Jan 24

Today’s News 24th January 2019

  • Integrity Initiative: Big Brother's Minions… Or Flim-Flam Artists?

    Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    I’m not sure what to make of Integrity Initiative (what a great gaslighting name: integrity? Hah hah: no, just furtive paid propaganda and opinion steering). But I watch the unfolding revelations with fascination. Certainly, the whole thing is bigger than it seemed at first and all the documents being revealed appear to be true.

    On the one hand, it looks like a group of superannuated old gits gassing on about how warfare today involves everything, especially “information warfare”, while last century it was only bullets. (Ever read any, say, Sun Tzu or Clausewitz? Or, speaking of the last century, Goebbels? How about Bernays?) And how we concerned individuals have voluntarily come together (assisted by £2+ million of the taxpayer’s money) to save democracy. Unpaid, unasked and unplotted. Completely conspiracy-free in fact. (Too late, the documents are out).

    In short, that the essence of democracy is never to doubt what the Ministry of Truth tells you. There’s a naïve and bubble-like quality to this: they never think any thoughts but their own. So maybe these guys, instead of kveching at the mirror and shouting at the TV set, have figured out how to flim-flam the government into supplementing their pensions in return for pages of conspiracy-babble.

    Or are we looking at something rather bigger? As John Helmer points out, there is a long history of British intelligence operating behind such “independent” and “disinterested” cover. Did they help start the Russia hysteria in the USA? Did they not only play up the Skripal affair but actually create it? Did they have an effect on Spain and Catalonia? Infiltrate Sanders’ campaign? What’s this “impose changes over the heads of vested interests. NB we did this in the 1930s” stuff? Is that a reference to the Zinoviev Letter forgery? (1924 actually, but they don’t look like people who bother to check details). Corbyn, of course, they see as another Kremlin stooge: is it time to “discover” a Dear Jeremy, How can I help you win? Your friend Vladimir letter? There is a danger these “clusters” of like-minded (and paid) flacks pose: in a time when the “news” media solemnly informs us that Putin has weaponised humour and Pokemon, to say nothing of killer squids, a group of “expert” “concerned citizens” who “voluntarily” appear can ratchet the hysteria up to further heights. (Although only a Russian troll would “emphasise the dangers of war in Europe (!!)”) They are trying to establish a base in the USA (“challenging the ignorance of, tolerance of or sympathy for the Russian activity” – tolerance!!?? the US media Russia-bashes 24/7!) So, no matter the temptation, we can’t write them off as silly old fools.

    Here’s their website. And here’s some of their output, most of it written straight off the top of the head. Bellyfeel, as they say in Newspeak.

    Deadly “Novichok” is not strong enough to kill you today, but is strong enough to kill someone four months later. Whatever – deadly, shmeadly – you read it, my head hurts.

    Its [Russia’s, of course] ongoing lawfare activities have shaken the pillars of the post-WWII security architecture in Europe. Who knew? The very pillars!

    Russian state media have succeeded in persuading some parts of the Arab world that Russia intervention is required to resolve the region’s disputes, which appears be the ultimate goal of Russia’s strategy in the region. I don’t think it’s Russian media, I think it’s these guys. Here they are again in Manbij.

    Silly Russians! NATO expansion, colour revolutions, sanctions, gas wars, rhetoric, tossing arms control treaties – all done to help you!

    Russia attacked Georgia in 2008, lying that it was Georgia which had attacked Russia, absurd though this sounds when one compares the respective sizes of each country. A powerful argument, not heard before. (And not considered by the EU either; even its feeble report understood that Tbilisi attacked.)

    Russia’s only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, is often presented as the most striking symbol of Russia’s resurgent military power. Really, by whom? I follow this stuff and I know Russians like to talk about Piotr Velikiy or their submarines but the elderly Kuznetsov is just functional. (Although, escort tug, belching smoke and all, it works and the British media gets the fantods every time it appears.) This piece tries to show that Russia’s infrastructure is falling apart. Maybe they should spend more time on YouTube.

    The Kremlin lies. Repeatedly and seriously. This is the only conclusion which can be drawn if you accept the view of the British Government that the Russian state is behind the attack using a nerve agent on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yuliya. The Russian authorities have already put out at least 17 different versions of what happened. (47 here). Ah, but the prosecution doesn’t win if the accused can’t prove who did it. Presumption of innocence – isn’t that one of those fundamental principles you’re supposed to be defending? The problem with accepting the “view of the British Government” is that it requires superhuman doublethink and crimestop as this summary of the absurdities shows. The latest being that a bit of “Novichok” on a door handle requires removing the roof of the house while Zizzi’s, old roof and all, is open for business!

