Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Our "terrorist" tracking system by the numbers

Support independent cartooning: join Sparky's List—and visit Tom Tomorrow's Emporium of Fun, featuring the new book and plush Sparky! (The Nation/ThisModernWorld.com).

.
Shrug Chart - Josh Begley
Biggest group on watchlist not terrorists
Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.
 
Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database -- a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments more -- than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category -- 280,000 people -- dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

1984: The numbers are shocking and aimed at something far more sinister than "terrorism."
 
Peter, are you targeting American citizens?
The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the “terrorist” screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than tenfold, to an all-time high of 47,000 -- surpassing the number of people barred from flying under [Unprecedented President] George W. Bush.
 
Obama and Nixon (TTDB)
If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”
 
The classified documents were prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to international terrorism. Stamped “SECRET” and “NOFORN” (indicating they are not to be shared with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date. Among the revelations:
.
When Guns Are Everywhere in police hands (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)

.
  • The second-highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by the government is in Dearborn, Michigan -- a city of 96,000 that has the largest percentage of Arab-American residents in the country.
  • The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records/day.
  • The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract  data to add to the watchlists.
Puppet "Capt. America" and Nixon (thenation)
A U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with watchlisting data told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. More

Thursday, 14 August 2014

Massive rally at White House condemns Israel

Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., Wisdom Quarterly; CODEPINKla.org

Hey, White House, Buddhist monks agree: We need the change we were promised! (phayul)
 .
Massive Rally at White House condemning Israeli massacre in Gaza
Cool it in Gaza? - Hell no, we're killing 'em!
Washington, DC - CODEPINK (Women for Peace) joined the White House rally on Saturday, August 2, calling on the U.S. government to pressure Israel [and or the CIA and U.S. military-industrial complex] to stop the ongoing massacre and lift its illegal siege of Gaza in Palestine, Israel.

Gaza Strip ghetto, Palestine
CODEPINK activists carried large banners and conducted a mock cemetery with bloodied dolls and toys commemorating the loss of so many innocent Palestinian lives, especially children.

CODEPINK activists have engaged in actions across the country almost daily since the Israeli attack on Gaza began. They have protested at Israeli consulates across the country, been arrested for blocking the entrance of the Israeli Embassy in DC, rallied at U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s house, and more.
 
The U.S. gov't pushes for Israel's crimes.
With the toll in Gaza [now far] surpassing 1,400 deaths, 8,200 wounded, and 180,300 civilians displaced, activists are determined to keep pressure on the U.S. to end its arming, funding, and unconditional support for Israel and its war crimes.
 
In the past few days alone, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks by U.S.-owned F-16s, Apache helicopters, weaponized drones, tank shelling, and naval bombardment.
 
Actually controlling the media
The tiny Gaza Strip (home of 1.8 million civilian)’s only power plant was targeted by Israel's state-sponsored militants -- the fourth most powerful army in the world -- and blown up, schools were destroyed, U.N. shelters were illegally bombed and hospitals targeted after threat-warning that they would be shelled, and over 4,000 homes knocked to the ground, explains retired Colonel Ann Wright (with paraphrasing and augmenting by WQ). “We must take action to stop this!”

“As a Jew, a mother, a U.S. taxpayer, and a compassionate human being, I weep as I watch the massacre of so many innocent people, including hundreds of children in Gaza”
- CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin


Control of the U.S. Media

Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Greenwald: CIA and NPR propaganda (video)

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Glenn Greenwald (The Intercept) Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Nermeen Shaikh (DemocracyNow.org, Aug. 13, 2014)
Nprlogo
NPR propaganda uses CIA-linked firm's report on Snowden's whistle blowing

Usairforce
Iraq: Is U.S. "humanitarianism" only summoned to control oil-rich areas?
.
The NSA illegally spies on everyone it can.
Earlier this month, The Intercept published documents provided by NSA-whistleblower Edward Snowden that revealed the deep ties between Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies.

In a recent article, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald cites one 2013 document that described a "far-reaching technical and analytic relationship" between the National Security Agency (NSA) and its Israeli counterpart against "mutually agreed upon geographic targets."

The partnership includes a "dedicated communications line" supporting "the exchange of raw material, as well as daily analytic and technical correspondence." More

NPR's disinformation for the state
Whistleblower former NSA Agent Snowden
Furthermore, Greenwald’s latest article for The Intercept is headlined "NPR is laundering CIA talking points to make you scared of NSAb eporting." 

