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I Paid To See A Movie About Singing. I Got Ninety Minutes Of Pentagon Propaganda.

January 14, 2018

I Paid To See A Movie About Singing. I Got Ninety Minutes Of Pentagon Propaganda. 

To cap off a long, strange day, my husband and I took the kids out last night to see Pitch Perfect 3. The first Pitch Perfect is a firm favorite in our household, the kind of movie we end up watching when we can’t agree on what to watch. We’d been waiting til we all had a night to see the latest one together, so we made a night of it and went out for some dinner, too. I even had a Coke. The sugary kind. This was a big night, people! So we were all in high spirits and I entered the theater excited to see some good music and have a good time.

I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece, but I also wasn’t expecting to be blasted in the face with ninety minutes of blatant war propaganda from the United States Department of Defense.

Documents Expose How Hollywood Promotes War On Behalf Of The Pentagon, CIA, & NSA
“The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to…www.zerohedge.com

Before I go on I should mention that a group called Insurge Intelligence published a report a few months back on thousands of military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act which showed unbelievably extensive involvement of US defense and intelligence agencies in the production of popular Hollywood movies and TV shows. Just from the information this group was able to gain access to, the scripts and development of over 800 films and 1,000 television titles were found to have been influenced by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA to advance the interests of the US war machine. We’re talking about big, high profile titles you’ve definitely heard of, from Transformers to Meet the Parents.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Same Democrats Who Denounce Trump as a Lawless, Treasonous Authoritarian Just Voted to Give Him Vast Warrantless Spying Powers

January 12, 2018

Rep. Adam Schiff, right, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speak during the Los Angeles LGBTQ #ResistMarch, Sunday, June 11, 2017, in West Hollywood, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Photo: Mark J. Terrill/AP

The Same Democrats Who Denounce Trump as a Lawless, Treasonous Authoritarian Just Voted to Give Him Vast Warrantless Spying Powers

LEADING CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS have spent the last year relentlessly accusing Donald Trump of being controlled by or treasonously loyal to a hostile foreign power. Over the last several months, they have added to those disloyalty charges a new set of alleged crimes: abusing the powers of the Executive Branch – including the Justice Department and FBI – to vindictively punish political opponents while corruptly protecting the serious crimes of his allies, including his own family members and possibly himself.

The inescapable conclusion from all of this, they have relentlessly insisted, is that Trump is a lawless authoritarian of the type the U.S. has not seen in the Oval Office for decades, if ever: a leader who has no regard for Constitutional values or legal limits and thus poses a grave, unique and existential threat to the institutions of American democracy. Reflecting the severity of these fears, the anti-Trump opposition movement that has coalesced within Democratic Party politics has appropriated a slogan – expressed in the hashtag form of contemporary online activism – that was historically used by those who unite, at all costs, to defeat domestic tyranny: #Resistance.

One would hope, and expect, that those who genuinely view Trump as a menace of this magnitude and who view themselves as #Resistance fighters would do everything within their ability to impose as many limits and safeguards as possible on the powers he is able to wield. If “resistance” means anything, at a minimum it should entail a refusal to trust a dangerous authoritarian to wield vast power with little checks or oversight.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

House Passes Legislation Renewing Controversial NSA Surveillance Program

January 11, 2018

House Passes Legislation Renewing Controversial NSA Surveillance Program

Update 3: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been renewed by the House of Representatives. Originally enacted in 1978, the act outlines the lawful procedure for collecting foreign intelligence. FISA Section 702 allows the US government to pull in communications from foreign nationals but does not permit surveillance of US citizens, even if they are suspected of criminality or terrorism. Ahead of a vote to extend FISA for six years, US President Donald Trump initially hit out at the key intelligence provision, although later updated his stance through a tweet declaring that the country needs FISA.

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

“House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.” This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!

As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is the list of House Democrats who stood with Trump, Devin Nunes and the NSA to ensure ongoing warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, adding “Note how many of the leading #Resistance leaders are on this list.“

George Zornick
✔@gzornick

55 House Democrats – including Pelosi, Hoyer, Schiff – voted to kill a surveillance reform bill that would have (among other things) added a warrant requirement to 702 searches.

