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Magic Hat

Best of the Web: Propaganda alert! 'Syrian Blogger Amina Arraf' is a stolen identity

John Stevens
UK Daily Mail
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 05:15 UTC
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The Amina Arraf Campaign, brought to you by The Secret Team: Thousands of people have joined a Facebook group calling for the release of Amina Arraf
  • London woman says photo of U.S. lesbian blogger 'kidnapped in Syria' is actually her
  • Jelena Lecic said: 'I don't know how this happened, I've never met her. This has put me in danger'
  • Blogger's 'girlfriend' admits she's never met her
  • Story of alleged kidnap was reported across the globe
The reported kidnap of a U.S. lesbian blogger in Syria has come into question after a woman in Britain claimed that photos being used to call for her release are actually her.

Thousands of campaigners joined protest groups after media outlets across the world reported that Amina Arraf, a blogger known for her frank posts about her sexuality and her open criticism of President Bashar Assad had been detained.

But a woman in London came forward today claiming the photos being circulated were actually her, raising questions about the existence of the blogger.

Jelena Lecic found out that pictures of her were being used by the blogger when she saw her photo used next to an article in a British newspaper.

Comment: It would seem that recent "poster child" of this revolution and her story of woe, which western media has been so happy to promote, doesn't actually exist. As to the numbers of people killed by Syrian troops in recent months, if the psy-ops campaign against Libya in the run up to Operation Odyssey Dawn is anything to go by, then the numbers are probably inflated and don't take into account that Syrian authorities are dealing with an armed insurrection led by 'previously unknown terror groups'.

Just like the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter crying before Congress about Saddam's troops throwing babies out of hospital incubators in Kuwait in the run-up to the Gulf War...

Just like the wrong image of Neda Soltani was strobe-flashed across the world after someone (among many others) was murdered under mysterious circumstances during the orchestrated riots that followed Iran's presidential election in 2009...

Just like Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian activist supposedly stoned to death by 'them brutal Iranians', accompanied feature articles about her that were carried by mainstream media outlets the world over. SOTT.net found out that this story was first leaked by Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a CIA propaganda mill, in conjunction with The Media Line, a Zionist propaganda mill. This Jerusalem Post article broached the story of the non-stoning to the mainstream media on June 30, 2010...

Just like the Libyan 'rebels' telling us that "Gaddafi's army will kill half a million", when in all probability the 'rebels' are actually a clandestine unit of the Secret Team.

How can anyone have faith in ANY Western media story that paints Iran or Libya or Syria in a negative light when the psychopaths in Washington and Tel Aviv have been openly stating that they want to invade these countries as they did Iraq and slaughter millions more. If you fall for this one and agree with British Foreign Secretary William Hague that it's time to carpet-bomb Syria, then you've fallen for the oldest trick in the book: the pity ploy psy-ops. How many times do you want to played for a fool?

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War Whore

US intensifying secret campaign of Yemen airstrikes

Mark Mazzetti
The New York Times
Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:22 UTC
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© Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images
Washington - The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.

The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.

On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived.

The recent operations come after a nearly year-long pause in American airstrikes, which were halted amid concerns that poor intelligence had led to bungled missions and civilian deaths that were undercutting the goals of the secret campaign.
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Bad Guys

It's not just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF itself should be on trial

Johann Hari
The Indepedent
Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:25 UTC
Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death

Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed.

So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is - rightly - big news. But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.
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Attention

Best of the Web: Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos

Mike Masnick
techdirt.com
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:17 UTC
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3 Idiots, except this isn't a movie
from the not-understanding-the-technology dept

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons had proposed a new bill that was designed to make "streaming" infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn't available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend "public performance" rights to section 506a of the Copyright Act.

Supporters of this bill claim that all it's really doing is harmonizing US copyright law's civil and criminal sections. After all, the rights afforded under copyright law in civil cases cover a list of rights: reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works or perform the work. The rules for criminal infringement only cover reproducing and distributing -- but not performing. So, supporters claim, all this does is "harmonize" copyright law and bring the criminal side into line with the civil side by adding "performance rights" to the list of things.

If only it were that simple. But, of course, it's not. First of all, despite claims to the contrary, there's a damn good reason why Congress did not include performance rights as a criminal/felony issue: because who would have thought that it would be a criminal act to perform a work without permission? It could be infringing, but that can be covered by a fine. When we suddenly criminalize a performance, that raises all sorts of questionable issues.

Comment: Sott.net came across this totalitarian proposal through brasschecktv.com, so we thought it would be appropriate to embed their take on it here... while we still can:

The Anti-Brasscheck Act: Embed a video, go to jail

Legal eagles, public servants

If more than 10 people view a video you post to your site from YouTube in a 180 day period and that video turns out to be an infringement, three US Senators (named above) would like to put you in jail for five years.

No, I'm not kidding.

They want to turn a minor civil issue into a serious criminal offense.

They want to kill the world of embeded videos.

Otherwise, this is a great law.

Can you imagine the chain of idiocy that had to take place for this law to be put before the Senate?

Someone had to think of it. Someone had to write it down. At least three idiot Senators and their clueless staffs had to think it was worth the time and effort to put forward.

The financial industry has committed a multi-trillion dollar fraud. The TSA is completely out of control and getting worse every day. Corporations have completely corrupted the legislative and legal process...

...And these idiots want you to do hard time for embedding a YouTube video.


