'We're getting too close to Orwell's 1984 Oceania'
The US government should have to obtain a warrant before mobile phone providers have to hand over multiple geolocation data records about customers, a US judge has said.
In Europe, privacy watchdogs have called on geolocation data to be classed as personal data, information that can be used to identify someone. EU data protection laws set out special rules on how personal data can be used by organisations that hold it.
Mr Justice Garaufis said that an exception to privacy rights set out in the United States' Fourth Amendment should not apply to the collection of multiple records of mobile users' geolocation data.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Puppet Masters
© Moti Kimchi
Stolen taxi used in attack
Stolen taxi used in attack
The attacker was a Palestinian in his twenties from the city of Nablus, according to police spokeswoman Luba Samri.
Just before 2 a.m., the attacker stole a taxi in south Tel Aviv and then drove into a police checkpoint securing the street near a popular nightclub, she said.
He then got out of the car and stabbed passers-by, she said, while shouting "Allahu akbar" - Arabic for "God is great," a phrase often used as a battle-cry by Islamic terrorists.
© Moti Kimchi
Police lift the terrorist to the ambulance
Police lift the terrorist to the ambulance
One of the eight people hurt was listed in a serious condition in hospital and the others suffered light to moderate injuries, Samri said.
© The Associated Press/Threshold Editions
This book cover image released by Threshold Editions shows In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, by Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney. The book is scheduled for release on Aug. 30, 2011.
This book cover image released by Threshold Editions shows In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, by Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney. The book is scheduled for release on Aug. 30, 2011.
Powell was America's top diplomat during the first four years of President George W. Bush's administration. Cheney's book, In My Time, is set for release Tuesday.
Cheney writes that he thinks Powell tried to undermine Bush by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government.
Powell tells CBS' Face the Nation that he routinely gave his opinion and his best advice on issues to the president.
While Cheney writes that Powell's resignation was "for the best," Powell says he had always planned to leave the administration after the 2004 election.
Powell says Cheney is almost condescending in his remarks about Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice.
© EPA/BGNES
A child holds a sign during a demonstration against genetically modified organisms (GMO) in Sofia, Bulgaria, in February 2010.
A child holds a sign during a demonstration against genetically modified organisms (GMO) in Sofia, Bulgaria, in February 2010.
The information comes from several US diplomatic cables, (one by current US Ambassador in Sofia, James Warlick), which were released by WikiLeaks and their Bulgarian partner, the site for investigative journalism Bivol.bg.
According to the cables, GMO supporters in Bulgaria are actively backed and financed by the American Embassy, as Bivol writes.
In a cable, sent in 2006, Charge d'Affaires, Alex Karagiannis, informs the US Department of State that the main obstacle for the passing of more liberal GMO legislation has been opposition coming from the President of the Bulgarian Academy of Science (BAS), Ivan Juchnovski.
In 1494, Florence, Italy, was in economic and social turmoil. Catholic Priest Girolamo Savonarola declared Florence a Christian Republic and formed a Theocracy. Claiming to receive direction from God, Savonarola preached about the Last Days, and sparked a moral "purification" campaign. Homosexuals and liberal thinkers were killed, thousands of books were burned, and gangs ravaged Florence looking for indications of moral laxity, resulting in the notorious Bonfire of the Vanities.
In 2011, America is in economic and social turmoil and Republicans offer the solution of Theocracy. It's been tried here before. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was a Puritan Theocracy -- in 1660 Quaker Mary Dyer was hanged on Boston Common for advocating her religion. Until the nineteenth century, several states had official Christian churches. Nonetheless, the separation of church and state seems a solid legal principle -- "free exercise" of religion is in the First Amendment of the US Constitution (the notion of "separation" came from an 1802 Thomas Jefferson letter).
The remaining Arab potentates and tyrants have spent a second sleepless night. How soon will the liberators of Tripoli metamorphose into the liberators of Damascus and Aleppo and Homs? Or of Amman? Or Jerusalem? Or of Bahrain or Riyadh? It's not the same, of course.
