Taken from the album Will To Be Well
Daily Archives: 21. August 2014
The killer on the (Saudi) king‘s highway
The House of Saud, directly and indirectly, and the proverbial wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council donors are the Mom and Dad of ISIS. All duly vetted/approved by the industrial-military-Orwellian-Panopticon complex.
And yet „Assad must go“ had other ideas for Syria. He didn‘t go. He and his army resisted and counter-attacked. So the original mission in Syria morphed across the (non-existent) desert border towards Iraq. ISIS kept expanding – via extortion, kidnapping, captured oil fields, tribal smuggling networks.
EFF, ACLU Demolish “It’s Just Metadata” Claim in NSA Spying Appeal
Americans Deserve Full Protection of the Fourth Amendment for their Telephone Records, Groups Argue
Council On Foreign Relations: The Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s – Not Putin’s – Fault
The news is starting to go mainstream …
Stocks Hit All Time Highs After Russia Announces It Has „No Plans Of Military Incursion Into Ukraine“
So will this be today‘s catalyst to push the S&P over 2000 (so far it is working with the S&P hitting fresh record highs on the statement), and will futures continue to rise on hopes that Russia will step back from its trade war with the west, something which has failed to produce a correction in stocks, and yet where every rumor of de-escalation leads to higher highs in the market? We should have the answer shortly.
And the result…
The Double Identity of an „Anti-Semitic“ Commenter
Like many other news websites, Common Dreams has been plagued by inflammatory anti-Semitic comments following its stories. But on Common Dreams these posts have been so frequent and intense they have driven away donors from a nonprofit dependent on reader generosity.
A Common Dreams investigation has discovered that more than a thousand of these damaging comments over the past two years were written with a deceptive purpose by a Jewish Harvard graduate in his thirties who was irritated by the website‘s discussion of issues involving Israel.
The Secret Playbook of Internet Trolls
Similarly, anti-Semitic posts weaken websites by making them seem less reputable. Indeed, Common Dreams says that the troll’s anti-Semitic comments drove away many of that site’s largest donors … dealing a severe blow to its continued viability. That’s exactly what trolls spewing anti-Semitic bile are trying to do: shut down logical discussion and discredit and weaken sites which allow rational criticism of policy.
Big Banks “Bought” Congress … So Credit Derivatives Are Bigger than Ever
There aren’t better internal controls [at the big banks]. And they have a bigger, more opaque, more complex market with more players.
Switzerland Rejects Requests to Skirt Russia‘s Embargo
Switzerland has rebuffed attempts by some European Union food producers to sidestep a Russian ban on food imports from the EU and other Western countries by routing supplies through the Alpine country.
Switzerland is exempt from Russia‘s retaliatory measures because it isn‘t participating in Western sanctions against the country following its annexation of Crimea earlier this year
What Is the LRAD Sound Cannon?
The LRAD device has been used on several occasions against activists in the US. The first documented use was in Pittsburgh during the G20 summit in 2009. The Pittsburgh police used it again following the Superbowl in 2011. The LRAD has reportedly been used against Occupy protestors in Oakland and recently against Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zuccotti Park.
‚This is the Story of Power in this Country‘: Ferguson, Institutionalized Racism and the Militarization of Police
The 1033 program
How did we come to this? The reasons are complex and deeply ingrained in America’s troubling racial history, but the source of the problem is simple: widespread partnerships between law enforcement and government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
Gov. Nixon Orders National Guard to Withdraw from Ferguson
„That‘s the million-dollar question,“ he said. „People just want justice. Time and again, they don‘t get fair justice.“
How Can Humans Survive This? Living in the Moment in Gaza
I wonder how a human being can survive this, not just physically but psychologically? I was blocks away and it terrified me.
Whose sarin?
(19. Dezember 2012) in recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration’s assurances of Assad’s responsibility a ‘ruse’. The attack ‘was not the result of the current regime’, he wrote. A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening. The distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam.
Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013
(14. Januar 2014) – The Syrian Improvised Chemical Munitions that Were Used in the August 21, Nerve Agent Attack in Damascus Have a Range of About 2 Kilometers
– The UN Independent Assessment of the Range of the Chemical Munition Is in Exact Agreement with Our Findings
– This Indicates That These Munitions Could Not Possibly Have Been Fired at East Ghouta from the “Heart”, or from the Eastern Edge, of the Syrian Government Controlled Area Shown in the Intelligence Map Published by the White House on August 30, 2013.
