noworldsystem.com


Militarized Police State: LRAD on a UAV

Militarized Police State: LRAD on a UAV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ouA0Tl8NNE

MAVs: The Future of Domestic Surveillance

Surveillance Drones To Zap Protesters Into Submission

Russia Creates Mind Control Weapons

First Time Sound Cannon Used Against American Citizens

 



Gates Admits Blackwater Operating in Pakistan

Gates Admits Blackwater Operating in Pakistan

Raw Story
January 22, 2010

The Pentagon has gone into damage control mode after Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared to confirm that security contractor Blackwater is operating in Pakistan.

The admission, quickly denied by Defense Department officials, has set fire to long-simmering rumors inside Pakistan about the involvement of for-profit contractors in the war against the Taliban.

Defense Department officials say Gates did not mean to suggest that Blackwater is now operating on Pakistani soil when a journalist from Pakistan’s Express TV asked him about military contractors’ activities.

In the interview, which took place Thursday, Gates was asked “about another issue that has come up and again … about the phone security companies [sic] that have been operating in Iraq, in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan. Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater or Data Corp. Under what rules are they operating here in Pakistan?”

“Well, they’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” Gates replied. “If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”

Pentagon backtracks after Gates admits Blackwater operating in PakistanThe Pentagon has gone into damage control mode after Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared to confirm that security contractor Blackwater is operating in Pakistan.

The admission, quickly denied by Defense Department officials, has set fire to long-simmering rumors inside Pakistan about the involvement of for-profit contractors in the war against the Taliban.

Defense Department officials say Gates did not mean to suggest that Blackwater is now operating on Pakistani soil when a journalist from Pakistan’s Express TV asked him about military contractors’ activities.

In the interview, which took place Thursday, Gates was asked “about another issue that has come up and again … about the phone security companies [sic] that have been operating in Iraq, in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan. Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater or Data Corp. Under what rules are they operating here in Pakistan?”

“Well, they’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” Gates replied. “If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
Story continues below…

“This appears to be a contradiction of previous statements made by the Defense Department, by Blackwater, by the Pakistani government and by the US embassy in Islamabad, all of whom claimed Blackwater was not in the country,” investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill wrote.

In November, Scahill reported that Blackwater is operating out of a covert US operating base in Karachi, where it “plan[s] targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ‘snatch and grabs’ of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.”

In December, the UK’s Guardian reported that Blackwater guards are patrolling a CIA airbase in Baluchistan province.

Gates’ comments have sent Pakistan’s legislature into an uproar, with at least one government official denying knowledge of Gates’ remarks.

Pakistan has been rife with rumors in recent years about private security contractors operating on the country’s soil, and “about purported US plots to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and build permanent American military bases,” as the Wall Street Journal puts it.

“Mr. Gates himself may have inadvertently helped fuel a new rumor,” the Journal stated.

Defense officials tried to clarify the comment Thursday night, telling reporters that Mr. Gates had been speaking about contractor oversight more generally and that the Pentagon didn’t employ Xe [a.k.a. Blackwater] in Pakistan.

It was too late, however. By Friday morning, an array of Pakistani newspapers, television stations and radio programs reported that “Blackwater” had begun operating in Pakistan as well, citing Mr. Gates’s comments.

Whether it was a mistake or an unintentional admission, Gates’ comments are certain to complicate efforts by the US to prod Pakistan into refocusing away from its long-time rival, India, to the Taliban presence on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

To that end, the US has announced it will provide Pakistan with a dozen Shadow drones, smaller cousins of the Predator drones the US uses in air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the New York Times reports.

The US has also announced a new strategy for the war effort that focuses on the “re-integration” of Taliban fighters into mainstream society. The effort will be led by Afghan President Karzai. In discussing the plans Friday, Karzai “spoke about offering money and jobs to tempt Taliban fighters to lay down their arms and return to civilian life,” according to Pakistan’s Dawn Media Group.

 



13 Afghan Protesters Killed by NATO Forces

13 Afghan Protesters Killed by NATO Forces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O29DDWUBb5I

US Drone Fired Missile Into a ‘Crowd of Suspects,’ Killing 13 Afghans

 



U.S. Provoking War With Venezuela

Netherlands has Granted U.S. Military Use of its Islands in the Caribbean

globalresearch.ca
January 14, 2010

The government of the Netherlands recently granted the US military use of its islands in the Caribbean, with the excuse that this is to help in the “war against drugs”. In reality, this is a direct threat to the Chavez government in Venezuela.

In the Dutch media articles have appeared about the “war-mongering” president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who is “preparing a war against Colombia”. Now Chávez has accused the Netherlands of supporting aggression against Venezuela, because the Netherlands has given permission to the American armed forces to use the military bases on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao[1].

In the media Hugo Chávez, as always, has been presented like some “crazy populist”, and of course the “civilised Netherlands” are presented as being totally innocent.

Later Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, said the American military were on Aruba and Curaçao, as part of the “war against drugs”. He remains silent about what is really happening on Aruba and Curaçao.

Authors such as Noam Chomsky and Eva Golinger have pointed out in different articles that the so-called “war against drugs” has nothing to do with any battle against drug smuggling, but has been used for other causes such as fighting against guerrilla movements and the spying of other countries. Since the start of the “war against drugs” there has only been more smuggling and consumption of drugs.

The fact that the Netherlands are participating in this is quite normal, because the Dutch government has a tradition of supporting American imperialism. After Britain the Netherlands are the biggest ally of the U.S. in Western Europe. The cabinet of Prime Minister Balkenende gave political support to the invasion of Iraq that was based completely on lies. Now the Netherlands have troops in Afghanistan, officially to rebuild the country, but in practice to prop up the corrupt regime of Karzai.

The bases on Aruba and Curaçao

In 1999 the Netherlands and the U.S. signed an agreement for the establishment of Forward Operating Locations (FOLs). This meant that the American military could use air force bases on Aruba and Curaçao. While the bases were originally used for operations against drug smuggling and the Colombian guerrilla movement FARC, this changed with the election of George Bush. Venezuela was seen as a threat by then, because it was a beacon of hope for the poor and working people of Latin America. In 2002 there was a CIA-backed coup attempt against the democratically elected Hugo Chávez. Since then there have only been more intrigues against Venezuela.

In 2006 there was a big military exercise by the U.S., Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, France and Canada in the Caribbean, named Joint Caribbean Lion 2006. This exercise was clearly a provocation against Venezuela. After criticisms by the Venezuelan government the then-minister of defence Henk Kamp and some right-wing MPs decided to accuse Chávez of “wanting to conquer the Antilles”. This was based on false statements from the Venezuelan opposition, that stated Chávez claimed everything within 200 miles from the Venezuelan coast as Venezuelan territory, while in that speech Chávez clearly said “12”, and not “200” miles.

