On Afghanistan I’ve been noticing something which has been dropped. Every year during the fighting season I check out the official ISAF website for the daily casualty reports of NATO soldiers to try and get a sense if violence is going up or down. It’s useful to see how much NATO troops are getting injured/killed vs previous years.
However it seems they have stopped releasing the reports. March 30th was the last day they updated it, coincidentally timed around the start of this years fighting season. Was it stopped to bring less focus on deaths during this years fighting season? Maybe it could be because of the NATO withdrawal that they don’t have the staff to update it anymore? NATO soldiers are still dying, 7 Georgian troops were killed just a few days ago in one attack.
Still find it pretty strange NATO not reporting deaths in Afghanistan on there website anymore.

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Jun 11 2013 19:13 utc | 3

Pirouz_2 @ 3
This is exactly what the US wants for the entire region (ME). A consumer society burdened with debt and more debt. The AKP was praised for their “rapid” and “astounding” economic success. How Turkey got the money nobody knows but somehow they became “the model”. Something had to go some-when and it looks like it’s happening sooner than I’d imagined.
I find it funny when people make comments like, “Oh yeah, they became rich because of their tourist industry”. If the tourism industry is what guarantees economic success, Greece, Spain, Portugal etc. etc. will be economic paradise. But we all know they’re not.
Turkey(AKP) was simple given a FAT credit card to do whatever they want with it. It paid off massively as the US now fully controls the Turkish government. Erdogan simply can’t go against Washington’s wishes even if it’s against his country’s interest – think Syria.
I guess it’s fair to say the “Turkish model”, which was once championed by the top economic experts and non-think tanks, is dead on arrival.

Posted by: Zico | Jun 11 2013 20:45 utc | 5

Israeli Commandos Beating and Then Shooting Injured Gaza Flotilla Member

Posted by: Michal | Jun 11 2013 22:02 utc | 7

In the United States the bouncers are running the bar. The bikers, called in to provide security, have taken over the stage, the band is playing for their entertainment. As to the crowd?
Unsurprisingly, after sixty years of undermining democracies and installing dictators- the list is tediously long but includes Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, Brazil, Argentina and Chile- it has become a dictatorship itself: the core of the ruling group is the security establishment, the secret police and the military.
This ruling group is, essentially, auditioning for the role of global sovereign. It makes the richest and most powerful nation in the world do as it wants, it reckons it could do the same job across the planet. And most of the UN votes for it to do so. The member nations daren’t do otherwise.
Those who rule the States are very powerful, but they are not very bright. The days when the secret services acted intelligently are long gone: they don’t bother to learn languages or study other cultures any more (they did once) because they rely entirely on a mixture of force and money. Sticks and carrots are a lingua franca. Mr Snowden’s former colleagues are thugs and bullies, neanderthals, as Koestler called them.
This dictatorship controls all branches of government: there is no separation of powers. The Judiciary are thoroughly corrupted, individual judges may continue to believe in the rule of law and the Constitution, but the Appeals Courts will overturn any judgements that offend the Executive. And anything that slips past the Appellant courts the Supreme Court will quash it 5-4 or more. As to Congress has there ever been a worse one? One would be hard put to count more than a handful from both houses who will stand up to the dictatorship.
Beyond Congress, resistance is very difficult: try and march, peacefully, against the next episode of war and at best everyone involved will be blacklisted, harassed and stalked until further notice. You will certainly be listed for detention in the event of an “emergency.” And it would be wise to look forward to lengthy periods of unemployment.
At worst you will end up in gaol, as Lynne Stewart and Scott Ritter are. And that is not to mention the fate of Dr David Kelly and many others who have had, coincidentally, atrocious luck after making life harder for the elite.
The United States has been at war since 1941. And whenever war ended the establishment rushed to start another, which it could not lose: an army without real enemies is like a species without predators, eating everything in its path it grows until it explodes, turning on itself.
Its easy to forget that the world’s largest military comes from a country which is committed, historically and constitutionally, to having no standing army at all, a nation which, as recently as the 1930s had a tiny army with a budget that, I am guessing, was much smaller than those of France and the other European powers, almost all of which had mass conscript armies. The current situation was a long time coming. It began with Truman who was a cypher, like Obama, sponsored by a political ‘machine’ with clear criminal connections.
There is nothing inevitable about the descent into real fascism but the course is clearly set.

Posted by: bevin | Jun 11 2013 22:55 utc | 9

bevin @ 7: “There is nothing inevitable about the descent into real fascism but the course is clearly set.”
Excellent finish to a very relevant post. The confluence of corporate and government power has led the US to this point, and there is no going back. Let’s hope some other force in the world can blunt the drive to make this reality global.