The Arab Spring-Summer-Autumn has proved not just that the old colonial frontiers remain inviolate - an awful tribute to imperialism, I suppose - but that every revolution has its own characteristics. If all Arab uprisings have their clutch of martyrs, some rebellions are more violent than others. As Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said at the start of his own eventual downfall, "Libya is not Tunisia, it's not Egypt...It will become civil war. There will be bloodshed on the streets." And there was.
© Serpents and Doves
Not very well. The chairman, vice chairman, and senior legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating themselves from the commission's report. They said that the Bush administration put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice.
In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was "set up to fail." Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote
that the US government made "a decision not to tell the truth about what happened," and that the NORAD "tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public." Kean said, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."
Most of the questions from the 9/11 families were not answered. Important witnesses were not called. The commission only heard from those who supported the government's account. The commission was a controlled political operation, not an investigation of events and evidence. Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts were appointed to the commission.
Expensive taste: Michelle Obama, pictured yesterday in Massachusetts, has been accused of spending $10m of public money on vacations.
But according to new reports, this is the least of their extravagances.
White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers' money on vacations alone in the past year.
© Unknown
NATO's destruction of Libya
NATO's destruction of Libya
The United States was keen to integrate Libya as much as possible into "AFRICOM," the American military command for Africa which seeks to establish bases and station military forces permanently on the continent.
"We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi," Senator Joseph Lieberman (Ind.-CT) said during an August 2009 meeting, which also included Senators John McCain and Susan Collins.
The records confirm that McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, strongly supported US arms sales to Libya and personally pledged to Muammar Gaddafi (also spelled "al-Qadhafi") and his son Muatassim that he would push to get such transfers approved by Congress. McCain also revealed that the United States was training officers in Gaddafi's army.
While the Americans pursued the relationship vigorously, they met with a cautious and sometimes "mercurial" response from the Libyans. In particular, the mistrustful Libyans wanted security guarantees that the Americans appeared reluctant to give.
"We can get [equipment] from Russia or China," Muatassim told the visiting senators, "but we want to get it from you as a symbol of faith from the United States."
In hindsight, given the US support for the NATO war against the Gaddafi regime, it is not difficult to understand why the Libyans wanted these guarantees.
© Cyaegha-c.livejournal.com/460657.html
On the morning of August 22nd 2011, Al Jazeera aired a 'live' report from Green Square in Tripoli,which claimed to show the capture of the Libyan capital by rebel forces. Scenes of jubilation and euphoria enveloped Al Jazeera's reporter Zeina Khodr as she declared: " Liya is in the hands of the opposition''
The images were immediately reproduced throughout the global media complex, with headlines trumpeting the 'end of the Gaddafi regime' and editorials throughout the corporate media world speculating about the post-Gaddafi future of Libya.
Gaddafi's sons were said to have been arrested, and more defections were announced. The Libyan capital was, we were told, now in the hands of the rebel forces. For many, it seemed a fait accompli.
In fact, the Al Jazeera pictures from Green Square were an elaborate and criminal hoax. The report had been prefabricated in a studio in Doha Qatar . This information had been passed onto Libyan intelligence and the Libyan people had already been warned about the qatari psyops a couple of days previously on Rayysse state television.
The Al Jazeera hoax was intended to create the impression that Tripoli had fallen so as:
(1) to break the Libyan resistance by creating panic and chaos in the Libyan captial.
(2) to provide cover for the massacres of civilians that would occur in the days following the declaration of rebel victory.
In other words, the media would provide cover for the war crimes and crimes against humanity that are necessary in order to subjugate the Libyan Jamhahirya to Western corporate interests.
Comment: If you think it has nothing to do with the upcoming Palestinian Unilateral Declaration of Independence in September, then think again. Israelis will use every tactic, every dirty trick up their sleeve to stop the process and discredit Palestinians in order for the psychopathic state to continue with its murderous deeds.