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UK law enforcement agency wants full access to citizens' emails and social media content


RT
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:07 UTC
Image
© Wikipedia
Keith Bristow, Director, UK National Crime Agency
The UK's top law enforcement officer says Britons must be prepared to sacrifice their freedoms online if they want to be protected from terrorists and cyber criminals. This includes giving authorities access to private email and social media contents.

Speaking to The Guardian, the director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), Keith Bristow, warned that the UK's biggest threats are becoming increasingly focused on the web, and that authorities had not done enough to persuade the public that greater oversight of their online activity was necessary.

He told the newspaper that existing methods of monitoring communications had to be "modernized" and that the NCA, which is being touted by the government as Britain's version of the FBI, was "losing capability and coverage of serious criminals".

While Bristow did not outline plans to increase the monitoring of web activity, digital watchdog Open Rights Group (ORG) expressed concern that, while it welcomed public debate about sureillance of personal communications by the police and intelligence services, "so far the government seems intent on simply increasing its powers to allow unchecked whole population profiling,"

"To tackle terrorism and serious crime, we need targeted surveillance that is authorized by judges not politicians, as well as proper democratic oversight to ensure that powers are not abused," ORG executive director Jim Killock said in a statement.
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War Whore

German journalist admits CIA paid him and other Western journalists to lie to public and publish pro-Western articles penned by CIA

Eric Zuesse
Washington's Blog
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 18:38 UTC
Image

Dr. Udo Ulfkotte
Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (which is one of Germany's largest newspapers), has decided to go public about the corruption of himself and the rest of the Western 'news' media, because he finds that this corruption is bringing Europe too close to a nuclear war against Russia, which he concludes the U.S. aristocracy that controls the CIA wants to bring about, or else to bring closer to the brink.

He told Russian Television:
I've been a journalist for about 25 years, and I've been educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public. ... The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say ... it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe. ... I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don't like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too. ... We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war. ... I don't want this anymore, I'm fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic, and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom. ...

The German media, especially, my colleagues ..., day by day, write against the Russians, [these journalists] who are in transatlantic organizations, and who are supported by the United States to do so. ...
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Apple Green

Philadelphia cancels teachers contract, deprives them of health benefits in unprecedented move

Hilary Russ
The Raw Story
Mon, 06 Oct 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
The state panel that oversees Philadelphia's cash-strapped public schools abruptly canceled a contract with teachers on Monday, despite nearly two years of labor negotiations, and said teachers would have to begin paying for healthcare benefits.

The move, which a labor expert said was likely unprecedented in the United States, would free up $43.8 million for the district this school year. Next year, it is facing a $71 million budget shortfall.

The system's long-running financial woes have become a full-blown crisis over the past couple years, leading to thousands of layoffs, dozens of shuttered buildings and program cuts.

The move will affect the roughly 16,000 members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers, assistants, nurses, counselors and others.

Comment: One of the reasons there is not enough money for education is that the elites do not want the masses to be able to think critically. It is much easier to control a population that has been dumbed down, does not ask questions and is happy to follow orders.

The Assault on Public Education

The dumbing down of America - By design

American Education: Brainwashing children and suffocating freedom

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Bomb

IDF shells S. Lebanon after blast that injures 2 Israeli soldiers


RT
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 17:08 UTC
Israel Hezbollah fight
© Reuters/Amir Cohen
The Israeli Army fired artillery shells into Lebanon after at least two IDF troops were injured in a blast on the border between the two states, an Israeli security source told Reuters.

An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the retaliatory incident, which took place near the southern Lebanese village of Kafr Shouba.

Earlier reports suggested three Israeli soldiers sustained wounds, but the Israeli Defense Force's official Twitter is talking of two soldiers being injured.

Comment: Lebanon's Daily Star adds more to the story:

Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for the blast that wounded two Israeli soldiers on Lebanon's southern border Tuesday, according to a statement released by the resistance group.

"At 2:22 pm Tuesday, the martyred Ali Hasan Haidar brigade of the Islamic Resistance set off an explosive device under an Israeli patrol in the Shebaa heights, which led to several casualties among the ranks of the occupying soldiers" read the statement.

The brigade responsible for setting off the explosive device near an Israeli tank was named after the 25-year-old Ali Hasan Haidar, a Hezbollah explosives expert, who was killed while trying to dismantle four Israeli devices planted on Hezbollah's telecommunications network in Adloun, south Lebanon last month.

The Israeli army confirmed the incident, saying that two soldiers had been wounded in the blast.

"Initial reports indicate that the explosion was caused by an explosive device that was planted" to attack Israeli soldiers, Israel's army tweeted.

Within minutes of Hezbollah claiming responsibility for the blast, the Israeli Army tweeted that it had fired artillery at two Hezbollah posts along the border. However, an Al-Manar reporter said that no Hezbollah posts are situated in the area.

Security sources told The Daily Star that Israel had launched at least 15 explosives in retaliation near the Shebaa hills, at a rate of two per minute. The attacks are just 200 meters from Lebanese residential areas along the border.

