Puppet MastersS


Laptop

What happens when authorities seize your laptop?

David Miranda
© BBC imagesDavid Miranda (left) had his laptop seized by UK authorities - presumably because he is the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald
A federal judge in New York has ruled authorities can seize travellers' laptops at the border without citing a legal reason, suspecting the traveller of a crime, or explaining themselves in any way. What happens if they take yours?

The news over the past year has been filled with stories of the National Security Agency (NSA) and its surveillance operations and the risks to online privacy.

The release of documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sheds new light on its global electronic spying programme.

Yet authorities can also find out about you in a more traditional manner - by seizing your possessions at the border.

Long ago the authorities could read your diary. Now they can go through your laptop's hard drive. The federal judge was upholding a policy about border seizures formalised after the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks.

Stop

Best of the Web: At last, a law to stop almost anyone from doing almost anything - if you're rich, you have nothing to fear

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2013: Protesters, campaigners and activists gather in Trafalgar Square for a 'death party' celebrating the passing of Baroness Thatcher.
Protesters, buskers, preachers, the young: all could end up with 'ipnas'. Of course, if you're rich, you have nothing to fear

Until the late 19th century much of our city space was owned by private landlords. Squares were gated, streets were controlled by turnpikes. The great unwashed, many of whom had been expelled from the countryside by acts of enclosure, were also excluded from desirable parts of town.

Social reformers and democratic movements tore down the barriers, and public space became a right, not a privilege. But social exclusion follows inequality as night follows day, and now, with little public debate, our city centres are again being privatised or semi-privatised. They are being turned by the companies that run them into soulless, cheerless, pasteurised piazzas, in which plastic policemen harry anyone loitering without intent to shop.

Street life in these places is reduced to a trance-world of consumerism, of conformity and atomisation in which nothing unpredictable or disconcerting happens, a world made safe for selling mountains of pointless junk to tranquillised shoppers. Spontaneous gatherings of any other kind - unruly, exuberant, open-ended, oppositional - are banned. Young, homeless and eccentric people are, in the eyes of those upholding this dead-eyed, sanitised version of public order, guilty until proven innocent.

Now this dreary ethos is creeping into places that are not, ostensibly, owned or controlled by corporations. It is enforced less by gates and barriers (though plenty of these are reappearing) than by legal instruments, used to exclude or control the ever widening class of undesirables.

The existing rules are bad enough. Introduced by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, antisocial behaviour orders (asbos) have criminalised an apparently endless range of activities, subjecting thousands - mostly young and poor - to bespoke laws. They have been used to enforce a kind of caste prohibition: personalised rules which prevent the untouchables from intruding into the lives of others.

Arrow Down

'Americans have no constitutional right to privacy'

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© SodaheadKaren Kwiatkowski
A former Pentagon official says that Americans don't have the constitutional right to privacy per se and if they want to have this right they should ensure it themselves.

"This problem with the NSA 's action in their vast collection of information and emails and phone calls from American citizens and everybody else in the world appears to be a privacy issue but in the United States it is a constitutional issue," said
Karen Kwiatkowski in an interview with Press TV on Sunday.

She added that in the United States people "don't have the constitutional right to privacy per say. What we have is the right to be secure."

Kwiatkowski said that everybody in the world knows that the NSA is "a criminal organization" which has broken the American law and violated the constitution.

"We have judges that in the past couple of weeks ruled that the NSA is in violation of the constitutional rights of the Americans."

Toys

As millions of homeless suffer: First Lady stays in Hawaii for 'girl time' with Oprah

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© Daily Caller
Michelle Obama is spending her extended Hawaiian vacation at Oprah's "exquisite" Maui getaway, The Daily Caller has learned.

While White House pool reports indicate the first lady stayed behind this week in Hawaii to chill out with friends before her 50th birthday, there weren't many specifics. But sources with direct knowledge tell TheDC that the first lady is relaxing in Maui at Oprah's estate with CBS' Gayle King, Valerie Jarrett and Sharon Malone, who is Attorney General Eric Holder's wife.

Sources say she's there for a "girl's getaway" before the big 5-0.

"Yesterday we saw bomb sniffing dogs and Maui police in the bushes," Heather Long, the manager of nearby Grandma's Coffeehouse, told TheDC. "We're very close to Oprah's property. They'll probably walk up and down the road."

Oprah frequents the coffee shop, said Long. "We try not to make it a big deal. We try to treat her like she's another customer. I would die if I saw the first lady."

Oprah's home, described as "an ordinary little gray ranch" has been transformed into "the perfect" 21st century farmhouse. The residence is located in a remote up-country region where the houses there face the ocean. The house has reportedly undergone dramatic renovations since Oprah purchased it. Horses surround the ranch.

In a story for Oprah.com, Oprah says this about her Hawaiian house. "I love, love, love my house," she says. "It's a gem, so sweet and exquisite. Such a real, normal house. It feels like a nice blanket. A lovely and soft cashmere one."

Che Guevara

Dieudonné M'bala M'bala interview: "I'm just trying to show that the age of colonialism never ended"

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In 2010, Press TV interviewed Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, French actor and comedian, about his run-in with the Zionist lobby in France and his efforts to stand up for freedom of speech.

