Student loans seen as potential ‘next debt bomb’ for U.S. economy
DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google, NSA

The Justice Department is defending the government’s refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency.
The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency

.
Finally, for your edification, amusement or both…
The 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail”

Statements from 9/11 Commissioners Lee Hamilton & Thomas Kean. Lee Hamilton video from CBC Newsworld, Sunday, September 10th, 2006. Thomas Kean video from C-Span the next day, 9/11/2006

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 12 2012 21:46 utc | 3

for b real – africom

Posted by: remembererringgiap | Mar 12 2012 23:16 utc | 5

Well, well. I wonder how our sententious hamburger will juggle angry Arab’s recent reluctant and, let’s face it, embarrassing confessions that Nir Rosen is probably right, and indeed, the regime is guilty of massacre at Homs.
And get this: the more the dictatorship violently suppresses the uprising, the more radical the uprising grows. Go figure.

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 13 2012 1:49 utc | 7

what massacre at Homs, slops…
http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/high-tech-trickery-homs

Posted by: brian | Mar 13 2012 3:00 utc | 9

‘And get this: the more the dictatorship violently suppresses the uprising, the more radical the uprising grows. Go figure.’
youve got that back to front:te more violent the (islamic) insurgency, the more radical the govt reponse..as is its right to defend the country from enemies foreign or domestic.
Isnt it interesting that the syrian people support the army and not the insurgency! that doesnt support your position

Posted by: brian | Mar 13 2012 3:03 utc | 11

‘Saif Islam al-Qadhafi to the tune of €50 million. ‘
why would a gaddaffi fund a french right wing politician ? were they fooled about Sarcozys character?

Posted by: brian | Mar 13 2012 3:14 utc | 13

brian @ 9: Good link, thanks. Kudos b.
brian, you could show sloth reality til’ the cows come home, won’t change anything. It’s PAID to be here.

Posted by: ben | Mar 13 2012 3:24 utc | 15

slothrop like a moth to flame
likes to slander bernhard’s name
likes to rag and tag each thread
blowing spittle from his little head

Posted by: lizard | Mar 13 2012 4:03 utc | 17

nice one lizard

Posted by: lotsofnoise | Mar 13 2012 4:09 utc | 19

sometimes i worry about your appetite
after 50 years of free lunch… what could we expect?

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Mar 13 2012 4:26 utc | 21

[Repeat chorus]

Posted by: Biklett | Mar 13 2012 4:52 utc | 23

The Kingdom and the Towers

. Was there a foreign government behind the 9/11 attacks? A decade later, Americans still haven’t been given the whole story, while a key 28-page section of Congress’s Joint Inquiry report remains censored. Gathering years of leaks and leads, in an adaptation from their new book, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan examine the connections between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi), the Bush White House’s decision to ignore or bury evidence, and the frustration of lead investigators—including 9/11-commission staffers, counterterrorism officials, and senators on both sides of the aisle.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 13 2012 5:51 utc | 25

Thanks to Bevin @ 1 for the interesting report on Sarkozy. It seems that Berlusconi is a paragon of loyalty in comparison to S., but maybe that’s just a sign of the advantages of being your own source of covert funding.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Mar 13 2012 6:14 utc | 27

@b
Every time I use the search box on your site I get this message

We’re sorry…
… but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

Posted by: Calig | Mar 13 2012 6:26 utc | 29

there is also this stratfor email – the cancer is irrelevant, the Syrian part is
“http://www.emirates247.com/news/world/leaked-stratfor-email-stirs-turkey-pm-cancer-scare-2012-03-06-1.446983
The report was based on intelligence from a source identified as Faruk Demir who obtained the information from an “old classmate friend” of the lead surgeon who operated on Erdogan.
Stratfor described Demir as a former National Security Council official, adviser to Erdogan and an energy expert. Demir, on his website, describes himself as an energy security analyst who has worked for the prime minister’s office.”
http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/5509661_fwd-alpha-insight-turkey-syria-az-us-vz-russia-taiwan.html
On Syria – the conversation centered on how far Turkey is actually going
to go. TR325 explained that the Turkish plan is centered on civil war in
Syria. Officially, it’s Turkey providing the main training,a rms and
support to FSA. Unofficially, US and TUrkey are doing this together in
deploying SOF for this mission. Notice all the talk in the press now
about civil war breaking out in Syria. This is the narrative Turkey and US
want to build. I pointed out that creating the conditions for civil war –
actual neighborhood to neighborhood fighting – is still pretty difficult
considering that the Alawite forces are still holding together, but he
seemed to think that this can escalate within 2 months time. He also said
without saying that they’re working on making that happen. He acknowledges
it’ll be messy and it will take a lot of blood and time for a Sunni power
to emerge in syria, but that this is the Turkish obligation.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 13 2012 7:12 utc | 31