Posted by: ben | Jun 12 2013 0:41 utc | 11

Sales of Orwell’s ’1984′ novel are up by 177 per cent on Amazon, according to the website – 60 years and still going strong…

Posted by: kev | Jun 12 2013 4:16 utc | 13

Message to Erdogan from Syria: Karma’s a bitch!

Posted by: kalithea | Jun 12 2013 5:03 utc | 15

An Al-Nusra leader rapes another Al Jazeera reporter
Date and Time:30 April 2013 – 19:07 –
A female Al Jazeera reporter who was raped by an Al Nusra commander has been transferred to Qatar.
A female Al Jazeera correspondent, who is covering the terrorist activities from different cities in Syria for months, was quickly moved to Qatar, after one of the commanders of Al Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group, raped her in Aleppo. Egyptian daily Al-Nahar reported that Ghada Oweis, Al Jazeera correspondent, has long been working alongside terrorist groups opposed to Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo to send reports to Qatari
network.
A few days ago on the invitation of one of the commanders of this Salafist group, she went to his office. Surprisingly however, the Al-Nusra militias did not allow her camera crews to enter the office.
And they took Ms. Oweis by force and told the crews to come back for interview tomorrow.
Al Jazeera correspondent was rushed out of Syria via Turkey, when it was discovered she was raped by the commander of Al-Nusra Front in Aleppo. She was transferred to Qatar later, she is emotionally in shock.
Returning to Qatar, Ghada Oweis demanded justice and asked the senior leaders of Al-Nusra group to punish this commander. Reportedly Al Jazeera is trying to prevent the reporter from affirming the news by ways of pressure and payments of huge amount of money to maintain the good image of the terrorists fighting in Syria.
The terrorist militias in Syria have been committing numerous acts of violence and shameless atrocities against the civilians, by using a Fatwa; issued by one of the Muftis of Salafists, that militias fighting in Syria can force women to ‘Jihad al Nikah’ (Girls must participate in “marriage” to fulfill their Jihad obligations in Syria).
http://www.islamicinvitationturkey.com/2013/04/30/an-al-nusra-leader-rapes-another-al-jazeera-reporter/

Posted by: brian | Jun 12 2013 6:21 utc | 17

Re comments one and two, a surprisingly frank report on Stars & Stripes criticising official ISAF victory bulletins which not infrequently contradict reality:
http://www.stripes.com/positive-spin-some-messages-from-military-not-entirely-accurate-1.225393

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jun 12 2013 7:52 utc | 19

@brian #18 “how many reporters raped does it take before AJ turns against Alnusra and FSA?”
Al Jazeera is NOT an independent media, just Qatar’s brutal monarchies propaganda outlet, therefore “peaceful cannibals” can rape all they want, nothing will change unless prince says so. Reporter either gets payed to shut up, or if she doesnt – will be jailed or silenced in another way.

Posted by: Harry | Jun 12 2013 9:04 utc | 21

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/12/308545/syrian-army-make-advances-in-aleppo/
imagine if terrorists were running amuck in US , based in mexico and canada and making cross border raids where the media claim a civil war was being waged; and the US army(gawd bless em!) were making advances in Chicago to wrest it back from the american ‘rebels’ none of whom spoke american! while the evil empire of Iran was debating whether to add to their humanitarian aid by sending weapons to the US opposition rebels…..

Posted by: brian | Jun 12 2013 9:13 utc | 23

Monthly Review commemorates the 25th anniversary of the battle that drove the SADF and its ‘Western’ allies out of Angola, and hastened the fall of the apartheid regime:
The Military Defeat of the South Africans in Angola, by Horace Campbell
http://monthlyreview.org/2013/04/01/the-military-defeat-of-the-south-africans-in-angola
Cuito Cuanavale, Angola: 25th Anniversary of a Historic African Battle, by Ronnie Kasrils
http://monthlyreview.org/2013/04/01/cuito-cuanavale-angola