    However, at no time has the Integrity Initiative engaged in party political activity and would never take up a party-political stance. Spain and Catalonia? Sanders? Corbyn? Stay tuned.

    These guys really should get out more. If they were being paid by some private individual for this tripe that would be one thing; but the British government (and others?) is paying – in fact, it’s actually paying these people to influence its own policy. Think about that: that’s rather different. Even leaving aside all the stuff about “we did this in the 1930s”. It’s a bit Deep Stateish – it’s a lot Deep Stateish.

    Or maybe it’s just a bunch of retirees swindling the government by writing fluff about how Russia is sapping and impurifying all our precious bodily fluids.

    Sarcasm is fun but the big question is: who’s winning: these guys with millions and the support of most media outlets, or us with hundreds and sites like this one? But then we have reality on our side and, eventually, but it can be a long eventually, it bites.

    You decide. Here and here are the hacks. Or are they leaks? Interesting question, eh? We owe much thanks to Anonymous for exposing these people. Add Kim Klarenberg to your Twitter feed – an actual reporter doing actual reporting! I think there’s lots more to be revealed.

    I’m amused by Donnelly saying that the fact that their stuff has been hacked shows that they must be having an effect; no, there are people out there who are tired of the lies, secret manipulations and managed media campaigns whooping up war fever. They found you and they broke into your files. That’s all.

  • Uncle Sam Wants Your DNA: The FBI's Diabolical Plan To Create A Nation Of Suspects

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “As more and more data flows from your body and brain to the smart machines via the biometric sensors, it will become easy for corporations and government agencies to know you, manipulate you, and make decisions on your behalf. Even more importantly, they could decipher the deep mechanisms of all bodies and brains, and thereby gain the power to engineer life. If we want to prevent a small elite from monopolising such godlike powers, and if we want to prevent humankind from splitting into biological castes, the key question is: who owns the data? Does the data about my DNA, my brain and my life belong to me, to the government, to a corporation, or to the human collective?”―Professor Yuval Noah Harari

    Uncle Sam wants you.

    Correction: Uncle Sam wants your DNA.

    Actually, if the government gets its hands on your DNA, they as good as have you in their clutches.

    Get ready, folks, because the government— helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—is embarking on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

    As the New York Times reports:

    “The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived. In 2017, President Trump signed into law the Rapid DNA Act, which, starting this year, will enable approved police booking stations in several states to connect their Rapid DNA machines to Codis, the national DNA database. Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.”

    Referred to as “magic boxes,” these Rapid DNA machines – portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours – allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.

    Journalist Heather Murphy explains:

    “As police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal databases.”

    Suspect Society, meet the American police state.

    Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

    By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say.

    By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write.

    By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go.

    By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do.

    By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember.

    And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

    Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.

    Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.

    Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

    Consequently, no longer are we “innocent until proven guilty” in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals.

    The government’s questionable acquisition and use of DNA to identify individuals and “solve” crimes has come under particular scrutiny in recent years.

    Until recently, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone’s DNA. That has all been turned on its head by various U.S. Supreme Court rulings that pave the way for suspicionless searches and herald the loss of privacy on a cellular level.

    Certainly, it was difficult enough trying to protect our privacy in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Maryland v. King that likened DNA collection to photographing and fingerprinting suspects when they are booked, thereby allowing the government to take DNA samples from people merely “arrested” in connection with “serious” crimes.

    Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Maryland v. King is worth reading not only for the history lesson on the Fourth Amendment but for its clear-sighted rebuke of the police state’s tendency to justify every encroachment on our freedoms as necessary for security.

    As Scalia noted:

    “Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches… Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason. Today’s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes; then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane (surely the Transportation Security Administration needs to know the “identity” of the flying public), applies for a driver’s license, or attends a public school. Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”

    The Court’s decision to let stand the Maryland Court of Appeals’ ruling in Raynor v. Maryland, which essentially determined that individuals do not have a right to privacy when it comes to their DNA, made Americans even more vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or permission.

    Although Glenn Raynor, a suspected rapist, willingly agreed to be questioned by police, he refused to provide them with a DNA sample.

    No problem. Police simply swabbed the chair in which Raynor had been sitting and took what he refused to voluntarily provide.

    Raynor’s DNA was a match, and the suspect became a convict.