Everyone knew it but now we have prove that the Lockerbee case against the Libyian man Megrahi was a sham:
All links from the Herald of Scotland
Lockerbie Revealed: The secret report that damns Scottish justice

A DAMNING secret report has revealed the flawed handling of the Lockerbie case by Scottish prosecutors and the key documents not disclosed to the defence team which could have cleared the Libyan convicted of the atrocity.

Six key points that cast doubt on Megrahi’s guilt
The U.S. bribed the false witness:
Lockerbie Revealed: extracts and analysis

Enquiries with D&G (Dumfries and Galloway Police) have established that, some time after the conclusion of the applicant’s appeal against conviction, Anthony and Paul Gauci were each paid sums of money under the “Rewards for Justice””programme administered by the US Department of State. Under that programme the US Secretary of State was initially authorised to offer rewards of up to $5m for information leading to the arrest or conviction of persons involved in acts of terrorism against US persons or property worldwide.

Editorial Lockerbie: inching closer to the truth

Posted by: b | Mar 13 2012 8:43 utc | 33

and this is how it stands in the country that wants to attack Iran
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/some-200-rockets-hit-israel-since-start-of-latest-gaza-escalation-1.418173
“Israel and militant factions in the Gaza Strip agreed to an Egyptian-mediated truce to end four days of cross-border violence, a senior Egyptian security official told Reuters on Tuesday.
The official said both sides “agreed to end the current operations” including an unusual undertaking by Israel to “stop assassinations” in a deal expected to take effect at 1 A.M. local time.
Despite the cease-fire agreement, however, Three rockets were fired at southern Israel, causing no casualties.”

Posted by: somebody | Mar 13 2012 8:55 utc | 35

in the balkans, the aspiring empire dangled visions of pipeline revenue under the noses of factions hostile to each other, sold them guns, recruited a few psychopaths to serva as media figureheads, heroic leaders and scapegoats, and waited until the number of casualties rose far enough to justify “humanitarian intervention”… although the casualties are not critical since they can be managed and manufactured by the media.
the empire never had any intention of building the SEEL, or PEOP, or constanta trieste, or AMBO or any of those pipelines through the balkans, mostly because they didnt go much of anywhere… but they served their purpose… they stirred up enough trouble to justify our intervention.
.
.
the same routine in afghanistan: UNOCAL bridas and enron hype turkmenistan’s gas, and want to pipe it to pakistan and india… the israelis, represented by mossad guy yossi maiman, lobby the US congress for a pipeline in the other direction, across the caspian, that would supply europe, and eventually israel’s indian ally once the gas was piped and shipped thousands of miles out of its way, across the caspian, through azerbaijan, georgia and turkey, shipped to israel where it is piped to the read sea, then finally shipped to india… and india is apparently cool with this bullshit, god knows why.
whatever, at any rate, there were factions that genuinely were interested in the aghanistan pipeline, but PNAC’s needs for a new pearl harbor and the ensuing “war on terror” overrode them, seeing as how one of the main objects of the “war on terror” and the “new american centurty” was to deprive china of access to oil, and china was planning a big port at gwadar that would have enabled them to tap the turkmenistan gas if it once got headed in the wrong direction… not to mention the possibilities of chinese pipelines from turkmenistan and iran through pakistan to china.
so the afghan operation was the same plan as the balkan operation, with variations… the presence of drugs not being one of those variations, of course.
.
.
now , in syria, we really really need those pipeline routes and tanker ports, because we need to close hormuz to take out 50% of china’s oil imports, the 50% that goes through hormuz… once that oil is bottled up in the persian gulf by the closure of hormuz, we’ll have to build pipes to israel, lebanon and syria, and plumb that oil over to the mediterranean…
israel will become the oil distribution hub of the world, a big step towards “benevolent global hegemony” or “tikkun olam” or whatever you want to call it.
so we do the same thing we’ve successfully done in the balkans… we recruit and arm troublemakers, turn them loose, and wait for the casualties to mount, real casualties or manufactured, it’s all the same… enough casualties so we do a patented “humanitarian intervention” and change the regime of syria to one that will cooperate with (and profit massively from) the pipeline scheme.
no sweat, GI

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Mar 13 2012 11:54 utc | 37

– I knew Sarkozy was a lying sleazy politician without the smallest signs of human decency but this really makes me even more cynical about politics.

