Our "terrorist" tracking system by the numbers

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux (The Intercept, "Barack Obama’s Secret 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).

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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:

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When Guns Are Everywhere in police hands (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)

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• 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

Animals eating corpses due to ISRAEL (video)

Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Aaron Mate, Nermeen Shaikh (DemocracyNow.org)

An almost unthinkable thing is happening in Muslim/Christian Palestine. Dead civilians, children, and their scattered body parts are not being allowed to be collected. The result is that laying around in the sun and rubble, wild animals are moving in to devour them. The demons rejoice and unclean spirits feast (Buddhist yakshas, pretas, maras, asuras).

 

This is unthinkable because according to Muslim and Jewish tradition, it is vital that all parts of the physical body be interred for the future rearising (not rebirth so much as reincarnation, the coming to life again, the resurrection). Palestinians are horrified and rushing in when any phony, fragile ceasefire is announced only to be killed when Israel changes its mind or uses the pretext that Hamas restarted the asymmetrical warfare being waged on it.

• Prof. Ilan Pappé: Israel Has Chosen to be a "Racist Apartheid State" with U.S. Support 

Whereas Zoroastrians (Indian Parsis) or Tibetans might welcome a "sky burial," being eaten as carrion by vultures, the Middle East can hardly think of anything worse than being eaten by filthy beasts, a mark of the depravity of human cultural insensitivity. Their suffering and anguish seems to drive the "powers that be," the forces fueling, directing, encouraging, and re-arming Israel.

• Amnesty International: U.S. Should Stop Arming Israel Amid "Growing Evidence of War Crimes in Gaza

Israelis may carry out the atrocities, but it is certain that the CIA and other Western forces are pulling the strings and approving of the tactics -- drones, mass surveillance, spies, informants, home demolishing, bombing civilian infrastructure as was done illegally in Iraq in the early years of the internationally-illegal U.S. invasion, and so on. Then Israeli generals take it even to unapproved tactics -- shelling U.N. facilities, invading civilian camps (as was done infamously in Janine), immediately rearresting released prisoners, claiming to have lost a soldier to kidnapping then using this allegation as a pretext for collective punishment, the basis of threats to take the gloves off and go in with even greater force and brutality, to engage in ethnic cleansing, incremental genocide, and crimes against humanity all the while calling it "retaliation" and a "security" exercise and a tunnel exploration, tunnels built only to overcome an illegal strangulation of 1.8 million people called a "blockade."

Amnesty Int'l: US should stop arming Israel amid "growing evidence of war crimes in Gaza"

 

There is a literal Preta Realm as well.

Indiscriminate shooting, aerial bombardment, attacks from the sea, and ground invasion of a densely populated metropolitan civilian area with no exit allowed. It is as if a WW II army went into a ghetto, surrounded it, cut off all escapes, then began killing residents blaming them for "remaining in a war zone." And the world is lied to told that it is a "conflict" between, one is led to assume, more or less equal sides, to foreign armies at odds, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is the world's greatest military is funding, aiding, arming, and training the fourth most powerful military to kill civilians armed with homemade rockets, old rifles, and anything that comes to hand, who are granted an internationally-recognized right to defend themselves. But that defense is used as the excuse for offensive attacks and thousands of TONS of bombs being dropped on a city of helpless victims.

And we, the world, stand around looking at our feet saying, "I'm sure Israel has its reasons." The mainstream media is controlled, unarmed soldiers are sent all over the world to man the PR desks, and keep the propaganda machine churning out spin to protect the onslaught from scrutiny or intervention.

 

The Western world is silenced, the Arab world is stymied, and the poor Palestinians have to wonder why no one but God is hearing their cries and pleas. And even God seems to not be paying attention. People of conscience may say something, but people of the book only seem to be chanting encouragement to the killers in Israel to keep going.