    As the dissenting opinion in Raynor for the Maryland Court of Appeals rightly warned, “a person desiring to keep her DNA profile private, must conduct her public affairs in a hermetically sealed hazmat suit…. The Majority’s holding means that a person can no longer vote, participate in a jury, or obtain a driver’s license, without opening up his genetic material for state collection and codification.”

    Yet in refusing to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its tacit approval for government agents to collect shed DNA, likening it to a person’s fingerprints or the color of their hair, eyes or skin.

    Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving.

    It’s what police like to refer to a “modern fingerprint.”

    However, unlike a fingerprint, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.”

    With such a powerful tool at their disposal, it was inevitable that the government’s collection of DNA would become a slippery slope toward government intrusion.

    All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the FBI’s massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.

    Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. However, in many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.

    What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

    For the rest of us, it’s just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our familial DNA shared with geneological services such as Ancestry and 23andMe, or through the collection of our “shed” or “touch” DNA.

    All of those fascinating, geneological ancestral searches that allow you to trace your family tree can also be used against you and those you love. As law professor Elizabeth Joh explains, “When you upload your DNA, you’re potentially becoming a genetic informant on the rest of your family.”

    While much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.

    Yet as scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:

    We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.

    What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name.

    As Forensic magazine reports, “As officers have become more aware of touch DNA’s potential, they are using it more and more. Unfortunately, some [police] have not been selective enough when they process crime scenes. Instead, they have processed anything and everything at the scene, submitting 150 or more samples for analysis.”

    Even old samples taken from crime scenes and “cold” cases are being unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles.

    Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.

    If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.

    Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

    No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.

    Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.

    Of course, there will be those who point to DNA’s positive uses in criminal justice, such as in those instances where it is used to absolve someone on death row of a crime he didn’t commit, and there is no denying its beneficial purposes at times.

    However, as is the case with body camera footage and every other so-called technology that is hailed as a “check” on government abuses, in order for the average person—especially one convicted of a crime—to request and get access to DNA testing, they first have to embark on a costly, uphill legal battle through red tape and, even then, they are opposed at every turn by a government bureaucracy run by prosecutors, legislatures and law enforcement.

    What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.

    Yet if there are no limits to government officials being able to access your DNA and all that it says about you, then where do you draw the line?

    As technology makes it ever easier for the government to tap into our thoughts, our memories, our dreams, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian.

    With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed at detecting and pursuing those who “might” commit a crime before they have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which government agents (FBI, local police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic disposition to be a “troublemaker” or their relationship to past dissenters.

    Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government’s already burgeoning database?

    As always there will be those voices—well-meaning, certainly—insisting that if you want to save the next girl from being raped, abducted or killed, then we need to give the government all the tools necessary to catch these criminals before they can commit their heinous crimes.

    If you care for someone, you’re particularly vulnerable to this line of reasoning. Of course we don’t want our wives butchered, our girlfriends raped, our daughters abducted and subjected to all manner of atrocities.

    But what about those cases in which the technology proved to be wrong, either through human error or tampering? It happens more often than we are told.

    For example, David Butler spent eight months in prison for a murder he didn’t commit after his DNA was allegedly found on the murder victim and surveillance camera footage placed him in the general area the murder took place. Conveniently, Butler’s DNA was on file after he had voluntarily submitted it during an investigation years earlier into a robbery at his mother’s home. The case seemed cut and dried to everyone but Butler who proclaimed his innocence. Except that the DNA evidence and surveillance footage was wrong: Butler was innocent.

    Moreover, despite the insistence by government agents that DNA is infallible, New York Times reporter Andrew Pollack makes a clear and convincing case that DNA evidence can, in fact, be fabricated. Israeli scientists “fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva,” stated Pollack. “They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.”

    The danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that crime scenes can be engineered with fabricated DNA.

    Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or immoral, then the prospect of government officials—police, especially—using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case might seem outlandish.

    Yet as history shows – and as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People – the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”

  • Millions Of Secret Bank Docs Leak Online After Mishap

    In the latest reminder of just how vulnerable Americans’ sensitive financial data can be, a server security lapse at Ascension, a data and analytics company for the financial industry, based in Fort Worth, Texas, left the unencrypted information – some 24 million documents – available for anyone who knew where to look. Ascension offers financial institutions the service of converting documents into files that can be read by computers, known as OCR.

