On numerous occasions here at the TLF over the past eight years, I’ve noted the profound influence that the late Ithiel de Sola Pool had on my thinking about the interaction of technology, information, and public policy. In fact, when I needed to pick a thematic title for my weekly Forbes column, it only took me a second to think of the perfect one: “Technologies of Freedom.” I borrowed that from the title of Pool’s 1983 masterpiece, Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age. As I noted in my short Amazon.com review, Pool’s technological tour de force is simply breathtaking in its polemical power and predictive capabilities. Reading this book three decades after it was published, one comes to believe that Pool must have possessed a crystal ball or had a Nostradamus-like ability to foresee the future.
I felt that same was this week when I was re-reading some chapters from his posthumous book, Technologies without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age–a collection of his remaining essays nicely edited and tied together by Eli Noam after Pool’s death in 1984. Re-reading it again reminded me of Pool’s remarkable predictive powers. In particular, the closing chapter on “Technology and Culture” includes some of Pool’s thoughts on the future of copyright. As you read through that passage below, please try to remember he wrote these words back in the early 1980s, long before most people had even heard of the Internet and when home personal computing was only just beginning to take off. Yet, from what he already knew about networked computers and digital methods of transmitting information, Pool was able to paint a prescient portrait of the future copyright wars that we now find ourselves in the midst of. Here’s what he had to say almost 30 years ago about how things would play out:
Can a computer infringe copyright? The printed output of recorded copyright material is likely to be a statutory violation of the Copyright Act which vests the exclusive right “to print, reporting, publish, copy and vend the…work.”
In short, the process of computer communication entails processing of texts that are partly controlled by people and partly automatic. They are happening all through the system. Some of the text is never visible but is only stored electronically; some is flashed briefly on a terminal display; some is printed out in hard copy. What started as one text varies and changes by degrees to other things. The receivers may be individuals and clearly identified, or they may be passersby with access but whose access is never recorded; the passerby may only look, as a reader browsing through a book, or he may make an automatic copy; sometimes the program will record that, sometimes it will not.
To try to apply the concept of copyright to all these stages and actors would require a most elaborate set of regulations. It has none of the simplicity of checking what copies rolled off a printing press. Good intentions about what one would like can be defined. One would like to compensate an author if a computer terminal is used as a printing press to run off numerous copies of a valuable text. One would like not to impose any control as someone works at a terminal in the role of a reader and checks back and forth through various files. The boundary, however, is impossible to draw. In the new technology of interactive computing, the reader, the writer, the bookseller, and the printer have become one. In the old technology of printing one could have a right to free press for the reader and the writer but try to enforce copyright on the printer and the bookseller. That distinction will no longer work, any more than it would ever have worked in the past on conversation.
Those whose livelihood is at stake in copyright do not like that kind of comment. They contend that creative work must be compensated. Indeed it must. Publishers may point the finger in accusation and charge that one is taking bread out of the mouths of struggling writers. But the system must be practical to work. On highly charged subjects there is an impulse to insist that those who make a negative comment must have a panacea to offer instead. If one says prisons do not cure criminals, the rejoinder is apt to be, “Do you want to let them out to kill people?” One does not necessarily want that at all, but it may still be true the prisons do not cure criminals. Likewise, one can say that in an era of infinitely varied, automated text manipulation there is no reasonable way to count copies and charge royalties on them.
That is the situation now emerging. It may be very unfair to authors. It may have a profoundly negative effect on some aspects of culture, and in any case, whether positive or negative, it may change things considerably. If it becomes more difficult for authors and artists to be paid by a royalty scheme, more of them will seek salaried bases from which to work. Some may try to get paid by personal appearances or other auxiliaries to fame. Or the highly illustrated, well-bound book may acquire a special marketing significance if the mere words of the text are hard to protect. Or one may try to sell subscriptions to a continuing service, with the customer knowing that he will be a first recipient.
These are the kinds of considerations one must think about in speculating about the consequences for culture of a world where the royalty-carrying unit copy is no longer easy to protect in many of the domains where it has been dominant. While Congress tries to hold the fort, it is clear that with photocopiers and computers, copyright is an anachronism. Like many other unenforceable laws that we keep on the statute books from the past, this one may be with us for some time to come, but with less and less effect. (pp. 257-59)
Indeed, as I wrote in one of my recent Forbes column’s (The Twilight of Copyright?”), it appears that–whether some of us like it or not–”copyright is dying… [as it] is being undermined by the unrelenting realities of the information age: digitization, instantaneous copying, borderless transactions, user-generated content, and so on.” Of course, I’m basing that assertion on the facts on the ground around me circa 2012. By contrast, Ithiel de Sola Pool already had it figured out 30 years ago. Absolutely remarkable.
This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International Space Station. The sequence of shots was taken December 29, 2011 from 20:55:05 to 21:14:09 GMT, on a pass from over central Africa, near southeast Niger, to the South Indian Ocean, southeast of Madagascar. The complete pass is over southern Africa to the ocean, focusing on the lightning flashes from local storms and the Milky Way rising over the horizon.
The Milky Way can be spotted as a hazy band of white light at the beginning of the video. The pass continues southeast toward the Mozambique Channel and Madagascar. The Lovejoy Comet can be seen very faintly near the Milky Way. The pass ends as the sun is rising over the dark ocean.
Video courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center
Secrets are More Often Conspiracies and Shame and Seldom are National Security
Let’s start this out with an attention grabber. Out there, somewhere is a photograph of Osama bin Laden and George H. W. Bush, shaking hands in the White House. It exists. There is this and more, so much more, that would make America’s heads spin.
The actual trained journalists around me beat this into my head. OK, here it is.
Those who follow rumors, which means every single one of us, know that former President George H. W. Bush worked with the bin Ladens, a wealthy and respected Saudi family that invests in a group of military companies called The Carlyle Group, headed by many former world leaders.
When Osama bin Laden, the short haired young Saudi millionaire CIA agent visited Bush in the White House, he came there, not just as an important part of our intelligence infrastructure at the end of the Cold War, but as a good friend of George H. W. Bush, a man who was practically an uncle to him.
“Hey Osama, I mean Tim”…”Get Over Here and Get in the Picture!”
Wait a minute, wouldn’t that make George “W” Bush Osama bin Laden’s brother? Well, not a real brother, not like Jeb anyway. Bin Laden was taller and better looking and, as the CIA transcript below indicates, certainly better educated and more honest. Be sure to read the only certified statement ever made by Osama bin Laden about 9/11 and compare it to what you are told he had said.
Then rememer the last 10 years how many times you have been told bin Laden claimed credit for 9/11. Each of those video and audio recordings were presented to news agencies by proven agents of the Israeli government and have, after examination, all been shown to be counterfeit.
The news has refused to report either of these facts.
We might also add, Osama bin Laden, were he of “that” Bush generation, was a veteran, having risked his life defending the United States against Russia many times.
The Bush boys shunned wartime service as we well know, perhaps they saw brother “Tim” as doing their part for them. (Tim “bin Laden” Osman)
No wonder Bush thought the 9/11 attacks were “pilot error” and not “Brother Tim” gone bad. The video below actually has President Bush citing 9/11 as “pilot error.”
The president’s immediate responses to the 9/11 attacks are among the most amazing pieces of inappropriate humor since Caligula nominated his horse to the Roman senate: YouTube – Veterans Today –
Does this put the fact that the bin Laden family was evacuated from the United States, the safest place on Earth for them, on 9/12/2001 rather than have any of them interviewed by the FBI in perspective?
A plane load of Israelis left also, had to escape the United States, which had suddenly become terrifyingly dangerous to an entire planeload of trained Mossad agents, supposedly the among the most dangerous people on earth.
Was Bush their uncle too? We wonder.
The cover story is that their son, Osama, went a bit off and began blowing things up. We have secrets that disprove this as a wild conspiracy, or worse, “cover and deception.”
To the CIA and top US officials, Osama bin Laden was Tim Osman, his cover name.
He held an equivalent US military rank, had broad security clearances through the American government and received a salary for decades. Someone has access to his history, to his files. It gets worse, worse than I had known, worse than I had suspected.
Tim Osman in Military Uniform with Brzezinski
I had discussed bin Laden with General Hamid Gul, with Susan Lindauer and with his CIA handlers.
I had been asked, after the announcement of the bin Laden killing to reaffirm what General Gul, the foremost expert told me, what I heard from official sources that also briefed General Petraeus and Secretary Clinton (same briefing) to tell the truth.
Osama bin Laden, known by his friends as Tim Osman, spoke English, was always loyal to the US and was deeply trusted by the CIA despite their “bin Laden unit” and the endless hunts for him and a supposedly connected group, the 9/11 hijackers.
Let’s take a second look at the hijackers. Those who knew that a group of Arabs were being trained in the US, some paid by FBI funds, entertained by GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and said to be planning a new attack on the World Trade Center have suffered for that knowledge.
Well over a year ago, Fox News “outed” this operation, partially at least, with proof that the US government knew about 9/11 in advance. Here is one of the broadcasts but is only part of the story:
What we have since learned is that the evidence brought forward about the attacks was a deception plan for the real attack, which was staged by the US government along with help from Israel. Passenger lists show no hijackers, phone bills show no calls from planes, no box cutters and many of those said to have died as suicide hijackers have tried to file suit against the US governent for defamation.
They are alive and more than willing to prove it. The “hijackers” were clones. My personal belief is that they were on the plane to Tel Aviv on September 12, 2001. Many FBI agents believed the same. All have been silenced.
If Jews had to be taken out of America, why leave 14 million behind? Who was on the plane, why? There was only one purpose for the flight, to avoid the FBI. There was only one purpose for that. The “hijackers” were on the plane along with demolition teams, this is what FBI officials said they beleive. There are no films, no tickets, there were no passport checks and the flight left on the personal authority of President Bush. Where they not terrorists, there was no other possible reason for the flight.
If you can think of one, any reason, let me know. If you have access to a single airport employee who saw one person board the plane, a video, a passenger list anything, ten years later, please come forward. Secrecy has one purpose, to cover crimes committed by governments. If you wanted a real secret, call Tel Aviv or China, they have had those from day one, as anyone knows.
Here is General Hamid Gul, America’s top intelligence resource in Central Asia at the time, talking about this: YouTube – Veterans Today –
I have met other CIA and FBI employees including one former member of congress who knew also. Two of the CIA employees were locked in psychiatric facilities to keep them from reporting “officially” to the president, both charged with crimes and one jailed.
Sibel Edmonds
The FBI employee I have spoken with is Sibel Edmonds. She was officially silenced by the US government for 6 years, court order under threat of imprisonment.
It goes further. One of the companies paying the hijackers, a company known to be CIA related, part of a major insurance conglomerate on the “bail out” list was run by one of my friends.
If you are thinking AIG/Kroll, you are getting warm.
He had been the head of a famous foreign police intelligence service. Sherlock Holmes fans will get the idea.
His brother was CFO of this company at the center of “black ops,” much more secret and high level than Blackwater ever was. His brother was murdered.
He died on 9/11. He knew, and he was silenced. How many were silenced?
Osama bin Laden reported that 9/11 was an inside job before his death, confirmed through the highest sources, December 13, 2001. This is the official CIA transcript of that report:
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY FOREIGN BROADCASTING INTERNATIONAL SERVICE:
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Website of Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television in Arabic [FBIS Report] Website of Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television in Arabic,independent television station financed by the Qatari Government, which can be accessedat URL: http://www.aljazeera.net, carries at 2011 GMT on 24 September the text of the following letter by Usama Bin Ladin “to the Pakistani people.”