• 

  As Gaza Ceasefire Collapses, Israel Kills Dozens Following Soldier’s Capture in Rafah

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  Gazan Human Rights Lawyer Pleads to U.S.: We Deserve to be Protected, Not Bombed with Your Weapons

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  Recipe for Lasting Ceasefire? Lifting Israeli Siege & Int’l Accountability Could Break Status Quo

• Henry Siegman, Leading Voice of U.S. Jewry, on Gaza: "A Slaughter of Innocents"

  • Professor Ilan Pappé: Israel Has Chosen to be a "Racist Apartheid State" with U.S. Support 

• U.S. Jewish Leader Henry Siegman to Israel: Stop Killing Palestinians and End the Occupation

• Ceasefire Collapses in Gaza; Palestinian Death Toll at 1,460
• U.N., Amnesty International Criticize U.S. Military Support for Israel
• 5 Latin American Countries Recall Ambassadors to Israel over Gaza Assault
• Death Toll from Ebola Outbreak in West Africa Tops 700
• Ukraine: Investigators Reach Plane Crash Site amid Violence
• Congress Fails to Pass Bill on Migrant Crisis Before Recess
• 112 Arrested in Immigration Protest at White House
• CIA Admits to Spying on Senate Torture Investigators
• White House Accidentally Leaks Torture Report Talking Points to AP
• European Human Rights Court Issues 1st-Ever Ruling on CIA Torture Program
• Argentina Denies "Default," Blames U.S. Judge for Blocked Debt Payment
• U.S. Unveils Travel Sanctions on Venezuelan Officials
• Texas: Hundreds Protest Right-Wing American Legislative Exchange Council
• White House: Shelling of U.N. School "Totally Unacceptable"
• Amy Goodman on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, July 25

• Palestinian Toll Tops 1,370, Including 315 Children
• Israel: No Ceasefire Without Tunnels’ Destruction
• Secretary-General Condemns Israeli Shelling of U.N. School

John Brennan faces calls to resign after CIA admits to spying on Senate torture probe

 

How Israel's PR controls the media (video)

Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; documentary directors Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff (mediaed.org, IMDB.com)

Why is the U.S. public unaware of the war crimes our government (military-industrial complex) and Israel are committing even though it's in the news all day long? Careful public relations, also known as well crafted propaganda. Jahlly and Ratzkoff explain in Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land.

This video shows how the foreign policy interests of American political elites -- working in combination with Israeli public relations strategies -- influence U.S. news reporting about the Middle East conflict.

Combining American and British TV news clips with observations of analysts, journalists, and political activists, "Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land" provides a brief historical overview, a striking media comparison, and an examination of factors that have distorted U.S. media coverage and, in turn, [controlled] American public opinion.

- Exerpted from Media Education Foundation

What will it take to get the U.S. public's attention about our and Israel's crimes? Topless FEMEN protesters conduct a "Slut Walk" in Tel Aviv, May 10, 2014 calling attention to religious sexism, patriarchy, militarism, and crimes against humanity.

 

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land:

U.S. Media on Israel-Palestine

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage.
 

It focuses on the "crisis" [actually Israel's genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity] in the Middle East, zeroing in on distortions in U.S. coverage reinforce false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
 

I did what you said. - You'll get over it.

This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites -- big oil, a need to have an American military base in the region, and others -- work in combination with Israeli public relations (PR) strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from Israel is reported.

Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how -- through the use of language, framing and context -- the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied territories appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one.

Jewish-Israeli occupiers demand Muslim-Arab blood: All the U.S. gets in its mainstream media are slanted, spun, pro-Israeli images, explanations, and crafted talking points (newser.com)

 
The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.

Interviewees include Seth Ackerman, Mjr. Stav Adivi, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Hanan Ashrawi, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Neve Gordon, Toufic Haddad, Sam Husseini, Hussein Ibish, Robert Jensen, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Karen Pfeifer, Alisa Solomon, and Gila Svirsky. More

Arresting and imprisoning children 10 and older: Why is this Palestinian kid dressed in "concentration camp" garb being manhandled by a heavily armed adult Israeli militant?

