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Ruling Class Propaganda: Only Government-Approved Apps Allowed

January 4, 2020

RULING CLASS PROPAGANDA: ONLY GOVERNMENT-APPROVED APPS ALLOWED

The United States Army has decided that soldiers can no longer access certain apps. They have banned soldiers from using TikTok over alleged Chinese “cyber threat”, but in reality, it’s just an app the U.S. government can’t control.

The U.S. Army is signaling that its soldiers should stick to platforms that march exclusively to Washington’s tune and do not deviate from the official narrative and government-approved propaganda.  An army spokeswoman confirmed on Monday that the Chinese app “is considered a cyber threat“ and will no longer be allowed on government phones and mobile devices. The military had previously used the popular social media platform to reach out to potential recruits, according to a report by RT. 

The decision comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Navy banned the Chinese app from all government-issued mobile devices – citing the same alleged “cybersecurity threat.”  Anyone who’s been paying attention, however, should know that TikTok poses no cybersecurity threat.  It poses a threat to the American power structure that the establishment ruling class is desperately attempting to hold on to.

The Pentagon issued a Cyber Awareness Message earlier in December, warming that using TikTok could come with “potential security risks.“ The app had been targeted by two US senators, Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), and Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who requested in October that US intelligence agencies probe the app. –RT

TikTok parent company ByteDance has strongly denied any sinister motives, even as competing apps, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook have been proven to collude openly with government agencies. In September, executives from all the major U.S. social media platforms met with U.S.S.A government officials to discuss how to “secure“ the 2020 elections and crackdown on the spread of “polarizing“ content.

That can be translated to “the government wants social media and tech giants to remove any content that does not support their ruling class power structure.”

US Army Takes 50 Tons of Gold From Syria in Alleged Deal With ISIS

March 1, 2019

US Army Takes 50 Tons of Gold From Syria in Alleged Deal With ISIS

As the remaining pockets of ISIS fighters faced imminent defeat in northeast Syria, the United States allegedly gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse: give us your massive caches of gold — or die.

According to reports by Syrian state news agency SANA, U.S. forces struck a deal with ISIS whereby the terrorist group would give up 50 tons of gold across eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour province in exchange for safe passage.

The precious metal, worth about $2.13 billion, was plundered by the self-designated “caliphate” as its reign of terror spread across Syria and Iraq between 2015 and 2017.

Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah reports that local sources claim U.S. Army helicopters have already transferred the gold from the U.S. forces’ base in Kobani, the Kurdish-controlled city that lies close to Syria’s northern border with Syria. A portion of the gold was also distributed to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominates the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The news comes after SANA claimed that locals witnessed U.S. helicopters airlifting large cases of gold amounting to about 40 tons from the al-Dashisha area in Hasaka’s southern countryside earlier this month. The gold was purportedly looted by ISIS from Mosul in Iraq and other parts of Syria.

The Syrian state media outlet claimed that ISIS leaders were on-hand to guide the U.S. helicopters to the places where the gold was stashed, “closing a deal by which Washington spared hundreds of the terror organization’s field leaders and experts.”

The claims by the Syrian government outlet coincide with reports by U.K.-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), which alleged that the U.S. and its Kurdish allies had been sparing ISIS fighters in hopes of acquiring the group’s war spoils.

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

Planet of War: Still Trapped in a Greater Middle Eastern Quagmire, the U.S. Military Prepares for Global Combat

November 21, 2018

Planet of War: Still Trapped in a Greater Middle Eastern Quagmire, the U.S. Military Prepares for Global Combat

American militarism has gone off the rails — and this middling career officer should have seen it coming. Earlier in this century, the U.S. military not surprisingly focused on counterinsurgency as it faced various indecisive and seemingly unending wars across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa. Back in 2008, when I was still a captain newly returned from Iraq and studying at Fort Knox, Kentucky, our training scenarios generally focused on urban combat and what were called security and stabilization missions. We’d plan to assault some notional city center, destroy the enemy fighters there, and then transition to pacification and “humanitarian” operations.