A senior Israeli army source told The Jerusalem Post that "the incident hasn't ended yet from our standpoint."

Several reports cited a second blast that came within minutes of the first explosion, however, security sources denied such reports.

The blast comes just two days after Israeli soldiers fired at a Lebanese Army post and wounded one soldier in the same area.

The Army and UNIFIL have beefed up security measures as a result of Sunday's assault.

A UNIFIL source told The Daily Star that there were two scenarios being examined: one, the bomb was planted by Hezbollah in response to Israel firing at the Lebanese Army patrol Sunday; or two, that Israel had gone to the site to inspect a suspected bomb, setting it off in the process.

Israeli troops routinely violate the internationally recognized Blue Line around the Al-Sendaneh area to kidnap shepherds and conduct other operations.

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Cult

Vatican rejects "chosen people" claim, calls on Israel to end "occupation"


RT
Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:48 UTC
pope rabbis

Pope Benedict XVI with rabbis
A high-ranking Israeli official on Sunday slammed a statement from Catholic bishops, who called for international organizations to lead the cause of Palestinian statehood.

Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Bustros sparked an interreligious firestorm when he suggested that Israel was "using Scripture" to continue its occupation of Palestinian territory.

"The Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians," Bustros said at the close of a two-week conference in Rome, Italy, "to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands."

The Archbishop then questioned the biblical idea of a "promised land" set aside by a specific group of people.

"We Christians cannot speak of the promised land as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people,"Bustros continued. "This promise was nullified by Christ. There is no longer a chosen people - all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people."

Bustros led the group that drafted the synod's concluding statement on Israel and the Palestinians.

The controversial comments came at the conclusion of a two-week Vatican conference assembled to discuss the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

Pope Benedict XVI was in attendance at the synod and celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Cathedral on Sunday with the bishops.
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Telephone

Continuity of Government: The hidden government group linking JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra and 9/11?

Peter Dale Scott
WhoWhatWhy
Sun, 05 Oct 2014 14:28 UTC
Image
© Mr. Fish
Captains America Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, rigged to self-destruct.
Peter Dale Scott is considered the father of "Deep Politics" - the study of hidden permanent institutions and interests whose influence on the political realm transcends the elected, appointed and career officials who come and go.

A Professor of English at Berkeley and a former Canadian diplomat, he is the author of several critically acclaimed books on the pivotal events of our country's recent past, including Deep Politics and the Death of JFK ; Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (War and Peace Library); The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America and American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library). He is also a poet, whose long work, Coming to Jakarta: A Poem about Terror, was hailed as "the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time," by Robert Hass, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997.

Daniel Ellsberg said of his book Drugs, Oil and War, "It makes most academic and journalistic explanations of our past and current interventions read like government propaganda written for children."

What follows is based on a recent Scott lecture entitled "The JFK Assassination and Other Deep Events", and will be expanded on further in his next book, The American Deep State, due out in November.

***

For some time now, I have been analyzing American history in the light of what I have called structural deep events: events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, or 9/11, which repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, are mysterious to begin with, are embedded in ongoing covert processes, have political consequences that enlarge covert government, and are subsequently covered up by systematic falsifications in the mainstream media and internal government records.

The more I study these deep events, the more I see suggestive similarities between them, increasing the possibility that they are not unrelated external intrusions on American history, but parts of an endemic process, sharing to some degree or other a common source.

Comment: For more background on the JFK assassination, and the many pieces of evidence pointing towards such a 'secret government' operation, see the comprehensive documentary Evidence of Revision. While Scott doesn't mention it here, there is some evidence suggesting that Mossad had a hand in the JFK assassination, perhaps 'hijacking' an existing plot from within the 'secret government' types described above:

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Birthday Cake

Vlad turns 62: Russian president celebrates birthday with day off in Siberian wilderness


RIA Novosti
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 14:35 UTC
Image
Russian President Vladimir Putin will celebrate his birthday on October 7 in the Siberian taiga, a vast forested area in the northern regions of Russia covering hundreds of thousands of square miles, Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday.

"Putin has booked a holiday for tomorrow. Tonight he will fly over to Siberia, to the Siberian taiga, 300-400 kilometers away from the nearest town or village, where he will relax on his birthday," Peskov said.

Peskov added that no "official meetings" were planned for Russian leader's birthday.

"Most likely, everyone will send their best wishes to the President tomorrow. Although I cannot tell you who he will be with, because I do not know," Peskov said.

"Everyone who can, will be able to reach him by phone. Also everyone who wants to will be able to send telegrams, just like they do every year. We receive a huge number of letters, best wishes, telegrams, etc.," Peskov commented.
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People

Xenophobia in action: U.S. Center for Immigration Studies wants people to think immigration is a problem based on the number of non-English speaking residents


RT
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 14:15 UTC
americans
© Agence France-Presse/John Moore
English is not the spoken language in a record 20 percent of American homes, a study has found. Arabic and Urdu ‒ Pakistan's national language ‒ are the fastest-growing languages spoken in US houses, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

CIS revealed data parsed from the United States Census Bureau's 2013 American Community Survey (ACS), which was released last month. The ACS is a mandatory, ongoing statistical survey which the US government uses to give communities the current information they need to plan investments and services, according to the Census Bureau website.