Greenwald takes a highly critical look at a story by NPR’s counterterrorism correspondent, Dina Temple-Raston, which aired on Morning Edition earlier this month. Temple-Raston’s propaganda-ridden report focused on claims by the tech firm Recorded Future that it has "tangible evidence" that NSA whistleblower Snowden harmed national security by inadvertently prompting "terrorists" to use better encryption programs to maintain their privacy.
 
Greenwald says the NPR report erred in failing to mention that the firm is funded by the CIA, even though Temple-Rason was well aware of this. "This was such a pure and indisputable case of journalistic malpractice and deceit," Greenwald charges. "NPR radically misled millions of people with this report." More

Isisiniraq
Rise of CIA's "ISIS": US re-invasion of Iraq, backing of Syrian rebels fuels Jihadis’ advance
LA Police Commission gives LAPD Chief Beck 2nd term Beck has worked for the LAPD for more than three decades. Violent crime has fallen under his tenure it's also come with controversy.

Noam Chomsky on ISRAEL's "hideous atrocity"

Wisdom Quarterly; Prof. Emeritus Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman (democracynow.org)
2014-0811_chomsky3
 
US/CIA uses "Israel" in M.E.
PART 2 (see Part 1): famed linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky exposes the crisis in Israel and the Middle East, unquestioned U.S. support for Israel, states-sponsored Jewish-apartheid, and the BDS movement. "In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than [racist South African] apartheid," Chomsky says.

"To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by 'apartheid' you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse.

"There’s a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce.…The Israeli relationship to the indigenous Palestinians it has corralled into the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them. [They want to and are well into exterminating millions of them.] They want them out, or at least in prison."

Let's open a new arm of the museum focusing on our crimes against others? - No way!
 


  • "A Hideous Atrocity": Noam Chomsky on Israel’s assault on Gaza and U.S. support for Israel's illegal occupation 



  • Noam Chomsky: Israel’s actions in Palestine are "much worse than Apartheid" in South Africa



  • Noam Chomsky on the U.S. mainstream media’s "shameful moment" in Gaza and how a U.S. policy shift could immediately end the Israel's illegal occupation 
  • Ex-Japanese PM on how Fukushima meltdown was worse than Chernobyl and why he now opposes nuclear power Three years ago today a massive earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami that struck Japan’s northeast coast, resulting in an unprecedented nuclear crisis: a triple meltdown at the Fukushima-Daichi...
  • Noam Chomsky: Israel's Actions in Palestine are "much worse than Apartheid" in South Africa Part 2 of conversation with famed linguist and political dissident MIT Prof. Emeritus Noam Chomsky on the crisis in Israel's ghetto the "Gaza Strip," U.S. military and propaganda support for Israel, apartheid, and the BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) movement. 
  • Noam Chomsky: Sabra and Shatila Massacre that forced Israeli PM Sharon’s ouster recalls worst of Jewish Pogroms We look at one of the most shocking incidents in the career of the late former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Up to 2,000 Palestinians died on Sept. 16-17, 1982...


  • Intercept-article-01
    Spied on for being Muslim? NSA targets named by Snowden respond to U.S. surveillance

    Thursday, 7 August 2014

    Khmer convictions: Cambodia, Angelina Jolie

    It is believed that up to 2 million Cambodians died under CIA/Pol Pot's regime (AFP/BBC)
    .
    Cambodian Tomb Raider Angelina Jolie (Lara Croft)
    Most Americans are not likely aware that anything much ever happened in Cambodia -- Cambodia? Where's Cambodia? -- even as our government illegally bombed it during our war on Vietnam and our CIA fomented mass murder and crimes against humanity by cultivating dictators. 
     
    It does the same now in the geopolitical Middle East just as it did all over Latin America. The CIA's activities there were exposed first hand by the highest ranking officer to ever blow the whistle:
     
    Philip Agee, author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary. This seems to be in keeping with the way-of-empire and our American imperial method of making war as we learned it from England, Germany (WW II era Nazis, who came to live and work for the U.S. shadow government), Spain, France, Rome, Greece... It seems to be the Western way.
     
    But Americans might know the name Pol Pot from the late 1970s, and we have all certainly heard the expression "killing fields." After all, the world's most famous Cambodian citizen is superstar actor Angelina Jolie. And America's amazing "Buddha Girl" Ratanayani is a Cambodian-American!
     
    The Buddha at Battambang, Cambodia (Kim Seng/captainkino.com/flickr.com)
     
    Reptilians/Nagas
    Cambodia was once a peaceful Theravada Buddhist country in Southeast Asia.
     