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Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: US: SWAT team busts into house over student loan default

Sahil Kapur
American Broadcasting Company News 10
Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:04 UTC
Acting on orders from the U.S. Department of Education, a S.W.A.T. team broke into a California home Tuesday at 6 a.m. and reportedly roughed up a man - all because of his estranged wife's defaulted student loans. She wasn't there.

Yet, Kenneth Wright of the city of Stockton was grabbed by the neck by handcuffed before he and his three young children were put in a police car as the officers searched his house, he told ABC News10. He said he was in his underwear the whole time.

"They busted down my door for this. It wasn't even me," Wright told the local news station. "All I want is an apology for me and my kids and for them to get me a new door."

Local police were reportedly not involved in the incident.
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Radar

US drone strike kills 23 in Pakistan


Press TV
Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:20 UTC
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© UnknownThe US has conducted another unauthorized drone airstrike in Pakistan's troubled northwest, leaving at least 23 people dead and several others wounded.
Officials say the US drones have fired five missiles into North Waziristan close to the Afghan border.

Meanwhile, Pakistani medics reported that the missiles fired by US drones have contaminated the environment with unknown chemicals.

They say most of those wounded by US drone airstrikes in North Waziristan are hospitalized for various skin, eye and respiratory diseases caused by chemicals.

The US often carries out such attacks on Pakistan's tribal regions, claiming that the militants are their target.

But locals say civilians are the main victims of the non-UN-sanctioned US strikes.
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Penis Pump

US: Blogger Says He Has X-rated Photo Involving Rep. Anthony Weiner


The Associated Press
Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:30 UTC
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© Craig Warga/NewsEmbattled Rep. Anthony Weiner attempts to come clean about Twitter pic scandal on Monday.
The conservative blogger who reported that a photo of a man's crotch had been sent from Rep. Anthony Weiner's Twitter account to a woman college student says he has an X-rated picture he'll publicize if the New York Democrat attempts reprisals against him.

Conservative activist Andrew Breitbart of the website BigGovernment.com tells NBC's Today show he considers the image "an insurance policy" against attacks from Weiner, who on Monday admitted the crotch photo was of him. The married Weiner also acknowledged he had engaged in inappropriate contact with six women over three years through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and occasionally over the phone.

Breitbart told NBC Tuesday that if Weiner wants to open himself to further investigation, "there are a lot of women" who could come forward. Asked directly if he considered the purported unpublicized picture an insurance policy, Breitbart replied, "I don't like to think of it that way."
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MIB

COINTELPRO: British prosecutors suppressed key evidence to protect undercover 'environmental activist'

Rob Evans & Paul Lewis
The Guardian
Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:19 UTC
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© GuardianMark Kennedy didn't seem any different from the other activists – but in fact he was an undercover policeman.
CPS opens inquiry after claims prosecutors withheld undercover police officer's surveillance tapes from defence lawyers

Prosecutors have been accused of suppressing surveillance tapes covertly recorded by the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, the Guardian can reveal.

Leaked documents indicate the Crown Prosecution Service may also have misled the public and even the courts when the trial of six environmental campaigners accused of planning to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire collapsed earlier this year.

Two days before it was due to commence, the trial was abandoned by the CPS, which told the court that "previously unavailable information" had come to light that undermined its case against the activists.

However, the supposedly new evidence - the Kennedy tapes - had in fact been in the possession of the CPS for more than a year.
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Document

Hitler's first draft of the Holocaust: unique letter goes on show

Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:13 UTC
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© Beverly Grant/PAAdolf Hitler with fellow army dispatch runners in 1916. He was still working for the army in 1919 at the time of the 'Gemlich letter'.
Army document is only written statement detailing Hitler's wish for systematic removal of Jews from Germany

A document understood to be the only existing written statement by Adolf Hitler in which he set out his belief in a systematic removal of Jews from society has been acquired by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles.

The four-page letter, typewritten on faded brown paper and bearing Hitler's signature, was shown in public for the first time in New York, in what is likely to be seen as a key artefact in the historical record of the Holocaust. It will go on display at the centre's Tolerance Museum in Los Angeles.

The centre's founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier, said it was one of the most important documents of the period, showing the development of Hitler's antisemitic thought, and proved he had in mind a governmental solution to the so-called "Jewish Question". "This is the most important item we have in an archive of more than 50,000 objects," Hier said, adding that it would be used to educate future generations and to counter Holocaust denial.

Though Hitler alluded to his plans to exterminate Jewish people in speeches and indirectly through his closest henchmen, his thoughts on the subject can be found nowhere else committed to paper.
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Cult

More war please, we're British: William Hague calls for UN security council to act against Syrian regime

Barry Neild
The Guardian
Wed, 08 Jun 2011 02:56 UTC
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© Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty ImagesWilliam Hague said the UN security council had a 'responsibility to speak out' against President Assad's crackdown. What he neglected to mention is that fact that Assad is up against an organised and ARMED insurrection.
Foreign secretary says draft resolution is in circulation among council members following crackdown on protesters

Britain is to push for a UN security council resolution condemning a crackdown on anti-government protesters in Syria.

The foreign secretary, William Hague, told parliament that the security council had a "responsibility to speak out" and warned of new European Union sanctions unless demands were met.

Hague said diplomats were circulating a draft resolution to secure the necessary support from the nine council members.

He said the proposals would bring action taken against Syria in line with measures imposed on other countries in the region facing political upheaval. However, they fell short of the no-fly zone mandated against Libya under a resolution passed earlier this year that launched a Nato bombing campaign against Muammar Gaddafi's forces.
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