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Vader

Robert Greenwald and Reporter Michael Hastings Take on the Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War Machine

Michael Hastings The Operators
© The Daily Beast
Hastings, in his hard-hitting new book, discusses "politically correct imperialism," why the military is obsessed with its legacy, and why we're stuck in post-9/11 thinking.

Not many journalists can say they had a hand in getting a commanding general relieved of duty in the middle of a war. But Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings did just that when his 2010 story on Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, sent shockwaves through Washington and resulted in McChrystal being recalled to DC and unceremoniously fired by Barack Obama.

Hastings' report, "The Runaway General," detailed how McChrystal and his top officers spoke of their civilian superiors with sneering condescension, and revealed that they didn't genuinely embrace the counterinsurgency strategy being sold to the public at home. The piece was a result of fortuitous circumstances. Hastings had at first been allowed only controlled access to McCrystal, but when European air-traffic was grounded following the eruption of the Eyjafjöll volcano in Iceland, Hastings ended up catching a bus to Berlin with McChrystal and his staff, who let down their guard during the extended ride.

The young journo is a veteran war correspondent who covered Iraq as well as Afghanistan. The McChrystal story wasn't Hastings' first significant report, and it wouldn't be his last -- in 2011, he broke a story about how David Petraeus, McChrystal's replacement in Afghanistan, was using military psy-ops units to influence visiting United States senators' views of the conflict.

Hastings' new book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan, draws on his extensive grounds-eye-view reporting from the decade-long conflict. Filmmaker Robert Greenwald, director of Rethink Afghanistan, caught up with Hastings to discuss his book and the ongoing war.

Laptop

Canada: Proposal Would Create Massive Surveillance System

internet Surveillance graphic
© AP
Police will get much easier access to the web-surfing habits and personal information of all Canadians if a new law - expected to be introduced in the House of Commons next week - passes.

Privacy watchdogs caution if the so-called Lawful Access law is passed, it would give police access to webbrowsing history and sensitive personal information, and would grant greater permission to track the cellular phones of suspects - much of it without the requirement of a warrant.

The bill, which is on the order paper for this week, would require Internet service providers and cellular phone companies to install equipment that would monitor users' activities so that the information could be turned over to police when requested.

It would also grant greater permission to law enforcement authorities to activate tracking mechanisms within cellphones so they can follow the whereabouts of suspected criminals. If there is a suspicion of terrorist activity, the law would allow such tracking to go on for a year, rather than the current 60-day limit.

Display

FBI May Shut Down Your Internet Access March 8th

trojan horse computer graphic
© n/a
This March 8th, the FBI is planning to unplug DNS servers it set up to help eliminate malware from over half of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies still infected in early 2012.

The change could potentially leave a great number of Internet users without access to the Web.

InfoWorld reports:
...the feds replaced the criminals' servers with clean ones that would push along traffic to its intended destination. Without the surrogate servers in place, infected PCs would have continued trying to send requests to aim at the now-unplugged rogue servers, resulting in DNS errors.
The malware, called DNSChanger Trojan, is said to illegally redirect traffic and prevent users from accessing the updates necessary to remove it. Without access to these critical patches, these large companies, government agencies, and home users are said to be more susceptible to hackers.

Handcuffs

Dozens Arrested in Turkey Anti-Terror Probe

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© ReutersKurdish demonstrators shout slogans and hold flags with portraits of jailed PKK leader Ocalan during a protest in Brussels early January 2012
Turkish police have arrested about 100 people in a new nationwide operation targeting union leaders and activists because of alleged links to Kurdish rebels. The operation was part of a wider legal offensive against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), a union regarded by the authorities in Ankara as the political wing of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

In early morning raids across Turkey, police arrested more than 100 people as part of an ongoing anti-terror probe against the Kurdish rebel group, the PKK. Kurdish political activists were among those detained, as were trade unionists and a Kurdish film maker.

The headquarters of three of the countries main civil service trade unions were also searched.

The crackdown was strongly criticized by pro-Kurdish member of parliament, Ertugral Kurkcu, of the BDP party. He says the arrests have nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but are instead aimed at stifling democratic opposition to the government.

"There are no weapons on the table, there are no incidents of violence which those people are involved in. So this is an arbitrary raid against the Kurdish popular movement," Kurkcu said.

Eye 1

Google Offering to Pay Web Users to Track Their Every Move

Google
© Antonio Manfredonio]
Less than a month after announcing a controversial new privacy policy that shares user data across all its sites with no opt-out option, Google is introducing a system to monitor all online activity of those who participate in a program called Screenwise. In exchange for unrestricted access to information on your every online move, the search and software giant is offering financial compensation.