Of course, no one then asked about the dubious efficacy of “regime change” and “nation building,” the two activities in which our country had been so regularly engaged. That would have been frowned upon. Still, however bloody and wasteful those wars were, they now look like relics from a remarkably simpler time. The U.S. Army knew its mission then (even if it couldn’t accomplish it) and could predict what each of us young officers was about to take another crack at: counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fast forward eight years — during which this author fruitlessly toiled away in Afghanistan and taught at West Point — and the U.S. military ground presence has significantly decreased in the Greater Middle East, even if its wars there remain “infinite.” The U.S. was still bombing, raiding, and “advising” away in several of those old haunts as I entered the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Nonetheless, when I first became involved in the primary staff officer training course for mid-level careerists there in 2016, it soon became apparent to me that something was indeed changing.

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

“We Will Be At War With China In 15 Years” Predicts Former Commander Of U.S. Army In Europe

October 26, 2018

“We Will Be At War With China In 15 Years” Predicts Former Commander Of U.S. Army In Europe

Days after U.S. warships made a provocative passage through the Taiwan Strait on Monday, further making already strained tensions between the Washington and Beijing  — currently in the midst of a trade war — even hotter, the former top commander of the US Army in Europe has predicted the United States and China will likely be at war in 15 years.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges made the bombshell and alarming comments at a Warsaw security forum on Wednesday where he urged European allies to do more in preparing their own defenses against Russia while Americans focus more on the Pacific.

Gen. Hodges said, according to the Military Times:

I think in 15 years — it’s not inevitable, but it is a very strong likelihood — that we will be at war with China. The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat.

This statement is hugely remarkable in that it signifies the thesis has just left the domain of academic international relations theoreticians and has now become a guiding assumption of military commanders with years of experience on the ground.

General Ben Hodges (ret). commanded the US Army in Europe from 2014-2017. Image source: AP file photo

Hodges served as US Army commander in Europe during 2014-17, which makes his warning especially noteworthy, and he’s now an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis. He addressed an ongoing policy debate among policy and defense official circles over whether it’s a mistake for Washington to focus its defense efforts on “threats” like Russian and Iran.

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

US Army Prepares Troops Deployed In South Korea For WMD Attack

September 8, 2017

US Army Prepares Troops Deployed In South Korea For WMD Attack

On Thursday, amid de-escalation chatter, President Trump once again insisted that US military action in North Korea remains a possibility should the North continue its threatening behavior against the US and its allies. If the US were to strike, it would be a “sad day” for the isolated North, Trump promised, adding that while “it would be great” if the issue of containing the North’s nuclear program could be resolved without military action, “nothing is inevitable.” Not peace, not war.

Meanwhile, instead of remorse, Kim Jong Un has only expressed what appears to be frustration that global financial markets aren’t taking his threats more seriously, and has vowed to continue. With its neighbor and client state threatening to upset the global apple cart, China on Thursday hinted that it could support tighter UN economic sanctions, but also pushed the two sides to begin a dialogue. Meanwhile, Russia Today reports that the US military is continuing to prepare for another ground war on the continent. A recent procurement posting suggests that the US Army is seeking a contractor to train its forces in South Korea to respond to potential attacks involving a weapon of mass destruction.

According to a contract proposal posted by the Army on the Federal Business Opportunities website, the Army’s 718th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company (EOD) in South Korea should be taught to identify hazardous materials, “know how to perform basic control, containment and/or confinement operations,” and implement decontamination procedures.

The contractor would be expected to provide a two-week training course, taught on-site at the US Camp Humphreys base in South Korea. The US has 25,000 troops deployed at some 80 sites across the country. In August, the Pentagon posted another proposal that hinted at heightened anxieties about an attack: Contractors were needed to build walls around four US bases, according to Russia Today.

