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US steps up airport, federal building security after Paris attacks


RT
Wed, 14 Jan 2015 01:49 UTC
tsa
© Reuters / Kevork Djansezian
The Department of Homeland Security secretary has announced increased vigilance regarding national security, as well as stepped-up random searches of travelers and carry-on luggage in the wake of the recent terror attacks in Paris.

In the announcement made on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the Federal Protective Services - which provides security for US government buildings - will be expanding its reach to major cities and will vary shifts and patrols from location to location. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will also conduct random searches of passengers and carry-on luggage at US airports.

"We have no specific, credible intelligence of an attack of the kind in Paris last week being planned by terrorist organizations in this country," said Johnson in a released statement.

Johnson said the US would continue to share information with the French and other allies about terrorist threats, suspicious individuals, and foreign fighters. Last week's shooting at French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo followed a hostage situation in Sydney in December and a gunman's attack on the Canadian parliament in October - all of which are causing Homeland Security to increase protection.

"[The] recent attacks in Paris, Ottawa, Sydney, and elsewhere, along with the recent public calls by terrorist organizations for attacks on Western objectives, including aircraft, military personnel, and government installations and civilian personnel," Johnson said.
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Arrow Down

From neighborhood cops to robocops: The changing face of American police

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Wed, 14 Jan 2015 02:58 UTC
"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." ― Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
Robocop
© Studiocanal/Allstar
The 'Robocop vision’ was presented to companies by the director of the Home Office’s Centre for Applied Science and Technology.
If 2014 was the year of militarized police, armored tanks, and stop-and-frisk searches, 2015 may well be the year of technologized police, surveillance blimps and scan-and-frisk searches.

Just as we witnessed neighborhood cops being transformed into soldier cops, we're about to see them shapeshift once again, this time into robocops, complete with robotic exoskeletons, super-vision contact lenses, computer-linked visors, and mind-reading helmets.

Similarly, just as military equipment created for the battlefield has been deployed on American soil against American citizens, we're about to see military technology employed here at home in a manner sure to annihilate what's left of our privacy and Fourth Amendment rights.

For instance, with the flick of a switch (and often without your even being aware of the interference), police can now shut down your cell phone, scan your body for "suspicious" items as you walk down the street, test the air in your car for alcohol vapors as you drive down the street, identify you at a glance and run a background check on you for outstanding warrants, piggyback on your surveillance devices to listen in on your conversations and "see" what you see on your private cameras, and track your car's movements via a GPS-enabled dart.

That doesn't even begin to scrape the surface of what's coming down the pike, with law enforcement and military agencies boasting technologies so advanced as to render everything up until now mere child's play.

Once these technologies, which used to belong exclusively to the realm of futuristic sci-fi films, have been unleashed on an unsuspecting American public, it will completely change the face of American policing and, in the process, transform the landscape of what we used to call our freedoms.

It doesn't even matter that these technologies can be put to beneficial uses. As we've learned the hard way, once the government gets involved, it's only a matter of time before the harm outweighs the benefits.
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Star of David

Senator Rand Paul: Kicking the Palestinians is a freebie

Robert Naiman
Truth Out
Sat, 10 Jan 2015 14:27 UTC
Image
People who are still sure that Rand Paul offers a meaningful alternative to Hillary as far as excessively zealous support for the Empire is concerned may need to install the latest version of the software.

This week, Senator Paul introduced legislation to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinians unless the Palestinian application to join the International Criminal Court is withdrawn.

Senator, I knew Ron Paul. You are no Ron Paul.

Whatever one thinks of the ICC, or the Palestinian decision to join it, a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" would suggest acknowledging the right of the Palestinians to join the ICC if they wish. Indeed, the right of the Palestinians to join the ICC has been recognized by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.

Existing U.S. law demands that the Administration cut funding to the Palestinian Authority if it initiates or actively supports an investigation into Israeli nationals at the ICC. But Senator Paul's bill would go further by trying to require a cut-off of aid to the Palestinians simply for joining the ICC.

Sadly, Senator Paul seems to have made a cynical political calculation that a good way to inoculate himself from neocon charges that he is soft in his so-called "support for Israel" is to be "more 'pro-Israel' than thou" in kicking Palestinians.

That is, Senator Paul appears to believe that kicking Palestinians even more than Netanyahu and AIPAC is a freebie - that nobody worth caring about will bother to complain.