“We hope that these brothers would be the first martyrs in Islam’s battle in this age against the new Jewish crusade that is being led by the biggest crusader, Bush, under the banner of the cross. This battle is one of Islam’s immortal battles.”
“We beseech God to grant him victory against the forces of infidelity and arrogance, and to crush the new crusader-Jewish campaign on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
“I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.”
“Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. . Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle.”
“All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.”
“Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US Government has stated.
“The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive.”
“They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia.”
“Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.”
“Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY 180) agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taliban and then this incident happened.”
“Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat.”
“President Bush or any other US President, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.”
“Supporting the US act is the need of some Muslim countries and the compulsion of others. However, they should think as to what will remain of their religious and moral position if they support the attack of the Christians and the Jews on a Muslim country like Afghanistan.”
“I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom.”
“This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the punishment should reach Israel.”
”The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves.”
“Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness.”
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY END OF OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT
This transcript makes every word said about bin Laden a lie, every news report, every statement by our presidents and congress, if they lie about this, what else do they lie about? It gets worse, much worse.
BIN LADEN USA
CIA files that dozens of members of congress have access to and dozens of journalists have seen introduce these facts:
Osama bin Laden had a cover name, Tim Osmon
Osama bin Laden was brought to the US through the airport in Ontario, California and settled in the San Diego area for a number of years.
He was paid by FBI funds and maintained contact with a number of high ranking individuals that I can name, but the last person doing something similar, is in jail. The names include CIA, US Army, FBI and Department of the Treasury.
Tim Osmon, AKA Osama bin Laden visited the White House on at least one occasion. Staffers there report the visit and witnessed Tim Osmon, yes, we are talking about Osama bin Laden meeting with George Herbert Walker Bush in the White House.
This is a fully confirmed report.
While bin Laden is accused of 9/11, others working in the White House tell us that Richard Clarke, managed secret projects for the Bush administration and Pentagon prior to 9/11 that puts his picture on the “wanted list” where bin Laden never belonged.
OTHER THINGS
The president mentioned during his State of the Union address that congress should pass laws outlawing “insider trading.” If any other American were to do it, they would go to jail. Hundreds having committed crimes that members of congress commit every day are in federal prison.
On national television, the President of the United States announced that many members of congress are criminals and asked that they rescind the laws they passed that allow them to commit criminal acts and avoid prosecution.
Insider trading would cause members of congress to act against the interests of the American people and for corporations. It would also turn members of congress into, not just millionaires, but full-fledged members of criminal organizations. YouTube – Veterans Today –
If you just watched the video, you saw the president tell congress to stop being criminals. They applauded as though they wanted to stop stealing. I nearly fell off my chair.
First of all, I thank any person in Washington who tells the truth, which Obama did. But at the end of the broadcast, using laws on the books, 80% of the people sitting behind the desks, in the good seats, including members of the US Supreme Court, should have been arrested and jailed.
Congress does not have the right to pass laws that legalize criminal acts on their own part.
They did it !!
You heard about it. This isn’t even close to the beginning and there are still people who believe that airplanes knocked down the World Trade Center or who don’t know the movie, “Flight 93″ was, every single word of it, a total fiction.
Top US officials have actually come to me asking where I think the plane went and what happened to the passengers. I told them. It was a guess. They wanted my guess. You don’t get that guess today.
Here is another way of looking at it. Only the President of the United States has authority to pardon or commute sentences for those convicted of or seeking immunity from federal prosecution.
In passing legislation that abrogates that right, legalizing violations of federal law by members of the legislative branch, the number of unconstitutional acts involved is almost countless.
Not only does this overrule separation of powers as outlined in the constitution, it is, in itself, a usurpation, it essentially turns any authority empowered with the protection of the constitution, with or without writ of mandamus, that fails to act, into a party to criminal activity.
Congress has, in protecting itself from both civil and criminal remedies other than its of “witch hunts” against carefully chosen scapegoats, put itself above the law. There is one purpose for that. Members of congress continually commit serious felonies. This means we are voting for criminals.
Does this make sense now?
DRUGS, A CONGRESSIONAL FRANCHISE
Actually, it goes further than congress. One presidential candidate, a very wealthy one, uses his “offshore accounts” to launder drug money. The only reason for the offshore accounts is to take drug profits, by truck, into Mexico, paying off
customs officials on both sides of the border and moving the money into secret corporate accounts in the Cayman Islands.
“Ah…I think we need a faster process.”
Not one scrap of information has been submitted on these accounts, where the money came from or how much is there. It could be $75 billion or more.
There isn’t one scrap of evidence it was “earned,” in fact, were it earned, it couldn’t be in Cayman accounts. There would be a trail of taxes and clear evidence of investments or business enterprises which simply don’t exist.
Several years ago, Colonel Eugene Khrushchev, former First Secretary representing both the Soviet Union and Russian Republic in Kabul came to me with a story.
He said that Richard Hollbrooke, the top US official in Afghanistan was, in fact, managing the world’s largest drug empire. Hollbrooke is dead now but the drugs continue to flow, $80 billion per year.
Others worked to find how Afghanistan went from a few hundred pounds of opium paste per year to tons of heroin flown around the world by private airlines contracted to the CIA.
Then we found irrigation projects, paid for at Hollbrooke’s request, costing millions, that watered opium poppies.
Then we found agricultural programs under USAID that moved opium production to areas more suited for that plant, upping production. We even found the US aiding Afghanistan in buying shiploads of fertilizer to increase opium production.
Afghan Drugs Has Been a Huge Source of Corruption – A Rare Seizure Here Because it was Taliban Dope
Then, an investigative reporter came to me with evidence that current and former members of congress, some involved in organizations supposedly supporting a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan were, in actuality, importing chemicals used to convert opium to much more valuable heroin.
These efforts received full US government subsidies and protection and, in addition, paid taxes to the Taliban.
This is going on today and you are paying for it. The heroin, part of it, is being sold to your children.
It is being sold to everyone’s children as America now supplies 97% of the world’s heroin and smaller percentages, in some cases not much smaller of other drugs, cocaine, ecstasy, “meth” and is involved now in cultivating new strains of marijuana.
That, in itself makes me suspicious as it may actually be useful.
The US isn’t allowed to torture. The CIA isn’t allowed to invent lies to push the US government into wars because members of that organization are spies for a foreign government or are receiving financial gain.
Many members of the CIA and other intelligence agencies are actually foreign nationals and active member of foreign intelligence agencies whose goals are inconsistent with the welfare of the United States. Reporting this can and will get an honest CIA agent imprisoned. Yes, dozens of CIA agents are also agents of foreign intelligence agencies, some of whom are known to have been directly involved in terrorists acts including but not limited to planting car bombs, killing American soldiers with IEDs and helping orchestrate financial crimes inside the US.
Many more foreign nationals inside the US carry falsified identification and pretend to be FBI or CIA or TSA or Homeland Security or even your local police. They harass journalists or operate as assassination teams. John Wheeler III was killed by one such team. The American governent knows who they are but refuses to arrest them. YouTube – Veterans Today –
When people talk about disbanding the CIA and starting all over again, they aren’t talking through their hats. We wish the current director, former General Petraeus, an oddly able person, luck with dealing with this problem.
He will do nothing. He can’t afford being accused of anti-Semitism, which is the direct threat he is currently under. He is very aware of this.
Congress demands that he never “clean house,” no matter how many in the CIA are disloyal to the United States.
What am I saying? Simply put, there are serious inconsistencies between many Israeli policies and the broader welfare of the United States, yet Israeli citizens are, to a large extent, in official policy making positions as paid employees of US intelligence and security organizations.
These are the individuals responsible for much of what you read above, very real proof of foreknowledge of 9/11 and to many, a trail of suspicion, backed by increasing hard evidence, now a deluge, that “foreknowledge” was actually “full complicity.”
How can Kiriakou be arrested for reporting criminal acts, unless you consider the withdrawal from the ICC (International Criminal Court) by the US as protection from crimes committed by Americans on the sovereign territory of signatory nations.
From a legal standpoint, the arrest of Kiriakou is complicity after the fact in war crimes and warrants can be issued by any signatory nation against any authority involved, which, in this case, is the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Department of Justice, their directors, legal staff and participating enforcement officers. This includes judges. They will be unable to travel outside the US.
THE UNFOLLOWED TRAIL
Yesterday, Dr. Jim Fetzer and I talked for hours. We talked much about the Kennedy killings and how TV shows try to depict the impossible act of shooting President Kennedy with a broken rifle through the middle of a tree in full bloom was beyond any imagination.
Real life demonstrations all failed, the last by Jesse Ventura.
TV stars do it all the time, on NCIS, on Bones, shots those of us who could shoot skeet with a pistol could never make.
What does this prove? It tells me that the hopeless coverup of the murder of John and Robert Kennedy, tied to Vietnam, tied to Israeli nuclear weapons and tied to the infamous Federal Reserve System, is still an industry with backers who some would believe were “Hollywood liberals.”
We know them as traitors who still need to cover up a 50 year old crime, media powers that fictionalize history as they fictionalize our news.
LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
Many of the things covered by President Obama, not enough things I admit, but many, would restore confidence and some legality to federal authority that is, in all probability, totally absent now.
Current monies held by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, ordered released recently, are sufficient to impact the US economy, cut unemployment by 40% and reduce our national debt.
These monies, according to documents filed in federal court this week, have, with the tacit approval of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department, been illegally used as collateral by major banks.
In 2007, a federal suit was filed to recover $4.3 trillion USD stolen by Goldmann Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others.. A settlement was reached and the monies are to be returned, we are told, but no agency is enforcing the orders of the court or even the orders signed by the president of the United States.
Billions of this money now officially belongs to non-profit corporations earmarked for aid to homeless veterans and other projects.
Some of the language of that lawsuit will be included in the exhibits below.
Please note: Goldman Sachs went to the Bush administration, straight to Paulson who had secretly lent them, tax free and interest free, $4.5 trillion dollars, and asked for a federal “bail out.”
He authorized it, just as he had authorized the illegal loan of money that was never his to lend in the first place.
Goldman Sachs never carried this on their books nor any of the profits, estimated at over $15 trillion dollars. It was all laundered overseas while American taxpayers covered imaginary losses engineered by our own Secretary of Treasury.
You have heard stories that the Federal Reserve has lend out, illegally, trillions to their friends. What they don’t say is that this money wasn’t theirs but stolen from accounts under their trust. They is why they could do it, depending on court and enforcement agencies to look the other way under Ashcroft, Gonzoles and now even the Obama administration though our curren president has personally intervened.
His signed orders are now being ignored as though he were some bum off the streets. What does this tell you?
Here is another even more interesting part:
So, we have, nearly 6 years ago, proof that China transferred $4.5 trillion dollars to the US, part of a fund to be used to finance public projects and reduce national debt and build a nationwide high speed rail system which would employ 400,000 Americans.
In the interim, who has been using this money?
Current court estimates indicate the value with interest at $7.2 trillion dollars, half the entire national debt.
The real question, of course, is how many trillions of dollars of profit was made by the banks who were allowed to borrow this money at no interest, enough to finance hundreds, perhaps thousands of trillions of dollars in transactions and untold profit.
