Jan 26

Today’s News 26th January 2018

  • Germany: Return Of The Stasi Police State?

    Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

    • Germany’s new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the government. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint — regardless of whether the content is accurate or not.
    • Social media platforms now have the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who will speak and what they will say.
    • Notice the ease with which the police chief mentioned that he had filed charges to silence a leading political opponent of the government. That is what authorities do in police states: Through censorship and criminal charges, they silence outspoken critics and political opponents of government policies, such as Beatrix von Storch, who has sharply criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migration policies.
    • While such policies would doubtless have earned the German authorities many points with the old Stasi regime of East Germany, they more than likely contravene the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to which Germany is a party, as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

    Germany’s new censorship law, which has introduced state censorship on social media platforms, came into effect on October 1, 2017. The new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the German state. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint — regardless of whether the content is accurate or not. Social media companies are permitted seven days for more complicated cases. If they fail to do so, the German government can fine them up to 50 million euros for failing to comply with the law.

    The new censorship law, however, was not fully enforced until January 1, 2018, in order to give the social media platforms time to prepare for their new role as the privatized thought police of the German state. Social media platforms now have the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who will speak and what they will say.

    On January 1, 2018, however, the law was immediately enforced. Twitter began by suspending the account of the deputy leader of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Beatrix von Storch, for 12 hours, after she tweeted the following in response to a New Year’s greeting issued in Arabic by the Cologne Police:

    “What the hell is happening in this country? Why is an official police site tweeting in Arabic? Do you think it is to appease the barbaric, gang-raping hordes of Muslim men?”

    (During New Year’s Eve of 2015/16, over 1,000 mainly Muslim men sexually assaulted around 1,200 women in Cologne.)

    Von Storch also had her Facebook account suspended for repeating her tweet there. Facebook told her that her post contravened German law, as it constituted “incitement to hatred”.

    It did not stop there. Cologne police filed charges against von Storch for “incitement to hatred”, which is punishable under section 130 of the German Criminal Code. According to the Cologne police chief, Uwe Jacob, multilingual tweets at major events are an important part of the police’s communication strategy:

    “The campaign was really well received by most people – however, some were bothered by the fact that we tweeted in Arabic and Farsi – they were very prominent right-wingers, who then felt that they had to make tweets that incited to hatred. We simply filed charges”.

    Notice the ease with which the police chief mentioned that he had filed charges to silence a leading political opponent of the government. That is what authorities do in police states: Through censorship and criminal charges, they silence outspoken critics and political opponents of government policies, such as von Storch, who has sharply criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migration policies.

    While such policies would doubtless have earned the German authorities many points with the old Stasi regime of East Germany, they more than likely contravene the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to which Germany is a party, as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights states:

    1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers…

    2. The exercise of these freedoms… may be subject to such… restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

    In its case law, the European Court of Human Rights has stated that Article 10

    “…protects not only the information or ideas that are regarded as inoffensive but also those that offend, shock or disturb; such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broad-mindedness without which there is no democratic society. Opinions expressed in strong or exaggerated language are also protected”.

    Even more important in the context of charges against politicians is the fact that according to the European Court of Human Rights’ case law:

    “…the extent of protection depends on the context and the aim of the criticism. In matters of public controversy or public interest, during political debate, in electoral campaigns… strong words and harsh criticism may be expected and will be tolerated to a greater degree by the Court”.

    When leading politicians are criminally charged for questioning the actions of the authorities, such as in this case the actions of the police, we are no longer dealing with a democracy, but with a regular police state.

    Several other accounts on Twitter and Facebook were also suspended under the new censorship law in the first days and weeks of January. One such Twitter account was the satirical magazine, Titanic, which was blocked for parodying von Storch’s tweet about the “barbaric hordes” of Muslim men. The privatized Twitter thought police, in their eagerness to censor, had overlooked that Titanic was just poking fun. The suspension of the Titanic account alerted some politicians — a mere three months after the law went into force — to the problematic nature of the law. Leader of the Green party, Simone Peter and Secretary-General of the FDP, Nicola Beer were both critical of the law. “The law is messed up and must be replaced by a decent one”, Beer said.