Comment: The U.S. willingly gives billions to Israel to steal Palestinian land and commit genocide against the Palestinian people. Blaming the victim is such an epidemic, it's sickening.
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The Problem With Israel

The problem with Israel isn't merely that it is an Apartheid state where Palestinians (both in Israel and in the occupied territories) are treated as second class citizens, at best; there have been (and are) many nations around the world that brutally treat a section of their populations. The real problem with Israel is the image it presents of itself as a little slice of the 'West' in the Middle East surrounded by hoards of atavistic Arabs baying for Jewish blood and against whom Israel is fighting, on behalf of the people of Western nations, in the supposed 'clash of civilizations'.

The problem is not only that this image is entirely false, but in manipulating Western citizens into accepting this false image as true, the state of Israel makes Western citizens accomplices in the slaughter of innocent civilians, children included. This is the real problem of Israel for the people of the world and in particular the people of Western nations who are very much the primary target of this attempt to, essentially, subvert their souls, or at least their humanity (or what is left of it).

Israel's ongoing attack on the people of Gaza represents a choice (albeit a weighted one) for the people of this planet. A gun is being held (figuratively and literally) to the head of a small child, and the question being put to the 'civilized' West is:

'Is there ANY situation under which it is appropriate to pull the trigger?'

Too many people are allowing themselves to be manipulated by the despicable lies and manipulations of psychopaths in positions of power to answer 'yes'. In doing so, they are pushing us all, as a global society, closer to the brink (and perhaps over the edge) of complete moral bankruptcy. The history of human civilizations is littered with, not only the stories, but the actual ruins of civilizations that provoked devastating catastrophes because they lost their connection to their own humanity.

Telegenically Dead Palestinians and the Subversion of your Soul


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Eye 1

EU governments using Paris attacks to introduce greater surveillance and spying powers

Steven MacMillan
Global Research
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 02:04 UTC
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Following the tragic events in Paris, David Cameron is meeting with security heads to potentially grant the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) even greater spying powers. In a disgusting (yet predictable) move by Cameron and fellow Western leaders, these latest attacks are being used as a justification for illegal GCHQ and National Security Agency (NSA) spying, and as a pretext to further expand the surveillance state - which is already at heights never seen before in human history. This is the first time that governments have had the capacity and technological capability to monitor the behaviour, conversations, opinions and habits of the people on such a grand scale, in a quest to predict the behaviour of entire populations.

Tony Porter, the governments own surveillance commissioner, is worried at the level of spying in Britain and the lack of knowledge the public has about the pervasiveness of government snooping. Referring mainly to the ubiquitous CCTV cameras in the UK, Porter recently revealed how he is troubled by the apathy and ignorance of many citizens who don't understand how the information is used, and he points out that the data obtained from these devices can be used to "predict behaviour". Along with the sophistication and level of GCHQ spying - which compiles copious amounts of data on the public with no warrant, it unveils the surveillance state that Britain has become, even surpassing George Orwell's dystopian vision of the future in his book 1984. Across the water in the US, high-level NSA whistleblower William Binney has been warning the public about Stasi-style surveillance for years, describing the NSA as "totalitarian" in nature and their practices as "a total destruction of the rights you thought you had under the constitution". He also states that the objective of the surveillance state is "to set up the ways and means to control the population."

Cameron's meeting supposedly stems from a desire to prevent terrorist attacks in Britain, yet he does not even pay lip service to a major cause of the attack, namely the support and creation of rebel armies and terrorists in Syria by NATO powers, in addition to the perennial Western wars in the Middle East. A wonderful article by Tony Cartalucci titled: Paris shooters just returned from NATO's proxy war in Syria, documents how the Kouachi brother's returned home in the summer of last year after fighting alongside the al-Qaeda affiliated Syrian rebels, and this latest attack is partly blowback from NATO policy in Syria. NATO powers (including France) have been arming, funding and training this assortment of rebel bandits for years, but not one leading Western politician has called for an end to the proxy war in Syria to prevent future attacks.

Comment: Whether or not the attacks were planned and implemented by intelligence agencies within (or without) France, it sure didn't take very long for European governments to institute draconian laws in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings. It's almost like they were waiting for an incident like this to occur so they could dust off their shiny new surveillance laws and come to the rescue of the frightened populace. If the first question when incidents like this occur is, who benefits, the answer right now is the current French and British governments that are capitalizing on the situation to further increase their power. For more, see:

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Pineapple

Turkish president accuses 'the West' of being behind Charlie Hebdo attacks and deliberately 'blaming Muslims'

Sara Malm
Daily Mail
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 23:34 UTC
Image
© Getty images
Blame game: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested French security forces were behind the Paris attacks as they 'track' former prisoners and the culprits in the Charlie Hebdo shootings had served time.
  • Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested French security forces knew of attack
  • Turkish President said the West is 'playing games with the Islamic world'
  • Said: 'French citizens carried out massacre, and Muslims pay the price'
The President of Turkey has suggested French security forces are to blame for the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last week, since the culprits had recently served prison sentences.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused the West of 'playing games with the Islamic world', warning fellow Muslims to be 'aware'.