Now there is a new conflict. This has everything to do with the recent militarization of Colombia and its seven military bases that have been given to American troops. Venezuela is not talking nonsense as the media keep claiming. Colombia’s military spending now is 5% of its Gross Domestic Product. At the peak of her struggle against the FARC this was 2.5%.

Also the American Fourth Fleet has been stationed back in the Caribbean since 2008. This fleet was disbanded in 1950 after the end of WWII, but now it is back and close to the Venezuelan coast.

The Netherlands are now playing the role of junior partner of the U.S. in the Caribbean. Different spy planes have been detected above Venezuela. An American Boeing RC-135 has taken off at different times from Curaçao and has been detected over Venezuelan air space.

Hugo Chavez orders military to shoot at US aircraft

 



Aftermath of U.S. Air Strike in Yemen

Aftermath of U.S. Air Strike in Yemen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uUE-vCwV0M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGCWmqW9qoQ

 



U.S., China Are on Collision Course Over Oil

Obama’s Yemeni odyssey targets China

Asia Times
January 9, 2010

A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is “marking territory” – like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.

The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn’t end with Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that, the US establishes its military presence in an entire unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian Ocean’s western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The US has now foreclosed China’s options. The only country with a coastline that is available for China to set up a naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries have a Western military presence. (are western military puppet governments)

The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he doesn’t receive any body bags of American servicemen serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special forces and “focus on providing intelligence and training to help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants”, according to the US military. Obama’s main core objective will be to establish an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many purposes.

A new great game begins

First, the US move has to be viewed against the historic backdrop of the Shi’ite awakening in the region. The Shi’ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi’ite uprisings have been a recurring theme in Yemen’s history. There has been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of Shi’ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.

More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate Sunni Arab states – and Israel – is that the Believing Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in Lebanon in all respects – politically, economically, socially and culturally.

Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The Yemeni Shi’ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which is a key American base, is predominantly Shi’ite. Even more sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of Shi’ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia’s highly restive Shi’ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country’s fabulous oil wealth.

Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of political transition as a new generation is set to take over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and fault lines within the royal family are likely to get exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of institutionalized Shi’ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by the Wahhabi establishment, Shi’ite empowerment is a veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against the north Yemeni Shi’ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia testifies.

The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies – as he did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But democratization in the Yemeni context – ironically, in the Arab context – would involve Shi’ite empowerment. After the searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil rich-region in which it has profound interests.

Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn’t want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only “democratic” system operating in that entire region.

Iran’s shadow over the Yemeni Shi’ite consciousness worries the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he isn’t finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be believed, there could be times when the vague recollections of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the White House corridors.

Israel moves in

But Obama is first and foremost a realist. Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty considerations for Obama.

The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen – just as it did in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.

Islamism doesn’t deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn’t have been far off the mark when he alleged last year that Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.

Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel (and Britain). But the “pro-West” Arab states with their rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute spectators on the sidelines.

Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli security presence in the region as a safer bet than the spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi’ite empowerment emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn’t done that already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.

It’s all about China

Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait will put the US in an unassailable position in the “great game” of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China’s economy. By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an extravagant indulgence in fantasy.

In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the primary intent of eroding China’s influence with the military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to open a new transportation route towards the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting traditional Western economic dominance.

China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US, on the contrary, is determined that China remains vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and Malaysia.

An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy with China’s efforts to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan. Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose around the neck of the Pakistani elites – civilian and military – and forcing them to make a strategic choice between the US and China. This will put those elites in an unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they are inherently “pro-Western” (even when they are “anti-American”) and if the Chinese connection is important for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances perceived Indian hegemony.

The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will have to learn to live?

US-India-Israel axis

On the other hand, the Indian elites are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama’s political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the broad contours of the US’s global strategy – of which containment of China is a core template.

The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers as well as successive administrations. And all this is happening at a time when the India-Israel security relationship is gaining greater momentum.

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude toward India’s longstanding quest for “dual-use” technology from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military cooperation is about to open between the two countries, which will make India a serious challenger to China’s growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business for American companies.

Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on. It will have significance for the security of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.

All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be “change”, has careened away and increasingly defaults to the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the “revisionism” in his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia and towards China and Russia.

Arguably, this sort of “return of the native” by Obama was inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama’s presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a train cannot be “steered”, the driver can at best set its speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.

Besides, history has no instances of a declining world power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.

 

Russia, China, Iran redraw energy map

Asia Times
January 9, 2010

The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran’s northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan’s vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is “apocalypse now” for the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?

The 182-kilometer Turkmen-Iranian pipeline starts modestly with the pumping of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas. But its annual capacity is 20bcm, and that would meet the energy requirements of Iran’s Caspian region and enable Tehran to free its own gas production in the southern fields for export. The mutual interest is perfect: Ashgabat gets an assured market next door; northern Iran can consume without fear of winter shortages; Tehran can generate more surplus for exports; Turkmenistan can seek transportation routes to the world market via Iran; and Iran can aspire to take advantage of its excellent geographical location as a hub for the Turkmen exports.

We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world’s largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy.

Read Full Article Here

Afghanistan: only the first move in the grand chess game for control of Central Asian resources

 



MAVs: The Future of Domestic Surveillance

MAVs: The Future of Domestic Surveillance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2ZA-ecdtfo

Air Force Completes Assassinator Robot Wasp Project

 



Pakistan: Over 700 Civilians Killed in US Drone Strikes

Pakistan: Over 700 Civilians Killed in US Drone Strikes

Dawn News
January 3, 2009

PESHAWAR: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.

According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities.

The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day. Most of the attacks were carried out on the basis of human intelligence, reportedly provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen, who are spying for the US-led allied forces in Afghanistan.

Of the five successful predator attacks carried out in 2009, the first one came on January 1, which reportedly killed two senior al-Qaeda leaders – Usama al-Kin and Sheikh Ahmed Salim – both wanted by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Kin was the chief operational commander of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and had replaced Abu Faraj Al Libi after his arrest in 2004.

The second successful drone attack was conducted on August 5 in South Waziristan that killed the most wanted fugitive chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud along with his wife.

The US State Department had announces a $5million head money for information leading to Baitullah, making him the only Pakistani fugitive with the head money separately announced by Islamabad and Washington.

 



Hugo Chavez orders military to shoot at US aircraft

Hugo Chavez orders military to shoot at US aircraft

London Telegraph
December 21, 2009

President Hugo Chavez has accused the US of violating Venezuela’s airspace with an unmanned spy plane, and ordered his military to shoot down any such aircraft in the future.

Speaking during his weekly television and radio program, Mr Chavez said the aircraft overflew a Venezuelan military base in the western state of Zulia after taking off from neighbouring Colombia. He did not elaborate, but suggested the plane was being used for espionage.

“These are the Yankees. They are entering Venezuela,” he said.