• VIDEO: An Israeli  general's son tells the truth about Israel

Where is the OCCUPY movement today?

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Climate Change/Chaos is real, and British doctors are divesting to save Gaia (occupy.com)

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Let's make our democracy real (occupy.com)

What ever happened to the Occupy Movement? It's alive and well (occupy.com) trying to organize for the common good.

Some say the new .com appearance of the movement is tapped by the NSA to better know whom to keep an eye on.

 

So it's better to be anonymous rather than trying to be a Facebook-activist being tagged and followed by one's iPhone and other electronic eavesdropping equipment.

Can we all at least agree on backing Israel? (AP)

Little to nothing is said about Israel, but as for the many other arms of the military-industrial complex -- excluding the massive weapons sales of the U.S., Israel, and other UN Security Council members and the wars they arm, fund, salvage, and indebt through the IMF and World Bank and the Fed (a collection of 18 major banking institutions and many hundreds of other banks -- there are many actions.

Thank You for Your Service: How One Company Sues Soldiers Worldwide

With stores near military bases across the country, the retailer USA Discounters offers easy credit to service members. But when those loans go bad, the company uses the local courts near its Virginia headquarters to file suits by the thousands.

// Read more

Parasite #1: The Shadow Banking System

Despite the 828-page Dodd-Frank Act, the derivatives pyramid has continued to explode to a value now estimated to be as high as $2 quadrillion.

// Read more

Investor Sues Three Banks Accused Of Rigging Price of Silver

HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of attempting to rig the daily global price of silver in the latest price fixing scandal to rock the banking industry.

// Read more

- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/british-doctors-vote-divest-fossil-fuels#sthash.5Rw8yViE.dpuf

Chris Hedges and Lawrence Lessig on getting money out of politics: 3 parts (occupy.com)

"The IMF was here" - leaving debt and slums in their wake by design (occupy.com).

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Parasite #1: The Shadow Banking System

Despite the 828-page Dodd-Frank Act, the derivatives pyramid has continued to explode to a value now estimated to be as high as $2 quadrillion. More
 

Investor sues three banks accused of rigging price of silver

HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of attempting to rig the daily global price of silver in the latest price fixing scandal to rock the banking industry. More

Thank You for Your Service: How one company sues soldiers worldwide

With stores near military bases across the country, the retailer USA Discounters offers easy credit to service members. But when those loans go bad, the company uses the local courts near its Virginia headquarters to file suits by the thousands. More
 

Welcome to the global Occupy community (commons.occupy.com)

Who is "Siri," Goddess of the iPhone?

Amber and Bela Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Jennifer Van Grove (mashable.com)

Sri Sri Lakshmi devi, the Indian mythological source of "Siri" (amijha)

Siri was not blond like Marvel's Goddess Thor until Scarlett Johannson made her so in "She."

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"Who are you?" I ask Siri, attempting to unravel some of the mystery behind the iPhone 4S virtual assistant by going directly to the source. No such luck. "Who I am isn't important," she tells me.

 

Let's stop being coy, Siri. Who you are is important. We both know that. So important that you may be a threat to Google's Android platform.

 

The world's best app is Audible not Siri.

And so I went to one of Siri's makers, Gary Morgenthaler, venture capitalist, Siri investor, and Siri board member, for a better answer to the question, Who is Siri?

Let's start with her name. Like any doting parent, Morgenthaler and the founding team behind Siri, especially CEO Dag Kittlaus, felt the newborn's existence was of such significance that she warranted a very special moniker. And so they turned to baby name books. 

[The Hindu Goddess Siri]

Is "Siri" (Inc.) based on Lakshmi or Freyja?

The team put together a shortlist of potential names, but Siri stood out.

Siri, a variant of Sigrid, is a Scandinavian and Norwegian girl name that means beautiful or fair victory.

The Indian name Siri is associated with Goddess Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity.