– This mistaken Intelligence Could Have Led to an Unjustified US Military Action Based on False Intelligence.
– A Proper Vetting of the Fact That the Munition Was of Such Short Range Would Have Led to a Completely Different Assessment of the Situation from the Gathered Data
Zwei US-Forscher legen Studie zum Chemiewaffenangriff vom 21. August 2013 bei Damaskus vor: Washingtons Darstellung ist falsch
(21. Januar 2014) Bereits am Dienstag vergangener Woche legten zwei US-Forscher einen Untersuchungsbericht zum Chemiewaffenangriff im syrischen Ghuta bei Damaskus im August 2013 vor. In westlichen Ländern berichteten darüber nur wenige Medien, obwohl die Studie zu dem Schluß kommt: Die Giftgasmunition konnte nicht aus den Gebieten, die von syrischen Regierungstruppen kontrolliert wurden, abgefeuert worden sein.
Autoren der 23seitigen Analyse sind Richard Lloyd, ein früherer UN-Waffeninspekteur, und Theodore Postol, Professor am Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Unter dem Titel »Mögliche Auswirkungen falscher technischer US-Aufklärung« legen sie ihre Ergebnisse der Überprüfung jener Raketen vor, mit denen nach Erkenntnis von UN-Waffeninspekteuren am 21. August vergangenen Jahres Sarin in mehrere Ortschaften in der Region Ghuta geschossen worden war.
ISS HD Earth Viewing Experiment
For a display of the real time ISS location plus the HDEV imagery, visit here: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/HDEV/
Military source dismisses reports on terrorists entering military airport in Raqqa
A military source dismissed as baseless media reports which claimed that terrorists entered al-Tabqa military airport in Raqqa province in north central Syria.
The source stressed to SANA reporter that the army units defending the airport managed to establish control over the adjacent Ejeil town and the surrounding areas, killing large numbers of terrorists, in addition to seizing their weapons.
Paris: Schon „vor Monaten“ Waffen für syrische Rebellen
Bereits tags davor hatte Hollande in einem Interview mit der Tageszeitung „Le Monde“ erstmals Waffenlieferungen an die syrischen Rebellen bestätigt, allerdings nur indirekt. Auf die Frage, warum Frankreich den Kurden im Irak Waffen liefere, nicht aber den syrischen Rebellen, sagte Hollande: „Wer sagt Ihnen denn, dass wir den Rebellen, also der demokratischen Opposition, keine Waffen gegeben haben?“
.. Aber man kann auf ihm rumtrampeln.
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@GrueneBundestag @dieLinke Ein Sprichwort sagt: Jemanden der sich schlafend stellt, den kann man nicht wecken. Das stimmt.
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Stunden später kommt plötzlich auch @dieLinke hinterher. Dann klappt´s auch mit der Sondersitzung. Faszinierend.
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Sondersitzung des Bundestages könnte nächste Woche stattfinden
Einer ursprünglich von den Grünen geforderten Sondersitzung des Bundestages über Waffenlieferungen in den Nordirak steht fast nichts mehr im Wege. Nachdem die Linken darauf eingegangen sind, spricht sich jetzt auch die Koalition dafür aus.
Israeli ship is blocked from unloading in Oakland for four straight days
San Francisco Bay Area activists have not allowed a vessel from Israel’s largest shipping company to unload in the Oakland Port for four consecutive mornings.
On Tuesday, 19 August, at 6:45am, activists declared yet another victory against the Zim Line, which has been trying to make its way into Oakland since Saturday, 16 August.
Erzbischof Emeritus Desmond Tutu: Mein Appell an das Volk Israels: Befreit euch, indem ihr Palästina befreit
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Four arrested after occupying Senator Feinstein’s LA office to protest military aid
This is great. Another civil disobedience action in solidarity with the bombed people in Gaza. Folks who were appalled when Senator Dianne Feinstein voted to send $225 million to Israel in the middle of a massacre occupied her Los Angeles offices yesterday to protest. Four people were arrested.
JVP calls on Jewish community leaders to stand up for justice in Gaza
New York, NY (August 20, 2014)—A group of 30 members of Jewish Voice for Peace visited the UJA-Federation of New York offices on Wednesday to demand that the institutional Jewish leadership take a public stand for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the blockade of Gaza that makes life unbearable for Palestinian residents. Activists delivered a petition signed by over 30,000 concerned members and supporters of Jewish Voice for Peace calling on Federation President Jerry Silverman to make a public statement in support of ending the siege of Gaza.