Full list of Dem ‘no’ votes:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Big Brother = You

January 11, 2018

Big Brother = You 


Giorgione The Tempest 1508
Happy belated new year. Belatedly. Thought I’d sit out a few days, since there wasn’t much news to be expected. And it did pan out that way, other than Trump bogarting the limelight; but then, that isn’t really news either. Anything he says or does triggers the expansive anti-Donald echo chamber into a daily frenzy. And frankly, guys, it’s not just boring, but you’re also continuously providing him with free publicity. At least make him work for some of it.

Then, however, the big microprocessor (chip) security ‘flaw’ was exposed. And that’s sort of interesting, because it concerns the basic architecture of basically every microchip produced in the past 20 years, even well before smartphones. Now, the first thing you have to realize is that we’re not actually talking about a flaw here, but about a feature. We use that line a lot in a half-jokingly version, but in this case it’s very much true. As Bloomberg succinctly put it:

All modern microprocessors, including those that run smartphones, are built to essentially guess what functions they’re likely to be asked to run next. By queuing up possible executions in advance, they’re able to crunch data and run software much faster. The problem in this case is that this predictive loading of instructions allows access to data that’s normally cordoned off securely..

And:

Spectre fools the processor into running speculative operations – ones it wouldn’t normally perform – and then uses information about how long the hardware takes to retrieve the data to infer the details of that information. Meltdown exposes data directly by undermining the way information in different applications is kept separate by what’s known as a kernel, the key software at the core of every computer.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

End of ‘free’ press? NYT caved in to Bush & Obama, held NSA bombshell for 1 yr – James Risen

January 6, 2018

End of ‘free’ press? NYT caved in to Bush & Obama, held NSA bombshell for 1 yr – James Risen

End of ‘free’ press? NYT caved in to Bush & Obama, held NSA bombshell for 1 yr – James Risen
© Gary Hershorn / Reuters
The New York Times was “quite willing” to quash stories at the behest of the government, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Risen. He warns that America’s press has been muzzled by “hyped threats” to national security.

In an in-depth retelling of his experience as a national security reporter for the New York Times (NYT), published in The Intercept, Risen explains how, on more than one occasion, the NYT yielded to government demands to withhold or kill his stories – including a bombshell report about the NSA’s secret surveillance program under President George W. Bush.

Jaded by previous experiences of US government interference in his work, Risen writes that his NSA story set him on a “collision course” with his editors, “who were still quite willing to cooperate with the government.” His editors at the Times had been convinced by top US officials that revealing the illegal surveillance program would endanger American lives, Risen said.

Bill Keller, the then executive editor of Times, said the newspaper’s decision to shelve the explosive report, which detailed how the NSA had “monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years,” was motivated by the lingering “trauma” of the 9/11 terror attacks, and the sobering reality that the “world was a dangerous place.”

Risen’s NSA scoop, which later won him a Pulitzer Prize, was eventually published a year after he submitted it to his seniors – but only after Bush had been safely re-elected. Risen said that upon hearing the story was finally going to print, Bush telephoned Arthur Sulzberger, the Times’s publisher, requesting a private meeting to convince him against running the story.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ghosts in the Propaganda Machine

January 5, 2018

Ghosts in the Propaganda Machine

S. Mangal’s social media profile and author photo.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Is this what online journalism looks like in the era of Russiagate fever? A fake writer (read Alice Donovan) catfishes CounterPunch and a dozen other online websites. A handful of her articles are published over a two-year period. The FBI is tracking her and believes this writer, whoever is behind the moniker, has some ties to Russia. What kind of ties and how deep do they go? We aren’t sure. No evidence is presented, perhaps because there isn’t much, or perhaps because the NSA and the FBI are also spying on actual journalists and editors right along with the alleged imposters. The Washington Post calls for a quote on the FBI’s allegation and runs an article a month later on Kremlin operatives “burning across the internet”.

More panic ensues.

But only one troll was named in the Washington Post piece, Alice Donovan — our suspected interloper. Prior to the Post’s article, we found out Donovan likely was not who she claimed to be and was a plagiarist to boot. We apologized for our screw-up and issued a lengthy investigation into the whole Donovan ordeal and the challenges of vetting writers in the fast-paced world of cyber-journalism. The story ends there, or does it?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Facebook will infiltrate national elections and rule the world in less than 10 years — unless we stop it

December 29, 2017

How Facebook will infiltrate national elections and rule the world in less than 10 years — unless we stop it

What do NATO, private military contractors, giant arms manufacturers, wine merchants, the NSA, Trump, British property tycoons, Russian oligarchs, and Big Oil have in common? The world’s largest social network

Source: Geek.com

Published to launch the new beta platform for INSURGE intelligence, a crowdfunded journalism platform for Open Inquiry and coordinated action in service of people and planet. Become an owner of the media revolution.