“I’ve ordered them to be shot down,” Mr Chavez said of the aircraft. “We cannot permit this.”

Read Full Article Here

War threat between Venezuela and Colombia increases

 



US drone strikes leave 17 dead in Pakistan

US drone strikes leave 17 dead in Pakistan

Press TV
December 17, 2009

Several US drones have fired at least 10 missiles into the Pakistani tribal areas, killing 17 people and injuring several others, Pakistani officials say.

Multiple drones launched an onslaught on several houses in North Waziristan on Thursday evening.

An intelligence official said 10 missiles fired from five US unmanned aircraft hit two compounds in Angoshga, some 25 kilometers west of the district’s main town of Miranshah.

“The attacks killed at least 15 militants and injured several more,” DPA quoted the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Sources say death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured were said to be in critical condition.

Earlier at around midday, two missiles slammed into a house allegedly used by militants.

Read Full Article Here

The War is in Pakistan Right Now

 



Robots go to war: American insect Terminators

Robots go to war: American insect Terminators

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP7FtwEejVI

Packs Of Robots Will Hunt Uncooperative Humans

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs

Flying Taser Saucer To Become A Reality

A.I. War Machines a “Threat to Humanity”

 



CIA Hired Blackwater for Pakistan Bombings, Assassinations

CIA Hired Blackwater for Pakistan Bombings, Assassinations


Is Erik Prince Graymailing The U.S. Government?

The Nation
December 6, 2009

The in-depth Vanity Fair profile of the infamous owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is remarkable on many levels–not least among them that Prince appeared to give the story’s author, former CIA lawyer Adam Ciralsky, unprecedented access to information about sensitive, classified and lethal operations not only of Prince’s forces, but Prince himself. In the article, Prince is revealed not just as owner of a company that covertly provided contractors to the CIA for drone bombings and targeted assassinations, but as an actual CIA asset himself.

While the story appears to be simply a profile of Prince, it might actually be the world’s most famous mercenary’s insurance policy against future criminal prosecution. The term of art for what Prince appears to be doing in the VF interview is graymail: a legal tactic that has been used for years by intelligence operatives or assets who are facing prosecution or fear they soon will be. In short, these operatives or assets threaten to reveal details of sensitive or classified operations in order to ward off indictments or criminal charges, based on the belief that the government would not want these details revealed. “The only reason Prince would do this [interview] is that he feels he is in very serious jeopardy of criminal charges,” says Scott Horton, a prominent national security and military law expert. “He absolutely would not do these things otherwise.”

There is no doubt Prince is in the legal cross-hairs: There are reportedly two separate Grand Juries investigating Blackwater on a range of serious charges, ranging from gun smuggling to extralegal killings; multiple civil lawsuits alleging war crimes and extrajudicial killings; and Congress is investigating the assassination program in which Prince and his company were central players. “Obviously, Prince does know a lot and the government has to realize that once they start prosecuting him,” says Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “In some ways, graymail is what any good defense lawyer would do. This is something that’s in your arsenal.”

Read Full Article Here

 



The War is in Pakistan Right Now

Scahill: ‘The war is in Pakistan right now’
Military drones show no remorse on Pakistan civilians, creating U.S. hatred

Raw Story
December 4, 2009

In the wake of President Obama’s plan to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, questions are being raised about the use of private contractors in US operations there. The acknowledgement by Eric Prince, founder of military contractor Blackwater, that he has been serving for years as a CIA asset only intensifies these concerns.

For Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestselling book Blackwater, however, the real concern is not Afghanistan but Pakistan, where according to an article in the New York Times, “the White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program.”

“We need to view this sober reality,” Scahill told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “The war is in Pakistan right now. There’s no question about it. The question, though, is how much it’s going to expand. … These are actions that are going to destabilize Pakistan and are going to create new enemies for the United States because of the high civilian casualties. … Here you have military operations inside a country that we don’t have a declaration of war against.”

Scahill emphasized that the most destabilizing actions come not from the CIA but from Blackwater mercenaries, whom he recently described in The Nation as working for US special forces to “plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ‘snatch and grabs’ of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.”

The drone attacks outsourced to Blackwater are the source of the highest numbers of civilian casualties. Scahill told Maddow that one of his sources is a “very well-placed military intelligence source [who] is offended at the idea that you have these operations happening outside of the military chain of command and with no oversight from the Congress.”

“Blackwater has been operating under the cover of a training program,” Scahill explained. “Blackwater is training the Pakistani Frontier Corps, which is a federal paramilitary force that is hunting down high-value targets in the frontier province. A former Blackwater executive told me that the line is being crossed — that Blackwater guys are actually going out on these raids.”

Scahill also revealed a few interesting tidbits about Eric Prince’s decision to out himself as a CIA asset, saying, “I see this sort of as Eric Prince taking out an insurance policy for himself. … Eric Prince is in the cross-hairs now of the Congress, the federal investigators, and others … and it’s a way of trying to insulate himself from future attacks.”

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Dec. 3, 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COSFrTB1Uk
Rachel Maddow: Obama is Continuing The Bush Doctrine

 



Rachel Maddow: Obama Continuing Bush Doctrine

Rachel Maddow: Obama is Continuing the Bush Doctrine

NoWorldSystem.com
December 3, 2009

She’s right;

Obama “19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder 3,000 people. . . As we know the men belonged to alqaeda . . . Alqaeda’s base of operations were in Afghanistan.”
Actually the ’19 hijackers’ were Saudi Arabians.

Obama “(Afghanistan) is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by alqaeda, from (Afghanistan) we were attacked on 9/11, and it’s from here that new attacks are being plotted as i speak. Because we know that alqaeda and other extremist seek nuclear weapons and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.” “We have to take away the tools of mass destruction. . . “
This is precisely what the Bush administration’s rationale; “The attacks from 9/11 came from Iraq or Afghanistan so we must fight alqaeda there so they don’t come to our shores with weapons of mass destruction.”. One shouldn’t have to argue any longer that Obama is just another puppet like George W. Bush, bending-over for the royal internationalist oligarchs that want global military dominance throughout the mideast region.

Many have warned long before the 2008 elections that Obama is a war candidate and is no different from McCain, Bush or Cheney on foreign policy. Many didn’t listen, and now we are stuck in Afghanistan which will cost us financially, spiritually and not to mention many more lives of U.S. soldiers. Obama is continuing to besmirch the name of Americans, causing more tension against Americans and incubating violent hatred against the west, terrorism that supposedly Obama wants to prevent from happening.

Even the former Soviet Union is warning Obama that a war against the Taliban futile and will only create more resistance in the region.:

The same enemy that Obama says that we must fight were once U.S. allies, Osama Bin Laden worked for the United States until 9/11, and the Taliban were funded and trained by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, the U.S. was already caught paying the Taliban not to kill U.S. troops and some are most likely on the CIA payroll.