By signing up for Screenwise and installing a browser plugin (only Google Chrome is supported at present), you'll be given $5 in store credit on Amazon. For every three months you continue to provide Google with browsing data, you'll earn an addition $5 gift card, up to a total of $25. Only those over 13 can participate and, perhaps not surprisingly, signups are currently on hold due to overwhelming interest.

Star of David

Israel Blames Iran After Attacks on Embassy Staff

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© Reuters/Parivartan SharmaPeople examine a damaged Israeli embassy car after an explosion in New Delhi, February 13, 2012.
Israel accused arch-enemies Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind twin bomb attacks that targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia on Monday, wounding four people.

Tehran denied involvement in the attacks, which amplified tensions between two countries already at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear program, and accused Israel of carrying out the attacks itself. Hezbollah made no comment.

In the Indian capital New Delhi, a bomb wrecked a car taking an Israeli embassy official to pick up her children from school, police said. The woman needed surgery to remove shrapnel but her life was not in danger.

Her driver and two passers-by suffered lesser injuries.

Israeli officials said an attempt to bomb an embassy car in the Georgian capital Tbilisi failed, and the device was defused.

MIB

Steve Jobs Held Top Secret Security Clearance

Late Apple co-founder and CEO at one point held a Top Secret government clearance, was targeted for extortion in 1980s. Bob Orr reports then Charlie Rose speaks with the author of Inside Apple, Adam Lashinsky.


Laptop

Iran Blocks Email, Restricts Net Access: Reports

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© Agence France-Presse/Atta KenareIranians surf the internet at a cafe in Tehran in 2011.
Iran has further restricted access to the Internet and blocked popular email services for the past few days, in a move a top lawmaker said could "cost the regime dearly," media reports said on Sunday.

Millions of Iranians have been unable to log onto their accounts on popular email websites such as Google's Gmail, Yahoo's Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail since Thursday without any official explanation, the Arman newspaper reported.

But the Mehr news agency said the restrictions were not related only to email.

"It has been a while that Internet users have had difficulty accessing domestic and news websites as well as foreign search engines and email services," it said on its website.

These difficulties include "low speed, outage and blocking" of websites, Mehr said.

A top conservative lawmaker, Ahmad Tavakoli, criticised the new "annoying" filtering and said it should be explained.

Newspaper

Best of the Web: Revealed: How Syngenta Investigated the Press and Shaped the News About its Controversial Weed-Killer Atrazine

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© Alternet
A new investigation shows the global chemical company spent millions spinning news coverage and tracking journalists as concern grew over potential health risks of atrazine.

Documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, recently unsealed as part of a major lawsuit against Syngenta, reveal how the global chemical company's PR team investigated the press and spent millions to spin news coverage and public perceptions in the face of growing concerns about potential health risks from the widely used weed-killer "atrazine."

This story is part of a new series about this PR campaign to influence the media, potential jurors, potential plaintiffs, farmers, politicians, scientists, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the midst of reviews of the weed-killer's potential to act as an endocrine disruptor, over the past decade or so.

Bad Guys

Dow and Monsanto Team Up on the Mother of All Herbicide Marketing Plans

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© Rastoney/FlickrExpect to see lots of this stuff blanketing the Midwest for a long time if Monsanto and Dow get their way.
During the late December media lull, the USDA didn't satisfy itself with green-lighting Monsanto's useless, PR-centric "drought-tolerant" corn. It also prepped the way for approving a product from Monsanto's rival Dow Agrosciences - one that industrial-scale corn farmers will likely find all too useful.

Dow has engineered a corn strain that withstands lashings of its herbicide, 2,4-D. The company's pitch to farmers is simple: Your fields are becoming choked with weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. As soon as the USDA okays our product, all your problems will be solved.

At risk of sounding overly dramatic, the product seems to me to bring mainstream US agriculture to a crossroads. If Dow's new corn makes it past the USDA and into farm fields, it will mark the beginning of at least another decade of ramped-up chemical-intensive farming of a few chosen crops (corn, soy, cotton), beholden to a handful of large agrichemical firms working in cahoots to sell ever larger quantities of poisons, environment be damned. If it and other new herbicide-tolerant crops can somehow be stopped, farming in the US heartland can be pushed toward a model based on biodiversity over monocropping, farmer skill in place of brute chemicals, and healthy food instead of industrial commodities.