Imagine a world in which everybody gave away their freedom, willingly, in return for being able to belong to a toxic network which, rather than enriching their lives, profited from eroding civil discourse, polarizing communities, and manipulating their minds.

Wouldn’t you wonder what was wrong with these people?

You would. And yet that is the world you are about to inhabit, right now. Unless you do something about it.

This story is a call to action. A call on citizens, technologists, philanthropists, journalists and beyond to take action to disrupt our current path to a dystopian, monocultural future. As such, it experiments with a new form of journalistic narrative called Open Inquiry, that aims to balance out the investigation of power with a recognition of solutions and alternatives.

Facebook is on track to become more powerful than the National Security Agency — so says a senior advisor to the US military intelligence community who predicted the rise of artificial intelligence and robot warfare. In less than a decade, Facebook’s growth will mean it potentially has the ability to monitor almost everyone on the planet. This will make the firm more powerful than any other government contractor in the world.

This prospect has dangerous ramifications for democracy. Increasing evidence reveals that Facebook’s most lucrative business model is to outsource itself as a conduit for psychological warfare to any third party that wants to influence the beliefs and behaviors of citizens.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Government Is Lying to Us About Cybersecurity

November 15, 2017

The Government Is Lying to Us About Cybersecurity

The Department of Justice is full of excuses for wanting back doors into encryption systems, but they’re just that: excuses.

In a press conference, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stated that the “absolutist position” that strong encryption should be, by definition, unbreakable is “unreasonable.”

The DOJ is lying about three things:

First

The US government works against the security of businesses. Just this week, I had to tell Apple that my iPhone app did not have certain kinds of encryption that the U.S. government has export control on. Encryption export controls cripple the security and innovation of software products made by American businesses.  

Furthermore, the U.S. government hoards software exploits so it can hack into your computer rather than publish them that so companies can patch their products. The NSA intentionally sneaks weaknesses into protocols and bribes businesses to add holes to security products so it can steal the data of their customers.

The only “cybersecurity” that the government cares about is its ability to conduct surveillance and attacks on political targets.

When businesses want to improve the security of their products, they offer rewards for exploits – Microsoft pays up to $250,000 per exploit, Facebook has paid $40,000, and so on. The NSA purchases millions of dollars of exploits from hackers and uses them to spy on the entire world, including U.S. citizens. Unfortunately, the NSA is incompetent at keeping secrets, so it lost their exploit database and caused millions of computers to be infected and hijacked with the exploits they hoarded.The hardware and software pieces of both the Internet and individual user’s computers are made by private companies. There is nothing the U.S. government can do to improve “cybersecurity” other than prosecuting criminal behavior.  However, the U.S. government prosecutes a minuscule proportion of cybercrime.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Protect Yourself Online, No Matter Your Security Needs

November 13, 2017

How to Protect Yourself Online, No Matter Your Security Needs

Find a balance between security and convenience that is appropriate for your life.

Almost every week, it seems that there is some kind of major security breach. Whether celebrity nudes, the social security numbers of the majority of Americans, or a Bitcoin heist, it seems that our private data is under constant attack.

The Internet and your co-workers are full of advice: put a sticker over your webcam, disable Flash/Java in your browser, encrypt your drives, delete your Facebook account, cover your hand while using the ATM, get a burner phone, pay for everything with cash, start wearing a tinfoil hat to protect against the NSA’s spy rays, etc.

The reality is that as more and more of our lives become digital, information security becomes increasingly important. Many bad things can happen when your privacy is breached: from finding out that you have a boat loan that you didn’t know about to having your naked photos all over the web to being thrown in jail because the government doesn’t approve what you have to say. It’s important to take appropriate measures to protect yourself, but what is appropriate for you really depends on the kind of secrets you have to keep and the kinds of threats you need to protect against.

Let’s consider three people who care about their privacy, and steps they should take to keep their stuff private:

Lisa Monroe

Lisa Monroe lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She is a college student with a part-time job.  She just got her first credit card, and just started going steady with a boyfriend.