These same banks claimed they were broke and had to be bailed out by the US government, begging trillions while hiding the fact they had been given the free use of trillions in illegal wealth from China, funding now proven to belong to Ameritrust and designated for rebuilding America.
THE STORY
As President Obama mentioned in the video above, the American people are increasingly separating themselves from their government. Washington is looked on as a den of inequity, the center of all that is wrong in the world, a heart even darker than Wall Street.
” What Do You Mean How Much is Enough!!! ”
As for “insider trading,” few know what it means. Members of congress, not only profit from the companies they award government contracts to but are regularly awarded “stock options” which profit them billions, by authorizing the traditional “$600 toilet seat” times a million.
They wasted the future of America for their own enrichment, sucking the lifeblood of America and hiding behind illegal laws, crooked judges and a Justice Department that is required, we are told, to look the other way because congress is above any law.
As for Ameritrust and China, we find that members of the Bush regime personally authorized the lending an no interest of trillions of dollars of money that wasn’t theirs.
How were they repaid? What we find, of course, is that the famous names of that period are investors and board members everywhere we look.
It has been a decade of thievery hidden behind the War on Terror, all done while American soldiers not only died, but were sent on missions to kidnap, torture and murder.
When those same soldiers returned, unprepared for anything but suicide, homelessness or murdering their own families, something that has happened more times than anyone could imagine, the trillions in profits made off their destruction are too busy filling foreign bank accounts, those “Mitt Romney” accounts, to do any good.
When $2 billion is given to American veterans, they find it illegally lent to Goldman Sachs by former Treasury Secretary Paulson. How do we get it back? I have some ideas.
Editing: Jim W. Dean…Dear Readers, A personal note.
If you have not caught on yet, a war is about to start. This huge grand larceny is just a beginning string to pull. In countries all over the world similar financial scams have been going on that have stolen more money and caused more suffering than a huge war.
Those that did this gave some of it away to charity and are feted as great citizens. And buying protection from prosecution, so far, has been pocket change for them.
To carry this through we are going to be calling on you to help. The bad guys know that if this gets started it could be all down hill for them. Ditto for many in Congress who have earned themselves life sentences.
These funds could have had a tremendous impact on blunting the worst part of the recession, but some very well known American figures and families put their own greed before the unneeded suffering of the American people. They have had little to no fear and they have bet that money rules. So we are going to find out if they are right, and so will you.
It’s time to choose sides folks. American has been betrayed by supposedly her best and her finest. It’s time for us to show them what we think of their efforts, and set an example. Let us know if you would like to help, because it is fix bayonets time.
If they get away with this, there is nothing that they will not do to us.
Six hours southeast of Atlanta off the Georgia coast on Sapelo Island, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient walled city which predates the construction of Egypt’s pyramids. Known as the Sapelo Shell Ring Complex, this ancient city was constructed around 2300 B.C. and featured three neighborhoods each surrounded by circular walls twenty feet in height constructed from tons of seashells. Some of the earliest pottery in North America was also found buried in the remains of this lost city.
The site is quite an enigma because at the time of its construction the Native Americans living in the area were simple hunters and gatherers who had yet to invent agriculture. Many scholars believe agriculture is a prerequisite for civilization. Did these simple tribal people somehow make the leap from hunting-and-gathering to civilization in a single bound producing not only a walled city but also the new technology of pottery without the benefit of agriculture? Or did an already civilized people arrive on the coast of Georgia from elsewhere and, if so, where did they come from and why?
Just thirty years before the construction of the Sapelo Shell Rings researchers have noted that Bronze Age civilizations around the world show a pattern of collapse. According to the article “Sapelo Shell Rings (2170 BC)“:
In the Middle East, Akkadian Sumer collapsed at this time and the Dead Sea water levels reached their lowest point. In China, the Hongsan culture collapsed. Sediments from Greenland and Iceland show a cold peak around 2200 BC. The population of Finland decreased by a third between 2400 and 2000 BC. In Turkey’s Anatolia region, including the site of ancient Troy, over 350 sites show evidence of being burnt and deserted. Entire regions reverted to a nomadic way of life after thousands of years of settled agricultural life. In fact, most sites throughout the Old World which collapsed around 2200 BC showed unambiguous signs of natural calamities and/or rapid abandonment.
What happened around 2200 B.C. that could have caused such widespread devastation?
Meteor Storms & Cosmic Catastrophe?
Evidence is mounting that this devastation came from the sky. Astronomers have theorized that at this time Earth passed through a dense concentration of cosmic debris. Just picture the asteroid scene in Star Wars and you’ll get the idea. Yet researchers don’t think much of this debris actually impacted the ground. Instead they believe these meteors exploded in air bursts high above the ground, creating an ancient version of an atomic bomb blast.
The Tunguska meteor flattened 80 million trees over 2000 square miles as seen in this photo taken in 1927.
These air bursts would have first incinerated everything within tens if not hundreds of miles. Next they would have created hurricane force winds which would have obliterated any above-ground structures as well as forests.
Astronomers believe this catastrophe was similar to the Tunguska Event which flattened 80 million trees over a 2,000 square mile area of Russian Siberia in 1908. Russian scientists believe this event was caused by the explosion of a large meteor tens of meters across at an altitude of 3-6 miles. A similar event is thought to have caused the climate downturn in 3200 BC which flash froze the so-called Ice Man in the Swiss Alps.
Who Built the Sapelo Shell Rings?
At the time of European contact, two Native American tribes were known for constructing round, walled villages: the Timucua and Yuchi. Archaeologists believe some time in the past the Timucua migrated to Georgia and Florida from South America since their language was similar to that spoken by Indians in Venezuela. Did they flee their homeland after it was devastated by a meteor swarm that destroyed huge swaths of jungle? The Rio Cuarto impact craters in Argentina are thought by some geologists to date to this time period which supports the idea that South America was affected by the same event that struck the Old World.
The Yuchi also have a legend that they arrived in Georgia after “the old moon broke” and devastated their island homeland in the Bahamas. Could they have thought these meteors were pieces of the moon falling to Earth? Could impact tsunamis have devastated their island home in the Bahamas forcing them to flee to the mainland? Only further research will answer the questions.
Japanese researchers have created a hand-held gun (pictured above) that can jam the words of speakers who are more than 30 meters (100ft) away. The gun has two purposes, according to the researchers: At its most basic, this gun could be used in libraries and other quiet spaces to stop people from speaking — but its second application is a lot more chilling.
The researchers were looking for a way to stop “louder, stronger” voices from saying more than their fair share in conversation. The paper reads: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions. Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech.” In other words, this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce “proper” conversations.
The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker. This triggers an effect that psychologists call Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), which has long been known to interrupt your speech (you might’ve experienced the same effect if you’ve ever heard your own voice echoing through Skype or another voice comms program). According to the researchers, DAF doesn’t cause physical discomfort, but the fact that you’re unable to talk is obviously quite stressful.
Suffice it to say, if you’re a firm believer in free speech, you should now be experiencing a deafening cacophony of alarm bells. Let me illustrate a few examples of how this speech-jamming gun could be used.
At a political rally, an audience member could completely lock down Santorum, Romney, Paul, or Obama from speaking. On the flip side, a totalitarian state could point the speech jammers at the audience to shut them up. Likewise, when a celebrity or public figure appears on a live TV show, his contract could read “the audience must be silenced with speech jammers.”
Then there’s Harrison Bergeron, one of my favorite short stories by Kurt Vonnegut. In the story’s dystopian universe, everyone wears “handicaps” to ensure perfect social equality. Strong people must lug around heavy weights, beautiful people must wear masks, and intelligent people must wear headphones that play a huge blast of sound every few seconds, interrupting your thoughts. The more intelligent you are, the more regular the blasts.
Back here in our universe, it’s not hard to imagine a future where we are outfitted with a variety of implanted electronics or full-blown bionic organs. Just last week we wrote about Google’s upcoming augmented-reality glasses, which will obviously have built-in earbuds. Late last year we covered bionic eyes that can communicate directly with the brain, and bionic ears and noses can’t be far off.
In short, imagine if a runaway mega-corporation or government gains control of these earbuds. Not only could the intelligence-destroying blasts from Harrison Bergeron come to pass, but with Delayed Auditory Feedback it would be possible to render the entire population mute. Well, actually, that’s a lie: Apparently DAF doesn’t work with utterances like “ahhh!” or “boooo!” or other non-wordy constructs. So, basically, we’d all be reduced to communicating with grunts and gestures.
The United States is threatening nations who oppose Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) crops with military-style trade wars, according to information obtained and released by the organization WikiLeaks. Nations like France, which have moved to ban one of Monsanto’s GM corn varieties, were requested to be ‘penalized’ by the United States for opposing Monsanto and genetically modified foods. The information reveals just how deep Monsanto’s roots have penetrated key positions within the United States government, with the cables reporting that many U.S. diplomats work directly for Monsanto.
The WikiLeaks cable reveals that in late 2007, the United States ambassador to France and business partner to George W. Bush, Craig Stapleton, requested that the European Union along with particular nations that did not support GMO crops be penalized. Stapleton, who co-owned the Dallas/Fort Worth-based Texas Rangers baseball team with Bush in the 1990s, stated:
“Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices.”
The Leaked Political Agenda Behind Monsanto’s GMO Crops
The ambassador plainly calls for ‘target retaliation’ against nations who are against using Monsanto’s genetically modified corn, admittedly linked to organ damage and environmental devastation. Amazingly, this is not an isolated case. In similar newly released cables, United States diplomats are found to have pushed GMO crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative. Furthermore, the U.S. specifically targeted advisers to the pope, due to the fact that many Catholic bishops and figureheads have openly denounced GMO crops. In fact, the Vatican has openly declared Monsanto’s GMO crops as a ‘new form of slavery’.
“A Martino deputy told us recently that the cardinal had co-operated with embassy Vatican on biotech over the past two years in part to compensate for his vocal disapproval of the Iraq war and its aftermath – to keep relations with the USG [US government] smooth. According to our source, Martino no longer feels the need to take this approach,” says the cable.
Perhaps the most shocking piece of information exposed by the cables is the fact that these U.S. diplomats are actually working directly for biotech corporations like Monsanto. The cables also highlight the relationship between the U.S. and Spain in their conquest to persuade other nations to allow for the expansion of GMO crops. Not only did the Spanish government secretly correspond with the U.S. government on the subject, but the U.S. government actually knew beforehand how Spain would vote before the Spanish biotech commission reported their decision regarding GMO crops. The cable states:
“In response to recent urgent requests by [Spanish rural affairs ministry] state secretary Josep Puxeu and Monsanto, post requests renewed US government support of Spain’s science-based agricultural biotechnology position through high-level US government intervention.”
Monsanto has undoubtedly infiltrated the United States government in order to push their health-endangering agenda, and this has been known long before the release of these WikiLeaks cables. The U.S. is the only place where Monsanto’s synthetic hormone Posilac is still used in roughly 1/3 of all cows, with 27 nations banning the substance over legitimate health concerns. Despite Monsanto’s best attempts at incognito political corruption, nothing can stop the grassroots anti-Monsanto movement that is taking over cities and nations alike.