The French investigative website Mediapart claims to have seen a confidential note suggesting Gaddafi contributed up to €50m (£42m) to Sarkozy’s election fund five years ago.
Similar allegations emerged a year ago when Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam claimed Libya helped finance the 2007 campaign and demanded the French president, who led the war on the Libyan leader, return the money. In an interview with the Euronews TV channel, Saif al-Islam, who is currently being held in Libya after his father’s defeat and death, threatened to make details of the bank transfers public after the French leader threw his weight behind opposition forces.

So to be clear in 2007 Sarkozy took 50 Million from Gaddaffi to fund his election campaign. Then in 2011 he turns around and launches an attack on his country in order to bolster his re-election campaign. Anyone who thinks US politics is disillusioning clearly has never followed a French Presidential campaign.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/gaddafi-contributed-sarkozy-2007-election
– Meanwhile anyone who visits Huffington Post should read the following by Sharmine Narwani who teaches Middle Eastern Studies and St Antonys College London.

I have been blogging for the Huffington Post since September 2009, shortly after returning from a summer research tour through the Levant. Hanna Ingber, who recruited me as a blogger, was the founding World Editor of the Huffington Post. Hanna, who has since left the company, was particularly keen to have me write about my meetings and interviews with resistance groups Hezbollah and Hamas. I thought that was pretty ballsy for a US publication, online or not, and happily committed myself to bringing a fresh perspective on Mideast affairs to the pages of the Huffington Post.

Then, on December 5, I submitted the first of my Syria articles to the Huffington Post. The article, entitled Dubious Dealings: Syria and the Arab League, contained exclusive information – the list of Syrian amendments to the Arab League’s protocol to green-light an investigative mission into Syria. They did not publish it and did not respond to any emails. Since then, I have posted five further articles on Syria backstage at the Huffington Post. None have been published, and after many attempts to email editors there, I have still not received any explanation as to why.

Source: http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/syria-censorship-aol-huffington-post

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Mar 13 2012 12:15 utc | 39

heheh

Posted by: Alexander | Mar 13 2012 12:20 utc | 41

Sure, but still it was funny. Anyway, that slothrop comes here to defecate doesn’t mean it’s a latrine.

Posted by: Alexander | Mar 13 2012 13:04 utc | 43

Good interview from penny, long, but, worth a listen:
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2012/03/interview-william-cook.html

Posted by: ben | Mar 13 2012 15:58 utc | 45

Canada’s Toadie-in-Chief Harper’s vision of the modern state: Impoverish Canadians so they’ll take any job at any wage. Encourage Canadians to make more babies, however unloved they may be, so they’ll kill each other to get some stinking job they hate. Build more prisons to keep up with the demand. Use the excess, unconvicted, to man the army. More wars, more disease, more poverty, more crime, all presided over by unctuous under-toadies babbling about “morals”. And the “opposition” is letting it happen. This is not a conspiracy; it’s bleedin obvious!

Posted by: yes_but | Mar 13 2012 17:46 utc | 47

amen to that

Posted by: Alexander | Mar 13 2012 18:51 utc | 49

May explain the Scottish push for emancipation, I mean independence from UK, shortly after they sent him back to Libya on humanitarian grounds.

Posted by: Alexander | Mar 13 2012 20:57 utc | 51

Hans @ 44 — Thanks! That’s what I thought I’d read, but had no idea where.
IED, most likely, is not a weapon employed by the Syrian military — and is no mortar or other type of shell…. So…?
Usually autopsies are required for deaths under which occur under unusual circumstances, but, increasingly, fewer are being done as localities and states are facing budget problems. But surely the US government or Murdoch would have seen to having one done?
If private, we won’t hear anything which doesn’t support the objectives and story line of the Powers That Be.