To keep her private photos private, Lisa only sends them using Snapchat.

Lisa doesn’t have many secrets to keep, but she is worried about fraud to her credit and debit cards and the naughty pics she trades with her boyfriend Brad.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“False Flags” Are So Common that U.S. Officials Commonly Discuss Them

November 7, 2017

“False Flags” Are So Common that U.S. Officials Commonly Discuss Them

Despite the attempt to marginalize the concept, “false flags” are so common that U.S. officials frequentlyuse that phrase.

For example, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell:

Former Director for Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council, Roger Cressey:

Former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Mudd:

Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, a high ranking Air Force official:

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and Neocon warmonger) John Bolton:

The Washington Post notes that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved as an acceptable interrogation method

A technique known as “false flag,” or deceiving a detainee into believing he is being interrogated by someone from another country.

NBC News points out:

In another document taken from the NSA by Snowden and obtained by NBC News, a JTRIG official said the unit’s mission included computer network attacks, disruption, “Active Covert Internet Operations,” and “Covert Technical Operations.” Among the methods listed in the document were jamming phones, computers and email accounts and masquerading as an enemy in a “false flag” operation. The same document said GCHQ was increasing its emphasis on using cyber tools to attack adversaries.

Washington’s Blog asked high-level NSA official Bill Binney* if he had heard of the term “false flags” when he was with the NSA.

Binney responded:

Sure, they were under deception and manipulation programs.  I was not involved in doing them; but, I did have to figure out some that the other side was doing.  The other side called them “dezsinformatsiya” and Manipulatsiya.”

The Brits have been doing this for several hundred years and are quite good at it.

Washington’s Blog asked Philip Giraldi – a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA – the same question with regards to his experience with the CIA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What the Kennedy Assassination Records Reveal: Uncontrollable Incompetence

November 1, 2017

What the Kennedy Assassination Records Reveal: Uncontrollable Incompetence

Imagine Harvey Weinstein wielding a “top secret” stamp to block any exposure of the uncomfortable truth and you have the FBI, CIA and NSA.

One way to interpret the intelligence community’s reluctance to let all the Kennedy assassination archives become public is that the archives contain evidence of a “smoking gun”: that is, evidence that the intelligence agencies of the United States of America were complicit in the assassination of the President.

I think the agencies fear something larger: exposure of their gross incompetence, their “cowboy” recklessness and their disavowal of elected-civilian control. Their fear of this exposure is based on one simple fact: nothing’s changed since 1963. They were unaccountable and incompetent then, and they remain unaccountable and incompetent now. The only difference is their funding has greatly increased.

We rarely get an insider’s glimpse of the intelligence community’s pettiness, hubris and incompetence. The Ministry of Propaganda is tasked with showing the NSA, CIA, FBI, et al. as super-competent, super-dedicated, and focused on defeating evil (which is always presented as unambiguously evil, i.e. anti-American.)

Although it’s 30 years old, I still recommend this account of a top MI5 (U.K.) officer, SpyCatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer.

I’ve read many books on the intelligence community, but few (if any) reveal the inter-agency rivalries and bad blood that (as far as I can tell) still exist beneath a formal veneer of co-operation. The CIA and FBI were always envious of the NSA’s SigInt (signal intelligence, i.e. eavesdropping), and so they’ve attempted to create their own versions, with laughably incompetent results in the case of the FBI’s “Russians stole the election” inquiry.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War

October 28, 2017

In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War

 A television interview of a top Qatari official confessing the truth behind the origins of the war in Syria is going viral across Arabic social media during the same week a leaked top secret NSA document was published which confirms that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the conflict.

And according to a well-known Syria analyst and economic adviser with close contacts in the Syrian government, the explosive interview constitutes a high level “public admission to collusion and coordination between four countries to destabilize an independent state, [including] possible support for Nusra/al-Qaeda.” Importantly, “this admission will help build case for what Damascus sees as an attack on its security & sovereignty. It will form basis for compensation claims.”

A 2013 London press conference: Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. A 2014 Hillary Clinton email confirmed Qatar as a state-sponsor of ISIS during that same time period. 