Posted by: Watson | Jun 12 2013 15:35 utc | 25

In the United States the bouncers are running the bar bevin at 9.
The latest US-Swiss imbroglio concerns banking of course.
The US has presented a plan to the Federal Council to resolve the tax issues of the past and fix, regulate the future. All this is very complicated and almost impossible to explain briefly.
– Concerns the likes of UBS and Credit Suisse prospecting for clients in the US for them to avoid tax; or simply accepting clients who are not in order with US tax regs. The US and Lybia under Kadafi and one African country are the only ones who tax their citizens abroad. Most of this stuff is regulated by international – and/or – bilateral agreements.
I am not supporting these banks, their imprudent, illegal, or criminal activities.
Anyway, the US has offered up a secret agreement.
The Swiss are asked to sign off on it, with no negotiation possible.
The threats are very dire.
So “Parliament” is faced with voting in some agreement they can’t know the content of. They are discussing it these past days.
Positions vary:
a) it is the best solution, let the banks deal with the US, though nobody knows what happens next, this stance involves emergency legislation and suspending Swiss law, capitulating and losing voters…
b) we cannot vote an agreement without knowing what it is, we abstain, or variant: We are against the whole deal but are willing to be pragmatic and wait to hear more, specially from the banks
c) in these conditions we should not be asked to decide, the Federal Council has to take responsibility (They have all emergency powers etc.) Wait for the ppls reactions.
d) f*** the USA. (not possible)

Posted by: Noirette | Jun 12 2013 15:45 utc | 27

b
may be i should’ve say *conspiracy theorists*

Posted by: denk | Jun 12 2013 17:09 utc | 29

@debs#30; funny discussing Angola the other day, the UN failed (OK, a Norm) but the Chinese succeeded, this is a trend on the continent, and one the US is battling or trying to counter. Sérgio Vieira de Mello Timor mission, and from the very few good people the UN offers; he died sadly in Iraq (Hotel bombing), likewise, Luiz Carlos da Costa (PDRSG) died in Haiti’s earthquake, another good egg. Both I will note ‘had’ to play ‘Politics’, but did fight for what should be right when push came to shove. Yes, and sadly it is big ‘business’ that drives all ‘Humanitarian’ (Or peacekeeping and the new comical Peace Building) missions. In this light, I worry that the UN is requesting its largest ever funding pledge for Syria (Or not for Syria, but the partners against Syria).

Posted by: kev | Jun 13 2013 1:21 utc | 31

@ 30
Yeah, the apartheid regime wasn’t defeated militarily; it agreed to step aside in a settlement supervised by its patrons in the ‘West’.
The end of the Soviet bloc had resulted in the termination of most of the military support for the anti-apartheid struggle, and the diminution of much of the left influence within the ANC.
Even though one can’t minimize importance of abolishing the hateful apartheid system and instituting universal suffrage, the outcome has nonetheless been extremely disappointing.
Electoral democracy and social equality are hollow without economic justice.

Posted by: Watson | Jun 13 2013 1:58 utc | 33

b
i got my *conspiracy* post deleted in atimes too 🙁
anyway,
if u think *ethnic specific bioweapon * is too far fetched
i’ll point u to two facts
in 2004, the british medical society predicts that *ethnic bomb* could be a reality in *few yrs time*, but the brits could be behind the curve on this.
way back in around 2000, the muricun *defence* sec ?? cohen told janes that *our scientific community [sic] is very close to producing ethnic specific bioweapon*, cohen should know what he’s talking about, he had first hand knowledge of what’s going on in the myraid of dr strangeglove labs all over murica, didnt he ?
a few yr later, 2003, sars hit china n spread to mostly ethnic chinese enclaves all over the world. similar pattern recurs with the hxnx series including the current h7n9 flu.
another mystery, from 2000-2003, dozens of microbiologists specialised in genetic bioweapon research died , or murdered in mysterious situation.
last but not least, *ethnic specific bioweapon * was one of the items listed in the pnac manifesto. if u take a look at that document, all other objectives, the *seven countries in five yrs* road map , the star war project, the *asian pivot* have all been executed like clockwork, is it too far fetched to assume that *ethnic specific bioweapon* is already a reality ?
lots of people wonder if sars, hxnx series are ethnic bombs for very good reasons, if it quacks like duck…….
hmm, i can sense ur impatience already so i shall rest my case on this *conspiracy theory*

Posted by: denk | Jun 13 2013 4:08 utc | 35

When Qusayr fell to the SAA, a rebel leader said on TV that 1000 rebel fighters were on the way from all over Syria to retake it. Is it really that kind of numbers? I mean, that’s not really a lot is it? And I bet you he was inflating that number. They can only fight for so long until the number of killed catches up with them.

Posted by: Alexander | Jun 13 2013 14:14 utc | 37

@Alexander When Qusayr fell to the SAA, a rebel leader said on TV that 1000 rebel fighters were on the way from all over Syria to retake it. Is it really that kind of numbers? I mean, that’s not really a lot is it? And I bet you he was inflating that number. They can only fight for so long until the number of killed catches up with them.
As I had estimated here the total of insurgents is less than 30,000. They are thin spread and have significant losses. Today a Saudi, a Qatari and an Egyptian cleric, all top folks, publicly called for Jihad in Syria. The insurgents have run out of bodies and need new recruits.