Part 1


Arrow Down

Meet the MQ-4C Triton - A new Navy drone with the wingspan of a Boeing 757

Spying on humanity's every electronic move is clearly not good enough for the U.S. government. It is also necessary to be able to surveil the species' every move from 50,000 feet in the sky. You know, because of the terrorists and all.

The past couple of years have seen many frightening new advances from the U.S. military. From "Atlas" the 6 Foot Tall Humanoid Robot, to "ARGUS" The World's Highest Resolution Video Surveillance Platform, to domestic drone use, the Department of Defense is hard at work making sure that you can never engage in a private act again without the fear of a hellfire missile landing on your head.

Now here's the latest...a Northrop Grumman drone with the wingspan of a 757.
MQ-4C Triton Drones
© U.S. NavyThe MQ-4C Triton drones are getting flight-tested in Palmdale, California.

Oscar

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls has a paranoid conspiracy theory: 'Comedian Dieudonne is financed by Iran'

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Translated by SOTT.net


Manuel Valls is not releasing the pressure on Dieudonné. As the debate rages about banning the comedian's shows, the president of the republic François Hollande reiterated his vows Tuesday to the religious authorities at the Champs Elysee in a ceremony attended by Manuel Valls in his capacity as Minister of Religious Affairs.

During an 'off-the-record' conversation, the minister disclosed that he had to be "uncompromising" towards Dieudonné, before adding: "And anyway, he is financed by Iran..."

A film produced by an Iranian production company

Dieudonné had reached an agreement with an Iranian production company, Haft Aseman, to finance his film The Anti-Semite, released in 2011.

The film tells the story of a woman with cancer who asks her husband to be psychoanalyzed by a Jew in order to cure his anti-Semitism.

Comment: Who is Manuel Valls? France's Socialist Sarkozy


Attention

Is Kim Jong-Un's aunt now dead as well? Reports claim wife of recently executed uncle has suffered fatal heart attack or committed suicide

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Kim Kyong-hui, 67, is said to have died less than a month after her husband was executed by her nephew, Kim Jong-un.
  • Kim Kyong-hui, 67, is aunt of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, 30
  • Her husband Jang Song-Thaek was executed by Kim Jong-un last month
  • Mrs Kim, whose only child died in 2006, is said to have had heart disease
  • North Korean media say officials believe she is dead but not how or where
The aunt of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has died in mysterious circumstances, it was reported today.

Kim Kyong-hui, 67, whose husband Jang Song-Thaek was executed under Jong-un's orders less than a month ago, is said to have either suffered a heart attack or committed suicide by North Korean media.

There has been speculation on her health and whereabouts since the death on 8 December of her husband, also 67, described as 'scum' by his 30-year-old nephew.

Mrs Kim, who was said to have been receiving treatment for heart disease, reportedly had a heart attack soon after her husband was killed in what is believed to be an attempt by Kim Jong-un to tighten his grip on North Korea.

South Korean newspaper the Chosunilbo reported that North Korean intelligence services believed Mrs Kim to be dead, but had not confirmed how or where she had died.

One theory is that she died abroad while seeking medical treatment - she is known to have visited heart specialists in Singapore and Moscow.

Light Saber

Truth: The Enemy of the State

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the Truth and expose lies.

- Noam Chomsky
Hans and Sophie Scholl
Hans and Sophie Scholl
My book, The Wizards of Ozymandias, was dedicated "To the memory and spirit of Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose, who reminded us what it means to be civilized." These wonderful young people - most in their teens or twenties - lived in Germany during the Hitler regime, and spent much of their time writing and distributing leaflets exposing and criticizing the policies and practices of the Nazi state. They were found out; brought to trial; found guilty of treason, the demoralization of the troops, and abetting the enemy, and summarily beheaded. Sophie's Gestapo interrogator raises the same arguments one hears directed against such modern speakers of truth as Chelsea Manning, Ed Snowden, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and others. Those whose moral and intellectual standards can rise no higher than to whine "the law is the law," would do well to consider the exchange between Sophie and her prosecutor. The Nazi functionary declares: "Without law, there is no order. What can we rely on if not the law?" Sophie responds: "Your conscience. Laws change. Conscience doesn't."

Ambulance

Merkel cracks pelvis in skiing accident in the Alps

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© AP/Markus SchreiberGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel cracked her pelvis during a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps and will have to cut back on her work schedule for the next three weeks, her spokesman said Monday.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said the chancellor suffered what she first thought was just a bruise to her left rear pelvic area while cross-country skiing in southeast Switzerland last month. But doctors later determined it was a "incomplete" bone fracture that will require her to rest for three weeks, he said.

"The doctors' orders are to lie down," Seibert told reporters. In response, Merkel canceled a Wednesday visit to Warsaw, Poland, and Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel called off his Thursday trip to Berlin.

Merkel, 59, had been skiing "at low speeds" when her fall occurred, Seibert said. He was unable to say if another person was involved.

She will continue to preside over Cabinet and government meetings, using a walking aid to get around, he added.

Last week, Merkel sent her wishes for a speedy recovery to German Formula One legend Michael Schumacher, who suffered a serious head injury while downhill skiing in France. Schumacher has been ina medically induced coma at Grenoble University Hospital and doctors said Monday he is still in critical but stable condition.