    The server, which was running an Elasticsearch database, contained more than a decade’s worth of data – from loan and mortgage agreements to repayment schedules and other financial and tax documents – which offer an intimate insight into a person’s life. The information wasn’t protected by a password.

    Doc

    The database was only exposed for two weeks – but that was long enough for independent security researcher Bob Diachenko to find it. And if he was able to locate it, who knows how many professional cyber criminals were also able to find it. The database wasn’t shut down until mid-January, after TechCrunch inquired about it.

    TC found that almost all of the documents pertained to loans and mortgages offered by some of the largest lenders in America dating as far back as 2008 (including some that are now defunct). Some of the sensitive information exposed by the unforced error included social security numbers and W-2 forms, which are used by scammers to claim refunds.

    From our review, it was clear that the documents pertain to loans and mortgages and other correspondence from several of the major financial and lending institutions dating as far back as 2008, if not longer, including CitiFinancial, a now-defunct lending finance arm of Citigroup, files from HSBC Life Insurance, Wells Fargo, CapitalOne and some U.S. federal departments, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

    Some of the companies have long been defunct, after selling their mortgage divisions and assets to other companies.

    Though not all files contained the highly sensitive and personal data points, we found: names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and bank and checking account numbers, as well as details of loan agreements that include sensitive financial information, such as why the person is requesting the loan.

    Some of the documents also note if a person has filed for bankruptcy and tax documents, including annual W-2 tax forms, which are targets for scammers to claim false refunds.

    Though most of the files were presented out of order, making it difficult for criminals to sift through the data, TC was able to verify the identifies of all of the people identified in the files using public records.

    Citi, one of the lenders identified in the documents, said it has no continuing relationship with the third party responsible for the leak.

    Although the documents originate from these financiers, one bank – Citi, which helped to secure the data – said it had no current relationship with the company.

    “Citi recently became aware that a third party, with no connection to Citi, was storing certain mortgage origination and modification documents in an unsecure online environment,” said a Citi spokesperson. “These documents contained information about current or former Citi customers, as well as customers from other financial institutions. Citi notified law enforcement, initiated a thorough forensic investigation and worked quickly to ensure the information could no longer be publicly accessed.”

    Citi confirmed that “third party is a vendor to a company that had purchased the loans and we have found no evidence that Citi’s systems were compromised.”

    The bank added that it’s working to identify potentially affected customers.

    Dozens of other companies are affected, including smaller regional banks and larger multinationals.

    A Wells Fargo spokesperson said the data was obtained by Ascension from other entities that purchased Wells Fargo mortgages. When reached, neither HSBC nor CapitalOne had comment at the time of publication. A Housing and Urban Development spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The department is currently affected by the ongoing government shutdown. If anything changes, we’ll update.

    The breach is only the latest involving an Elasticsearch database. But it’s also a healthy reminder that it doesn’t take a data breach on par with JPM’s precedent-setting banking data breach to leave your information vulnerable to thieves.

  • Inside The FBI's 'Police State' Operation Against Trump

    Authored by Patrick Martin via Off-Guardian.org,

    A front-page article published last week in the New York Times revealing that the FBI secretly opened a counter-intelligence investigation into President Donald Trump after he fired FBI Director James Comey has laid bare a massive police state conspiracy by the US intelligence agencies.

    The Times published the article in an effort to revive the anti-Russia campaign against Trump, promoting the unsubstantiated and highly dubious claim that Trump is a Russian agent. The facts presented in the Times report are, in reality, far more damning of the FBI than of Trump.

    Despite the newspaper’s intentions, the picture painted by the Times of the FBI is alarming. The Times depicts a highly politicized intelligence agency whose officials carefully monitor the activities of the two main capitalist parties, keeping a vigilant eye out for any deviations from the national security consensus in Washington.

    The Times claims that Trump “had caught the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents when he called on Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack the emails of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.” Given that this was a sarcastic campaign remark directed against Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and delivered at a public news conference, Trump’s sally can hardly be construed as evidence of a conspiracy.

    The Times article goes on to describe how FBI officials monitored the platform adopted at the Republican National Convention, reporting that the spy agency “watched with alarm as the Republican Party softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia.” That is, the nation’s top police agency was concerned that the positions adopted contravened certain basic tenets of dominant sections of the foreign policy establishment.

    By what constitutional authority can the FBI, based on political positions adopted by one or the other of the two main capitalist parties, open up a secret investigation into treason and conspiracy? Such an operation bespeaks a police state and recalls the methods of the Stalinist NKVD.