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

5 Gray Man secrets I learned as a surveillance operative

March 5, 2017

5 Gray Man secrets I learned as a surveillance operative

Luckily, this just happens to be something I’m very familiar with, having both been involved in real-world operations on source operations and surveillance teams as well as teaching agents in both classroom and field exercises (not to mention the crap ton of training I did, compliments of the government), so I’ll break down the basics for you as far as I understand the concept. If you really want to dig deeply into it, here’s a list of books that you might want to consider.

What is the Gray Man concept?

Surveillance Tradecraft: The Professional's Guide to Surveillance Training The gray man concept is the theory behind the tactics, techniques, and procedures of reducing an adversary’s awareness of your presence or actions, allowing you to operate in a semi-permissive environment.

In simpler terms, it means doing things in a way that any others either don’t pay attention to you or dismisses you from being a target while you go about your business. Essentially, it comes down to how to hide in plain sight.

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

Lawrence Wilkerson: “The American ‘Empire’ Is In Deep, Deep Trouble”

October 5, 2015

Lawrence Wilkerson: “The American ‘Empire’ Is In Deep, Deep Trouble”

Former US army colonel and Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson unleashed a most prescient speech on the demise of the United States Empire.

As Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith notes, Wilkerson describes the path of empires in decline and shows how the US is following the classic trajectory. He contends that the US needs to make a transition to being one of many powers and focus more on strategies of international cooperation.

The video is full of rich historical detail and terrific, if sobering, nuggets, such as:

“History tells us we’re probably finished.

The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is 1) strategically inept and 2) not the power it used to be. And that the trend is to increase that.”

Wilkerson includes in his talk not just the way that the US projects power abroad, but internal symptoms of decline, such as concentration of wealth and power, corruption and the disproportionate role of financial interests.

Wilkerson also says the odds of rapid collapse of the US as an empire is much greater is generally recognized. He also includes the issues of climate change and resource constraints, and points out how perverse it is that the Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously. He says that the worst cases scenario projected by scientists is that the world will have enough arable land to support 400 million people.

Further key excerpts include:

“Empires at the end concentrate on military force as the be all and end all of power… at the end they use more mercenary based forces than citizen based forces”

“Empires at the end…go ethically and morally bankrupt… they end up with bankers and financiers running the empire, sound familiar?”

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

Leaked Documents Show FBI, DEA and U.S. Army Buying Italian Spyware

July 7, 2015

Leaked Documents Show FBI, DEA and U.S. Army Buying Italian Spyware

Featured photo - Leaked Documents Show FBI, DEA and U.S. Army Buying Italian Spyware

The FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Army have all bought controversial software that allows users to take remote control of suspects’ computers, recording their calls, emails, keystrokes and even activating their cameras, according to internal documents hacked from the software’s Italian manufacturer.

The company, Hacking Team, has also been aggressively marketing the software to other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, demonstrating their products to district attorneys in New York, San Bernardino, California, and Maricopa, Arizona; and multi-agency task forces like the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation in Florida and California’s Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team. (We do not use this product nor are we currently considering a proposal from the vendor/manufacturer to purchase it,” Jerry Cobb, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said.)

The company was also in conversation with various other agencies, including the CIA, the Pentagon’s Criminal Investigative Service, the New York Police Department, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

The revelations come from hundreds of gigabytes of company information, including emails and financial records, which were released online Sunday night and analyzed by The Intercept. Milan-based Hacking Team is one of a handful of companies that sell off-the-shelf spyware for hundreds of thousands of euros — a price point accessible to smaller countries and large police forces. Hacking Team has drawn fire from human rights and privacy activists who contend that the company’s aggressive malware, known as Remote Control System, or RCS, is being sold to countries that deploy it against activists, political opponents and journalists.

Even in the U.S., where the software would presumably be used only with a judge’s approval, the tactic is still controversial. Just last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote to the director of the FBI asking for “more specific information about the FBI’s current use of spyware,” in order for the Senate Judiciary Committee to evaluate “serious privacy concerns.”

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

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