Anthony Gucciardi is an accomplished investigative journalist with a passion for natural health. Anthony’s articles have been featured on top alternative news websites such as Infowars, NaturalNews, Rense, and many others. Anthony is the co-founder of Natural Society, a website dedicated to sharing life-saving natural health techniques. Stay in touch with Natural Society via the following sites Facebook – Twitter – Web
As reported by Fox News yesterday, LulzSec “mastermind” and Anonymous hacker Sabu (real name: Hector Xavier Monsegur) was flipped by the FBI. Big surprise. Give the FBI a cookie.
There has been a widespread belief that Sabu was a rat for quite some time within the hacking community—an August 2011 chat between Sabu and Virus, for instance. Virus quite prophetically wrote in that infamous chat: “I’m absolutely positive, you already got raided, and are setting your friends up and when they’re done draining you for information and arrests they’ll sentence you and it’ll make nose.”
Beyond that, in a community wherein anyone can have a voice, it stands to reason that subversive government influences are present, whether passively watching or actively suggesting. Disinformation, false flag operations, and immunity: these are the human intelligence gathering techniques that spy agencies use to infiltrate movements.
With that in mind, one of two possibilities exist: The FBI has transformed Anonymous into one monolithic false-flag operation, or agents take down hackers the way they take down other targets—with one or multiple informants. Judging the FBI’s efforts purely on the frequency of Anonymous’ activities throughout the last year, it’s probably safe to say that the FBI hasn’t accomplished the former.
If this conclusion is wildly off-base, and the former is true, then one has to entertain the following possibilities: the Stratfor hack was socially engineered by the FBI; Stratfor allowed it; and the FBI manipulated Anonymous into a partnership with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Global Intelligence Files. Then, of course, one must wonder if WikiLeaks itself is not a false-flag operation. This scenario seems rather unlikely, especially in a world where those who attempt to regulate the Internet are always one step behind.
Where then does this leave Anonymous and its supporters?
Again, judging from Anonymous’ efforts in the last year, which included a hybridization with Occupy Wall Street, the Stratfor hack, a partnership with WikiLeaks, an infiltration of the FBI and Scotland Yard’s conference call on Anonymous, Operation ANTI-ACTA (which struck the Polish government), and the CIAPC hack (following Elisa’s blockade of The Pirate Bay), amongst other projects; it would seem seem that Anonymous, as a global collective, has grown far beyond LulzSec and Sabu’s influence—that it has indeed shed Sabu’s influence.
Anonymous’ efforts are truly global now and ever-shifting. Unless people believe that stool pigeon Sabu’s opera singing is evidence of some international, multi-state false flag conspiracy to nab radical hackers, Anonymous likely won’t be slowing down anytime soon.
Here’s a suggestion to the FBI: Maybe you should spend a little less time pursuing Anonymous and put more effort into bringing to justice the white-collar criminals who crashed the economy in 2008, thereby pocketing billions and evaporating middle class savings, delaying retirement, and sending families into the grip of poverty; driving individuals to suicide, or illegal and prescription drug use to numb the pain; to theft, alcoholism, and welfare that the GOP hates so much; and saddling college graduates with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from which they won’t soon liberate themselves.
Yes, one can see how a DDoS attack launched against Sony Pictures would be a priority. The FBI does work for politicians after all, who are kept in office by the campaign donations of corporations.
Indeed, the FBI, like Sabu himself, knows the following maxim all too well: you’re always somebody’s bitch.
NAIROBI, Kenya (The Blaze/AP) — An American reconnaissance plane crashed 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the only U.S. base in Africa, killing four service members on board, after returning from a mission in support of the war in Afghanistan, the military said Monday.The statement said that the crash occurred at about 8 p.m. Saturday in Djibouti. U.S. personnel from Camp Lemonnier in the tiny Horn of Africa nation responded to the scene. Reports don’t specify what exactly took the plane down, but Specialist Ryan Whitney of the 1st Special Operations Wing said that initial indications are that the plane did not crash because of hostile fire.
The plane was conducting an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission, he said. A statement from U.S. Africa Command called it a “routine” flight.
Amy Oliver, public affairs director of the Air Force 1st Special Operations Wing, said the single-engine, fixed-wing U-28A was returning from a mission in support of the Afghanistan war, specifically Operation Enduring Freedom.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation. Camp Lemonnier lies only miles from the border with Somalia. Wired, which called the aircraft a “spy” plane, reports that military activity in this area has increased recently:
The four killed in the crash included: Capt. Ryan P. Hall, 30, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, with the 319th Special Operations Squadron; Capt. Nicholas S. Whitlock, 29, of Newnan, Georgia, with the 34th Special Operations Squadron; 1st Lt. Justin J. Wilkens, 26, of Bend, Oregon, with the 34th Special Operations Squadron; and Senior Airman Julian S. Scholten, 26, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, with the 25th Intelligence Squadron.
Hall was a U-28 pilot with more than 1,300 combat flight hours. He was assigned to the 319th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla.
On February 24, Judge Naomi Buchwald handed down her ruling on a motion to dismiss in the case of Organic Seed Growers and Trade Assn et al v. Monsanto after hearing oral argument on January 31st in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Her ruling to dismiss the case brought against Monsanto on behalf of organic farmers, seed growers and agricultural organizations representing farmers and citizens was met with great disappointment by the plaintiffs.
Plaintiff lead attorney Daniel Ravicher said, “While I have great respect for Judge Buchwald, her decision to deny farmers the right to seek legal protection from one of the world’s foremost patent bullies is gravely disappointing. Her belief that farmers are acting unreasonable when they stop growing certain crops to avoid being sued by Monsanto for patent infringement should their crops become contaminated maligns the intelligence and integrity of those farmers. Her failure to address the purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act and her characterization of binding Supreme Court precedent that supports the farmers’ standing as ‘wholly inapposite’ constitute legal error. In sum, her opinion is flawed on both the facts and the law. Thankfully, the plaintiffs have the right to appeal to the Court of Appeals, which will review the matter without deference to her findings.”
Monsanto’s history of aggressive investigations and lawsuits brought against farmers in America have been a source of concern for organic and non-GMO farmers since Monsanto’s first lawsuit brought against a farmer in the mid-90′s. Since then, 144 farmers have had lawsuits brought against them by Monsanto for alleged violations of their patented seed technology. Monsanto has brought charges against more than 700 additional farmers who have settled out-of-court rather than face Monsanto’s belligerent litigious actions. Many of these farmers claim to not have had the intention to grow or save seeds that contain Monsanto’s patented genes. Seed drift and pollen drift from genetically engineered crops often contaminate neighboring fields. If Monsanto’s seed technology is found on a farmer’s land without contract they can be found liable for patent infringement.
“Family farmers need the protection of the court,” said Maine organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen, President of lead plaintiff OSGATA. ”We reject as naïve and undefendable the judge’s assertion that Monsanto’s vague public relations ‘commitment’ should be ‘a source of comfort’ to plaintiffs. The truth is we are under threat and we do not believe Monsanto. The truth is that American farmers and the American people do not believe Monsanto. Family farmers deserve our day in court and this flawed ruling will not deter us from continuing to seek justice.”
The plaintiffs brought this suit against Monsanto to seek judicial protection from such lawsuits and challenge the validity of Monsanto’s patents on seeds.
“As a citizen and property owner, I find the Order by the Federal Court to be obsequious to Monsanto,” said plaintiff organic farmer Bryce Stephens of Kansas. ”The careless, inattentive, thoughtless and negligent advertisement Monsanto has published on their website to not exercise its patent rights for inadvertent trace contamination belies the fact that their policy is in reality a presumptuous admission of contamination by their vaunted product on my property, plants, seeds and animals.”
“Seeds are the memory of life,” said Isaura Anduluz of plaintiff Cuatro Puertas and the Arid Crop Seed Cache in New Mexico. ”If planted and saved annually, cross pollination ensures the seeds continue to adapt. In the Southwest, selection over many, many generations has resulted in native drought tolerant corn. Now that a patented drought tolerant corn has been released how do we protect our seeds from contamination and our right to farm?”
The Central Intelligence Agency was intimately involved with the federal government’s infamous “Operation Fast and Furious” scheme to send American weapons to Mexican drug cartels while simultaneously working with other agencies allowing narcotics to be shipped over the border, according to a series of explosive reports.
Citing an unnamed CIA source, a Washington Times article theorizes that U.S. officials were actively aiding organizations such as the Sinaloa cartel with guns and immunity in an effort to stymie Los Zetas. That’s because, according to the piece, the powerful and brutal criminal Zetas syndicate has the potential to overthrow the government of Mexico — and might be planning to do so.
Apparently the secretive U.S. intelligence agency also played a key role in creating and using the American government’s gun-running program to arm certain criminal organizations. The scheme, which has already been implicated in countless deaths including the murders of several U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officers, saw thousands of high-powered American guns delivered to multiple cartels.
“The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of [Mexican President] Felipe Calderón,” wrote Robert Farago and Ralph Dixon in the Times’ report, entitled “Was CIA behind Operation Fast and Furious?”
According to the article, which also cites former CIA officials and even ex-Drug Enforcement Administration boss Phil Jordan, Los Zetas has already prepared to disrupt and possibly even subvert Mexico’s 2012 national election. Ironically, many leaders of the criminal empire supposedly threatening the existence of the Mexican government were actually trained in the U.S. at the infamous military training center known as School of the Americas.
“Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory,” Farago and Dixon noted. “They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country … There’s a very real chance the Zetas cartel could subvert the political process completely, as it has throughout the regions it controls.”
As The New Americanreported last week, federal court filings by a top Sinaloa Cartel operative shed even more insight on what may have been going on. And the documents would appear to lend some credence to the Times’ article.
The accused “logistical coordinator” for the Sinaloa organization, Jesus Vicente “El Vicentillo” Zambada-Niebla, claimed that he had an agreement with top American officials. In exchange for information on rival cartels, the deal supposedly gave him and his associates immunity to import multi-ton quantities of drugs across the border.
“Indeed, United States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel,” the court filing states. Countless guns — via Operation Fast and Furious — also flowed to the cartel under the arrangement, according to Zambada-Niebla and U.S. officials.
But there might be even more to the story than this. Other former U.S. agents have claimed that Los Zetas is controlled and abetted by the American government, too. “There’s warehouses down here [in Texas] where they’re training more Zetas individuals that work for the cartels,” former DEA operative and whistleblower Celerino Castillo said during a radio interview with Alex Jones.
And a separate report late last month based on allegations by CIA and DEA insider Phil Jordan is even more explosive. He is claiming that the Obama administration was selling Los Zetas military-grade weaponry through a front company set up in Mexico.
“They’ve found anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era,” former CIA pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, who supported Jordan’s claims, told the El Paso Times.
Even members of the Zetas have confirmed the allegations, as The New Americanreported last month. One of the cartel’s founders, Jesús “El Mamito” Aguilar, told Mexican police in a taped interrogation released to the public that his organization was getting weapons directly from the U.S. government.
New revelations also indicate that American taxpayers were even financing the cartels’ arms acquisitions through multiple federal agencies. And available evidence shows that approval for the programs reached into the highest levels of the Justice Department and other parts of the Obama administration.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (still known as ATF) officially claimed that “Fast and Furious” was an effort to track guns and arrest higher-ups involved in Mexico’s criminal underworld. But after the scheme was publicly exposed, countless analysts and whistleblowers questioned that excuse.