    Another politician, Martin Sichert, AfD member of the Bundestag for Nürnberg and state Chairman for the AfD, had a Facebook post deleted for violating “community standards”. In the post, which he substantiated with links to factual sources, he drew attention, among other things, to the way women are treated in Afghanistan. He also drew attention to the sexual abuse of small children in Afghanistan:

    “It is scary and at the same time shameful that our state is preventing the enlightenment of citizens by simply censoring factual opinions, publicly available citations and links to reputable sources.”

    Sichert and von Storch are just the most famous people to have their speech shut down on social media. There are countless others, whose stories never reach the media.

    Under the censorship law, anyone can ask a social network operator to delete postings, even if the post does not affect him personally in any way. If the social network provider does not respond within 24 hours, the person wishing to have a post deleted can involve the Federal Office of Justice; there is even a form for this purpose on the homepage of the Federal Office of Justice. This office is responsible for the prosecution of violations, and the district court of Bonn is the sole authority permitted to examine disputes about the criminal liability of comments made on social media and to impose fines on the social media companies for failing to delete those comments within the required 24 hours.

    It is regrettable that Germany, which can barely keep up with the terrorism threat and the wave of violent crime, is spending such vast resources on shutting down the free speech of its citizens on social media. The Federal Department of Justice has rented additional offices in Bonn to house approximately 50 new lawyers and administrators to implement the new law and ensure that the social media providers delete “offending posts” within 24 hours. “It was also important that we created a new file management system,” explains Thomas W. Ottersbach of the Federal Office of Justice in Bonn.

    “This is the only way to ensure that deadlines are met and that a statistical evaluation can be carried out. Because it is important that we keep an eye on which [social media] operator’s complaints are piling up and where they are just isolated cases.”

    The old German police state is back.

  • Paul Craig Roberts Warns "The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme"

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    The Republicans’ delay in releasing the summary of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russiagate investigation is giving weight to the presstitutes’ claim that the report is not being released, because it is a hack attempt at a Trump coverup that is not believable. Only Republicans are stupid enough to put themselves in such a situation.

    Readers ask me why the summary memo is not released if it is real. There must be some reasons besides the stupidity of Republicans. Yes, that is so. Among the many reasons that might be blocking release are:

    1) Republicans are very national security conscious. They don’t want to provide precedents for the release of classified information.

    2) Many Republican congressional districts host installations of the military/security complex. Upsetting a large employer and directing campaign financing to a challenger is a big consideration.

    3) The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime was a neoconservative regime. One consequence is that Republicans are influenced by neoconservatives who stress the alleged “Russian threat.”

    4) The Israel Lobby can unseat any member of the House and Senate. The Israel Lobby is allied with the neoconservatives and this alliance intends to keep the US militarily active against perceived threats to Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East and against Russia, which supports Syria and Iran, countries perceived as threats by Israel.

    5) Many Republicans are themselves invested in false Russiagate allegations against Trump and would like to replace him with Pence. Other Republicans believe that Trump is undermining Washington’s expensively-purchased foreign alliances and, thereby, undermining US power.

    Many Americans do not seem to understand what is at stake. What America is confronted with is a coup conspiracy organized by top officials of the Obama Justice Department, FBI, CIA, the Hillary DNC, and the presstitute media to overturn the result of a democratic election and remove the president from office. The basis of the coup is a fake dossier purchased for money that consists of unsupported allegations against Trump and that was used to obtain warrants from the FISA count to spy on Trump and various associates hoping to find something that can be used against Trump. Regardless, the false allegations could be fed to the CIA’s media assets and used to create a scandal requiring a special prosecutor to investigate Russiagate.

    Once the investigation was under way, the presstitutes kept the scandal alive hoping to convince enough Americans that Trump must have done something—“where there is smoke, there is fire”—that justifies his removal. It worked against Richard Nixon, but not against Ronald Reagan, and Trump is no Reagan.

     

    If the highest reaches of the police state agencies can get away with an attempted or successful coup against the president of the United States, then that is the complete end of democracy and all accountability in government. The House, Senate, and judiciary will become as powerless as the Roman senate under the caesars. We will live under a dictatorship ruled by police state agencies.

    Many Americans say they don’t need the House Intelligence Report, because they don’t believe the Russiagate BS in the first place. They miss the point. They need the report, because those responsible for this attempt at a coup must be identified, charged, and prosecuted for their act of high treason.