As the war in Syria continues slowly winding down, it seems new source material comes out on an almost a weekly basis in the form of testimonials of top officials involved in destabilizing Syria, and even occasional leaked emails and documents which further detail covert regime change operations against the Assad government. Though much of this content serves to confirm what has already long been known by those who have never accepted the simplistic propaganda which has dominated mainstream media, details continue to fall in place, providing future historians with a clearer picture of the true nature of the war.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

NSA Concealed Records on JFK Assassination for Decades

October 25, 2017

THERE IS SOMETHING perverse about the fact that President Donald Trump, the exuberant and all-too-successful spinner of conspiracy theories, and deeply ignorant of American history besides, will oversee the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination of his presidential predecessor, John F. Kennedy.

In 1992, Congress approved, and former President George H.W. Bush signed, the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. They were prodded by an Oliver Stone film on the killing released the year prior and the resulting flurry of public interest. The act mandated the disclosure of all assassination-related records no later than 25 years after its signing, by October 26, 2017 — this Thursday.

While federal agencies can contest the release of the documents on the grounds of “identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations” that “outweighs the public interest in disclosure,” according to the act, the chief executive gets the final say in all such cases. In other words, much of what we can still hope to learn about the JFK assassination hinges on Trump.

The estimated 113,000 pages of material, presently with the National Archives, are known from metadata searches to contain extensive mentions of Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Two documents provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and published for the first time today further underline how closely the intelligence community has held information related to Cuba’s potential role in the killing, indicating that the NSA for decades has kept secret its efforts to monitor Cuban agents’ communications in the aftermath of the event.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NSA Document Says Saudi Prince Directly Ordered Coordinated Attack by Syrian Rebels on Damascus

October 25, 2017

A LOOSELY KNIT collection of Syrian rebel fighters set up positions on March 18, 2013, and fired several barrages of rockets at targets in the heart of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad’s capital. The attack was a brazen show of force by rebels under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, targeting the presidential palace, Damascus International Airport, and a government security compound. It sent a chilling message to the regime about its increasingly shaky hold on the country, two years after an uprising against its rule began.

Behind the attacks, the influence of a foreign power loomed. According to a top-secret National Security Agency document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the March 2013 rocket attacks were directly ordered by a member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Salman bin Sultan, to help mark the second anniversary of the Syrian revolution. Salman had provided 120 tons of explosives and other weaponry to opposition forces, giving them instructions to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the airport, the document, produced by U.S. government surveillance on Syrian opposition factions, shows.

The Saudis were long bent on unseating Assad. Salman was one of the key Saudi officials responsible for prosecuting the war in Syria, serving as a high-ranking intelligence official before being promoted to deputy minister of defense later in 2013.

The NSA document provides a glimpse into how the war had evolved from its early stages of popular uprisings and repression. By the time of the March 2013 attack, arguably the most salient dynamic in the conflict was the foreign powers on both sides fueling what appeared to be a bloody, entrenched stalemate. The document points to how deeply these foreign powers would become involved in parts of the armed uprising, even choosing specific operations for their local allies to carry out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Legacy of Reagan’s Civilian ‘Psyops’ 

October 13, 2017

The Legacy of Reagan’s Civilian ‘Psyops’ 

Special Report: When the Reagan administration launched peacetime “psyops” in the mid-1980s, it pulled in civilian agencies to help spread these still-ongoing techniques of deception and manipulation, reports Robert Parry.

Declassified records from the Reagan presidential library show how the U.S. government enlisted civilian agencies in psychological operations designed to exploit information as a way to manipulate the behavior of targeted foreign audiences and, at least indirectly, American citizens.

Walter Raymond Jr., a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist who oversaw President Reagan’s “psyops” and “perception management” projects at the National Security Council. Raymond is partially obscured by President Reagan. Raymond is seated next to National Security Adviser John Poindexter. (Photo credit: Reagan presidential library)

A just-declassified sign-in sheet for a meeting of an inter-agency “psyops” committee on Oct. 24, 1986, shows representatives from the Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department, and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) joining officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department.

Some of the names of officials from the CIA and Pentagon remain classified more than three decades later. But the significance of the document is that it reveals how agencies that were traditionally assigned to global development (USAID) or international information (USIA) were incorporated into the U.S. government’s strategies for peacetime psyops, a military technique for breaking the will of a wartime enemy by spreading lies, confusion and terror.

Essentially, psyops play on the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily controlled or defeated, but the Reagan administration was taking the concept outside the traditional bounds of warfare and applying psyops to any time when the U.S. government could claim some threat to America.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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