    The agency also investigated four of Trump’s campaign aides over possible ties to Russia, and even made use of the notorious Steele dossier, consisting of anti-Trump gossip collated from Russian sources by a former British intelligence agent on the payroll of the Democratic Party.

    After Trump fired Comey, according to the Times, “law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests… Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.”

    The operations of the FBI, encouraged, aided and abetted by the Times, recall the paranoid rantings of the John Birch Society, the ultra-right group formed in the 1950s, whose founder, Robert Welch, notoriously claimed that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former World War II commander of Allied forces in Europe, was a “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.”

    Claims that once were the province of an extremist group, on the fringes of American politics, are now embraced by the military-intelligence apparatus, appear on the front page of the most influential American daily newspaper, and dominate the network and cable television news.

    But these allegations have no credibility. Why should anyone believe claims that Trump, at age 70, after decades as a real estate mogul, con man and media celebrity, with a billion-dollar fortune, suddenly decided to throw in his lot with Vladimir Putin? Even the Times report itself concedes, in a single sentence buried in the 2,000-word text, “No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials.”

    While there is no evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Moscow, the Times report itself is evidence of a conspiracy involving the intelligence agencies and the corporate media to overturn the 2016 presidential election – which Trump won, albeit within the undemocratic framework of the Electoral College – and install a government that would differ from Trump’s chiefly in being more committed to military confrontation with Russia in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

    A secret security investigation by a powerful police agency directed against an elected president or prime minister can be described as nothing other than the antechamber to a coup by the military or intelligence services.

    Historically, the FBI has been at the center of such dangers in the United States. Its founding director, J. Edgar Hoover, was notorious for his unchecked power, particularly during the period of the McCarthy anticommunist witch hunt, when he accumulated dossiers on virtually every Democratic and Republican politician and authorized widespread spying on civil rights and antiwar groups.

    President John F. Kennedy was so concerned that he installed his brother Robert as attorney general – and nominal superior to Hoover – to keep watch over the bureau. That did not save Kennedy from assassination in 1963, an event linked in still undisclosed ways to ultra-right circles, including Cuban exiles embittered by the Bay of Pigs disaster, Southern segregationists, and sections of the military-intelligence apparatus up in arms over Kennedy’s signing of a nuclear test ban treaty with Moscow.

    The New York Times report – and a companion piece published Sunday in the Washington Postclaiming that Trump has kept secret key details of his private conversations with Putin – serve to legitimize antidemocratic and unconstitutional conduct by the military-intelligence apparatus.

    These reports shed light on the striking complacency in the “mainstream” media over Trump’s threats to declare a national emergency, using the pretext of his conflict with congressional Democrats over funding of a border wall, which has led to a three-week-long partial shutdown of the federal government.

    If one takes for good coin the main contention of the reports by the two newspapers, their acquiescence in a potential Trump declaration of emergency rule is inexplicable. After all, if Trump is Putin’s agent, then a Trump declaration of a state of emergency, giving him sweeping, near-absolute authority, would put the United States under the control of Moscow.

    The explanation is that the Times and the Post welcome the discussion of emergency rule, to prepare the forces of the state for coming conflicts with the working class. Their only disagreement with Trump is over which faction of the ruling elite, Trump or his opponents in the Democratic Party, should direct the repression.

    One thing is certain: if Trump declares a national emergency, or if, as the Post suggested in an editorial, his opponents in the ruling elite declare a national emergency over alleged Russian “meddling” as part an effort to remove him, it will represent an irrevocable break with democracy.

    It is impossible to determine which side in this sordid conflict is more reactionary. The working class is confronted with two alternatives:

    • either the present political crisis will be resolved by one faction of the ruling elite moving against the other, using the methods of palace coup and dictatorship, whose essential target is the working class,

    • or workers will move en masse against the political establishment as a whole and the capitalist system that it defends.

  • Pentagon Admits Russian Air Defenses "Changing U.S. Calculus" Abroad

    As the West has for the past two years distracted itself and obsessed over claimed Russian election meddling and those sinister online “disinformation campaigns,” the Kremlin has been busy establishing air superiority in places US aircraft could at one time operate with impunity.

    According to a new lengthy report in the Wall Street Journal Russia’s S-400 antiaircraft missile system, which much of the western public has recently begun to hear about in the context of Syria, is now “changing the calculus of the U.S. and its allies in potential hot spots” as Russia is erecting a “new Iron Curtain” in the form of a series of effective and far reaching anti-air defenses stretching from the Arctic to the Middle East. 