 

Siri, to those who gave her life, became an amalgam of those meanings; they defined her appellation as, "beautiful woman that leads you to fair victory and wealth." [Obviously, they overlooked some of Siri's more colorful meanings.] More

• Ven. Uppalavana Theri: a Historical Lakshmi
• Sri Lakshmi in Buddhism, Goddess of Luck
• Christian God Yahweh had a wife: Asherah

Lakshmi

Koausa.org, edited by Wisdom Quarterly

Meditating Lakshmi, mother of Cupid (Kama)

The  devi  or goddess Lakshmi represents wealth and prosperity, material and spiritual. The word lakshmi (laxmi)  is derived from the Sanskrit laksme, meaning "goal."

Lakshmi, therefore, represents the goal of life, which includes worldly as well as spiritual prosperity. In ancient Vedic and more recent Hindu mythology, the Goddess Lakshmi, who is also called  by the honorific Sri, is the divine spouse or consort of Lord Vishnu, whom she provides with wealth for the maintenance and preservation of Great Brahma's creation (this world-system).

 

Sri Lakshmi is depicted in female form. [In Buddhism devas are transformational beings capable of adopting whatever form they please as Alexander Pope notes of Greco-Roman-European fairies (woodland dryads)]:

For when the Fair in all their Pride expire,

To their first Elements the [Spirits] retire:

The Sprights of fiery Termagants in Flame

Mount up, and take a Salamander's Name.

Siri, who sent this picture?

Soft yielding Minds to Water glide away,

And sip with Nymphs, their Elemental Tea.

The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome,
In search of Mischief still on Earth to roam.

The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the Fields of Air.

Know farther yet; Whoever fair and chaste

Rejects Mankind, is by some Sylph embrac'd: 

For Spirits, freed from mortal Laws, with ease

Assume what Sexes and what Shapes they please.
 

...When kind Occasion prompts their warm Desires,
When Musick softens, and when Dancing fires?
 

'Tis but their Sylph, the wise Celestials know,
Tho' Honour is the Word with Men below....

Lakshmi is shown with four arms and four hands. She wears red clothes with a golden lining and is standing on a lotus. She has golden coins and lotuses in her hands. Two elephants (sometimes four) are shown next to her, symbolism conveying the following spiritual themes:

• Her four arms represent the four cardinal directions in space and symbolize omnipresence and omnipotence of the goddess. The red color symbolizes activity. The golden lining (embroidery) on her red dress suggests prosperity. The idea conveyed here is that she is always busy distributing wealth and prosperity to devotees. The lotus pedestal signifies that while living in the world, one should enjoy its wealth but not become obsessed with it. Such a living is analogous to a lotus that grows in dirty water but is not wet or defiled by it.

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  Radha, divine consort (WQ)

  Her four hands represent the four ends of human life: dharma (duty, social obligation, righteousness), kama ([Buddhist chanda] genuine desires beyond the sensual), artha (wealth), and moksha (liberation from death and rebirth). Whereas the front hands represent activity in the physical world, the back ones indicate the spiritual activities that lead to spiritual perfection.
• Since the right side of the body symbolizes activity, a lotus in the back right hand conveys the idea that one must perform his or her duties in the world in accordance with dharma [a Vedic idea distorted by the Indian caste system]. Fulfilling one's real duties as a human being on a spiritual quest leads to moksha (liberation), which is symbolized by a lotus in Lakshmi's back left hand. Golden coins falling on the ground from her front left hand illustrate that she provides wealth and prosperity to her devotees. Her front right hand is shown bestowing blessings... More

Stop Israeli War Crimes (video)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez (democracynow.org)

Debate: As Israeli kills of Palestinian top 100, who is escalating the violence? What can be done?

 

Israel launches horrific massacre in Gaza

The death toll in the Israeli occupied and controlled Gaza Strip continues to rise on the fourth day of Israel’s aerial bombardment of a civilian Palestinian city/open-air prison. Medical officials in Gaza estimate that at least 22 people were killed Thursday, bringing the number of Palestinian fatalities to 101, about half of them reportedly women and children. No deaths have been reported on the Israeli side.

