabilities on a mobile platform. VC used on GPRS or 3G networks." The next five words were what the Times tried and failed to redact: "heavily used in AQI Mosul Network." 

The aim as described in the documents is to target mobile phone apps that can give away a target's physical location. The utility of this in tracking terrorists hardly needs to be stated. The document describes a program focusing on clear security interests – Al Qaeda in Iraq, now calling itself Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – killed thousands in Iraq during the US-led war there and continues to carry out suicide bombings and attacks on civilians there on a weekly basis. ISIS is also deeply involved in the civil war in Syria, and the groups ties to Al Qaeda make it an obvious security concern for the US.

Snowden has often insisted that he isn't interested in exposing intelligence programs that have legitimate security concerns behind them and has gone so far as to say that almost none of the NSA's efforts have anything to do with terrorism. Glenn Greenwald, who's worked with Snowden on releasing NSA documents since at least February of last year, has also made that second claim.

In December Snowden wrote an open letter to "the people of Brazil" (he's been hoping to get asylum there) and in it he claimed:

There is a huge difference between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement – where individuals are targeted based on a reasonable, individualized suspicion – and these programs of dragnet mass surveillance that put entire populations under an all-seeing eye and save copies forever.

These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.

Mr. Greenwald said the following in an interview with CNN's Christian Amanpour last October, after being asked if leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron were correct in saying the world has become a more dangerous place because "bad guys know how we're listening to them and we're not able to do as much intercepting and stopping of these potentially damaging plots as we could in the past":

Let's just use our common sense analyzing the claims of political officials when they say that. Ever since 9/11 British and American officials have screamed terrorism over and over and over every time they get caught doing bad doing things they shouldn't do -- from lying to the public about invading Iraq to setting up a worldwide torture regime to kidnapping people and taking them around the world to be tortured. They just want to put the population in fear by saying that terrorists will get you if you don't want to submit to whatever authority it is that we want to do and that's all they're doing here. It's the same tactic they always use. Let's just use common sense. Every terrorist who's capable of tying their own shoes has long known that the US government and the UK government are trying to monitor their communications in every way that they can. That isn't new. We didn't reveal anything to the terrorists that they didn't already know. What we revealed is that the spying system is largely devoted not to terrorists but is directed at innocent people around the world. That is what was not previously known and that is why American and British officials are so angry because they wanted to hide what the true purpose of the spying system is from the people at whom it's directed. And that is the only thing that's new in what we reported.

Amanpour then plays a short clip of Rep. Mike Rogers saying that if French people understood the uses and intent of NSA telecommunications in that country, which he says is focused on terrorism and security, they'd "be popping champagne corks." Greenwald responds:

Well first of all a lot of people like to ask why is there so much anti-American sentiment around the world all you have to do is listen to that tape of Mike Rogers to understand it he's basically going around telling the world that they ought to be grateful that without their knowledge we're stealing all of their communications data and invading their privacy. None of this has anything to do with terrorism. Is Angela Merkel a terrorist? Are 60 or 70 million French citizens terrorists?... This is is clearly about political power and economic espionage and the claim that this is all about terrorism is seen around the world as what it is. Which is -- pure deceit.

The above two quotes contain a lot of hogwash, not to mention Greenwald's extremely binary thinking on this issue. 

Is all American spying about terrorism? No. And no one in the government ever claimed that. The US Congress has directed the NSA and other intelligence agencies to collect intelligence on foreign governments, just as they collect intelligence on the US.

Is it reasonable to claim that the US and other governments have overplayed the threat of terrorism as justification for acts that erode civil liberties? In my view, absolutely.

But his claim that "none of this has anything to do with terrorism" is not reasonable. That's pure nonsense -- as is his attempt to suggest that any revelations of eavesdropping techniques can't do any harm because terrorists already know all about it. Terrorists may know that the US is trying to spy on them as best it can (just as Germany and France know that). But knowing the precise methods is another thing altogether.

That fact is that while intelligence tools created to spy on terrorists could end up being used and misused for other purposes, it's an enormous logical leap to then claim that "this is is clearly about political power and economic espionage and the claim that this is all about terrorism is seen around the world as what it is. Which is -- pure deceit."

That's a claim refuted by a careful reading of the documents Greenwald say help prove his position.

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