Afghanis just want to be left alone, the entire Alqaeda/Taliban fraud is all a front for the real reasons for the war, and that is oil and heroin.

 

Michael Savage Reaction To Obama Afghanistan Speech

 

Obama ‘to expand drone strikes’ in Pakistan

Press TV
December 3, 2009

The administration of the Nobel peace laureate, President Barack Obama, has authorized an expansion of drone attacks on Pakistan’s troubled tribal regions, a new report says.

The New York Times report also says US and Pakistani officials are discussing the possibility of CIA operated drone strikes in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province for the first time.

The purported aim of the American air strikes is to target militants. But Pakistani media outlets say the raids have mostly killed civilians.


Obama bombs Pakistan

The unpopular strikes were initiated under the George W Bush administration in 2006.

Use of drones has increased since the Nobel peace laureate, Obama, became president.

Obama has repeatedly vowed to expand the controversial strikes that have raised anti-US sentiments across Pakistan.

The development also comes as Obama has announced his intention to deploy 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan and his top commander in Afghanistan says that Washington is not planning an early exit from Afghanistan.

Although nearly 110,000 foreign troops are present in Afghanistan after more than eight years of US-led invasion, they have not been able to establish stability in the war-ravaged country.

Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan was condemned by Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich.

“The war is a threat to our national security. We’ll spend over $100 billion next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our soldiers’ lives on the line,” the Ohio congressman said in a statement.

 



Celente forecasts next 9/11 will be in 2010

Celente forecasts next 9/11 will be in 2010

 



Taliban Still Working for the CIA?

Taliban Still Working for the CIA?

Henry Makow Ph.D.
November 8, 2009

As President Obama ponders whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, there is mounting evidence the Taliban is supported by the CIA. If correct, the Afghan war is a charade with a hidden agenda.

First, we have many reports that unmarked helicopters are ferrying the Taliban to targets, and relieving them when cornered.

“Just when the police and army managed to surround the Taliban in a village of Qala-e-Zaal district, we saw helicopters land with support teams,” an Afghan soldier said. “They managed to rescue their friends from our encirclement, and even to inflict defeat on the Afghan National Army.”

This story, in one form or another, is being repeated throughout northern Afghanistan. Dozens of people claim to have seen Taliban fighters disembark from foreign helicopters in several provinces.

“I saw the helicopters with my own eyes,” said Sayed Rafiq from Baghlan-e-Markazi.

“They landed near the foothills and offloaded dozens of Taliban with turbans, and wrapped in patus (a blanket-type shawl).”

“Our fight against the Taliban is nonsense,” said the first soldier. “Our foreigner ‘friends’ are friendlier to the opposition.”

CIA AIR BASES IN PAKISTAN

Last February, there were reports of CIA airbases within Pakistan used for drones. If this is true, Pakistanis are being attacked by drones based in their own country. Obviously, the CIA helicopters supporting the Taliban could also come from these bases.

In May, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, told NBC News that the CIA and the U.S.-Funded Pakistani ISI intelligence service “has created the Taliban.”

Zardari said that the CIA and the ISI are still supporting the Taliban.

On Oct 29, 2009, Hillary Clinton told Pakistani officials that she found it “hard to believe” the Pakistani ISI didn’t know where Al Qaeda leaders were hiding. Her role is to maintain the illusion that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not CIA creations.

Just the day before, Oct. 18, four American citizens were caught photographing sensitive buildings in Islamabad. All four were dressed in traditional Afghan outfits and were found to be in possession of illegal weapons and explosives.

Their vehicles contained 2 M-16A1 rifles, 2 handguns and 2 hand-grenades. The police held the American citizens in custody for an hour before the Interior Ministry interfered and had them released without charge even as preliminary investigation was being carried out.

Clearly, the CIA could be involved in the recent attacks on Pakistani institutions. Who knows? In some cases, the “Taliban” could be CIA mercenaries.

In Feb. 2008, the British were caught planning a training camp for the Taliban in Southern Afghanistan supposedly to make them “change sides.” Karzai expelled two top British “diplomats.” This was all part of the ongoing charade.

THE HIDDEN AGENDA

All wars are charades. This is true of the world wars, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, 9-11 and the current war on terror. The human race is caught in a hologram controlled by the Illuminati Rothschild central bankers.

War are necessary to keep the human race divided, distracted and dehumanized. Otherwise, we might focus on the fact that a small network of Masonic families, based in London, control government credit. Therefore, the central banking cartel incites wars using pawns like Bush and Obama, and intelligence agencies like the CIA, Mossad, MI-6 and ISI. They finance these wars by issuing debt repayable to them by the taxpayer.

As I have said, their ultimate goal is to translate their monopoly over government credit into a worldwide monopoly over power, wealth and culture; in other words, to disinherit and enslave the human race. This is called world government.

I’m not an expert on the politics of the Asian subcontinent. But it appears that the
Afghanistan war should be seen in a larger regional context. Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated a “global-zone of percolating violence,” that included all of Central Asia, Turkey, southern Russia, and the western borders of China. It also included the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf (Iran), Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The plan was outlined in Brzezinski’s book, “The Grand Chessboard” (1997) . Ostensibly, the
purpose was to prevent Russia from becoming an imperial power again. But that’s not the real reason. What do these countries have in common? They are Muslim. Islam is the last redoubt of faith in God.

The Illuminati are Satanists. Put two and two together. The Afghan war has some immediate benefits: perpetual war, arms spending, drugs, pipelines etc. But it is part of a larger “war of civilizations” designed to degrade and destroy Islam. Look for this war to expand and go on forever.

———————–
On a related note, The New York Times reported Oct. 28, 2009 that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been getting regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, citing current and former U.S. officials.

”Ahmed Wali Karzai is a suspected player in Afghanistan’s opium trade and has been paid by the CIA over the past eight years for services that included helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar,” the newspaper reported.

 



Alex Jones Drafts Ron Paul for 2012 Presidency Bid

Alex Jones Drafts Ron Paul for 2012 Presidency Bid

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
October 29, 2009

On speculation that Congressman Ron Paul may soon announce his intentions to run again for President in 2012, radio host Alex Jones has urged that he do so in an effort to once again spread the message of liberty on a grassroots level. Ron Paul, Jones says, would be the only candidate to foster debate on real issues, and would be the only candidate to operate under the Constitution’s guidelines.

Though Paul was considered a long-shot leading up to the 2008 Republican primaries, he generated substantial fundraising and proved deadly against the milk-toast ‘Republican-in-name-only’ candidates that included one-time front runner Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and, of course, John McCain.

Alex Jones hopes to further spread the message of Ron Paul’s campaign, who has proved prescient on a wide-variety of issues where other candidates proved short-sighted and flat wrong, including the Dollar’s demise. The call to return to Constitutional government and otherwise revitalize freedom has been spread through decentralized groups all across the country as well as in Ron Paul’s on-going “Campaign for Liberty” and his son Rand Paul’s viable bid for U.S. Senate in Kentucky.