    This is not minor stuff. This goes to the heart of whether any form of liberty will exist. We all know that the ability of the people to hold government accountable is not assured by democracy. However, there is no prospect of holding government accountable if it is a police state, a road that the US has been going down for some time. The audacious coup attempt against President Trump is our opportunity to stop the momentum to a police state.

    Despite my recent postings, many people do not understand that the somewhat redacted FISA court document that has been declassified and released and explained by myself, William Binney, and former US Attorney Joe di Genova contains admissions by the FBI and DOJ that they improperly spied and obtained warrants from the court under false pretenses. In other words, we have it on the authority of the FISA court itself that the FBI and DOJ have admitted to the court their transgressions. When Department of Justice (sic) congressional liaison Stephen Boyd says the DOJ is “unaware of any wrongdoing,” he is lying through his teeth. The DOJ has already confessed its wrongdoing to the FISA court.

    (See Lendman on Boyd’s claim that releasing the memo would harm national security and ongoing investigations. This is always the claim made when government has to cover up its crimes. )

    When Admiral Rodgers, director of the National Security Agency, discovered that the FBI and DOJ were misusing the spy system for partisan political reasons, he let it be known that he was going to inform the FISA court. This caused the FBI and DOJ to rush to the court in advance and confess to “mistakes” and to promise to tighten up procedures so as not to make mistakes in the future. It is these “mistakes” and corrections that the FISA court document reveals.

    In other words, the information already exists in the pubic domain that proves that Russiagate was a conspiracy organized for the purpose of bringing down the elected president of the United States.

    A case can be made that it would be just as well if the coup succeeds as it would bring an end to Washington’s cover as the government of a great democracy with liberty and justice for all. Most other governments, and one would hope certainly the Russian and Chinese governments, would see the coup as America’s final transition into a police state and give up their utopian ideas of reaching accommodation with Washington. The constraints on Washington’s ability to bully the world would be greatly strengthened by the universal perception that the government of the United States had devolved into a police state.

  • The Era Of AI-Generated 'Fake Porn' Has Arrived

    They call them “deepfakes.”

    It’s the term for pornography made using artificial intelligence-assisted technology to superimpose a person’s face on another performer’s body – essentially allowing the producer to create fake porn featuring celebrities, politicians or even average every people.

    In a report published Wednesday, Motherboard recounted how they discovered a user on Reddit responsible for producing convincing porn videos featuring celebrities like Gal Gadot, Maisie Williams and Taylor Swift.

    Pretty soon, the technology used to create “deepfakes” will be widely available enough to be used by extortionists and criminals with only a cursory understanding of how the software works. Another redditor discovered by Motherboard even created an app specifically designed to allow users without a computer science background to create AI-assisted fake porn. All the tools one needs to make these videos are free, readily available, and accompanied with instructions that walk novices through the process.

    Two months ago, the first redditor mentioned above created a subreddit dedicated to the practice.

    In that short time, the subreddit has already amassed more than 15,000 subscribers. Within the community, the word “deepfake” itself is now a noun for the kinds of neural-network generated fake videos their namesake pioneered, according to Motherboard.

    Another “deepfake” auteur created an app called FakeApp, a user-friendly application that allows anyone to recreate these videos with their own datasets. The app is based on deepfakes’ algorithm, but another user who goes by deepfakeapp created FakeApp without the help of the original deepfakes. While none of these people divulged their identity to Motherboard, the user known as Deepfakeapp said in a direct message that his goal with creating FakeApp was to make deepfakes’ technology available to people without a technical background or programming experience.

    “I think the current version of the app is a good start, but I hope to streamline it even more in the coming days and weeks,” he said. “Eventually, I want to improve it to the point where prospective users can simply select a video on their computer, download a neural network correlated to a certain face from a publicly available library, and swap the video with a different face with the press of one button.”

    Peter Eckersley, chief computer scientist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, fears the technology will soon reach the point where fakes are virtually indistinguishable for authentic videos.

    “I think the current version of the app is a good start, but I hope to streamline it even more in the coming days and weeks,” he said. “Eventually, I want to improve it to the point where prospective users can simply select a video on their computer, download a neural network correlated to a certain face from a publicly available library, and swap the video with a different face with the press of one button.”