    For starters, the S-400 system’s stealth-detecting radar system is able to cast a broad net around the Eastern Mediterranean from its Russian base positioning in Syria, and is further linked up to “a ring of air defenses” that stretches “North from Syria, along the borders of Eastern Europe and rounding the Arctic Circle to the east,” according to the report.

    Though not yet tested in battle, the Pentagon itself has admitted the necessity of changing flight routes and where it can operate in terms of deploying aircraft, which is the most significant revelation in the WSJ report: 

    The Pentagon acknowledged that S-400 batteries in Syria have forced adjustments to coalition air operations, but it contended the U.S. in general still maintains freedom of movement in the air. “We can continue to operate where we need to be,” a U.S. defense official said.

    The White House revamped its National Security Strategy in late 2017 to account for the new challenge. Russia is “fielding military capabilities designed to deny America access in times of crisis and to contest our ability to operate freely,” a report said. “They are contesting our geopolitical advantages.”

    And a further similar admission is found in a Congressional report produced by a bipartisan commission to evaluate White House defense strategy. The commission found, as cited in the WSJ, that Russia is “seeking regional hegemony and the means to project power globally,” and that this was already “diminishing U.S. military advantages and threatening vital U.S. interests.”

    Via the Wall Street Journal

    Though Russian military spending and capability is still dwarfed by both the United States and China (Russia’s defense budget is about a tenth the size of the Pentagon’s), the Kremlin’s strategic deployment of these systems to counter US power has been enough to put Washington on notice, and is driving fears the S-400’s deadly reach could proliferate, as it already has in China and India, and with prospective deals in the works with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. 

    If as the WSJ acknowledges the event that kickstarted the S-400’s deployment far outside Russia’s borders was the Syrian war, which saw an embattled Assad invited allied Russian forces into the country in 2015, then Washington and its allies can look no further than themselves in terms of blame. As both Putin, Assad, and at rare moments of frankness some US officials themselves have acknowledged, Russian forces entered Syria in reaction to the West-Gulf alliance’s covert war of regime change which empowered al-Qaeda and ISIS forces poised to take Damascus. 

    The result of this for US dominance across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans? WSJ finds, echoing the Russian conclusion:

    As Russia fills orders, the expanding S-400 footprint creates barriers that threaten decades of unchallenged U.S. air superiority in the Middle East, the Arctic and parts of Asia. By selling the S-400 to other countries, Russia spreads the cost of limiting U.S. forces.

    “Russia doesn’t want military superiority, but it has ended the superiority of the West or the U.S.,” said Sergey Karaganov, a foreign-policy adviser to Mr. Putin. “Now, the West can no longer use force indiscriminately.”

    To be predicted the Pentagon is still touting its global dominance, a fact disputed by few, but perhaps soon to come up against the increasingly expansive reach of the S-400, especially if Turkey and Saudi Arabia actually end up acquiring them, something Washington will continue to work towards preventing. 

    The Pentagon told the WSJ in response to the question of Russia’s growing air defense capabilities: “The U.S. remains the pre-eminent military power in the world and continues to strengthen relationships with NATO allies and partners to maintain our strategic advantage,” said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon. “The U.S. and our allies have quite a few measures at our disposal to ensure the balances of power remain in our favor.”

  • Booze Good, Weed Bad: CBS Refuses To Air Medical Marijuana Super Bowl Ad

    Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    As more and more people shake themselves free from the taboo against the medical and recreational use of cannabis, one would think that the mainstream media would similarly shift with the cultural winds and begin to show more flexibility toward the plant.

    In the case of CBS, this doesn’t seem to be an option.

    The network’s stance was made clear when they rejected a commercial promoting the numerous medicinal and health benefits of cannabis during this year’s Super Bowl, when an estimated 100 million viewers will attentively watch not only the Big Game and Halftime Show, but also eagerly gape at the commercials that run during the game.

    As is tradition, many of the ads will be for alcoholic beverages that viewers often binge-drinkthroughout the day. But ads for medical marijuana to treat glaucoma or improve the quality of life for suffering U.S. military veterans? Now that’s going too far – or so CBS executives say.

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    According to USA Today, Acreage Holdings  – a firm involved in the cultivation, processing, and sale of cannabis – produced a 60-second ad showing three people suffering from a variety of ailments who attest to the healing power of medical marijuana.

    “It’s a public service announcement really more than it is an advertisement,” Harris Damashek, chief marketing officer for Acreage explained.