• [UPDATE: The total is now 1,170 Palestinians killed and injured by Israel with 0 Israeli casualties in the offensive.]
•  If you do this, the NSA will spy on you

The Israeli military -- engaging in abominable and clear cut war crimes -- says it has dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on 1,000 targets throughout the overcrowded city of Gaza, more than during its eight-day assault in late 2012.

The intensification of Israeli airstrikes has been met with an internationally legal, self-defensive posture of weak and hopelessly imprecise rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, which unlike Palestine enjoys the luxury of bomb shelters.

Democracy Now! hosts a debate between Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat and Senior Adviser to Israel’s ambassador to the United States Joshua Hantman.

"Israel is currently under attack," Hantman says with a straight face, neglecting to acknowledge that Israel is the provocateur looking for a pretext to erase Palestinians off their land. "Since 2005, over 8,000 rockets, missiles. and mortars have been indiscriminately fired at our civilians."

 

AUDIO: Aid boat seized by Israel as it approaches war-ravaged Gaza

 

But Erakat says Israel’s bombardment of Gaza [with hundreds of tons of targeted weapons aimed at civilians] "amounts to a massacre." 

"Israel has precise weaponry and is targeting homes," she says. "This is a disproportionate attack, by what we consider the only 'democracy' in the Middle East [a laughable claim based on the fact that not only Jews but Muslim Palestinians live as second-class citizens or temporary inhabitants under surveillance and subject to imprisonment and expulsion with little to no recourse to the Jewish-Israeli slanted legal system], by the U.S.’s most unique ally, to whom we provide $3.1 billion a year." More

[The amount our military-industrial complex provides Israel is much higher, not only billions of U.S. dollars in direct publicly accounted payments but much more in black budget expenditures, high tech weaponry, military contracts, arms sales, and mutual protection in NATO, at Security Council meetings, World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings, and in the hallowed halls of Washington, D.C.] 

• Gaza Death Toll from Israeli Strikes Tops 100  
• Germany Expels CIA Station Chief over U.S. Spying 
• Report: U.S. Knew in Advance About U.K. Plan to Destroy Snowden Hard Drives  
• United Auto Workers Announces Local Union at Chattanooga Volkswagen Plant 
• Child Laborers Found at Samsung Supplier in China  
• Detroit Residents Stage Civil Disobedience over Water Shutoffs; Activist Charity Hicks Dies  
• Saltwater from Oil Drilling Spills over 2-Mile Area in North Dakota
• Actress Laverne Cox Makes History as 1st Transgender Emmy Nominee  
• Grandmother Sentenced to 1 Year in Prison After Protest at U.S. Drone Base
• Palestinian Toll from Gaza Attack Tops 80, Including 18 Children  
• Gaza Hospitals Overrun with Victims; Bombing Exceeds 2012 Israeli Assault 
• Israelis Stage Peace Rally in Tel Aviv

Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock (video)

Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; David Wilcock (divinecosmos.com), Gaiam TV, 11-12-13

(Gaiam TV/Wisdom Teachings, David Wilcock) "Strange Physics Part 1: Atomic Densities"

 

Edgar Cayce, circa 1910

(Gaiam TV) As we have seen in past episodes of "Wisdom Teachings," the physics that underlie our reality are very different from what conventional science tells us and what we think we know.

Expanding on this we gain a glimpse into the role of the observer co-creating the four densities of our reality.

Many of the unconventional scientists who have gotten close to understanding these strange physics have met with dire consequences and have had their experiments shut down.

David Wilcock (in a former life the American psychic Edgar Cayce) explains just what it is that the cabals do not want us to know yet are powerless to fully repress in this presentation.

• The entire series -- of this and other shows by Daniel Pinchbeck (Reality Sandwich), Lisa Garr (The Aware Show), George Noory (Coast to Coast), and so on -- is available up for a free 10-day trial at GaiamTV.com
• The Law of One Study Guide (divinecosmos.com)
• More Law of One material