    Fakes posted in the subreddit have already been pitched as real on other websites; a deepfake of Emma Watson taking a shower was uploaded by CelebJihad, a celebrity porn site that regularly posts hacked celebrity nudes, as a “never-before-seen video” purportedly from the user’s “private collection.”

     

    Fake

    Here’s an example of a “deepfake”

    Other redditors have taken video trained from celebrities’ Instagram accounts and used it to convincingly fake Snapchat messages.

    “Deepfakes” are hardly a new phenomenon. Last July, we reported on a project conducted by Stanford’s Matthias Niessner that managed to create several faked videos of former US President Barack Obama.

    Soon, this technology could create problems for everybody, from governments, to corporations to the news media – which will now find it even more difficult to distinguish veritable “Fake News” from reality.

  • Immigrants Vs. Aliens: The Global Invasion-Giveaway Continues

    Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

    The United States was a nation founded by immigrants, and immigration has always had a clear-cut path toward American citizenship. The United States was built by successive waves of immigrants who came to America in search of a better life. There is a difference between being an immigrant and being an illegal alien. Immigrants follow the rules of the nation they emigrate to and pursue a legitimate path toward permanent citizenship or toward legal employment in the country. Illegal aliens bypass all legal systems in place…rules designed to protect citizens of the country in numerous ways.

    For the past 100 years, the United States has pursued a laissez-faire policy toward illegal aliens. Much of this was because American businesses and industries such as farming and mining, for example, wanted illegal aliens to come here. They wanted to pay them under the table, avoiding the taxes and withholding, and circumventing the minimum wage. The public was also complicit: turning a blind eye, provided that it didn’t directly affect them.

    But it did…and year after year, tens of thousands of illegal aliens crossed our borders and started their new lives in America…at the expense of American citizens.

    Now it has changed into something completely different:

    Now it is a part of the socialist playbook based on Cloward and Piven, and Alinsky’s actions and doctrines to destroy the United States from within; it has become a global movement toward the goal of global governance.

    This is not immigration, either in the U.S. or worldwide. It is the planned, systematic destruction of national identities and sovereignties. This is being accomplished in several manners:

    1. The religious differences are so pronounced between these aliens who are Muslims and the citizens of the traditionally-Christian nations of Europe that underlying tensions are one step away from warfare between citizens and aliens.
    2. Laws in these countries are being “restructured” to facilitate the insertion of these aliens against the host-citizens’ wills.
    3. The efforts (globally) are coordinated and funded by a consortium of oligarchs and politicians who are utilizing the chaos, confusion, and instability to destroy the nations and push them toward global governance.
    4. Armies of NGO’s (Nongovernmental Organizations) under the guises of “humanitarian efforts” or “political dialogue” are in reality “embassies” and front-man representatives to carry out the planned dissolution of national borders and recruit citizenry in the form of “5th columnists” to destroy these nations from within.

    The world of George Orwell’s “1984” solidifies more by the day: increased surveillance, decreasing freedoms, and tensions throughout the world to keep whole populations unbalanced while fueling the war machine with money…taxed monies…of the global Military Industrial complex.

    Van Jones: “Top down, bottom up.”

    Encouraging “revolutions” by the stupid, uncomprehending youth, who all believe the nonsense of “making a difference” when what they are doing is playing the parts of puppets in the globalists’ hands. Guess what?  The globalists will round up the “new Bohemians,” and shoot them in the back of the head in the end.

    Hungary and Czechoslovakia are now the only nations with leaders that are standing up against the tide of the invasion of Europe: the planned and purposed insertion of illegal aliens into Europe’s nations. All of this is designed to destroy the homogeneity of the populations, destroy the borders, language, culture, and religions of the nations, and enable the removal of national boundaries…thus creating gigantic, corporate “continents” for “juntas” of oligarchs and politicos to rule over.

    Gefira released a piece on 1/19/18 entitled The Incredible Shrinking Population: By 2080 Italians Will Be a Minority in Their Own Nation. The article points out that mass “migration” from Asia and Africa will overwhelm and overshadow a population that already has a lowered birth rate. The article is a “representative slice” of the whole pie, as this is being duplicated in every nation in Europe except for those two previously mentioned.

