Puppet MastersS

Robot

Hypocrisy much? Government snitches Google and Microsoft call for government to be more transparent

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Technology companies join Google and Facebook in wanting government's permission to give public a more detailed list of demands for data from their servers

Microsoft and Twitter have joined calls by Google and Facebook to be able to publish more detail about how many secret requests they receive to hand over user data under the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).

"Permitting greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests, including Fisa orders, would help the community understand and debate these important issues," Microsoft said in an emailed statement to the Reuters news agency.

At Twitter the chief lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, tweeted: "We'd like more NSL [national security letter] transparency and Twitter supports efforts to make that happen."

A national security letter is used by US government agencies such as the FBI and NSA to demand access to data from companies - who are forbidden from revealing that they have been served such a request.

Google, Microsoft and Twitter publish "transparency reports" detailing how many government requests they receive for user data in various countries, but those for the US do not include Fisa requests or other NSL demands. Facebook has not so far published a transparency report.

Control Panel

Astronomically large amount of data storage capacity inside the NSA's secret Utah data center

NSA Utah data center
© AP Photo/Rick BowmerAn aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah. The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
As Americans demand answers about the government's wholesale electronic snooping on its citizens, the primary snooper -- the National Security Agency (NSA) -- is building a monstrous digital datacenter in Utah capable of sorting through and storing every e-mail, voicemail, and social media communication it can get its hands on.

This top-secret data warehouse could hold as many as 1.25 million 4-terabyte hard drives, built into some 5,000 servers to store the trillions upon trillions of ones and zeroes that make up your digital fingerprint.

But that's just one way to catalog people, said Charles King, principal analyst at data center consulting firm Pund-IT.

"The NSA -- like any large organization -- is using numerous kinds of storage systems," King told FoxNews.com, including "innovative SSD and in-memory systems for high performance applications like real time analytics."

Some reports have suggested the data center could hold as much as 5 zetabytes, an astronomical sum equivalent to 62 billion stacked iPhone 5s. King called that number "difficult, if not impossible to conceive."

"That would mean deploying about 5 million storage systems running roughly 1.25 billion, 4-terabyte hard drives," he said.


Comment: Geez, we wonder what those astronomically large zetabytes at the disposal of the agency that is spying on everyone's emails, phone calls and online activity on the planet will be used for! Oh wait - we get it.


Water

Nestle chairman wants water privatized

Water
© NaturalSociety
Companies should own every single bit of water on the planet, according to Nestle's former CEO and now-Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. His position, shared by many others in his ranks, is one of profits over people and corporate rights over human rights. They advocate a sort of survival-of-the-richest, where only those with money should have access to "privileges" like water.

Making rounds several years after its creation, a video depicting Brabeck-Letmathe suggests that while 1.5% of the world's water is for human usage, the other 98.5% "is not a human right". He states that it's this majority of water that should be "valued" through privatization. In other words, because the water is being treated as a human right (when in his mind it isn't), it is being taken for granted. In order to ensure it's used in an efficient manner, he suggests private corporations have access to owning it.

As if this isn't frightening enough, Brabeck-Letmathe equates his position to that of Monsanto (another vile corporation who puts profits above people).

Nestle's position on owning water is not new. A few years ago they began buying up property and water rights in Colorado to turn the world's greatest natural resource into a bottled commodity. The Arkansas River Basin in Chaffee County, Colorado was ground zero for millions in land acquisitions. Private landowners sold their plots for as much as $1.1 million for 1.4 acres, according to a news report from the Colorado Independent at the time.

Bad Guys

Best of the Web: What is the U.S. government's agenda?

US imperialism
It has been public information for a decade that the US government secretly, illegally, and unconstitutionally spies on its citizens. Congress and the federal courts have done nothing about this extreme violation of the US Constitution and statutory law, and the insouciant US public seems unperturbed.

In 2004 a whistleblower informed the New York Times that the National Security Agency (NSA) was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by ignoring the FISA court and spying on Americans without obtaining the necessary warrants. The corrupt New York Times put the interests of the US government ahead of those of the American public and sat on the story for one year until George W. Bush was safely reelected.

By the time the New York Times published the story of the illegal spying one year later, the law-breaking government had had time to mitigate the offense with ex post facto law or executive orders and explain away its law-breaking as being in the country's interest.