Now, with Barack Obama falling in the polls and ringing hollow on his promises, another opportunity has arisen for a truly Constitutional candidate to win the Presidency and wake mainstream America out of its spell.

Launching the campaign for 2012 in the near future would send shockwaves into the halls of political debate, in online searches for topics like “End the Fed” and would force the Mainstream Media to go into damage control as the unstoppable message from the bottom up seeks to reclaim our Republic.

Run Ron, Run!

 

Alex Jones: U.S. a powerslave serving aims of New World Order

 



U.S. Special Forces Training to Attack Iran Nuclear Facilities

U.S. Special Forces Training to Attack Iran Nuclear Facilities

 



Obama Steps Up Drone Bombings Despite Civilian Deaths

Obama Steps Up Drone Bombings Despite Civilian Deaths

Sherwood Ross
Prisonplanet.com
October 20, 2009

“Even if a precise account is elusive,” writes Jane Mayer in the October 26th The New Yorker, “the outlines are clear: the C.I.A. has joined the Pakistani intelligence service in an aggressive campaign to eradicate local and foreign militants, who have taken refuge in some of the most inaccessible parts of the country.”

Based on a study just completed by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., “the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President,” Mayer reports.

In fact, the first two strikes took place on Jan. 23, the President’s third day in office and the second of these hit the wrong house, that of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one just five years of age.

At any time, the C.I.A. apparently has “multiple drones flying over Pakistan, scouting for targets,” the magazine reports. So many Predators and its more heavily armed companion, the Reaper, are being purchased that defense manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, of Poway, Calif., can hardly make them fast enough. The Air Force is said to possess 200.

Mayer writes, “the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.” Today, Mayer writes, “there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.” And according to Gary Solis, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Law Center, nobody in the government calls it assassination. “Not only would we have expressed abhorrence of such a policy a few years ago; we did,” Solis is quoted as saying.

David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency warfare authority who co-authored a study for the Center for New American Security, of Washington, D.C., has suggested the drone attacks have backfired. As he told The New Yorker, “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.”

And because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, Mayer writes, “there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”

The New Yorker further reports the Obama Administration has also expanded the sphere of authorized drone assaults in Afghanistan. An August Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the Pentagon’s list of approved terrorist targets held 367 names and included some 50 Afghan drug lords “who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban,” Mayer reports. She quotes the Senate report as stating, “There is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds goes to Al Qaeda.”

It is the military’s version of the drone assaults that operates in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the C.I.A.’s drones hunt terror suspects in countries where U.S. troops are not based and is “aimed at terror suspects around the world,” Mayer writes. The C.I.A. effort was launched by Obama’s predecessor, and a former aide to President George W. Bush says Obama has left nearly all the key personnel in place.

Running the C.I.A. program is a team of operators that handle Predator flights off runways in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once aloft, the Predators are passed over to controllers at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., who maneuver joysticks and monitor events from a live video feed from the drone’s camera.

The magazine article reports the government plans to commission “hundreds more” of the drones, including “new generations of tiny ‘nano’ drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.”

 



Google-Earth To Track People In Real-Time

Editor’s Note: This could be the start of the New World Order MATRIX, where every ‘thing’ in the world can be located and tracked on the internet
Augmented Google-Earth Tracks Real-Time People, Cars, Weather

Cryptogon
September 30, 2009

The surveillance side of this is the chickenfeed. There’s something far more sinister than the simple surveillance… an angle we haven’t heard about yet.

Tice never did tell his story to Congress about this different aspect of the program.

Well, my guess is that it has something to do with providing surveillance data for this SEAS World Sim thing, and that individual Americans are being watched and potentially targeted with it. Tice’s background seems to involve a lot of traditional electronic warfare, radar and ELINT stuff. Maybe Tice’s deal involved the collection of the mobile phone GPS and/or triangulation data which would provide realtime spacial/geographic data to the SEAS system. In other words, SEAS sees you. They could bring up a map of a city and plot your path based on the information that your phone is exchanging with the mobile network.

Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation

Via: Popular Science:

Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.

They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

They use motion capture data to help their animated humans move realistically, and were able to extrapolate cars’ motion throughout an entire stretch of road from just a few spotty camera angles.

From their video of an augmented virtual Earth, you can see if the pickup soccer game in the park is short a player, how traffic is on the highway, and how fast the wind is blowing the clouds across the sky.

Up next, they say they want to add weather, birds, and motion in rivers.

 

Ubiquitous Computing: Big Brother’s All-Seeing Eye

 



Pakistan: U.S. Drone Attack Kills 12, Women and Children Included

Pakistan: U.S. Drone Attack Kills 12, Women and Children Included

Pakistan Observer
August 22, 2009

More than a dozen innocent civilians mostly children and females were killed and many injured when the notorious American drones hit a house with hell fire missiles in North Waziristan Agency Friday wee hours.

The CIA operated pilotless US planes, fired at least two deadly projectiles on the house of one Mirza Khan in Danday Darpakhel village two kilometer North of Miran Shah, the headquarters of North Waziristan Agency on Friday at 3.50 a.m. The eyewitnesses said the house was razed to the ground. At least 12 inmates including five children and two females were perished while many others received critical injuries. The death toll was feared to go higher. According to details, the drone hit at a house of an Afghan refugee in Danday Darba Khel village killing at least 12 people of which 5 are kids and two females. “However, we have no reports if there was any foreigner among the remaining five dead,” the sources in the political administration told this scribe adding the targeted house was close to a madrassa run by the Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani.

The local people rushed to the house and recovered the bodies from the rubble. The injured were rushed to hospital for treatment. Three other houses were also demolished in the deadly attack. The identity of the victims could not be ascertained.

It was reported that the infuriated Taliban following the incident, attacked a military check post in Danday Darba Khel area which resulted in a shoot out between the militants and the security forces for almost two hours and the administration confirmed injuries to at least two soldiers in the clash.

Read Full Article Here

 



Obama bombs Pakistan

Here we go.. Obama continues Bush’s policy on military force in Pakistan

Obama bombs Pakistan

NY Daily News
January 23, 2009

U.S. Predator drones hit two suspected AlQaeda dens in Pakistan with Hellfire missiles Friday – the first cross-border strikes from Afghanistan on President Obama’s watch.

Pakistani officials said at least 15 people were killed, including three children and four civilians. The attacks signaled Obama had given the green light to the CIA and the military to continue former President Bush’s policy of targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan.

New White House press secretary Robert Gibbs repeatedly declined to say whether Obama had personally signed off on the missile attacks that hit two villages in Pakistan’s lawless northwest frontier zone. “I’m not going to speak about these matters,” Gibbs said.