    The President is enforcing the laws, and the illegals in the U.S. are being deported. There is another side to the seesaw that bears mention, however, as “every rose has its thorn.” The “thorn” here being this:

    The illegals being deported from the United States are not “evicted” at a rate to make a dent, and the screws are tightening down on scrutinizing individual citizens: a step away from such things as a national ID card and a permanent police state.

    The evil genius of the globalists is their capability to “seesaw” the game, and as they accomplish one thing (perhaps hidden), if it appears to be “good” or in opposition to their plans? Under closer scrutiny, it shows a hidden agenda, a purpose that seems good on the surface but upon closer examination can be changed to serve nefarious intentions.

    Thus, it is with the fostered insertions of illegal aliens into the countries of Europe and the United States. The ironic part is that these aliens are unwitting tools whom the globalists could care less about and are just using. Once the world is under their rule, the aliens will be dealt with in the manner outlined with the “young revolutionaries” before…along with the rest of the citizens that cannot be made compliant in the global governance coming closer to fruition every day.

  • All Generations Think America Is At A Low Point

    America is living through stressful times.

    According to the American Psychological Association, a majority of people from each generation would agree that their country is at a low point looking back on their lifetime experience.

     

    As Statista’s Dyfed Loesche notes, this even applies to the generation of the over 72-year olds who witnessed such devastating events as the Japanese Attack on Pearl Habor and the ensuing Second World War.

    Infographic: All Generations Think America is at a Low Point | Statista

    You will find more statistics at Statista

    Of all generations, it’s the Xers who are most pessimistic about this time and age, according to the findings published in the report State of our Nation from November 2017.

  • Kurdish Leaders Implore Assad To Defend Afrin From The Turks

    Submitted by Leith Fadel via Al-Masdar News,

    The Kurdish authorities in the Afrin Canton of Aleppo have called on the Syrian government of Bashar Al-Assad to defend the region from the attacking Turkish forces, the SBS News reported Thursday evening.

    According to the SBS News report, a statement posted on the website for the Afrin authorities underscored the complexity of the Syrian war and the ongoing problems caused by the Turkish aggression in northern Syria.

    “We call on the Syrian state to carry out its sovereign obligations towards Afrin and protect its borders with Turkey from attacks of the Turkish occupier … and deploy its Syrian armed forces to secure the borders of the Afrin area,” the statement said, as quoted by SBS News. A similar report was released by Al-Mayadeen TV on Wednesday; however, it was later denied by the official media wing of the  Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

     


    Image via Al Masdar News

    Meanwhile, as “Operation Olive Branch” entered its sixth day, Ankara’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has stated that Turkey has no intention of targeting or attacking troops of the Syrian Arab Army. Cavusoglu said this during an interview with journalists on Thursday. The Minister of Foreign Affairs said that Turkey wished to preserve Syria’s unity, and as such will not attack any Syrian Arab Army forces or equipment.

    “While they do not attack us, we do not need to consider them as our target. Up to this day, we have not taken such actions,” Cavusoglu said. “Damascus knows that the YPG militias (People’s Protection Units) want to divide Syria. Whereas Turkey and Damascus as well as the opposition forces are all supportive of the territorial integrity of Syria within its current borders. We believe that the Syrian regime will not cooperate with terrorists,” the minister added.

    Turkey considers the Kurdish YPG militias in Syria to be an affiliate of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is labeled a terrorist organization by Ankara. The Turkish offensive came in direct reaction to recent statements by the US and its Kurdish allies in northern Syria, that they would form a US-trained “border security force” consisting out of Kurdish troops, a move seen by many as a step towards secession of the Kurdish areas from Syria.

    Despite Turkey claiming it seeks to “help” Syria in preserving its unity, the fact that its offensive entered Syrian soil without permission from Damascus, combined with the fact that Turkey has been actively supporting Syrian “moderate rebels” of the so-called Free Syrian Army for years now as part of Operation Euphrates Shield, have made Damascus very wary of the Olive Branch operation.

    Meanwhile, after multiple accusations coming from Turkish officials this week that the US is supporting a “terror army” in northern Syria, the Pentagon has denied providing any training or arms to the Kurds located in the Afrin area in particular, according to a statement by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. speaking to reporters on Thursday.