Comment: Though Paul Craig Roberts alludes to it, he doesn't come out and say it plainly: the agenda has been, is and will be, imperialism. It's all about amassing power and control at the expense of humanity by the few psychopaths in power - the pathocrats, as Andrew Lobaczewski calls them:
Pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing expansionism through the use of all means possible. As long as that "other" world governed by the systems of normal man exists, it inducts into the non-pathological majority a certain sense of direction. The non-pathological majority of the country's population will never stop dreaming of the reinstatement of the normal man's system in any possible form. This majority will never stop watching other countries, waiting for the opportune moment; its attention and power must therefore be distracted from this purpose, and the masses must be "educated" and channeled in the direction of imperialist strivings. This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured. The latter factor - creating conditions of poverty and hardship - effectively limits the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part of the society of normal people.

The ideology must, of course, furnish a corresponding justification for this alleged right to conquer the world and must therefore be properly elaborated. Expansionism is derived from the very nature of pathocracy, not from ideology, but this fact must be masked by ideology. Whenever this phenomenon has been witnessed in history, imperialism was always its most demonstrative quality.



Eye 1

Big Brother Obama 'defends' sweeping surveillance efforts


President Obama on Friday defended the government's collection of data on the phone records of millions of Americans, saying that it was a modest encroachment on privacy and one he thinks is both lawful and justified in order to identify terrorists plotting to attack the United States.

Obama emphasized that the government does not collect information on individual callers or eavesdrop on Americans' conversations without a warrant. He said he would welcome a debate on the classified surveillance effort as well as the previously secret workings of a second program that gathers the e-mails and other digital content of targeted foreigners outside the United States from major American Internet companies.

Comment: Andrew Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology, has the perfect explanation for what we witness today:
Pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing expansionism through the use of all means possible. As long as that "other" world governed by the systems of normal man exists, it inducts into the non-pathological majority a certain sense of direction. The non-pathological majority of the country's population will never stop dreaming of the reinstatement of the normal man's system in any possible form. This majority will never stop watching other countries, waiting for the opportune moment; its attention and power must therefore be distracted from this purpose, and the masses must be "educated" and channeled in the direction of imperialist strivings. This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured. The latter factor - creating conditions of poverty and hardship - effectively limits the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part of the society of normal people.

The ideology must, of course, furnish a corresponding justification for this alleged right to conquer the world and must therefore be properly elaborated. Expansionism is derived from the very nature of pathocracy, not from ideology, but this fact must be masked by ideology. Whenever this phenomenon has been witnessed in history, imperialism was always its most demonstrative quality.



Eye 1

Neither shocking or surprizing: NSA orders Verizon to hand over ALL US call records

patriot act
What's up, Obama? You want to know if I'm talking about you behind your back? Why don't you just ask me? Why you gotta sneak around and court order Verizon to give you my phone records?

Actually, I don't think the Obama administration cares much about the goings-on of a suburban work-at-home mom who can't seem to keep any of her plants alive. Nonetheless, the National Security Administration ordered a Verizon subsidiary to hand over all phone records of its clients on a daily basis.

The court order is wide-sweeping and all encompassing, as it calls for all phone records between the U.S. and foreign countries, as well as all domestic calls, including local calls. While the data collected doesn't include substantive information (the content of the call), or the name, address, or financial information of the subscribers, it does include routing information, such as originating and terminating phone numbers, Mobile Subscriber Identity number, International Mobile Station Equipment Identity number, trunk identifier, calling card numbers, and time and duration of the calls.

The order was issued to Verizon Business Network Services in April and expires on July 19, 2013, unless it is extended. Verizon is the largest U.S. wireless provider.

Comment: As Zoya Klebanova comments in her latest SOTT Focus article, Through the PRISM of public amnesia:
[...] I read an article that mentions how "in the wake of recent revelations regarding the secret National Security Agency surveillance program known as PRISM, George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 has seen a surge in sales on Amazon.com." I find it quite ironic, because this book's main line of force has to do with the deficiency in collective memory and the abundance of amnesia. We clearly forget who we are dealing with. But they surely haven't.



MIB

SOTT Focus: Through the PRISM of public amnesia

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© Unknown
So apparently NSA has been listening to our conversations, and - oy vey! - Israeli companies are involved in this too. Am I surprised? Not one bit. I understand that many, who are still dangerously ignorant and believe that governments have our best interests at heart, find this "revelation" rather shocking and outrageous, but the truth is that this is far from being new. I remember how many years ago I first read about a project called Echelon.
ECHELON, according to information in the European Parliament document, "On the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)" was created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s[...]