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 14 2012 0:32 utc | 53

New to this site…
Lot of strange ideas floating round…
poop on toilets for example…

Posted by: killtaker | Mar 14 2012 0:34 utc | 55

According to Press TV and Wikipedia she was indeed killed by an IED.

Posted by: Alexander | Mar 14 2012 3:23 utc | 57

If it doesn’t fit the western narrative..

Posted by: Alexander | Mar 14 2012 6:21 utc | 59

They co-opt and defuse messages faster and faster these days. I’m already too late out of the starting gate on this one.
Why I Am Leaving the Empire, by Darth Vader

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 14 2012 14:14 utc | 61

@Monolycus “Why I am leaving Goldman Sachs”
Answer “Because my shithead boss did cut my bonus payment. Besides – I have made more money then I will ever be able to spend, so why bother working for more.”

Posted by: b | Mar 14 2012 18:06 utc | 63

From NYT

In a sign of the nervousness surrounding Mr. Panetta’s trip, the Marines and other troops who were waiting in a tent for the defense secretary to speak were abruptly asked by their commander to get up, place their weapons — M-16 and M-4 automatic rifles and 9-mm pistols — outside the tent and then return unarmed. The commander, Sgt. Maj. Brandon Hall, told reporters he was acting on orders from superiors.
“All I know is, I was told to get the weapons out,” he said. Asked why, he replied, “Somebody got itchy, that’s all I’ve got to say. Somebody got itchy; we just adjust.”

wtf, over.
the secretary of defense of the US of A now must fear being fragged?
what interesting times we live in.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 14 2012 20:22 utc | 65

@63 – My thoughts exactly. And I have news for the still naive twit. Goldman Sachs was always a bunch of shitbirds. It’s not some recent transformation.

Posted by: Sultanist | Mar 14 2012 21:04 utc | 67

I’ve selected nine quotes in an attempt to summarise a phenomenal court case. If you’re not interested in this, just scroll down.
“Vojislav Seselj came to the tribunal of his own free will [in] February 2003. … [T]he trial started after four years of Dr Šešelj’s pretrial detention. To this very day the answer has not been given to the question why the right to the expeditious trial is violated. The presiding judge of the Trial Chamber, Jean-Claude Antonetti, has stated that the duration of the trial proceedings against Šešelj has beaten the world record..”
http://www.vseselj.com/index.php?a=1167
10 March 2012. “Upon examination, the hospital doctors have determined that Seselj’s defibrillator, implanted at the beginning of January, is completely malfunctioning.”
“The rapid deterioration of Seselj’s health just before the end of his trial mirrors the case of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in 2006.”
http://info-wars.org/2012/03/10/serbian-politician-on-trial-at-hague-implanted-with-faulty-pacemaker/
“In addition [the alarm in] Šešelj’s cell was switched off or disabled so that he could not help [call] the prison guards during the night when he was sick”
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sr&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsrb.fondsk.ru%2Fnews%2F2012%2F03%2F13%2Fhag-u-panici-sheshel-ie-i-dale-zhiv.html
September 2006. “You falsely presented this man with a bird’s nest on the top of his head as my defence lawyer. He will never be my defence lawyer. You brought actors here to act as my defence lawyers but they will never be my defence lawyers. They are your spies.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2793899.stm
“One of the inviolable rights guaranteed by contemporary criminal law is the right to defense, according to which an accused person can choose how his defense will be conducted. On several occasions, against his will, Vojislav Šešelj was assigned stand-by counsels who were ready to take over his defense. […] thereby violating international law. After nearly four years in detention, Vojislav Šešelj felt compelled to start a hunger strike on November 10, 2006 in order to defend his human and legal rights, as guaranteed by all international conventions. Vojislav Šešelj brought his dramatic hunger strike […] to a halt only after his requirements regarding basic human and legal procedural rights had been met.”
http://www.vseselj.com/index.php?a=1166
“I am being tried for atrocious war crimes that I allegedly committed through hate speech as I preached my nationalist ideology that I am proud of….. I have no other involvement in these crimes expect for what I said or wrote.” (November 2007)
(“Vojislav Seselj in his own words”:)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2793899.stm
14-15 March 2012. VS’ closing remarks at his trial.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501714_162-57397359/serb-war-crimes-suspect-trial-was-political/
Wikipedia. [A dissident under Communist rule…] On 26 November 1979 he obtained a doctorate […] after successfully defending his doctoral thesis titled The Political Essence of Militarism and Fascism, which made him the youngest PhD holder in Yugoslavia….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vojislav_%C5%A0e%C5%A1elj
Books by V. Seselj in English:
http://www.vseselj.com/index.php?c=10