    “We haven’t trained or provided equipment for any of the Kurds that are in Afrin pocket. We are focused on the Euphrates River Valley operations to the South and to the East,” McKenzie said.

    When asked about the plans about the weapons provided to the Syrian Kurds, McKenzie said, “We carefully track weapons that are provided to them.” And he said further, “We ensure that they to the maximum extent possible don’t fall into the wrong hands, and we continue discussions with the Turks on those issues,” he said.

    Last Saturday, the Turkish Armed Forces launched the massive operation against the Kurdish forces in Afrin. Damascus has strongly condemned Ankara’s actions, with the Syrian Foreign Ministry calling them a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

  • Explosive Allegation: Israel Planned To Blow Up Passenger Plane In Arafat Assassination Plot

    For years, many had speculated – for which they were promptly cast as tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists – that when it comes to achieving illegal goals, including but not limited to creating “false flag” terrorism and political assassinations, few are as skilled and industrious as the CIA and Mossad. Especially Mossad.

    Only, as so often happens, most (if not all) such “conspiracy theories” turn out to be truth, in this case exposed thanks to the work of Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, whose just published explosive book “‘Rise and Kill First: The secret history of Israel’s targeted killings” details such Israeli plans as the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat which included a plot to blow up passenger planes and football stadiums.

    Ronen Bergman, the intelligence correspondent for Yediot Aharonot newspaper, persuaded many agents of Mossad, Shin Bet and the military to tell their stories, some using their real names.

    The result is the first comprehensive look at Israel’s use of state-sponsored killings.

    An excerpt from the book published in the NYT , details how when former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was defense minister, he ordered the Israeli army to shoot down a passenger plane carrying hundreds of innocent people Arafat was thought to be on. Arafat was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization at the time. Although the plan was eventually called off, it was allegedly one of a list of plans to to assassinate the Palestinian leader.

    Bergman spoke to hundreds of intelligence and defense officials and studied classified documents which have revealed a “hidden history, surprising even in the context of Israel’s already fierce reputation.”

    “I found that since World War II, Israel has used assassination and targeted-killing more than any other country in the West, in many cases endangering the lives of civilians,” Bermen chillingly wrote, in the process unleashing a whole new series of conspiracies theories, many of which will certainly also be confirmed.

    In another assassination attempt in October 1982, Mossad set its sights on a plane which was carrying 30 wounded children, victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre by Phalange militia in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.  

    According to the book, Tsomet, the Mossad unit which recruits assets overseas, had heard Arafat would take a plane from Athens to Cairo. Caesarea, the Mossad unit responsible for targeted killings, sent two operatives to wait at Athens airport. F-15 fighters were placed on alert. Mossad eventually realized the man was not Arafat, but his brother – who was bringing wounded Palestinian children to Cairo for medical treatment.

    As Bergmen explains, he first heard of that assassination plan in 2011, but his source made him promise to wait until a second person came forward with the story. In another case detailed in the book, fighter jets surrounded a commercial flight from Jordan to Tunisia, while in another incident, they disrupted a Boeing 707’s communications, Haaretz reports.  

    In addition to Mossad’s apparent penchant for covering up a single assassination among dozens of innocent victims, there is an even more bizarre revelation.

    Bergmen writes of an assassination attempt inspired by the movie The Manchurian Candidate. Israelis reportedly sought to turn a Palestinian prisoner into a trained killer. The only problem is that this backfired when, five hours after being released, the prisoner turned himself into the police and explained everything.   

    Then there was plain old mass murder: another plan was to take out all of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership by setting up bombs inside a Beirut stadium where the group were planning to celebrate the anniversary of their first operation against Israel. According to the book, the Israelis also set up cars rigged with explosives outside the stadium, set to detonate minutes after the first explosion to target survivors as they were trying to escape.

    The operation was cancelled at the last minute, after a group of officers and the defense minister demanded it be called off.

    “You can’t just kill a whole stadium,” an officer remembered telling then-Prime Minister Menahem Begin. “The whole world will be after us.”

    Smart.