Posted by: b | Jun 13 2013 17:59 utc | 39

b,
A “conspiracy theory” is a mental model for sorting out the truth. It is like the proverbial finger pointing at the moon. Don’t obsess over the finger. It is the moon you should be looking at.

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 14 2013 2:17 utc | 41

Re: ‘conspiracy theories’
One must obviously be wary in accepting them, as they are typically not capable of definitive proof, in part because the alleged perps have the means to act covertly.
However, I find it useful to check in periodically with the ‘conspiracy theorists’, because they proceed from the valuable assumption that the MSM version of events is regularly false. They provide possible alternative hypotheses, worthwhile in themselves, and in support of which they often report facts and reveal relationships which, although not conclusive, are frequently informative and don’t otherwise reach the light of day.

Posted by: Watson | Jun 14 2013 13:11 utc | 43

Get a load of this “revolutionist’s” blog: http://louisproyect.org/

Posted by: ruralito | Jun 14 2013 14:35 utc | 45

Is PRISM still in any way effective now that it is public?

I don’t perceive this as a “privacy” issue. It’s an ethics, constitutional issue, and monetary issue. It’s not just a matter of principle or emotion, it’s a matter of integrity of state.

Long, but well worth the time to read..

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 15 2013 1:13 utc | 47

sherlock holmes
*any event with a probability > 0 is worth investigating*

Posted by: denk | Jun 15 2013 3:11 utc | 49

We can no longer organize that way.

reusrename (518 posts)
135. I don’t think this will bear any fruit. We can no longer organize that way.
This new technology is specifically designed for disrupting our ability to organize. This is what folks need to come to terms with. Only a very small number of individuals need to be removed from the public discourse in order to accomplish this end.
Sometimes (or according to research, in most cases) the most influential person in a social network or insurgency is not the most high profile or most vocal individual in the group. With very large groups (OWS for example), this new technology identifies those individuals who’s participation in the group is the most critical.
That, in a nutshell, is what the metadata is being collected and used for. Because the algorithms being used are easily handled by computers, and because no errors are introduced by trying to decode or translate any communication content, the system can create a very precise mapping of our social networks. Only actual metadata associated with each communication is logged into the software, and from that the algorithms sort out the social connections.
For some basic info about how the science is implemented, google the keywords: thesis+insurgent+social+network
My guess is that less than 1/100 of 1% of the population would need to be disrupted/detained/dissuaded/discredited in order to derail any popular movement. For a town like mine of 30,000, that is less than 3 people. If such disruptions are actually occurring, would we even know about it?
Add to this a propaganda machine that everyone acknowledges is the best ever invented, and you will start to see what we are up against. Just so there is no misunderstanding I mean “we, the ones who are trying to change things” and I include some right-wing libertarians in this group. The other day someone asked if I supported Ron Paul. Of course not, but I would rather have one Ron Paul on the team than ten Diane Feinsteins.
People are NOT apathetic, they are super-motivated. The baggers are ready to start shooting at the first sudden noise and the left are ready to start beating each other into submission, if necessary. IMHO, the science of suppression is being actively deploy against an unwitting public and it is working astoundingly well. Of course it works, it’s science.
Recent Historic Example: During the Iranian uprising several years ago, only 800 people were arrested, IIRC, and only three or four were killed in order to put down a revolution that was very broad and very deep. Remember that this was a population in which many had lived through the overthrow of the Shah. (Since the revolution was put down, most, if not all, of the 800 who were detained have been executed.) IIRC, the US had no official position on any of this. My understanding of these events is two-fold: that we need to have a bad guy in order to have a nuclear confrontation and that the thwarting of this uprising would not have been possible without our technology. YMMV. Total population of Iran is about 75 million and the only arrested (and have since executed) about 800, which is about 0.0001% or way less than what one might normally think is necessary.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 17 2013 4:02 utc | 51

A Russian, an American and a Brit walk into a summit; unfortunately I can’t find a punch line – but then Boris Johnson stepped up to the plate; A Brit with a Russian name and born in the US, how funny is that! (His family linage is pretty wild, from 8th cousin of David Cameron, to great-grandson of Ali Kemal Bey, a liberal Turkish journalist). Bar that, he made a statement on Syria, Ok,it’s given at times he does put his foot in his mouth, but is decent to explain the rational or simply appoligize;
“Odious, twisted, hate-filled thugs; arrogant and inadequate creeps, intoxicated by the pathetic illusion of power that comes with guns; poisoned by a perversion of religion into a contempt for all norms of civilised behaviour.
They are fighting not for freedom but for a terrifying Islamic state in which they would have the whip hand — and yet there is no dodging or fudging the matter: these are among the Syrian rebels who are hoping now to benefit from the flow of Western arms …
This is not the moment to send more arms. This is the moment for a total ceasefire, an end to the madness. It is time for the US, Russia, the EU, Turkey, Iran, Saudi and all the players to convene an intergovernmental conference to try to halt the carnage. We can’t use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs.”