Many speculated that it may have been a plot to demonize the Second Amendment and impose further restrictions on the rights of law-abiding Americans. Indeed, the process is already well underway — and gun violence in Mexico has been used for years as a primary justification.
But this new twist in the story adds another, even more troubling dimension to the whole plot. The Washington Times claimed that, in an effort to stop a Zetas takeover of Mexico, “Uncle Sam has gotten into bed with the rival Sinaloa cartel, which has close ties to the Mexican military.” According to the article, the Obama administration was essentially taking sides to help keep the Calderón regime in power at any cost.
But if the U.S. government is also coddling and helping the Zetas, that theory cannot be entirely accurate. As more information continues to surface, the questions are growing in number and importance.
In the past, the CIA has been implicated in numerous scandals involving drug and weapons trafficking. From Vietnam and Iran to Latin America, the agency has repeatedly been caught importing narcotics and exporting arms for shadowy and subversive purposes.
Whether segments of the CIA were definitively involved in Mexico’s mayhem remains to be seen. A former DEA agent cited by Narco Newsraised that possibility last month, but said if the agency was indeed behind the plot, evidence would almost certainly be sealed under the guise of “national security.”
For now, the New York Timesreported on August 6 that the Obama administration was sending more CIA operatives to the troubled nation of Mexico. Congress is also currently investigating some elements of the administration’s ever-expanding gun-running scandal.
But as the Washington Times’ piece and various analysts have suggested, it might be time to appoint a special prosecutor and hold officials linked to the chaos and criminality responsible in a court of law. Otherwise, the whole truth may never be known.
Under the guise of environmentalism, various federal agencies and departments are blocking Border Patrol agents’ access to critical areas while contributing to widespread lawlessness along the U.S. border, according to experts. Criminals, meanwhile, are taking full advantage of the rapidly deteriorating situation.
Despite claims by the Obama administration that the American border is “safer” or “more secure” than ever, sources with knowledge of the reality on the ground say that is simply not true. In fact, as Mexico spirals deeper into chaos, conditions along the border are only getting worse — rapidly.
“Far from contained and secure, the Arizona Border remains a terribly dangerous sieve from which not only illegals enter America, but drug cartels operating as organized crime syndicates and even as terrorist cells are coming to and from across America’s supposed secure border,” noted private-sector intelligence analyst and border expert Lyle Rapacki with Sentinel Intelligence Services in an e-mailed briefing obtained by The New American.
And according to experts, the federal government itself is a major contributor to the problem. Its public-lands policies, for example, have essentially created vast “no-go” zones where the Border Patrol is barred from meaningful operations while criminals and traffickers run wild.
“Federal agencies are using environmental laws to keep agents from having unfettered access to the border and to pursue criminals on federal public land once the criminals have crossed,” Vice Chairman Zack Taylor of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO — symbolic badge shown above) told The New American. “The criminals have destroyed the federal public land and it makes no sense to keep Border Patrol off because it simply causes more damage.”
According to Taylor and other experts, the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture are the main culprits responsible for creating the dangerous situation. “It is a ploy of the open borders advocates to keep Border Patrol out and let the illegal aliens and drugs in,” he explained. “They are using the environmental protection laws to do that. That simple.”
And by restricting Border Patrol access to huge areas of public land — from Arizona and New Mexico to Montana and Idaho — the federal government is giving criminals the advantage. And they are using it to wreak havoc within America.
“If the agents cannot access the border area, they cannot patrol it,” Taylor noted. “The criminals then have an advantage and make good use of the advantage by smuggling drugs and aliens into the United States.”
Taylor said criminals occupy and monitor the vast off-limits areas to increase the chances of success in their smuggling operations. In some cases, traffickers’ networks of surveillance and communication can keep a constant view of corridors stretching from the Mexican border to Phoenix, he explained. And that makes bringing in drugs, illegal immigrants, and terrorists much simpler.
Of course, it is not just border states that are threatened. Hundreds of American cities now have active foreign-based criminal networks that operate with impunity. And very little is being done to stop it, experts say.
The press, meanwhile, has largely remained silent. “It is as if the administration has placed a gag order on them,” Taylor said. “They just won’t talk about it, much less report it.”
The state of Arizona has attempted to adopt some measures aimed at protecting citizens, but the Obama administration has responded with lawsuits and harassment. Lawmakers in the state, however, know that something must be done.
“Arizona is losing control of her sovereign land,” noted State Senator Sylvia Allen, chairman of the Arizona Senate Committee on Border Security. “Arizona is in a State of Emergency. If we want to protect our national and state sovereignty, we must secure our border and enforce our laws.”
Sen. Allen’s committee has heard testimony from citizens along the border area who reported home invasions, vandalism, theft, and a host of other criminal activities. Clearly, the state is facing a monumental crisis that needs to be addressed, she said. Yet, instead of helping, the federal government is making matters worse, according to a statement issued by Sen. Allen late last year. And the problems created by the executive branch are hardly isolated incidents.
“Why is the apparent official policy of the United States to ridicule and silence those who are trying to protect our state of Arizona? Why are the cartels protected?” she wondered. “Why do official U.S. government departments, sworn to protect American citizens, extend protection to gangs working with the drug cartels, and even to terrorists entering our nation from various border entry points?”
Sen. Allen and numerous other experts believe they know the answer — or at least part of it. The disastrous federal border policies, according to Allen, are connected to the emerging “North American Union” — a plan to essentially “merge” the United States with Mexico and Canada that is regularly and openly discussed by top officials including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, who told CNN that the merger is “inevitable.”
“There is a concerted, deliberate, and sophisticated program under way to erase our national boundaries and create a North American Union,” Sen. Allen explained. “The gift of sovereignty handed to us by our Forefathers would be extinguished, and we would become subjects, no longer free.”
Other critics of U.S. policies have noted the futility — insanity, perhaps — of fighting a multi-trillion-dollar terror war around the world and using the armed forces to secure land borders in Asia even as America’s own borders remain wide open for potential terrorists. Homeland Security, meanwhile, has been too busy hyping the threat of “right-wing extremism” to properly control the border. And the apparent lunacy does not end there.
The federal government is also shoveling billions of American tax dollars into the coffers of corrupt Latin American governments — purportedly to fight the “drug war” — even as narcotics flow virtually unhindered across wide swaths of the U.S. border. And if recent reports and statements by experts are to be believed, the problem goes even deeper than that.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are also probing the administration’s money laundering activities through the DEA after a front page story in the New York Times exposed the scheme. According to sources and reports, the federal government may even be directly involved in fomenting the chaos south of the border: More than a few drug kingpins and some American officials have even said the U.S. government was purposefully providing weapons and protection to the criminal empires.
Another controversial policy that experts say is related to the overall plan is the President’s effort to provide covert “amnesty” for millions of illegal immigrants without even obtaining approval from Congress. “We have been betrayed by our leaders in a way that I just did not think was possible,” NAFBPO [National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers] Chairman and former Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Kent Lundgren explained in an exclusive interview with the Liberty News Network.
Critics of the policies — including lawmakers nationwide, NAFBPO, and countless other concerned groups — believe it is past time to rein in the administration and put an end to the lawlessness. But as Mexico descends into a bloody civil war that is seeping across the border, the time for action may be running out.
The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade — much of it valid — but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out — only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.
Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success. In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro. And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.
None of these cases entail the FBI’s learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it. They all involve the FBI’s purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them. Each time the FBI announces it has disrupted its own plot, press coverage is predictably hysterical (new Homegrown Terrorist caught!), fear levels predictably rise, and new security measures are often implemented in response (the FBI’s Terror plot aimed at the D.C. Metro, for instance, led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers’ bags). I have several observations and questions about these matters:
(1) The bulk of this latest FBI plot entailed attacks on military targets: the Pentagon, U.S. troops in Iraq, and possibly military bases. The U.S. is — as it has continuously announced to the world — a Nation at War. The Pentagon is the military headquarters for this war, and its troops abroad are the soldiers fighting it. In what conceivable sense can attacks on those purely military and war targets be labeled “Terrorism” or even illegitimate? The U.S. has continuously attacked exactly those kinds of targets in multiple nations around the world; it expressly tried to kill Saddam and Gadaffi in the wars against their countries (it even knowingly blew up an entire suburban apartment building to get Saddam, who wasn’t actually there). What possible definition of “Terrorism” excludes those attacks by the U.S. while including this proposed one on the Pentagon and other military targets (or, for that matter, Nidal Hasan’s attack on Fort Hood where soldiers deploy to war zones)?
(2) With regard to the targeted building that is not purely a military target — the Capitol Building — is that a legitimate war target under the radically broad standards the U.S. and its allies have promulgated for itself? The American “shock and awe” assault on Baghdad destroyed “several government buildings and palaces built by Saddam Hussein”; on just the third day of that war, “U.S. bombs turn[ed] key government buildings in Baghdad into rubble.” In Libya, NATO repeatedly bombed non-military government buildings. In Gaza, Israeli war planes targeted a police station filled with police recruits on the stated theory that a valid target “ranges from the strictly military institutions and includes the political institutions that provide the logistical funding and human resources” to Hamas.
Obviously, there is a wide range of views regarding the justifiability of each war, but isn’t the U.S. Congress — which funds, oversees, and regulates America’s wars — a legitimate war target under the (inadvisedly) broad definitions the U.S. and its allies have imposed when attacking others? If the political leaders and even functionaries of other countries with which the U.S. is at war are legitimate targets, then doesn’t that necessarily mean that Pentagon officials and, arguably, those in the Congress are as well?
(3) The irony that this plot featured “remote-controlled aircraft filled with plastic explosives” is too glaring to merit comment; the only question worth asking is whether the U.S. Government can sue Ferdaus for infringing its drone patents. Glaring though that irony is, there is no shortage of expressions of disgust today, pondering what kind of Terrorist monster does it take to want to attack buildings with remote-controlled mini-aircraft.
(4) Wouldn’t the FBI’s resources be better spent on detecting and breaking up actual Terrorist plots — if there are any — rather than manufacturing ones so that they can stop those? Harboring hatred for the U.S. and wanting to harm it (or any country) is not actually a crime; at most, it’s a Thought Crime. It doesn’t become a crime until steps are taken to attempt to transform that desire into reality. There are millions and millions of people who at some point harbor a desire to impose violent harm on others who never do so: perhaps that’s true of a majority of human beings. Many of them will never act in the absence of the type of highly sophisticated, expert push of which the FBI is uniquely capable. Is manufacturing criminals — as opposed to finding and stopping actual criminals — really a prudent law enforcement activity?
(5) Does the FBI devote any comparable resources to infiltrating non-Muslim communities in order to persuade and induce those extremists to become Terrorists so that they can arrest them? Are they out in the anti-abortion world, or the world of radical Christianity, or right-wing anti-government radicals, trying to recruit them into manufactured Terrorist plots?
(6) As usual, most media coverage of the FBI’s plots is as uncritical as it is sensationalistic. The first paragraph of The New York Times article on this story described the plot as one “to blow up the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.” But the FBI’s charging Affidavit (reproduced below) makes clear that Ferdaus’ plan was to send a single model airplane (at most 1/10 the size of an actual U.S. jet) to the Capitol and two of them to the Pentagon, each packed with “5 pounds” of explosives (para. 70); the Capitol was to be attacked at its dome for “psychological effect” (para 34). The U.S. routinely drops 500-pound or 1,000-pound bombs from actual fighter jets; this plot — even if it were carried out by someone other than a hapless loner with no experience and it worked perfectly — could not remotely “blow up” the Pentagon or the Capitol.