    But long before that -- mirroring the Mesoamerican empires of ancient Mexico (Aztec, Toltec, and Olmec) -- it was one of the world's greatest empires extending in the jungles from the center of the world at Angkor Wat and its suburbs, which were once home to 1,000,000 residents. It covers more ground than Paris and was built with more stone than the pyramids of Egypt, according to National Geographic.



    The greatness is evident because Cambodia's former glory was not limited to the City of Angkor with its central wat (Buddhist temple). Other great stone cities have also been discovered and made much of by National Geographic, but other equally great ruins remain yet to be discovered.
     
    Glass pool reservoir at Angkor Wat, Cambodia (Platongkohphoto/flickr.com)
     
    But their innovative water system collapsed and their apparent worship of nagas (reptilians, snakes, Quetzalcoatl-like off-planet overlords) ushered in their ruin as a "Rome," "Washington," or "Vatican" -- the capitals of other massive empires.
     
    "The Killing Fields," winner of three Academy Awards, tells the story of a New York Times reporter and his Cambodian aide harrowingly trapped in Cambodia's 1975 Khmer Rouge revolution. Sam Waterston, John Malkovich, and "Best Supporting Actor" (Oscar and Golden Globe winner) Haing S. Ngor star in this shattering true story. Rated: R.
     
    Jolie's Cambodian shaman/Buddhist tattoos
    Americans would have heard of the expression "The Killing Fields" from the popular film, and Pol Pot from the chorus of the Dead Kennedy's ironic and popular punk classic "Holiday in Cambodia," its stone building sunk in jungle thickets from Angelina Jolie as actress (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.

    WARNING: Graphic and gruesome violence! (CNN.com, May 1, 2009) CNN's Dan Rivers profiles members of the Khmer Rouge, as they face justice before a U.N.-backed trial.

    Top Khmer Rouge leaders convicted: found guilty of crimes against humanity
    Ancient megalithic Angkor Wat and its Buddha and kings' faces (Dvillaret/flickr.com)
    .
    (BBC) There was a round of applause as the verdict was reached, according to BBC correspondent Jonathan Head.

    Two top Khmer Rouge leaders have been jailed for life after being convicted by Cambodia's UN-backed tribunal of crimes against humanity
     
    Nuon Chea, 88, served as leader Pol Pot's deputy and Khieu Samphan, 83, was the Maoist regime's head of state. They are the first top-level leaders to be held accountable for its crimes.
     
    Soum Rithy, who lost his father and three siblings, reacts to the verdict in Phnom Penh on 7 August 2014
    Soum Rithy, who lost his father and three siblings, reacts to verdict in Phom Penh (Reuters)
     
    Up to two million people are thought to have died under the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime -- of starvation and overwork or executed as enemies of the state.
     
    Judge Nil Nonn said the men were guilty of "extermination encompassing murder, political persecution, and other inhumane acts comprising forced transfer, enforced disappearances, and attacks against human dignity."
     
    Lawyers for the pair said they would appeal against the ruling. "It is unjust for my client. He did not know or commit many of these crimes," Son Arun, a lawyer for Nuon Chea, told journalists. They will remain in detention while this takes place. 
     
    "Anger remains"
    The regime sought to create an agrarian society: cities were emptied and their residents forced to work on rural co-operatives. Many were worked to death while others starved as the economy imploded. 
     
    During four violent years, the Khmer Rouge also killed all those it perceived as enemies -- intellectuals, minorities, former officials -- and their families. More

    "Holiday in Cambodia"
    (DKs555) "Apocalypse Now" illegally in Cambodia, where the US/CIA had no right or justification to be. Yet, it dropped more cluster bombs and committed as many if not more secret war crimes in Cambodia and Laos than it did in Vietnam.











    An honest man on ISRAEL: Noam Chomsky

    Wisdom Quarterly; Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman (democracynow.org, Aug. 7, 2014)


    Hideous. Sadistic. Vicious. Murderous. That is how Noam Chomsky describes Israel’s 29-day offensive war on Gaza -- which as killed nearly 1,900 people and left almost 10,000 Gazan Palestinians injured.
     
    Ilanpappe
    Pappe: "Racist Apartheid State" with US help
    Chomsky has written extensively about the Israel conflict with Palestine for decades. After Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, Chomsky co-authored the book Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians with Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé. (Exeter University Prof. Pappé is one of the leading voices on Israel, calling the U.S./Israel campaign against Palestine an "incremental genocide").
     
    Gazadestruction
    Israel claims "self-defense" in war crimes
    Chomsky's other books on the Israel/Palestine conflict include Peace in the Middle East?: Reflections on Justice and Nationhood and The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. Perhaps his most famous work is called Manufacturing Consent exposing American propaganda techniques.
     
    Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned political dissident, linguist, and author, Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where he has taught for more than 50 years. More

    Monday, 4 August 2014

    Israel keeps killing kids with impunity (video)

    Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Mo Omer, Aaron Mate, Nermeen Shaikh (DemocracyNow.org, Aug. 4, 2014)

    Rafahbombing
    Israel kills dozens more in Rafah
    The United States [minus our shadow government reveling in profits for the military-industrial complex] and the United Nations have condemned Israel after an airstrike killed 10 people near the entrance of a U.N. school sheltering Palestinian civilians.

    The school was reportedly being used as a shelter for about 3,000 people, most of them terrified children. It was the second illegal targeting of a U.N. school by Israel in less than a week. It tried to pin its first attack on Hamas to deflect international criticism but was conclusively shown to be the culprit, making Israel a "terrorist state" once again. And it was the seventh such crime against humanity over the course of Israel’s offensive war on Gaza.


    Music for Judeo-Christian soldiers
    Jewish American youth aspire to go to Israel to kill Palestinians, fly safe missions as glorious, state-sponsored Air Force terrorists, defend their other country from the unruly natives. It has in just 50 years packed the indigenous population into two teeming camps in which they are concentrated, open air prisons, non-Jewish neighborhoods, ghettos called the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where they are fish in a barrel to be shot at. Wonder what they listen to on their iPads as they kill, Florida's Cannibal Corpse maybe? "They think they know who I am/ All they know is I love to kill/ Face down, dead on the ground/ Find me before another is found/ I come alive in the darkness [night raids]/ Left murdered and nameless/ Dead, unburied, and rotten/ Half eaten by insects.../ They're all dead, they're all dead/ They're all dead, by [our invasion]... It felt so good to kill/ I took their lives away/ Seven dead, lying rotten/ Unburied victims their naked bodies putrefy [and get eaten by animals]/... They're all dead, they're all dead/ They're all dead, by [our invasion]/ I come alive in the darkness/ Left murdered and nameless/ Dead, unburied, and rotten/ Half eaten by insects..."

    Gazarubble
    US, we deserve protection not US bombs
    The coordinates of the school were reportedly communicated to the Israel "Defense" Force no fewer than 33 times, the last time just an hour before the shelling. That is, there is no way Israel did not know exactly what they were targeting and shelling in violation of international law and Geneva Conventions. 
     
    Shortly after Israel’s attack on Sunday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement saying: "The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon characterized the attack as "a moral outrage and a criminal act." [Will PM Netanyahu be dragged to the Hague? Not if U.S. politicians and CIA officials can help it.] 

    DN! gets an update from Christopher Gunness, spokesperson for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) for Palestine Refugees. More

     
    The number of Palestinians murdered by Israel in Gaza has topped 1,800 as the Israeli offensive enters its 28th day. On yesterday [Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014], at least 10 people were killed when Israel illegally shelled another U.N. school shelter for Palestinian civilians.
     
    Global-warming
    Why kill Gazans when you can kill Gaia?
    The U.S. has officially called the attack "disgraceful," while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned it as a "moral outrage and a criminal act." It was the seventh U.N. school hit since Israel’s offensive began. The U.N., meanwhile, is warning of a "rapidly unfolding" health crisis in Gaza as large parts of the territory had their power and running water taken out by targeted Israeli strikes, and around 400,000 are now displaced by Israel's war of aggression on its segregated indigenous population.

    More than 200 Palestinians have been killed since a 72-hour ceasefire collapsed on Friday [Aug. 1, 2014]. Over the weekend, the Israeli government admitted that a soldier it had used as war propaganda by reporting him [Hadar Goldin] as "captured and taken hostage by Hamas" was actually killed in a battle as he attacked badly outgunned Hamas resisters.

    Earlier today, Israel announced a unilateral seven-hour truce ("pause") in most of the Gaza Strip, except for Rafah, where Israel has concentrated its bombardment. Palestinians have already accused Israel of breaking its own ceasefire by launching deadly attacks on the Shati refugee camp, another crime against humanity. DN! goes live to Gaza City to speak with its correspondent Mohammed Omer, an award-winning Palestinian journalist who has family in Rafah. More
     
     

    Landay_l3

    Part two of  interview with acclaimed MIT physicist Theodore Postol, who says there is no evidence Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system is actually working. Prof. Postol estimates that the Iron Dome, which is partially built by U.S. corporate war-profiteers Raytheon, intercepts just 5 percent of rockets fired at Israel.