Tag Archives: military industrial complex
Russia joins chorus doubting chemical weapons evidence
In an interview published on Wednesday, President Vladimir V. Putin said it seemed “completely ridiculous” for the government of President Bashar al-Assad to have used chemical weapons and that there was still not sufficient proof to justify the military strike that President Obama has asked Congress to authorize. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/world/europe/putin-says-proof-of-chemical-arms-attack-not-enough-to-justify-us-attack.html?ref=world Mr. Putin, speaking to The […]
Brazil defies US over NSA spying, summons ambassador
Brazil’s government summoned the United States ambassador on Monday to respond to new revelations of American surveillance of President Dilma Rousseff and her top aides, complicating relations between the countries ahead of Ms. Rousseff’s state visit to Washington next month. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/world/americas/brazil-angered-over-report-nsa-spied-on-president.html?ref=world “This would be an unacceptable violation to our sovereignty, involving our head of state,” […]
UK High Court OKs seizure of Miranda and Greenwald material
The UK high court extended police powers to analyze encrypted material seized from the partner of one of the newspaper’s journalists this month. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/world/europe/britain-cites-grave-risks-in-leaked-data-it-seized.html?src=rechp The decision, which slightly expanded the authority of the police to investigate the digital files, came after a senior national security adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron told the court that […]
FBI increases domestic surveillance while war with Syria looms
The F.B.I. has increased its surveillance inside the United States in response to concerns that a military strike against the government of President Bashar al-Assad could lead to terrorist attacks here or against American allies and interests abroad. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/us/fbi-sharpens-scrutiny-of-syrians-in-us-for-signs-of-retaliation.html?ref=us The authorities are particularly concerned because Iran — one of Mr. Assad’s closest allies — […]
18th American drone strike in Pakistan tribal belt this year
A drone suspected of being American killed at least four militants early Saturday in an attack on a compound in the North Waziristan tribal district, near the border with Afghanistan, a Pakistani security official and local residents said. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/asia/drone-strike-kills-suspected-militants-in-pakistan.html?hp&_r=0 The drone fired missiles at a building and a nearby parked vehicle in a village close […]
Snowden releases US intelligence budget, Post withholds info
The top secret budget request for the current fiscal year was obtained by The Washington Post from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden and published in part on its Web site on Thursday. The newspaper said it was withholding most of the 178-page document at the request of government officials because “sensitive […]
UN tries to forestall US aggression in Syria
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, cut short a European trip and rushed home on Thursday to prepare for a weekend briefing by his team of chemical weapons inspectors on the ground in Syria. He implored President Obama to refrain from a threatened military strike and to allow the procedures enshrined in […]
Americans draw parallel to Iraq WMD lie in Syria
A grim-faced secretary of state reading a bill of charges against a rogue Arab leader. The White House promising intelligence that will provide proof about weapons of mass destruction. Frenetic efforts to piece together a coalition of the willing. Breathless news reports about imminent bombing raids. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/world/middleeast/on-syria-a-drumbeat-with-some-echoes-of-iraq.html?ref=world The days since the deadly chemical weapons […]
Brits, Iran call for evidence in Syrian attack as war looms
In London, government enthusiasm for a rapid retaliatory strike against Syrian government targets seemed to evaporate late Wednesday when British leaders, facing dissent among lawmakers, signaled that they would await the inspectors’ findings. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, aware of the sensitivities created by the Iraq war, said unexpectedly that a separate vote would be […]
Middle East questions validity of US pretext for war
Why would Syria’s Bashar Hafez al-Assad launch a deadly chemical attack on a scale not yet seen in his country’s civil war — as American and allied officials assert his loyalists did last week — when he seemed to be holding his own in the stalemated conflict, and just as international weapons inspectors arrived in the […]
Facebook gives over 21,000 users data to the US government
Governments around the world requested information on about 38,000 Facebook users in the first six months of 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23852230 Facebook’s Global Government Requests Report, released on Tuesday for the first time, offered details on official requests from 74 countries. The US made by far the most requests, asking for information on between 20,000 and 21,000 […]
Julian Assange exposes Google collaboration with NSA et al
It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system. http://cryptome.org/2013/08/assange-google-nsa.htm So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the […]
American Civil Liberties Union lives up to their creed
In a detailed legal attack on the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ phone call data, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in court papers filed Monday that the sweeping data gathering violates the Constitution and should be halted. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/us/nsa-phone-data-collection-is-illegal-aclu-says.html?ref=us The A.C.L.U. cited the writings of George Orwell and the comprehensive East German surveillance portrayed […]
Egypt turns police state focus from Muslim Brotherhood
The Egyptian authorities have begun cracking down on other dissenters, sometimes labeling even liberal activists or labor organizers as dangerous Islamists. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/world/middleeast/egypt-widens-crackdown-and-meaning-of-islamist.html?pagewanted=1&ref=middleeast Ten days ago, the police arrested two left-leaning Canadians — one of them a filmmaker specializing in highly un-Islamic movies about sexual politics — and implausibly announced that they were members of […]
Egyptian people: US, islamists allied in Divide and Conquer
When the conversation in Egypt turns to politics, the predominant topic is the conspiracy between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy Egypt. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/world/middleeast/as-egyptians-ignore-curfew-talk-of-a-us-brotherhood-conspiracy.html?ref=world The idea is widespread among supporters of the military, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last month. For journalists who ventured out Saturday night in violation […]
German people to jealously guard internet privacy
Continuing revelations, based on documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, of sweeping American digital surveillance around the world are rattling the close ties between the United States and Germany. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/world/europe/surveillance-revelations-shake-us-german-ties.html?ref=world In a country scarred by Nazi and Communist pasts, the issue is prompting not just a debate about privacy and data protection, but also […]
US intelligence and banksters feed private spy companies
In 2012, more than $1 billion in venture financing poured into security start-ups, more than double the amount in 2010, according to the National Venture Capital Association. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/technology/the-pentagon-as-start-up-incubator.html?src=recg For years, the Pentagon has knocked on Silicon Valley’s door in search of programmers to work on its spying technologies. But these days, it’s the Pentagon that […]
Egypt military allows Islamists to attack churches
Egypt’s security forces, which have taken center stage in Egyptian political life in recent weeks, have made little effort to protect churches and other Christian property, leaving Christians in many parts of Egypt to fend for themselves. A majority of the attacks have happened in Upper Egypt, the country’s poorer and more conservative southern and […]
Assange says libertarians only hope for US
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange praised United States Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and his father, Dr. Ron Paul, during an interview Friday in which he said the family has been among the biggest supporters his whistleblowing group has in Congress. The Paul family, added Assange, have been “the strongest supporters of the fight against the US […]
Dirty Babylon 