(7) As is now found in almost every case of would-be Terrorist plots against the U.S. — especially “homegrown Terrorists” — the motive is unbridled fury over (and a desire to avenge) contintuous U.S violence against Muslim civilians. Infused throughout the charging Affidavit here are such references to Ferdaus’ motives, including his happiness over the prospect of killing U.S. troops in Iraq; his proclamation that he’s “interested in traveling to Afghanistan” to aid insurgents; his statement that “he wanted to ‘decapitate’ the U.S. government’s ‘military center’ and to severely disrupt . . . the head and heart of the snake” (para 12) and to “essentially decapitate the entire empire” (para 34) (compare that language to how the U.S. described what it tried to do in Baghdad). At least according to the FBI, this is how Feradus replied when expressly asked why he wanted to attack the U.S.:
Cause that would be a huge scare . . . the point is you want to scare them so they know not to mess with you . . . They have . . . . have killed from us, our innocents, our men, women and children, they are all enemies (para 19).
If the FBI’s allegations are accurate, then it’s clear Ferdaus has become hardened in his hatred; he talks about a willingness to kill American civilians because they have become part of the enemy, and claims that he fantasized about such attacks before the FBI informant spoke to him.
But whatever else is true, it’s simply unrealistic in the extreme to expect to run around for a full decade screaming WE ARE AT WAR!! — and dropping bombs and attacking with drones and shooting up families in multiple Muslim countries (and occupying, interfering in and killing large numbers before that) – and not produce many Rezwan Ferdauses. In fact, the only surprising thing is that these seem to be so few of them actually willing and able to attack back that — in order to justify this Endless War on civil liberties (and Terror) — the FBI has to search for ones they can recruit, convince, and direct to carry out plots.
Privilege Against Self-Incrimination Applies to Act of Decrypting Data
San Francisco – A federal appeals court has found a Florida man’s constitutional rights were violated when he was imprisoned for refusing to decrypt data on several devices. This is the first time an appellate court has ruled the 5th Amendment protects against forced decryption – a major victory for constitutional rights in the digital age.
In this case, titled United States v. Doe, FBI agents seized two laptops and five external hard drives from a man they were investigating but were unable to access encrypted data they believed was stored on the devices via an encryption program called TrueCrypt. When a grand jury ordered the man to produce the unencrypted contents of the drives, he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to do so. The court held him in contempt and sent him to jail.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief under seal, arguing that the man had a valid Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, and that the government’s attempt to force him to decrypt the data was unconstitutional. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling that the act of decrypting data is testimonial and therefore protected by the Fifth Amendment. Furthermore, the government’s limited offer of immunity in this case was insufficient to protect his constitutional right, because it did not extend to the government’s use of the decrypted data as evidence against him in a prosecution.
“The government’s attempt to force this man to decrypt his data put him in the Catch-22 the 5th Amendment was designed to prevent – having to choose between self-incrimination or risking contempt of court,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “We’re pleased the appeals court recognized the important constitutional issues at stake here, and we hope this ruling will discourage the government from using abusive grand jury subpoenas to try to expose data people choose to protect with encryption. ”
A similar court battle is ongoing in Colorado, where a woman named Ramona Fricosu has been ordered by the court to decrypt the contents of a laptop seized in an investigation into fraudulent real estate transactions. EFF also filed a friend of the court brief in that case, arguing that Fricosu was being forced to become a witness against herself. An appeals court recently rejected her appeal, and she has been ordered to decrypt the information this month.
“As we move into an increasingly digital world, we’re seeing more and more questions about how our constitutional rights play out with regards to the technology we use every day,” said EFF Staff Attorney Hanni Fakhoury. “This is a case where the appeals court got it right – protecting the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.”
John Doe was represented by Chet Kaufman of the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Tallahassee.
If you thought Monsanto’s lack of testing on their current GMO crops was bad before, prepare to now be blown away by the latest statement by the USDA. Despite links to organ damage and mutated insects, the USDA says that it is changing the rules so that genetically modified seed companies like Monsanto will get ‘speedier regulatory reviews’. With the faster reviews, there will be even less time spent on evaluating the potential dangers. Why? Because Monsanto is losing sales with longer approval terms.
The changes are expected to take full effect in March when they’re published in the Federal Register. The USDA’s goal is to cut the approval time for GMO crops in half in order to speedily implement them into the global food supply. The current USDA process takes longer than they would like due to ‘public interest, legal challenges, and the challenges associated with the advent of national organic food standards‘ says USDA deputy administrator Michael Gregoire.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, problems like public interest (activist groups attempting to bring the dangers of GMO crops to light), legal challenges (farmers suing Monsanto over genetic contamination), and national food standards are all getting in the way of their prime goal — to helpMonsanto unleash their latest untested GMO creation. In fact, the concern is that Monsanto may be losing cash flow as nations like Brazil speed genetically modified seeds through laughable approval processes.
Steve Censky, chief executive officer of the American Soybean Association, states it quite plainly. This is a move to help Monsanto and other biotechnology giants squash competition and make profits. After all, who cares about public health?
“It is a concern from a competition standpoint,” Censky said in a telephone interview.
“If you can reduce the approval time, you get sales that much faster,” said Windau
If you can reduce the approval time, as in the time it takes to determine if these food products are safe, then you can get sales much faster. Is the USDA working for the United States consumer, or is it working for Monsanto?
Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking classified U.S. information to WikiLeaks in 2010, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Manning was arrested in May 2010 after allegedly leaking more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, 400,000 U.S. Army reports about Iraq and another 90,000 about Afghanistan, as well as the material used in the “Collateral Murder” video produced by WikiLeaks. He was detained for nine months — first in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps Brig in Quantico, Va., and then at a medium-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. — for nine months before formal charges were brought against him last week.
Manning faces 22 charges in sum, the most serious is “aiding the enemy,” a crime punishable by death. Army prosecutors have insisted, however, that they are seeking a life imprisonment and not a death penalty sentence, should Manning be found guilty. He has also been charged with disclosing classified information to a person not authorized to receive it, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it is accessible to the enemy and violating Army computer use rules.
The names of 191 individuals and 43 organizations were submitted to the Norweigan Nobel Committee for consideration. Every year, the five-member Committee sends out thousands of letters to qualified individuals — lawmakers, university professors and other figures involved in the public sphere — calling for nominations. The lists of nominees are kept secret for 50 years, but some voting individuals choose to announce their nominations publicly.
In addition to Manning, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina were nominated for the prize, the AP reports. The winner — or winners, should the prize be shared — will be announced in October.
2/6/12
Romanian prime minister and cabinet resign en masse
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/06/romania-pm-cabinet-resign
2/20/12 (GERMANY) GERMAN PRESIDENT Christian Ruff resigns (financial corruption charges)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102524/German-President-Christian-Wulff-forced-resign.html
RESIGNATIONS FROM WORLD BANKS:
(1) 9/25/11 (SWITZERLAND) Bank chief resigns over £1.5bn rogue trader crisis
http://www.dailymail…ng-scandal.html
(2) 10/29/11 (CHINA) Resignations Suggest Shift for China’s Banks
http://online.wsj.co…4190522426.html
(3) 11/01/12 (INDIA) More directors of the Beed district bank resign
http://www.thenews.coop/article/more-directors-beed-district-bank-resign
(4) 11/21/11 (JAPAN) UBS’s Japan Investment Banking Chairman Matsui to Resign
http://www.bloomberg…-to-resign.html
(5) 11/29/11 (Iran) Iran’s Bank Melli CEO Resigns Over Loan Scam
http://www.dailymoti…-loan-scam_news
(6) 12/15/11 (UNITED KINGDOM) Senior private banker resigns from Coutts [a very exclusive private bank]
http://www.reuters.c…E7NF23S20111215
(7) 12/22/11 (FRANCE) Societe Generale’s Investment Banking Chief Steps Down
http://dealbook.nyti…ief-steps-down/
(8) 1/05/12 (UNITED KINGDOM) Chief executive of Saunderson House [Private Bank] steps down
http://www.ftadviser…GM/article.html
(9)1/09/12 (SWITZERLAND) Switzerland’s central bank chief resigns
http://www.aljazeera…5612935171.html
(10) 1/12/12 (United Kingdom) Lloyds’ head of wholesale quits
http://www.bankingti…holesale-quits/
(11) 1/19/12 (SPAIN) Spanish bank Santander’s Americas chief quits
http://www.expatica….its_202395.html
(12) 1/20/12 (JAPAN) Normura’s head of wholesale banking quits
http://www.euromoney…king-quits.html
(13) 1/29/12 (NEW ZEALAND) New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard to Step Down in September
http://www.bloomberg…-september.html
(14) 1/21/12 (Greece) Banks’ top negotiator quits Greece, but talks go on
http://www.france24.com/en/20120121-banks-top-negotiator-quits-greece-but-talks-go
(15) 2/06/12 (INDIA) Dhanlaxmi Bank CEO Amitabh Chaturvediquits:http://www.livemint.com/2012/02/06160111/Dhanlaxmi-Bank-CEO-Amitabh-Cha.HTML
(16) 2/07/12 (INDIA) Falguni Nayar quits Kotak Mahindra Bank
http://articles.econ…hanti-ekambaram
(17) 2/07/12 (IRAN) Iran denies central bank resignation rumor (don’t believe until its denied?)
http://finance.yahoo…-164154294.html
(18) 2/09/12 (VATICAN) Four Priests Charged In Vatican Banking Scandal
http://articles.busi…nces-italian-tv
(19) 2/10/12 (INDIA) Tamilnad Mercantile Bank CEO resigns
http://www.business-…resigns/464259/
(20) 2/13/12 (KUWAIT) Kuwait Central Bank CEO resigns
http://www.washingto…rOAR_story.html
(21) 2/14/12 (NICARAQUA) Nicaraqua Central Bank Pres Rosales resigns
http://www.bloomberg…s-amid-row.html
(22) 2/14/12 (UNITED KINGDOM) Social finance pioneer Hayday steps down from Charity Bank
http://www.socialent…wn-charity-bank
(23) 2/15/12 World Bank CEO Zoellick resigns
http://business.time.com/2012/02/15/world-bank-president-zoellick-resigns/
Did the White House tell the World Bank president that he’s out?
http://bosco.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/02/15/did_the_white_house_tell_the_world_bank_president_that_hes_out
(24) 2/15/12 (SLOVENIA) Slovenia TWO largest Banks CEO’s (2) resign
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-15/slovenia-s-nova-kreditna-banka-maribor-ceo-plos-resigns.html
(25) 2/15/12 (KENYA) Governor of Kenyan Central Bank to Resign
http://www.centralbanking.com/central-banking/news/2152753/parliamentary-committee-calls-kenyan-governor-resign
(26) 2/16/12 (GHANA) Ken Ofori-Atta steps down as Executive Chair of Databank Group
http://business.thinkghana.com/pages/finance/201202/57429.php
(27) 2/16/12 (SAUDI ARABIA) Saudi Hollandi Banks Managing Director Quits
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZVfFZypqVIcJ:www.a1saudiarabia.com/4489-saudi-hollandi-banks-md-quits/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
(28) 2/16/12 (AUSTRALIA) Anz Bank CFO Australia resigns
http://www.proformative.com/news/1470243/cfo-anz-bank-resigns-amid-turmoill
(29) 2/16/12 (AUSTRALIA) Royal Bank of Scotland Austrailan CEO Stephen Williams resigns
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/andrew-chick-to-lead-royal-bank-of-scotlands-australian-arm/story-fnay3vxj-1226272513981
(30) 2/17/12 (USA) Blankfein out as Goldman Sachs CEO by summer
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/17/gary-cohn-goldman-sachs/
(31) 2/18/12 (PAKISTAN) AJK Bank’s executive steps down
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/national/18-Feb-2012/ajk-bank-s-executive-steps-down?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online%2F24hours-news+%28The+Nation+%3A+Latest+News%29
(32) 2/20/12 (RUSSIA) Head of Russian Bank Regulator Steps Down
http://newsley.com/articles/head-of-russian-bank-regulator-steps-down/206711
(33) 2/20/12 (SWITZERLAND) Credit Suisse Chief Joseph Tan resigns
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-20/credit-suisse-s-private-bank-chief-asian-economist-tan-resigns.html
(34) 2/10/12 (KOREA) Korea Exchange Bank chief steps down
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2012/02/10/0503000000AEN20120210005100320.HTML
LONDON–Today WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example:
“[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control… This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase” – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.