But U.S. intelligence sources told the Daily News neither the military nor the CIA was authorized to carry out such attacks without presidential approval.

In one of the strikes, “A militant den was successfully destroyed. At least five foreign Al Qaeda militants were killed,” a Pakistani official told Agence France-Presse.

During the campaign, Obama warned that he would authorize cross-border operations to go after Osama Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, with or without the approval of Pakistan, which complained about the missile strikes.

“It helps us in no way conducting our operations” against Islamic militants, Pakistani Army Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told CNN.

“We face much more difficulty as a result of drone strikes, and we have conveyed our position on that” to the U.S., Abbas said.

Pakistan routinely protests the air strikes as violations of sovereignty, but U.S. sources have suggested that Pakistan secretly supports the tactic to hit militants that also threaten the central government.

The U.S. has carried out more than 30 air strikes on targets in Pakistan since last July, killing more than 260 people.

Among those killed were top operatives planning attacks against the West, sources told The News. The list included:

Pakistan warned Petraeus over missile strikes
http://rawstory.com/..raeus_over_missil_01202009.html

Obama ready to deploy 20,000 troops to Afghanistan
http://rawstory..ady_to_deploy_up_to_20_01232009.html

Ron Paul: Obama Will Massively Increase The Government
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ron-..vernment.html
Barack Obama: it is no longer essential to kill Osama bin Laden
http://www.times..s_and_americas/article5520116.ece

Obama’s orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact
http:/..obamas-orders-leave-torture-indefinite.html” target=”_self

 



Australia To Enforce Mandatory Internet Censorship

Australia To Enforce Mandatory Chinese-Style Internet Censorship
Government to block “controversial” websites with universal national filter

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
October 29, 2008

The Australian government is set to impose Chinese-style Internet censorship by enforcing a universal national filter that will block websites deemed “controversial,” as part of a wider agenda to regulate the Internet according to free speech advocates.

A provision whereby Internet users could opt out of the filter by contacting their ISP has been stripped from the legislation, meaning the filter will be universal and mandatory.

The System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it will restrict web access, raise prices and slow internet traffic speeds.

The plan was first created as a way to combat child pornography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia,” reports the Australian Herald Sun.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the Global Network Initiative, bringing together leading companies, human rights organisations, academics and investors, committed the technology firms to “protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users”. (Complete black is white, up is down, double talk).

Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate “there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it.”

Speaking from personal experience, not only are “controversial” websites blocked in China, meaning any website that is critical of the state, but every website the user attempts to visit first has to pass through the “great firewall,” causing the browser to hang and delay while it is checked against a government blacklist.

This causes excruciating delays, and the user experience is akin to being on a bad dial-up connection in the mid 1990’s. Even in the center of Shanghai with a fixed ethernet connection, the user experience is barely tolerable.

Not only are websites in China blocked, but e mails too are scanned for “controversial” words and blocked from being sent if they contain phrases related to politics or obscenities.

Googling for information on certain topics is also heavily restricted. While in China I tried to google “Bush Taiwan,” which resulted in Google.com ceasing to be accessible and my Internet connection was immediately terminated thereafter.

The Australian government will no doubt insist that their filter is in our best interests and is only designed to block child pornography, snuff films and other horrors, yet the system is completely pointless because it will not affect file sharing networks, which is the medium through which the vast majority of such material is distributed.

If we allow Australia to become the first “free” nation to impose Internet censorship, the snowball effect will only accelerate – the U.S. and the UK are next.

Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Blair called for Internet censorship last year.

In April 2007, Time magazine reported that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time. The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

Moves to regulate the web have increased over the last two years.

– In a display of bi-partisanship, there have been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.

– In December 2006, Republican Senator John McCain tabled a proposal to introduce legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards. It is well known that McCain has a distaste for his blogosphere critics, causing a definite conflict of interest where any proposal to restrict blogs on his part is concerned.

– During an appearance with his wife Barbara on Fox News in November 2006, George Bush senior slammed Internet bloggers for creating an “adversarial and ugly climate.”

– The White House’s own de-classified strategy for “winning the war on terror” targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to “diminish” their influence.

– The Pentagon has also announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.

– In an October 2006 speech, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a “terror training camp,” through which “disaffected people living in the United States” are developing “radical ideologies and potentially violent skills.” His solution is “intelligence fusion centers,” staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will are already in operation.

– The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.

– A landmark November 2006 legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations sought to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web – and their argument was supported by the U.S. government.

– A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.

– The European Union, led by former Stalinist John Reid, has also vowed to shut down “terrorists” who use the Internet to spread propaganda.

– The EU data retention bill, passed after much controversy and implemented in 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, sms’, emails and instant messaging services.

– The EU also proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.

– The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. “At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites.”

Governments are furious that their ceaseless lies are being exposed in real time on the World Wide Web and have resolved to stifle, regulate and control what truly is the last outpost of real free speech in the world. Internet censorship is perhaps the most pertinent issue that freedom advocates should rally to combat over the course of the next few years, lest we allow a cyber-gag to be placed over our mouths and say goodbye to our last medium of free and open communication.

 

DARPA building search engine for video surveillance footage

Ars Technica
October 21, 2008

The government agency that birthed the Internet is developing a sophisticated search engine for video, and when complete will allow intelligence analysts to sift through live footage from spy drones, as well as thousands of hours worth of archived recordings, in order to spot a variety of selected events or behaviors. In the past month, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced nearly $20 million in total contracts for private firms to begin developing the system, which is slated to take until at least 2011 to complete.

According to a prospectus written in March but released only this month, the Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) will enable intel analysts to “rapidly find video content of interest from archives and provide alerts to the analyst of events of interest during live operations,” taking both conventional video and footage from infrared scanners as input. The VIRAT project is an effort to cope with a growing data glut that has taxed intelligence resources because of the need to have trained human personnel perform time- and labor-intensive review of recorded video.

The DARPA overview emphasizes that VIRAT will not be designed with “face recognition, gait recognition, human identification, or any form of biometrics” in mind. Rather, the system will search for classes of activities or events. A suggested partial list in the prospectus includes digging, loitering, exploding, shooting, smoking, following, shaking hand, exchanging objects, crawling under a car, breaking a window, and evading a checkpoint. As new sample clips are fed into the system, it will need to recognize the signature features of new classes of search terms.

Read Full Article Here

 

EU Set to Move ‘Internet of Things’ Closer to Reality

Daniel Taylor
Old-Thinker News
November 2, 2008

If the world-wide trend continues, ‘Web 3.0′ will be tightly monitored, and will become an unprecedented tool for surveillance. The “Internet of Things”, a digital representation of real world objects and people tagged with RFID chips, and increased censorship are two main themes for the future of the web.