Erdogan said Muslims are 'paying the price' for the attacks on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish kosher supermarket in Paris last week.
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Chart Pie

World Bank report: Low oil prices create 'window of opportunity' for China and India


RT
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 23:02 UTC
Image
© David McNew/Getty Images/AFP
Oil importing countries like China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa will be the big winners as oil prices continue to weaken in 2015, the World Bank says in a report.

Battered oil prices "creates a window of opportunity for oil importing countries, such as China and India; we expect India's growth to rise to 7 percent by 2016. What is critical is for nations to use this window to usher in fiscal and structural reforms, which can boost long-run growth and inclusive development," Kaushik Basu, one of the main authors of the report, and the World Bank Chief Economist, writes in the report published Tuesday.

Comment: Oh the powers-that-be sure do want escalation in Ukraine!

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Die

Rouhani: Iran will weather oil price slide, some Gulf states will suffer


RT
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 22:52 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Adrees Latif
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that Iran can cope with the economic turmoil of falling oil prices, adding that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be harder hit.

Rouhani said that while oil now only accounts for one-third of Tehran's budget, some of the Gulf states are up to 95 percent reliant on it.

"If Iran suffers from the drop in oil prices, know that other oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will suffer more than Iran," he said.

He added that "Kuwait's budget is 95 percent reliant on oil," and 90 percent of Saudi Arabia's "annual exports are related to oil."

Comment: With the drop in oil prices, there will be more turmoil in the world that could cause revolutions or wars to break out.

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Dominoes

Iran accuses Saudis of oil conspiracy

Jamie Dettmer
Voice of America
Tue, 06 Jan 2015 21:55 UTC
Image
© AP
A security guard keeps watch over oil pipelines in Aramco refinery in Saudi Arabia.
Iranian hard-liners are lashing out at Saudi Arabia, accusing it of conspiring with the West to keep oil prices low in a bid to harm the Islamic Republic's economy and pressure the country to conclude a nuclear deal with West. In retaliation, Iranian hawks are urging restive Shia Muslims in eastern Saudi Arabia to rebel against the ruling House of Saud.

Iranian hawks' accusations have mounted over the Saudi's refusal to cut production - in an effort to maintain its share of the global oil market - fueling the precipitous slide in prices. Crude oil prices have fallen by more than half since June, from $115 a barrel to below $50.

Comment: Looks like this drop in oil prices is really stirring up a hornet's nest of problems that ultimately will not end well.

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Vader

NATO leaves Afghanistan...or does it?

Andrew Korybko
Sputnik
Tue, 30 Dec 2014 21:51 UTC
Image
© flickr.com/ The U.S. Army
NATO has formally ended its combat 13-year-long combat mission in Afghanistan, but this doesn't actually mean 'no more boots on the ground'. As a matter of fact, nearly 12,000 soldiers will remain in country until at least 2016 in order to train security forces and fight terrorism.

The much-publicized withdraw is actually a drawdown, as NATO forces and responsibilities will be officially cut back in the country, not cut out of it as was misleadingly made to seem. Although the Afghans are now supposedly in charge of their own destiny, they still have the option, if mutually agreed upon, to work in coordination with the stay-behind forces to engage in combat operations and counter-terrorism missions. This effectively gives Kabul a crutch to lean on for when times get tough, meaning that at the end of the day, the government still depends on the US and NATO for its ultimate existence. Furthermore, when the Status of Forces Agreement between Afghanistan and the US is critically examined, it becomes clear that the US is still largely in charge of the country and nothing has really changed.

Comment: On and on it goes, where she will stop, nobody knows. Looks like the record opium crop production is also safe.

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Attention

SOTT EXCLUSIVE: Terror attack in Ukraine! World outraged! Je suis Donbass!

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 19:00 UTC
je suis donbass
The world is collectively mourning the vicious terror attack on a passenger bus that resulted in the deaths of 10 people in the Donetsk People's Republic today, prompting worldwide mass demonstrations and protests against the terrorism being unleashed in that country, and is calling for an international response in the form of new laws to crack down on the dramatic rise in radical terror attacks in the region. People are taking to the streets with signs saying "Je suis Donbass", borrowing from the mass show of unity with the victims of the recent terror attack in France...
Donetsk bus

Terror attack kills 10 on passenger bus in Donetsk.
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