     “We’re not marketing any of our products or retail in this spot.”

    After sending the storyboards of the commercial to CBS, Acreage received a reply that brusquely stated:

    “CBS will not be accepting any ads for medical marijuana at this time.”

    A CBS spokesman subsequently told the newspaper that its current broadcast standards don’t allow for any sort of advertising related to cannabis.

    Acreage president George Allen isn’t particularly shocked about the rejection, and attributed the company declining the ad to the legal gray-zone in which medical marijuana purveyors currently find themselves. Allen explained:

    “We’re not particularly surprised that CBS and/or the NFL rejected the content… that is actually less a statement about them and more we think a statement about where we stand right now in this country.”

    In 1996, California was the first state to lift restrictions on the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Since then, over 30 states have followed the Golden State’s example while ten states plus Washington, D.C. have also freed the plant almost entirely, granting adults over 21 the right to partake freely in the recreational use of the herb.

    Yet under federal law, cannabis remains classified as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act – a contradiction that has led to many legally-licensed companies dealing with the plant to land in hot water with the feds.

    Allan added:

    “One of the hardest parts about this business is the ambiguity that we operate within …We do the best we can to navigate a complex fabric of state and federal policy, much of which conflicts.”

    The advertisement, depicting three cases of people who benefited from their use of medical marijuana, remains in unfinished form. Stories included that of a Colorado boy who suffers from Dravet syndrome, whose mother claims that medical cannabis saved his life after suffering numerous seizures per day. A Buffalo man claims that after 15 years of opioid dependency following three back surgeries, medical marijuana allowed him to live once again. And an Oakland resident and military veteran who lost his leg while serving also claimed that medical marijuana has softened the unbearable pain he had undergone.

    The use of marijuana for various ailments is nothing new. Cannabis has been used medicinally by humans across the globe for over 5,000 years.

    After years of demonization, the plant has enjoyed increasing mainstream acceptance in recent decades, with a recent poll by the Pew Research Center finding that 62 percent of U.S. residents, including 74 percent of millennials, favor an end to the prohibition of cannabis.

    The plant has also been the subject of numerous studies by the medical community as a valid treatment for a various medical and health conditions including headaches, chronic pain, insomnia, muscle spasms, menstrual cramps, narcotic addiction, appetite loss, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, HIV-AIDS, cancer, and other ailments. In contrast, alcoholic beverages haven’t been proven to be a reasonable treatment for any of these things.

  • Texas Power Prices Explode As Dallas Freezes

    While the coasts dominated the headlines in the latest chillpocalypse to cross America, freezing weather in Texas has sparked a panic-bid for wholesale electricity in the lone star state.

    Dallas temperatures plunged to 29 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 2 Celsius) by 8 a.m. local time Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.

    Which prompted people to blast their heaters to keep warm, driving power demand well above forecasts prepared by the state’s grid operator.

    As Bloomberg reports, spot electricity at a northern hub in Texas jumped 461 percent to average $118.77 a megawatt-hour for the hour ended 10 a.m. local time. Prices spiked to as high as $140.22, the most since April of last year.

    Making matters worse: Texas’s abundance of wind power has failed to help, with generation from farms falling below forecasts.

  • AeroMexico's DNA Discounts

    Authored by Sarah Cowgill via Liberty Nation,

    Aeromexico, Mexico’s largest commercial airline, is offering fare discounts on travel south of the border for Americans who have Mexican heritage. The greater the percentage of a Yank’s Hispanic blood, the steeper the discount.

    As advertisements go, this one is simply brilliant…

    Not because Americans are now more inclined to travel to an often unstable, notoriously corrupt region, infested with drug and gang violence, to vacay on policia federale-patrolled beaches, but because tongues are wagging across all forms of media.

    It’s a Mexican version of the United Colors of Benetton – the global fashion brand based in Italy that capitalized on ads promoting racial harmony before millennials were spawned.

    It’s so safe-place and feel-goody, until those pesky geneticists throw science into the discussion. Blaine Bettinger of Baldwinsville, NY, is one such genetic genealogist and the advertising agency’s worst party-pooper.  As he claims, “It’s an impossibility to really identify anyone’s DNA to be ‘Mexican.’”

    Those science types are prickly about facts.

    Madison Avenue – Mexico Satellite Office

    New York ad agency Ogilvy – a biggie in the business of selling products; despising conservative views, especially those of President Trump; and spreading far left indoctrination across every discipline in 21st -century media – is the Wizard behind the green curtain.