Posted by: Ivan K. | Mar 15 2012 1:44 utc | 69

Since this is an Open Thread:

16 Mar 2012. The grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, who is the supreme religious authority in Saudi Arabia, has said that all christian churches in the Arabian penninsula should be destroyed. In Saudi Arabia, Christian churches are already illegal; it is allowed for Christians to pray in the privacy of their homes but they cannot have churches. The grand mufti’s new comment came in the context of his advising Kuwait to enact a similar law. The mufti cited the Prophet Mohammed, who said the Arabian Peninsula is to exist under only one religion. The mufti went on to conclude that it was therefore necessary for Kuwait, being a part of the Arabian Peninsula, to outlaw and destroy all the churches on its territory. http://rt.com/news/peninsula-saudi-grand-mufti-701/

Posted by: Parviziyi | Mar 16 2012 13:25 utc | 71

The only enemies the government has that are worth this kind of effort is the people.
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

The former NSA official held his thumb and forefinger close together: “We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”

Bullshit. We are already there and have been for a decade or longer… They are just fine tuning it. Only everyone pretends, we’re not there yet, even the erudite on this board. Fact of the matter is, they can pull your or my ticket at any given moment. If not in real-time, then as Ward Churchill once said, “they can back engineer any evid4ence they want”. Just as with John Locke and Adam Smith. In Two Treatises of Government, e.g. State. The argument becomes religious as the invisible hand is interpreted as the hand of God. The invisible hand is God the State. And you are at it’s every whim. For good or ill. Mostly ill. A dangerous and paranoiac schizophrenic murderous God/State.
American ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme on July 12
Google Teams Up with CIA to Fund “Recorded Future” Startup Monitoring Websites, Blogs & Twitter Accounts

Manic Screaming
We should make all spiritual talk simple today
God is trying sell you something but you dont want to buy
That is what your suffering is:
your fantastic haggling
your manic screaming
over
price.
–Hafiz

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 16 2012 16:00 utc | 73

I’ve read about two cases. Have they both been getting money at the time? Thought about some revenge acts, too. But who knows, these days. With “wars” in Libya and Syria and assets frozen and/or given away, I’m sure there’s plenty of money going to various places, causing a lot of envy each.

Posted by: peter radiator | Mar 16 2012 17:42 utc | 75

@all – for obvious “political” reasons, I’m looking for alternatives to the use of Google’s search and email; any suggestions, please? (maybe others here might have this problem, too)

Posted by: claudio | Mar 17 2012 20:30 utc | 77

claudio: https://duckduckgo.com/ or https://blekko.com/ or http://www.bing.com/
I use a mix of them all including Google, none satisfy me really. Google used to be much better and they still are to some extend, setting aside their more than questionable politics these days. One key thing I do: I never search with Google when logged in (I use the gmail account mostly for junk mail and some stuff on code.google.com). Delete all google cookies at the end of the session.
As for email providers, I can’t help there, I use my own mailserver/domain.

Posted by: Philippe | Mar 18 2012 1:12 utc | 79

i’ve been having trouble with zshare… my songs disappear after a few minutes…
google has been my home page, and i’ve been using zshare because they give you a “delete code” without your having to sign up…
so, if google is reading my delete codes, then they could delete the songs…
my worst offense was probably “god and ten dollar gas“, hosted by supload, which began refusing my uploads a few nonths ago, and as of this posting, supload is down… what’s that about?
i posted a bunch of songs at a racist little site in texas, a site that banned me four or five times apparently because i didnt hate “niggers” and objected to the continual barrage of anti-black propaganda… anyhow, i thought maybe someone there figured out how to delete stuff from zshare… the problem with that theory being, i just posted a song here, this version of the song has never been posted anywhere else, hosted by zshare, and the song disappeared.
there was drop.io, which was touted as the best arudio host, it was bought by facebook, and they pulled the plug.
it’s all starting to smell like a slow-motion crackdown on the internet, or maybe it’s just the normal shaking-out process as this capability is consolidated into fewer, more easily-controlled, hands… which, i spose, amounts to the same thing as a crackdown.
anyhow, now i’m going through the same routine with kiwi6…
but i got no faith at all in google.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Mar 18 2012 12:36 utc | 81