    Meanwhile, Israel’s vendetta with Arafat continued and in 1982, Sharon created a special task force named Salt Fish to take out the PLO leader. He appointed special operations experts, Meir Dagan, who later became head of Mossad, and Rafi Eitan, who was then adviser to the defense minister on counterterrorism matters. The group even debated killing Israeli journalists who were going to interview Arafat in Lebanon in 1982, with the consensus being that, yes, it was worth carrying out such an operation. However, Mossad lost the group on the way to the meeting.

    “The feeling was that it was something personal for Sharon,” Air Force commander in Chief Major General David Ivry told Bergmen.

    One can almost see why.

    Still, despite their best efforts, Arafat continued to evade Mossad’s relentless assassination attempts, in no smart part thanks to the occasional normal human being.

    Uzi Dayan, the operation’s commander, told Bergman Arafat was saved by two things, “his interminable good luck and me.”

    He explained that he was concerned about civilians being killed in an assassination, and clashed with Eitan over it, who would get angry over missed opportunities. Dayan even withheld intelligence from Eitan to prevent civilian casualties.

    Eitan would remind Dayan that he did not have the authority to decide whether or not to drop a bomb. But Dayan nonetheless found a way to take a hand in the decision-making. “All I had to do was to report when the target was ripe from the intelligence point of view,” he said. “So from that point on, each time we knew that bombing would lead to massive civilian casualties, we reported that the target wasn’t ripe from the intelligence angle.”

    Based on 1,000 interviews and thousands of documents, and running more than 600 pages, Rise and Kill First makes the case that Israel has used assassination in the place of war, killing half a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists, for instance, rather than launching a military attack. It also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to eventually kill Arafat, an act its officials have consistently denied

    * * *

    It wasn’t just Arafat: poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target’s life. Armed drones. Exploding cell phones. Spare tires with remote-control bombs. Assassinating enemy scientists and discovering the secret lovers of Islamic holy men: these were the techniques Israel used to carry out at least 2,700 assassination operations in its 70 years of existence. While many failed, they add up to far more than any other Western country, the book says.

    Bergman, the author of several books, also says that the Israeli secret services sought to interfere with his work, holding a meeting in 2010 on how to disrupt his research and warning former Mossad employees not to speak with him.

    He also claimed that President George W. Bush adopted many Israeli techniques after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and President Barack Obama launched several hundred targeted killings.

    Bergman raises moral and legal concerns provoked by state-sponsored killing, including the existence of separate legal systems for secret agents and the rest of Israel. But he presents the operations, for the most part, as achieving their aims. While many credit the barrier Israel built along and inside the West Bank with stopping assaults on Israeli citizens in the early 2000s, he argues that what made the difference was “a massive number of targeted killings.”

    One of Bergman’s most important sources was Meir Dagan, a recent head of Mossad for eight years who died in early 2016. Toward the end of his career, Dagan fell out with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu partly over launching a military attack on Iran. Netanyahu said intelligence techniques such as selling the country faulty parts for its reactors — which Israel and the U.S. were doing — weren’t enough.

     


    Ex-Mossad Chief Meir Dagan in 2014

    Finally, we may have to wait for part 2 of the book to learn how many of Mossad’s other clandestine operations leading to “massive civilian casualties” – with several key prominent examples springing to mind – were not stopped from taking place.

  • Comey, Rosenstein, McCabe All Named In FISA Memo, First Leak Reveals

    A bombshell four-page “FISA memo” alleging egregious surveillance abuse by the FBI, DOJ and Obama administration, specifically names FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to the Daily Beast. 

    The GOP-authored memo made waves last week after it was made available to the full House of Representatives for viewing. With over 60 GOP lawmakers calling for its release, Capitol Hill sources on both sides of the aisle tell The Daily Beast that it’s only a matter of time before the general public is allowed to view the document – which is likely to stoke already-inflamed tensions between GOP lawmakers and the individuals named in the leak. 

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    The facts contained in the Republican majority-authored report are said to be “jaw-dropping and demand full transparency,” according to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), while the top ranking Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) dismissed the memo as “profoundly misleading” talking points drafted by Republican staffers. 

    Several other GOP Congressmembers have weighed in. “I have read the memo,” tweeted Rep. Steve King (R-IA), adding “The sickening reality has set in. I no longer hold out hope there is an innocent explanation for the information the public has seen. I have long said it is worse than Watergate. It was #neverTrump & #alwaysHillary. #releasethememo.”