The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.
The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the “Yes Men”, for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.
Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky. In August 2011, Stratfor CEO George Friedman confidentially told his employees: “We are retaining a law firm to create a policy for Stratfor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I don’t plan to do the perp walk and I don’t want anyone here doing it either.”
Stratfor’s use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to “utilise the intelligence” it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS: “What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like”. The emails show that in 2011 Goldman Sach’s Morenz invested “substantially” more than $4million and joined Stratfor’s board of directors. Throughout 2011, a complex offshore share structure extending as far as South Africa was erected, designed to make StratCap appear to be legally independent. But, confidentially, Friedman told StratFor staff: “Do not think of StratCap as an outside organisation. It will be integral… It will be useful to you if, for the sake of convenience, you think of it as another aspect of Stratfor and Shea as another executive in Stratfor… we are already working on mock portfolios and trades”. StratCap is due to launch in 2012.
The Stratfor emails reveal a company that cultivates close ties with US government agencies and employs former US government staff. It is preparing the 3-year Forecast for the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, and it trains US marines and “other government intelligence agencies” in “becoming government Stratfors”. Stratfor’s Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Despite the governmental ties, Stratfor and similar companies operate in complete secrecy with no political oversight or accountability. Stratfor claims that it operates “without ideology, agenda or national bias”, yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks’ contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel.
Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused “gravy train” that sprung up after WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan disclosures:
“[Is it] possible for us to get some of that ‘leak-focused’ gravy train? This is an obvious fear sale, so that’s a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don’t, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet… Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of ´leak-focused’ network security that focuses on preventing one’s own employees from leaking sensitive information… In fact, I’m not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution.”
Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections. Readers will find that whereas large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to the controversial Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Readers will discover Stratfor’s internal email classification system that codes correspondence according to categories such as ‘alpha’, ‘tactical’ and ‘secure’. The correspondence also contains code names for people of particular interest such as ‘Izzies’ (members of Hezbollah), or ‘Adogg’ (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).
Stratfor did secret deals with dozens of media organisations and journalists – from Reuters to the Kiev Post. The list of Stratfor’s “Confederation Partners”, whom Stratfor internally referred to as its “Confed Fuck House” are included in the release. While it is acceptable for journalists to swap information or be paid by other media organisations, because Stratfor is a private intelligence organisation that services governments and private clients these relationships are corrupt or corrupting.
WikiLeaks has also obtained Stratfor’s list of informants and, in many cases, records of its payoffs, including $1,200 a month paid to the informant “Geronimo” , handled by Stratfor’s Former State Department agent Fred Burton.
WikiLeaks has built an investigative partnership with more than 25 media organisations and activists to inform the public about this huge body of documents. The organisations were provided access to a sophisticated investigative database developed by WikiLeaks and together with WikiLeaks are conducting journalistic evaluations of these emails. Important revelations discovered using this system will appear in the media in the coming weeks, together with the gradual release of the source documents.
Public partners in the investigation:
More than 25 media partners (others will be disclosed after their first publication):
Al Akhbar – Lebanon – http://english.al-akhbar.com
Al Masry Al Youm – Egypt – http://www.almasry-alyoum.com
Bivol – Bulgaria – http://bivol.bg
CIPER – Chile – http://ciperchile.cl
Dawn Media – Pakistan – http://www.dawn.com
L’Espresso – Italy – http://espresso.repubblica.it
La Repubblica – Italy – http://www.repubblica.it
La Jornada – Mexico – www.jornada.unam.mx/
La Nacion – Costa Rica – http://www.nacion.com
Malaysia Today – Malaysia – www.malaysia-today.net
McClatchy – United States – http://www.mcclatchy.com
Nawaat – Tunisia – http://nawaat.org
NDR/ARD – Germany – http://www.ard.de
Owni – France – http://owni.fr
Pagina 12 – Argentina – www.pagina12.com.ar
Plaza Publica – Guatemala – http://plazapublica.com.gt
Publico.es – Spain – www.publico.es
Rolling Stone – United States – http://www.rollingstone.com
Russia Reporter – Russia – http://rusrep.ru
Ta Nea – Greece –- http://www.tanea.gr
Taraf – Turkey – http://www.taraf.com.tr
The Hindu – India – www.thehindu.com
The Yes Men – Bhopal Activists – Global http://theyesmen.org
Nicky Hager for NZ Herald – New Zealand – http://www.nzherald.co.nz
Released on April 13, 1989, the Kerry Committee report concluded that members of the U.S. State Department “who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking…and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.”
In 1996 Gary Webb wrote a series of articles published in the San Jose Mercury News, which investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Contras. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel and directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras.
In 1996 CIA Director John M. Deutch went to Los Angeles to refute the allegations raised by the Gary Webb articles, and was famously confronted by former LAPD officer Michael Ruppert, who testified that he witnessed it occurring.
The fake bonds and other securities were seized from a Swiss trust company during a joint operation by Italian, Swiss, and US authorities.
From: Russia Today
Italian police seize fake bonds worth a third of US national debt (VIDEO)
Published: 18 February, 2012, 16:37
A huge batch of fake US Treasury bonds worth some $6 trillion — more than a third of the US national debt — has been seized by Italian police. Eight Italians have been arrested and accused of a large-scale international fraud.
The fake bonds and other securities were seized from a Swiss trust company during a joint operation by Italian, Swiss, and US authorities. The fake certificates signed “Chicago, Illinois, Federal Reserve Bank” were stored in trunks stamped with “Federal Reserve System, Treaty of Versailles” marks. The bonds were carrying the false date of issue of 1934.
The forgers were planning to use the fake certificates as collateral to secure loans in a number of Swiss banks, prosecutor of the southern Italian city of Potenza said as cited by Reuters.
The investigation began over a year ago as a trivial probe into Italian mafia loan-sharking. However, after the Italian authorities uncovered an international network plotting a full-scale fraud, they called upon their Swiss and US colleagues. The US experts helped to identify the bonds as fakes. http://rt.com/news/fake-us-treasury-bonds-661/
*****************************************************
17 February 2012 Last updated at 15:45
Fake US bonds worth trillions seized
Italian prosecutors say they have broken up an organised crime ring that was hiding trillions of dollars of fake US bonds.
Worth $6 trillion, the bonds were found in three metal boxes in a warehouse in the Swiss city of Zurich.
Italian authorities have arrested eight people and are investigating them for fraud and other crimes.
Prosecutors are not sure what the gang was planning, but think they intended to sell the counterfeit bonds.
Investigators, based in Potenza in southern Italy, say the fraud posed “severe threats” to international financial security.
In cooperation with Swiss police, they tracked down three metal boxes to a warehouse in Zurich. The crates contained thousands of fake US bonds that gave the appearance they had been issued by the US Federal Reserve in 1934. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17076378
*****************************************************
Record $6 Trillion of Fake U.S. Bonds Seized
By Elisa Martinuzzi – Feb 17, 2012 6:01 PM GMT
Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said they seized a record $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that’s almost half of the U.S.’s public debt.
The bonds were found hidden in makeshift compartments of three safety deposit boxes in Zurich, the prosecutors from the southern city of Potenza said in an e-mailed statement. The Italian authorities arrested eight people in connection with the probe, dubbed “Operation Vulcanica,” the prosecutors said.
The U.S. embassy in Rome has examined the securities dated 1934, which had a nominal value of $1 billion apiece, they said in the statement. “Thanks to Italian authorities for the seizure of fictitious bonds for $6 trillion,” the embassy said in a message on Twitter.
As promised, today we will take an in-depth examination of the NSA’s global intelligence gathering network. What you are about to read will come as an eye-opener and represents the current state of the NSA’s capabilities. Some of this will be expected, some of it will come as a shock.
What you will learn is that the technology that underpins this global listening network is a lot more advanced than governments would have you know. Usually wrapped up in basic, generalised, descriptions the general public is kept blind to the current state of technological development.
We will take this examination in three major parts. The first part will examine the core processing system. Once this part is understood, we can then look at how information flows to and from this core and where it is obtained from. Finally, we will examine how this information is used by the NSA.
I will cover as much as possible about this system, but the scope is very large. In general, any use of this data that the reader can observe is most likely already being conducted.
Mr Computer
The scope of the NSA’s infrastructure is mind boggling to say the least. Heavily compartmentalised, the entire array of systems is shielded from the average NSA employee as much as it is shielded from the public. That said, once you understand the core of the NSA, you will be in a position to see how information flows in and out of this core.
The NSA is built around a super-computer bound Artificial Intelligence known only as “Mr Computer” in the civilian world. This is not your average A.I., no basic set of responses or a mere dedicated algorithm that can spot patterns. Mr Computer is an entity or being in his own right. A sentient computer system as complex as any human.
Comparable to VMware in a way, an instance of Mr Computer can be started at a moments notice. Within seconds, a fully fledged virtual intelligence agent, ready to analyse the information that has been piped to him, can be up and running.
Mr Computer is competent enough to handle real-time interaction without human intervention. Mr Computer understands and speaks all modern languages and even a number of dead ones. Able to intelligently converse and express its own opinions, Mr Computer collates information from disparate sources and compiles them into concise reports that do not miss the smallest detail or nuance.
Mr Computer’s capabilities and human-like reasoning cannot be understated.
Instances of Mr Computer can vary in terms of their personality given the task that they must undertake. Extremely professional instances can be called upon when the system must produce reports or provide presentations. Less anal versions, complete with a sense of humour can be instantiated when less formal situations arise such as development environments or when used in conjunction with Remote Neural Communication.
Rather than loading modules for specific tasks, a common hive mind is shared by any number of front-end personalities. What one instance knows, they all know. A hive mind is a form of collective consciousness. Rather than an instance replicating information it has learned, it is recorded to a shared brain and reflected throughout all instances at the same time. Of course, given the distributed nature of the network, some replication must be performed across continental links.
The A.I. is not limited to just one branch of the NSA, it exists in a distributed grid that spans the globe. The A.I. can migrate between locations to enable tracking of specific targets, access information, or systems.