The non-profit research organization focused on the part of the survey that looked at languages spoken by those five years of age and older. The three relevant questions on the ACS look at whether a language other than English is spoken in the home, what language that is, and how well each person canvassed speaks English.

In 2013, a record 61.8 million US residents (native-born, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants) spoke a language other than English at home - an increase of 2.2 million from 2010, the survey found. That number has grown by nearly 15 million since 2000 and by almost 30 million since 1990.

Comment: CIS, and other racist groups of their likes, can blame "foreigners" all they want for the troubles that face America today, but they are looking at the wrong direction. As Charlie Reese wrote recently:
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.


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Stock Down

Ukrainian military and politicians say Kiev wildly understating combat deaths

Charles Bausman
Russia Insider
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 13:41 UTC
funeral

One of many. But one of the few to receive a real funeral, rather than being left to rot in mass graves by their psychopathic commanders.
In the past two weeks persistent rumors that Kiev has been hiding thousands of killed and wounded Ukrainian servicemen and 'volunteers battalion' casualties have forced their way into the Ukrainian press.

The most vocal allegations of a cover-up of Ukrainian combat deaths comes not from Russian media or the leaders of the 'separatist' Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, but from right wing MP and Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko, and from the commander of Kiev's 'Donbas Battalion' Semyon Semchenko.

Last month on his Facebook page Lyashko directly accused President Petro Poroshenko of hiding over 8,000 Ukrainian combat deaths -- a number nearly eight times the 'official' KIA figures reported by the English-language Kyiv Post, which as of Friday was still stubbornly reporting 'only' 974 confirmed Ukrainian combat deaths - a highly dubious figure that has barely budged since the disastrous battle for Ilovaisk in early September.

According to Myroslava Petsa, a correspondent for Ukraine's 5th Channel, Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey refused to discuss the casualties from in the Ilovaisk disaster in a recent parliamentary hearing. Ms. Petsa tweeted on October 1st that Heletey referred to the casualty lists from the Ilovaisk battle as classified. But who is Lieutenant General Heletey trying to hide Kiev's true losses from, the Donbas militias or the Ukrainian people?

It's easy to dismiss Semchenko as an incompetent battlefield commander seeking to excuse his failures, and to call Lyashko a fascist clown who kidnaps alleged 'separatists' and strips them down to their underwear for videotaped interrogations. But Lyashko's estimate of Ukraine's total KIA is consistent with numbers put forward by pro-Novorossiya sources such as Colonel Cassad's blog. It's also consistent with the grim casualty reports from the bloody battle underway as of this writing for the Donetsk airport.

Comment: Every indication is that this is the case. Just like the U.S. in Iraq, Kiev is covering up the true amount of combat deaths, probably in a feeble attempt not to let the people know what a failure their 'war' is, and how many young men have been sent to their deaths, deaths which occurred while on a mission to murder civilians -- men, women, and children -- in east Ukraine.

By the way, this is not really 'new'. There have been indications that the death count in east Ukraine has been vastly downplayed for months. See: Ukrainian MP sez over 10,000 dead in Ukraine since start of mad 'anti-terror' op

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X

U.S. and allies' strikes kill 94 and wound 69 in Iraq

Margaret Griffis
AntiWar.com
Mon, 06 Oct 2014 12:57 UTC
coalition strikes
© Associated Press/U.S. Air Force/Matthew Bruch
In this Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014 photo, released by the U.S. Air Force, a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle flies over northern Iraq, after conducting airstrikes in Syria. U.S.-led coalition warplanes bombed oil installations and other facilities in territory controlled by Islamic State militants in eastern Syria on Friday, Sept. 26, 2014
At least 94 people were killed today and 69 more were wounded. The deadliest attack occurred in Hit where airstrikes accidentally hit a market. It is unclear if the strikes were conducted by the Iraqis, who often strike civilians in Falluja, or one of the coalition partners.

The Netherlands and Australia have launched their first combat flights over Iraq, while Belgium conducted its first airstrike.

Authorities revealed that the Aza Tribe struck a secret deal with Iraqi security forces: They would fight the militants in exchange for weapons. The deal appears to have helped security forces reclaim 13 villages. A general bypassed Baghdad and struck the deal directly with tribal leaders. They are just one tribe among several who are working, somewhat reluctantly, with Iraqi troops. Their fight may have gotten more difficult as now the militants in Diyala are reportedly using entire families as human shields.

In Hit, 22 civilians were killed and 43 were wounded during an airstrike that hit a market. The victims were mostly women and children. There are unconfirmed reports that coalition fighters may have been behind the airstrike. Airstrikes also killed a number of militants.

Comment: While the Coalition of cowards and psychopaths is killing mostly civilians, watch this video to see the young Kurdish women who are actually fighting the ISIS, because they have no other choice. From RT:



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