The future of the internet, according to author and “web critic” Andrew Keen, will be monitored by “gatekeepers” to verify the accuracy of information posted on the web. The “Outlook 2009″ report from the November-December issue of The Futurist reports that,

“Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen believes that the anonymity of today’s internet 2.0 will give way to a more open internet 3.0 in which third party gatekeepers monitor the information posted on Web sites to verify its accuracy.”

Keen stated during his early 2008 interview withThe Futurist that the internet, in its current form, has undermined mainline media and empowered untrustworthy “amateurs”, two trends that he wants reversed. “Rather than the empowerment of the amateur, Web 3.0 will show the resurgence of the professional,” states Keen.

Australia has now joined China in implementing mandatory internet censorship, furthering the trend towards a locked down and monitored web.

The Internet of Things

Now, the European Union has announced that it will pursue the main component of Web 3.0, the Internet of Things (IoT).

According to Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media for the EU, “The Internet of the future will radically change our society.” Ultimately, the EU is aiming to “lead the way” in the transformation to Web 3.0.

Reporting on the European Union’s pursuit of the IoT, iBLS reports,

“New technology applications will need ubiquitous Internet coverage. The Internet of Things means that wireless interaction between machines, vehicles, appliances, sensors and many other devices will take place using the Internet. It already makes electronic travel cards possible, and will allow mobile devices to exchange information to pay for things or get information from billboards (or streetlights).”

The Internet of Things consists of objects that are ‘tagged’ with Radio Frequency Identification Chips (RFID) that communicate their position, history, and other information to an RFID reader or wireless network. Most, if not all major computer companies and technology developers (HP, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, etc.) are putting large amounts of time and money into the Internet of Things.

Cisco and Sun Microsystems have founded an alliance to promote the Internet of Things and further its implementation.

South Korea is at the forefront in implementing ubiquitous technology and the Internet of Things. An entire city, New Songdo, is being built in South Korea that fully utilizes the technology. Ubiquitous computing proponents in the United States admit that while a large portion of the technology is being developed in the U.S., it is being tested in South Korea where there are less traditional, ethical and social blockades to prevent its acceptance and use. As the New York Times reports

“Much of this technology was developed in U.S. research labs, but there are fewer social and regulatory obstacles to implementing them in Korea,” said Mr. Townsend [a research director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California], who consulted on Seoul’s own U-city plan, known as Digital Media City. ‘There is an historical expectation of less privacy. Korea is willing to put off the hard questions to take the early lead and set standards.’

An April 2008 report from the National Intelligence Council discussed the Internet of Things and its possible implications.

A timeline shown in the April 2008 NIC report

The report outlines uses for the technology:

“Sensor networks need not be connected to the Internet and indeed often reside in remote sites, vehicles, and buildings having no Internet connection. Smart dust is a term that some have used to express a vision of tiny, wireless-connected sensors; more recently, others use the term to describe any of several technologies that range from the size of a pack of gum to a pack of cigarettes, and that are widely available to system developers.

Ubiquitous positioning describes technologies for locating objects that may reside anywhere, including indoors and underground locations where satellite signals may be unavailable or otherwise inadequate.

Biometrics enables technology to recognize people and other living things, rather than inanimate objects. Connected everyday objects could recognize authorized users by means of fingerprint, voiceprint, iris scan, or other biometric technology.”

These trends towards internet censorship and the internet of things are undoubtedly going to continue, but restricting your free speech and violating your privacy will be harder with your outspoken resistance.

DARPA spies on analyst brains; hopes to offload image analysis to computers
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20..-image-analysis-to-computers.html

Security services want personal data from sites like Facebook

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/15/terrorism-security

UK.gov says: Regulate the internet

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/20/government_internet_regulation/

 



Packs Of Robots Will Hunt Uncooperative Humans

Packs Of Robots Will Hunt Uncooperative Humans

New Scientist
October 23, 2008

The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a “Multi-Robot Pursuit System” that will let packs of robots “search for and detect a non-cooperative human”.

One thing that really bugs defence chiefs is having their troops diverted from other duties to control robots. So having a pack of them controlled by one person makes logistical sense. But I’m concerned about where this technology will end up.

Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed? I asked two experts on automated weapons what they thought – click the continue reading link to read what they said.

Both were concerned that packs of robots would be entrusted with tasks – and weapons – they were not up to handling without making wrong decisions.

Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen. “The giveaway here is the phrase ’a non-cooperative human subject’,” he told me:

“What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed.

We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed.”

Another commentator often in the news for his views on military robot autonomy is Noel Sharkey, an AI and robotics engineer at the University of Sheffield. He says he can understand why the military want such technology, but also worries it will be used irresponsibly.

“This is a clear step towards one of the main goals of the US Army’s Future Combat Systems project, which aims to make a single soldier the nexus for a large scale robot attack. Independently, ground and aerial robots have been tested together and once the bits are joined, there will be a robot force under command of a single soldier with potentially dire consequences for innocents around the corner.”

What do you make of this? Are we letting our militaries run technologically amok with our tax dollars? Or can robot soldiers be programmed to be even more ethical than human ones, as some researchers claim?

 



DARPA Wants Real-Time Images of Inside Your House

DARPA Wants Real-Time Images of Inside Your House

Wired Magazine
October 23, 2008

The Pentagon wants to be able to peer inside your apartment building — picking out where all the major rooms, stairways, and dens of evil-doers are.

The U.S. military is getting better and better at spotting its enemies, when they’re roaming around the streets. But once those foes duck into houses, they become a whole lot harder to spot. That’s why Darpa, the Defense Department’s way-out research arm, is looking to develop a suite of tools for “external sensing deep inside buildings.” The ultimate goal of this Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project: “reverse the adversaries’ advantage of urban familiarity and sanctuary and provide U.S. Forces with complete above- and below-ground awareness.”

By the end of the project, Darpa wants a set of technologies that can see into a 10-story building with a two-level basement in a “high-density urban block” — and produce a kind of digital blueprint of the place. Using sensors mounted on backpacks, vehicles, or aircraft, the HIBR gear would, hopefully, be able to pick out every room, wall, stairway, and basement in the building — as well as all of the “electrical, plumbing, and installation systems.”

Darpa doesn’t come out and say it openly. But it appears that the agency wants these HIBR gadgets to be able to track the people inside these buildings, as well. Why else would these sensors be required to “provide real-time updates” once U.S. troops enter the building? Perhaps there’s more about the people-spotting tech, in the “classified appendix” to HIBR’s request for proposals.

There are already a number of efforts underway, both military and civilian, to try to see inside buildings. The Army has a couple of hand-held gadgets that can spot people just on the other side of a wall. Some scientists claim that can even catch human breathing and heartbeats beyond a barrier.