    Along with the four-page memo, Congressional investigators learned from a new batch of text messages between anti-Trump FBI investigators that several individuals within the Department of Justice and the FBI may have come together in the “immediate aftermath” of the 2016 election to undermine President Trump, according to Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) who has reviewed the texts.

    This is particularly interesting since the memo allegedly names Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who created Robert Mueller’s special counsel after former FBI Director James Comey was fired. 

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    While the “secret society” reference may have been in jest (“Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society,” Page wrote to Strzok), a whistleblower has allegedly confirmed the existence of clandestine, of high ranking U.S. intelligence officials which met “offsite” to conspire against a sitting President, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). 

    “we have an informant talking about a group holding secret meetings off-site,” Johnson said.

    “We have to continue to dig into it,” he added. “This is not a distraction. This is biased, potentially corruption at the highest levels of the FBI.” –The Hill

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    On Monday night, Reps. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) and Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told Fox News what they had learned from the new batch of communications between FBI investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page – contained within a 384-page batch of text messages delivered to Congress from the DOJ last Friday. Of note Ratcliffe says that Strzok and Page were included in the clandestine anti-Trump cabal at the highest levels of the American intelligence community. 

    In response to the memo, Congressional Democrats led by Adam Schiff (D-CA) drafted a “counter-memo” to “correct the record” regarding alleged FISA abuse contained within the GOP memo. 

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    Schiff’s “counter-memo” came on the heels of an absurd letter written by Schiff and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to Facebook and Twitter executives, calling for the Social Media giants to combat “Russian bots” which were promoting the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo.

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    The letter’s claims were immediately shot down by Facebook, which told the Daily Beast that #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag has been pushed by actual Americans. 

    a knowledgeable source says that Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.

    In short, according to this source, who would not speak to The Daily Beast for attribution, the retweets are coming from inside the country.

  • Students Hold "Bleed-In" To Demand Free Menstrual Products

    Authored by Daniel Weldon via Campus Reform,

    University of Florida students walked around campus Tuesday with fake menstrual blood on their pants to protest the lack of free feminine hygiene products on campus.

    On January 15, a student government committee rejected a proposal to provide free menstrual products to female students through the mandatory Activity and Service Fee, expressing concerns about applying mandatory fees paid by all students towards “funding that would only benefit the female half of the UF student body.”

    A student group called “Gatters Matter, Period.,” which began circulating a petition in support of the proposal last fall, responded by organizing a “bleed-in” protest during which roughly two-dozen students stained the back of their pants red, according to The Alligator.

    “This is a part of reproductive justice,” Shannon Matthew, who was among the first students to join the protest, told the Alligator. “I’m not ashamed of my period, and I don’t think anyone should be.”

    A Facebook event page for the “Are You Seeing Red?” demonstration explains that participants wore “washable dye on our bums, as if we didn’t have a pad and the blood bled through.”

    The organizers provided “supplies” for those in need of them, but encouraged students to “bleed-in how ever [sic] you want as well.”

    Following the protest, the proposal was discussed at a meeting of the full Student Senate, where the Alligator reports that Senate President Ian Green announced that a decision had been made to provide free menstrual products at the student union starting in February, though he could not offer details about funding because the arrangement had been worked out by Student Body President Smith Meyers, who was unavailable for comment.

    During the meeting, some senators pointed out that free menstrual products are already available on campus through the Field and Fork Pantry.

    Students are allowed to take up to three bags of menstrual products per week – each containing eight tampons, five liners, and five pads – but student activists retorted that the option is too limited.

    “Heteronormativity is rampant on this campus,” complained Sophia Ahmed, one of the organizers of the “bleed-in” protest.

    “Today I held a little protest for free menstrual protects. If you saw my butt that was evidence. And I say menstrual not feminine because menstruation should not be gendered. Some men get periods.”

    Two student senators, Branden Pearson and Emily Dunson, told The Alligator that they are working to alleviate just such concerns, and hope to secure funding for free menstrual products at several on-campus locations by April 2018.

    They estimate that the project will cost just under $5,000, and speculated that the pilot program could eventually be expanded to include roughly 60 gender-neutral restrooms.

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