Bamford describes the system as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.[...]

The UK/USA intelligence community was assessed by the European Parliament (EP) in 2000 to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states: UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands.[...]
Echelon was created long before the War [of] Terror and prior to the arrival of the Internet, meaning that back then there was no need for thorough "shaping of the public opinion", no need for media to be an overt whore for the military or intelligence agencies. NSA, CIA, Mossad, MI5, etc. just did their bloody thing and didn't worry much about whistleblowers. Of course, there were always trouble-makers, but everything was manageable (various coup d'รฉtats, COINTELPRO projects, assassinations, etc... piece of cake!), not to mention using the wonderfully silver-tongued concept of "plausible deniability", which came in handy, oh so often. In any event, in the public's eyes, intelligence agencies still had an aura of mystique about them. Hey, who wouldn't want to be a secret agent or a spy?

MIB

Legal wiretaps by Special services are 'normal' - Putin

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© Mikhail KlementievRussian President Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended the right by Russian special services to wiretap but stressed that such practices should take place only when they are sanctioned by a court.

"If this [wiretapping] is made within the framework of the law, by which the special services' rules of conduct are guided, this is normal. If this is made illegally, this is bad," Putin said in an interview with Russia Today.

The president said it is common knowledge that electronic intelligence-gathering services monitor citizens and organizations in an effort to fight international terrorism. "I repeat once again, inside the country we proceed from the necessity to obtain a court's sanction for such operations. Why should this not apply to the work of special services?" he said.

Eye 1

The NATO Afghanistan War and US-Russian relations: Drugs, Oil, and War

Peter Dale Scott continues his analysis of the U.S. system of domination. In a conference held in Moscow, this former Canadian diplomat summed up the findings of his investigation into the funding of the system with money deriving from drug trafficking and hydrocarbon deals. Although widely known, such facts are nevertheless difficult to accept.
Poppy & Missile
© unknownOne Begets the Other
I delivered the following remarks at an anti-NATO conference held in Moscow on May 15, 2012. I was the only North American speaker at an all-day conference, having been invited in connection with the appearance into Russian of my book Drugs, Oil, and War. [1] As a former diplomat worried about peace I was happy to attend: as far as I can tell there may be less serious dialogue today between Russian and American intellectuals than there was at the height of the Cold War. Yet the danger of war involving the two leading nuclear powers has hardly disappeared.

Unlike other speakers, my paper urged Russians - despite the aggressive activities in Central Asia of the CIA, SOCOM (US Special Operations Command), and NATO - to cooperate under multilateral auspices with like-minded Americans, towards dealing with the related crises of Afghan drug production and drug-financed Salafi jihadism.

Comment: Sibel Edmonds discusses some of the Afghan heroin myths in this SoTT Article.

Here is a Quote:
"Now, dear mainstream's loyal followers, can you imagine yourself as owners and or managers of this $65,000,000,000 a year business? Do you see this massive global business operation run with a few acres, a few cast-iron pots, a dozen or so donkeys, nomad huts as hubs, and tons of cash stashed under your mattresses? I didn't think so. But your mainstream information providers are telling you exactly that: That the $65 Billion a year global Afghan heroin business is generated, operated and managed secretly by illiterate bearded men using primitive pots and pans, donkeys, nomad tents, and mattresses used as vaults."



Star of David

State of denial: occupation? What occupation?

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© Unknown
Every person is endowed with a certain denial mechanism they can use to avoid the shame, fear, guilt and pain involved in coping with their improper actions. Instead of facing their failure, accepting reality and dealing with it, they simply enter a state of denial.

But denial extracts a heavy price from the denier. The mental effort involved in self-deception causes serious mental harm. Someone who denies facts is declaring that he has a mental problem. He needs treatment.

For 46 years we have been in this situation. We are denying one of the most significant phenomenon of our national existence, if not the most central one: the occupation.

We can use the well-worn metaphor of the huge elephant in the room, whose presence we deny. Elephant? What elephant? Here? We tiptoe around the elephant and avert our gaze so we won't have to look at it. After all, it doesn't exist.

We are ruling completely over another people. This influences every sphere of our national life - our politics, our economy, our values, our military, our legal system, our culture and more. But we don't see - and don't want to see - what is going on only a few minutes' drive from our homes, over the black line known as the Green Line.

We have become so accustomed to this situation that we see it as normal. But the occupation is intrinsically an abnormal, temporary situation.