Darpa’s Visibuilding program uses a kind of radar to scan structures. The problem isn’t sending the radio frequency (RF) energy in. It’s “making sense of the data produced from all the reflected signals” that come back, Henry Kenyon wrote in a recent Signal magazine article. Besides processing data from the inside a structure, the system also must filter a large amount of RF propagation in the form of randomly reflected signals. Although radar technologies exist that can track people in adjacent rooms, it is much more difficult to map an entire building. “Going through one wall is not that bad, but a building is basically an RF hall of mirrors. You’ve got signals bouncing all over the place,” Darpa program manager Dr. Edward J. Baranoski says. Field trials are supposed to get underway this fall.

 



Pakistan Connecting Deadly Explosion to U.S. Military

Pakistan Investigating US Marine Activity Inside Marriott Hotel Days Before Huge Bombing

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
September 24, 2008


A view of a deep crater caused by Saturday’s massive truck bombing at Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008. The bombing devastated the luxury hotel in Pakistan’s capital, killing some 60 people and injuring more than 250

Pakistani authorities investigating last Saturday’s huge bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad are looking into evidence that US marines were occupying two floors just days prior to the blast and were witnessed unloading a truckload of steel cases inside.

“The authorities want to ascertain if it was a routine exercise or part of some special mission that does not have the approval of the government of Pakistan,” Pakistan’s largest newspaper The News reported.

The reports of the mysterious activity first surfaced in the Pakistani media on Sunday.

According to the accounts, several witnesses, including Pakistani government officials, described seeing a US embassy truckload of steel boxes unloaded while all entrances to and from the hotel were locked down at around midnight on the 16th September.

The cases were not taken through security scanners in the hotel’s lobby, but were shifted directly to the fourth and fifth floors, the same floors that fire broke out on after the truck bombing on Saturday.

“Already, the government has got information that several rooms on the fourth floor of the Marriott were in permanent use of the US authorities. Three of these rooms were said to be inter-connected and contained some intelligence equipment and other material allegedly used for espionage,” The News also reported.

The reports have also been picked up in the press in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

A US embassy statement said that the marines were a routine team of support personnel that often precede and/or accompany certain US government officials, and that the cases contained communication equipment.

Further rumours that several senior officers of the CIA were staying at the hotel at the time of the attack were also strenuously denied by the US embassy statement as “inaccurate, irresponsible, baseless and completely without any foundation whatsoever.”

“Al Qaeda” was quickly portioned with the blame once more just hours after the dust had settled, while the Taliban have also been touted as suspects.

Meanwhile new claims have surfaced linking the bombing to an Islamic fundamentalist group based in Iran.

In our leading article earlier this week which has since been picked up by the Pakistan Daily, we detailed how Pakistan’s new leadership were due to dine at the hotel, but changed the venue at the last minute, according to a senior government official.

This raises the question, whether it be “Al Qaeda”, the Taliban or some other group of anti-American “terrorists”, why would they want to decapitate the new anti-US administration of Pakistan?

 

Pakistan hotel bombing kills at least 60

AFP
September 21, 2008

A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday, killing at least 60 people in a brazen attack in the heart of the Pakistan capital.

Around 200 people were wounded, some critically, and there were fears more dead would be found in the fiery wreckage of the hotel, a popular gathering place for politicians, foreigners and the Pakistan elite.

Officials said they were worried the building, engulfed in flame after the blast ruptured a gas pipeline, would collapse. A security official said many people leapt to their deaths from upper floors rather than be burnt alive.

The bombing came shortly after new President Asif Ali Zardari, who faces a struggle to rein in Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, delivered his inaugural address to parliament only a few hundred metres away.

It was one of the deadliest attacks in an increasingly bloody campaign by militants in Pakistan, a vital ally in the US-led “war on terror,” and presented Zardari with a major challenge just days after he took office.

Read Full Article Here

Why Would “Al Qaeda” Want To Decapitate Anti-US Leadership In Pakistan?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/why-..-in-pakistan.html

Pakistan probes mystery of US Marines’ steel boxes in Marriott
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Stor..%27+steel+boxes+&strParent=strParentID

“U.S. drone” crashes in northwest Pakistan
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080924/tpl-uk-pakistan-drone-81f3b62.html

Zardari ‘was target of bomb plot’
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080922/twl-zardari-was-target-of-bomb-plot-41f21e0.html

Pakistan blames US raids for hotel bombing
http://www.independent.co.uk/ne..r-hotel-bombing-938952.html

 



Dutch Intelligence Helped CIA Prepare UAV Attack on Iran

Biggest Newspaper In Holland Says Dutch Intelligence Helped Prepare Imminent Attack On Iran
De Telegraaf front page says sources inside AVID helped CIA map air attack

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
August 29, 2008


The biggest Newspaper in the Netherlands today devotes its front page to news that the Dutch intelligence agency has helped the CIA prepare for an air attack on Iran which it now believes is imminent.

AVID, Holland’s military intelligence service, has pulled back from operations it was carrying out inside Iran as it believes an American led attack will go ahead within weeks according to De Telegraaf’s sources.

The headline reads:

“AIVD is calling back spy because of US plans
ATTACK ON IRAN IMMINENT”

De Telegraaf reports that the decision has already been made by the U.S.
to attack Iran using unmanned aircraft. Potential targets are said to be nuclear facilities and military installations. The latter have been mapped by the CIA with the help of the Dutch secret service.

A portion of the article reads:

Good sources have declared to the Telegraaf that the AIVD has been operating in Iran for the last few years with the purpose of the infiltration and sabotage of the weapons industry of the Iranian republic.

The operations are said to have been “very successful” but have recently been put to a halt because of american plans for an air attack. Information regarding the AIVD operation has been shared with the CIA in recent years according to the sources.

Iran is probably working towards an atomic bomb and refuses to comply to western demands to stop enriching uranium. In june Israeli vice president Shaul Mofaz made the statement that an Israeli attack is inevitable if Iran continues its quest for atomic weapons.

The full article is online here.

A roughly translated version can also be found here.

Holland is a staunch ally of the U.S. government in the “war on terror”. Dutch troops have served on the front lines in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

 

Iran warns any attack would start ‘world war’

AFP
August 30, 2008

A senior Iranian military commander has warned that any US or Israeli attack on the Islamic republic would start a world war, the state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.

“Any aggression against Iran will start a world war,” deputy chief of staff for defence publicity, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, said in a statement carried by the agency.

Iran is under international pressure to halt uranium enrichment, a process which lies at the core of fears about Iran’s nuclear programme as it can make nuclear fuel as well as the fissile core of an atom bomb.

“The unrestrained greed of the US leadership and global Zionism… is gradually leading the world to the edge of a precipice,” Jazayeri said, citing the unrest in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Georgia.

“It is evident that if such a challenge occurs, the fake and artificial regimes will be eliminated before anything,” he said, without naming any countries.

Iran does not recognise Israel, which is often described by officials in Tehran as a “fake regime.”

Read Full Article Here