    Imagine that.

    The two-minute ad targeted Texans for their anti-open borders views and dislike of illegals – despite enjoying Tex-Mex food and Corona beer (who doesn’t?) – and offered to test their DNA and share results on camera. To be fair, the giants in the consumer DNA testing industry, 23andMe and Ancestry, were not part of the process or the analysis of gathered spit samples.

    And Bettinger, forever to be known as Aeromexico’s thorn in the side, explained that it is easier to distinguish between continents of origin but harder to drill down to specific countries or regions. That’s almost impossible.

    He is an expert on the subject. When he claims, “Mexico is no less of a melting pot than the United States. There’s no such thing as United States DNA, so why would there be Mexican DNA? It doesn’t make any sense,” whom are you going trust – science or Madison Avenue?

    Perhaps Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) should have consulted with Bettinger and Ogilvy before her disastrous DNA debacle.

    The AeroMexico ad showcases the metamorphosis of illegal-haters into warm and fuzzy humans forever changed by the notion of ancestry skewed to reflect a sales pitch.

    Original interviews garnered comments from “The idea of going to Mexico is not something I would foresee” and “That’s not my cup of tea” to “Let me stay here in peace, and let those folks stay on their side of the border.”

    But when the results were unveiled, Oh. My. God. The humanity was visceral. But no one grabbed a phone to a book a flight either, despite the offer of a 22% discount by a really pasty white guy.

    It’s junk science.

    As our old friend Bettinger said, “I don’t think they can do what they did. I think it’s in part unethical to do that because in the Americas — in Mexico and the U.S. and Canada — we’re very diverse, which is a very good thing.”

    Kudos To Creatives

    Despite the comic relief of the ad itself, travel to Mexico probably will not increase by those who want a border wall.  But Aeromexico isn’t desperate for visitors to Mexico – passenger traffic throughout Latin America, the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia – is on a steady incline: The airline boasts of 17.1 million passengers in 2014 and 21.9 million in 2018.

    Perhaps this ad was intended as sarcasm, hurtfully poking fun at Texans, while hoping for an ADDY or a Clio award at the next gala. While capitalizing on the latest trend of DNA testing for genealogical purposes, this ad teeters between insulting and unethical, but it does have folks talking.

    David Ogilvy, the father of advertising on Madison Avenue, would often boast, “We sell. Or else.”  Ah, yes, his legacy continues after death — all the way to the bank and back again.

  • US Refuses To Withdraw Diplomats From Venezuela, "Will Take Appropriate Actions" If Harmed

    In what may shape up to be a major international incident over the next 48 hours, the United States has refused to withdraw diplomats from Venezuela, saying in a Wednesday evening statement that the US “stands with interim President Juan Guaido,” adding “The United States does not recognize the Maduro regime as the government of Venezuela. Accordingly the United States does not consider former president Nicolas Maduro to have the legal authority to break diplomatic relations with the United States or to declare our diplomats persona non grata.

    Earlier Wednesday, Maduro broke diplomatic relations with the US, giving American diplomats 72 hours to leave Caracas after President Trump declared Maduro’s political opponent, Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido, the Interim President of Venezuela.  

    Nicolas Maduro

    Guaido responded with a tweet of appreciation. 

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    14 other countries have similarly recognized Guaido. 

    Cuba and Bolivia, meanwhile, have expressed support for Maduro – while Mexico remains on the fence, supporting the empanada-eating Maduro “for now.” 

    Guaido – who swore himself in as acting president of Venezuela earlier Wednesday, asked all embassies to “maintain their diplomatic presence in the country.”  

    Juan Guaido

    “Through the powers that the Constitution grants me, I would like to communicate to all leaders of diplomatic missions and their accredited staff in Venezuela — the state of Venezuela firmly wants you to maintain your diplomatic presence in our country. Any messages to the contrary lack any validity, since they come from people or entities that have been characterized as usurpers. They have no legitimate authority to make any statements on this.” -Juan Guaido

    The United Nations is monitoring the situation according to UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq during a Wednesday briefing. 

    “The United Nations firmly rejects any kind of political violence. We underline the urgent need for all relevant actors to commit to inclusive and credible political negotiations to address the challenges facing the country, with full respect for the rule of law and human rights,” said Haq in a statement. 

    Venezuelans, meanwhile, took to the streets en masse during a day of unrest in which pro-Maduro forces fired live rounds into the crowds killing several people. 

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