Alexander says, @82…

“…you apparently have some software installed…”

well, i dont know how the “delete” mechanism works…
i’m waiting to see, now, since i’ve switched away from google and switched to a host that doesnt give you “delete” codes, what happens.
they’re gonna have to clamp down, though, but they may have to wait for some catastrophic new “new pearl harbor” to happen… probably be a package deal: martial law in the US, internet censorship, plus whatever else they can get away with.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Mar 18 2012 14:22 utc | 83

As brian stated above in this thread, I find it interesting that a large number of Syrian people support the government and not the insurgency.
However it is difficult to sort the truth from propaganda. I was referred to the Global March for Syria on March 15, 16 & 17 as a massive Syrian demonstrations supporting the government and opposing the foreign sponsored insurgency. A google search on “global march for syria” turned up 225,000,000 results of which the few I reviewed went both ways.
It seems that within Syria the demonstration is in support of the government however it appears that many demonstrations in other countries have bought into propaganda and are demonstrating in support of the insurgents. A direct contradiction of the Syrian sentiment.
On example from within Syria

In a national scene conveying a message to the whole world of the Syrian people’s commitment to national unity away from foreign interferences and dictates, millions of Syrians on Thursday streamed into the homeland’s streets and squares throughout the provinces in a global march for Syria.
Waving Syrian flags and banners with national slogans on them, the jubilant participants voiced rejection of foreign interference in the Syrian people’s internal affairs and support to the comprehensive reform program led by President Bashar al-Assad to build the renewed Syria.

I believe the true intent of demonstrations have been globally perverted. But then again the “Syrian Free Press ~ Uncensored by the Zion-Western Media” could be a government organ. Smoke and mirrors everywhere make me constantly suspicious.

Posted by: juannie | Mar 18 2012 16:29 utc | 85

Found this comment on a CNN Syria bomb attack:

Al Jazzera said on their Facebook page there was attack on Aleppo 16 hours before it was actually happened. How did they know??? And if you don’t know, Al Jazerra is worse then CNN. They didn’t need a conformation for anything, they said it is a government immediately!!!

If this is true, my hightened suspicions about Al Jazeera lately are spot on, but most important, Al Jazeera being linked so closely to the terrorists is quite extraordinary.

Posted by: Alexander | Mar 18 2012 17:11 utc | 87

When not in use unplug your webcams and microphones. Via Daily Mail:

The CIA wants to spy on you through your TV: Agency director says it will ‘transform’ surveillance
* Devices connected to internet leak information
* CIA director says these gadgets will ‘transform clandestine tradecraft’
* Spies could watch thousands via supercomputers
* People ‘bug’ their own homes with web-connected devices
[…]Everything from remote controls to clock radios can now be controlled via apps – and chip company ARM recently unveiled low-powered, cheaper chips which will be used in everything from fridges and ovens to doorbells.
The resultant chorus of ‘connected’ gadgets will be able to be read like a book – and even remote-controlled, according to CIA CIA Director David Petraeus, according to a recent report by Wired’s ‘Danger Room’ blog.
Petraeus says that web-connected gadgets will ‘transform’ the art of spying – allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party. […]

And remember, anything you say will be used against you:

“We Are This Far From A Turnkey Totalitarian State” – Big Brother Goes Live September 2013
George Orwell was right. He was just 30 years early.
In its April cover story, Wired has an exclusive report on the NSA’s Utah Data Center, which is a must read for anyone who believes any privacy is still a possibility in the United States: “A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks….
Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”… The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.” In other words, in just over 1 year, virtually anything one communicates through any traceable medium, or any record of one’s existence in the electronic medium, which these days is everything, will unofficially be property of the US government to deal with as it sees fit.
The codename of the project: Stellar Wind.
As Wired says, “there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.” […]

Posted by: Juan Moment | Mar 19 2012 4:54 utc | 89