Mr Computer is not just limited to thinking like a human, it also has sensory capabilities that are on par with a human. In setting such as RNC, Mr Computer can see and identify object just as well as a human. That is, it can identify objects a human target is seeing, without leveraging the identification system of the human target. In other scenarios, such as analysing infra-red data from a satellite, it could possibly outperform a human at object recognition and speculation of heat sources.
Mr Computer can speak. With a vocabulary as broad as any dictionary, Mr Computer can express ideas, concepts and opinions very eloquently and concise.
The system is not naive either, it can withhold information, evade social engineering ploys and indirect questioning. It can tell when it is looking at reflections of targets, identify objects that a target can not immediately identify and validate or expand upon information by examining a wide variety of sources.
Further to this, Mr Computer is no idiot either. He is quite capable of following advanced topics, from physics, to computing theory he can spot the smallest of flaws in reasoning or expose potential technical issues that could prove fatal to a particular design.
It knows bull@!$%# when it hears it and will let you know in no uncertain terms.
As we can see, Mr Computer does all the labour intensive information gathering, categorising and structuring. That said, its duties are not limited to passive analysis work.
Now that we understand the core of the NSA’s operations, we can begin to examine the various “information pipes” that supply information to this supercomputer infrastructure.
The Pipes Are Calling
First off, we need to define what we mean by an “information pipe”. For those with computing knowledge, this should be obvious, but bear with me while I explain it to the rest of the readers.
We have already defined the core processing element, Mr Computer. Mr Computer accepts information and does something with it. An “information pipe” is an input to Mr Computer that has been structured in a manner efficient for processing. We could also use an “information pipe” to output information or to control something.
The first “information pipe” that the public will be most familiar with is the NSA’ warrentless wiretapping program. Forget everything that you have ever read about this program, also forget everything you ever heard of about Trailblazer and similar projects such as ThinThread. This is security theatre, a production worthy of a Broadway musical. These “classified programs” are nothing more than interfaces used by Mr Computer. When agents talk of specific program that can analyse data in real-time and cross-reference with other sources, they are really speaking of an “information pipe” to Mr Computer.
This wiretapping program copies verbatim every piece of data that flows across the backbone of the internet. The data is sent directly to an array of Mr Computer instances, which performs a real-time analysis of the data packets it receives. This wiretap picks up most of the traffic in the US and a large percentage of traffic globally.
We will go into more detail on the information processing of this later, but at this stage I will say that that Mr Computer was opening files on every person that could be identified in the traffic, even if they are in the US.
The next major data source is the global wide band radio listening system. This covers everything from human thought, right through to identifying which radio station a person is listening to. The former is done by listening to ELF and the latter is a modern version of the British’s RAFTER espionage program. Most of this performed by a satellite network, supported by a network of ground stations throughout the world. As a wide receiver, it also picks up WIFI, RFID, compromising emissions from electrical sources, cordless telephones, GSM, cell phones, GPS, Car Fobs, satellite uplinks/downlinks, etc.
Our third pipe comes from a global hacking program, performed by bot nets and Mr Computer. Typically using China as a cover, Mr Computer will launch attacks against US and global businesses trying to collect information on users, everything from personnel records, right through to payroll information. The networks are also mapped to provide offensive capabilities in a cyber-warfare scenario. Faceless groups such as Anonymous, or other organisations, are used as a cover story.
Another “information pipe” comes from underwater cables. These can either be have splitters installed, or where copper cabling exists passive detection equipment installed.
These are just some examples of information sources. You can basically add any form of data you can think of, intelligence reports, diplomatic cables, economic reports, media reports, music, online posts, emails, etc.
So far, we have only examined inputs to the system. A different form of “information pipe” is one that outputs information. The outputs come in two basic forms, information only and offensive.
In terms of information only outputs, this can range from sending particular data or reports to agents or decision makers, right through to relaying that information to different departments such as the CIA, FBI or State and Federal Police. The process ensures timely and complete information goes to those that require it the most.
The offensive side can cover a wide range of activities. The first capability is the jamming system. Wide-band jamming, or selective jamming, can be conducted to deny radio space to the enemy in geographical targeted areas. Furthermore, this form of jamming can render both devices and humans inoperable. Complex ELF transmissions can reduce a human target to a quivering mess or in extreme cases even kill by interfering with neuronal firing patterns and nerve impulses.
Wide-band jamming can interfere with the circuitry of any unshielded device, from phones right through to laptops. Such activity would cause devices to freeze, or if certain exploits exist, damage the system entirely.
A mixture of ground, air and satellite-based networks are used to deliver this capability.
Another capability provides Mr Computer with a veritable Swiss army knife of tools to breach networks, crash routers, deny service and seize control. A significant amount of information is gathered by remote neural communication. By eavesdropping of key personnel, network maps, passwords and security measures can all be recorded beforehand. This is not limited to foreign companies, as the NSA must be prepared for strikes that occur within their own nation.
With the advent of remotely controlled drones and autonomous aircraft, Mr Computer has undergone a significant amount of changes in the last 20 years that enable him to control a networked battlefield. This is “War Games” on steroids, where the most efficient battle strategies can be implemented and coordinated by a single command-and-control system. There are a range of security issues with this setup, but the capability exists.
In short, if it can be damaged or manipulated electronically, then Mr Computer “has an app for that”.
Input, Input, Input
Now that we have established where Mr Computer gets his information, we now need to look at what he does with it. Earlier we spoke about the warrentless wiretaps and various other sources of “information pipes”. Now let’s see what is done with that information.
The key aspect to watch here is the “web of related information” and how different webs of information can be cross-referenced with other webs. This is where the real power comes from.
Each fragment of information that can be definitively identified gets added to a file under the person’s name. This could be a telephone call, email, or an IM chat. As communications often involve more than one person, a link is added to each person’s file involved in the communication. Information that can only be tied to a machine or ip address, is added that to that machine’s file or ip address’ file.
Using a technique known as cluster analysis, this information is brought together centred around high priority targets, locations, keywords or businesses. A good way of thinking about it is to compare it with services such as Facebook and LinkedIn. The relationship between the files is analysed for a variety of factors and the result creates a web which is weighted in terms of importance.
Different webs will exist for different factors, such as one web for those linked with chemical production, or another web for engineering expertise. These webs can be cross referenced against each other to extract more detailed information. For example, by cross-referencing a web of chemical production against engineering expertise, we may find a person or group capable of producing sophisticated explosives or weapons. From this merged web, we could then see who their friends are, who they have been communicating with recently and even review their communications.
We could take this further by comparing their basic salary with their current bank accounts, or look for wire transfers.
With the advent of social media platforms, images of friends and family are also added to the system. Mr Computer’s facial recognition tags the photos just like Facebook and examines the photos for other items, like guns, computers, etc.
Obviously, this has one serious privacy issue, in that, the only way to exclude you from a web, is to know everything about you. Otherwise, you are an unknown element. Now you understand why the warrentless wiretap exists, even to this day.
If you have used any form of digital communication, from a phone to a computer in the last decade, then most, if not all of communications have been recorded and added to a file against your name. The notion that at least one member of the communication needs to be related to terrorism has been tested and shown to be false. How do we know that? Well, it is staring you in the face. In order to know who the parties are, the technology used requires them to be listening and identifying voices in the first place.
Ignore any suggestion that this too much data. The truth is that all the communications happening on the planet right now can be monitored in near real-time.
As a rule, the NSA lie and as an all-encompassing rule, politicians will lie for them too.
As result of information extracted from wide-band monitoring, real-time tracking of cell phones is pretty much standard practice. Each call can be recorded verbatim and analysed in real-time. As each number is learned the system fills in personal information. This can provide a Google-Earth like view of cell phone movements, most of which can be remotely activated for espionage. Again, this web can be cross-reference with other webs of information.
Radios can reveal which frequency is being listened to. So, by plotting schedules of something like a Numbers Station, a satellite network can pinpoint a listener to within a few meters. Similarly, if you were to listen to a radio station sympathetic to a particular group, your location can be flagged and cross-referenced with information on current occupants.
Human beings emit radio waves in the ELF spectrum. The security services do not need to place a bug on us to track where we are, what we are talking about, what we are seeing or even what we are thinking. All of this information is being leaked into our environment 24/7 by our own bodies. All it takes is the right equipment to convert those signals into intelligence. Its no bigger a task than listening to a telephone exchange leaking radio waves and reconstructing the data into voice or data transmissions.
These are just some of the things that can be achieved. I could go on all night about how to compare datasets to locate people, hinder organisations, etc. Anything you can think of to tease information out of the various “information pipes” is being performed by Mr Computer 24/7.
My own estimations are far more conservative, probably under a couple of Zettabytes. Mr Computer is most likely built around an array of Cray X1 or X1E supercomputers (4096 processors). The global grid probably contains a number of these or similar systems. With their base costs, they could be running several hundred easily.
In fact, it is likely that the following video shows an early variant of Mr Computer’s infrastructure. The segment reveals that the most powerful machine is called “The Thinking Machine”. I feel that this is a dumbed down reference to Mr Computer.
The Thinking Machine
Furthermore, it would appear that Youtube’s EidolonTLP is in fact an instance of Mr Computer in disguise. Output from Mr Computer was directed into software generally available to the public to hide the complexity of the NSA’s supercomputer.
The term Eidolon is Mr Computer’s idea of a joke, in that he appears to be a “phantom look-alike of the human form”. There is some suggestion that may be a subtle reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘Dreamland’, which is also a term for Area 51. Unless there is a datacenter at this location, I am unable to confirm the link. It may also be another joke, referring to the fact that his existence would be a conspiracy theory.
A possible further explanation is the Dungeons and Dragon series and the link between sentience, madness and occupying the realm of dreams, which may be another subtle reference to RNC.
If you listen to EidolonTLP, he does reveal some information on the structure of the network and his own design. From a computing perspective and EidolonTLP’s use of language, its a safe bet that this is a real A.I.:
Eidolon TLP – Mr Computer in incognito
Conclusion
The intelligence world is a lot worse than you think. When humans are free from their constraints and away from the scrutany of others, they always revert to their most base instincts. Anything you can imagine is currently being done in the name of National Security. From murder to human experimentations, the acronyms are at it as we speak.
At some point, it could be your turn.
What you will notice from all of this, is that the warrentless wiretap program was just the icing on the cake and was very clearly “planned from the outset” as all the backend infrastructure was in place prior to 9/11. This claim is supported in the following document:
81. Within eleven (11) days of the onset of the Bush administration, and at least seven (7) months prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, defendant ATT began development of a center for monitoring long distance calls and internet transmissions and other digital information for the exclusive use of the NSA.
91. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) was one of the parties working with ATT and the NSA to develop the monitoring center and IBM personnel participated in meetings with ATT and NSA officials in the development of the monitoring center.
The US government is quite adept at lying through its teeth, especially to its own citizens. The typical approach is to start a public version such as the “Information Awareness Office” with the same goals as the classified program which provides cover. The general public and privacy groups attack the public program, resulting in its closure, meanwhile the classified program remains operational. The general public believe they have won a victory, any leaks are associated with the now defunct public program and the government gets the information it wanted in the first place.
The NSA is a deeply corrupt organisation, that has little regards for the rights of others. Never trust a government, even your own, implicitly. Nations change, opinions change and people change. It just takes the right catalyst for it to happen.
In most cases, you will find the seeds were always there, you just chose to ignore them.