Posted by: kev | Jun 17 2013 12:58 utc | 53

This was posted by the former Chief Privacy Officer at Twitter:

Suddenly, it feels like 2000 again. Back then, surveillance programs like Carnivore, Echelon, and Total Information Awareness helped spark a surge in electronic privacy awareness. Now a decade later, the recent discovery of programs like PRISM, Boundless Informant, and FISA orders are catalyzing renewed concern.
The programs of the past can be characterized as “proximate” surveillance, in which the government attempted to use technology to directly monitor communication themselves. The programs of this decade mark the transition to “oblique” surveillance, in which the government more often just goes to the places where information has been accumulating on its own, such as email providers, search engines, social networks, and telecoms.
Both then and now, privacy advocates have typically come into conflict with a persistent tension, in which many individuals don’t understand why they should be concerned about surveillance if they have nothing to hide. It’s even less clear in the world of “oblique” surveillance, given that apologists will always frame our use of information-gathering services like a mobile phone plan or GMail as a choice.
We’re All One Big Criminal Conspiracy
As James Duane, a professor at Regent Law School and former defense attorney, notes in his excellent lecture on why it is never a good idea to talk to the police:
Estimates of the current size of the body of federal criminal law vary. It has been reported that the Congressional Research Service cannot even count the current number of federal crimes. These laws are scattered in over 50 titles of the United States Code, encompassing roughly 27,000 pages. Worse yet, the statutory code sections often incorporate, by reference, the provisions and sanctions of administrative regulations promulgated by various regulatory agencies under congressional authorization. Estimates of how many such regulations exist are even less well settled, but the ABA thinks there are ”nearly 10,000.”
If the federal government can’t even count how many laws there are, what chance does an individual have of being certain that they are not acting in violation of one of them?
As Supreme Court Justice Breyer elaborates:
The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just when a particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation.
For instance, did you know that it is a federal crime to be in possession of a lobster under a certain size? It doesn’t matter if you bought it at a grocery store, if someone else gave it to you, if it’s dead or alive, if you found it after it died of natural causes, or even if you killed it while acting in self defense. You can go to jail because of a lobster.
If the federal government had access to every email you’ve ever written and every phone call you’ve ever made, it’s almost certain that they could find something you’ve done which violates a provision in the 27,000 pages of federal statues or 10,000 administrative regulations. You probably do have something to hide, you just don’t know it yet.
We Should Have Something To Hide
Over the past year, there have been a number of headline-grabbing legal changes in the US, such as the legalization of marijuana in CO and WA, as well as the legalization of same-sex marriage in a growing number of US states.
As a majority of people in these states apparently favor these changes, advocates for the US democratic process cite these legal victories as examples of how the system can provide real freedoms to those who engage with it through lawful means. And it’s true, the bills did pass.
What’s often overlooked, however, is that these legal victories would probably not have been possible without the ability to break the law.
The state of Minnesota, for instance, legalized same-sex marriage this year, but sodomy laws had effectively made homosexuality itself completely illegal in that state until 2001. Likewise, before the recent changes making marijuana legal for personal use in WA and CO, it was obviously not legal for personal use.
Imagine if there were an alternate dystopian reality where law enforcement was 100% effective, such that any potential law offenders knew they would be immediately identified, apprehended, and jailed. If perfect law enforcement had been a reality in MN, CO, and WA since their founding in the 1850s, it seems quite unlikely that these recent changes would have ever come to pass. How could people have decided that marijuana should be legal, if nobody had ever used it? How could states decide that same sex marriage should be permitted, if nobody had ever seen or participated in a same sex relationship?
The cornerstone of liberal democracy is the notion that free speech allows us to create a marketplace of ideas, from which we can use the political process to collectively choose the society we want. Most critiques of this system tend to focus on the ways in which this marketplace of ideas isn’t totally free, such as the ways in which some actors have substantially more influence over what information is distributed than others.
The more fundamental problem, however, is that living in an existing social structure creates a specific set of desires and motivations in a way that merely talking about other social structures never can. The world we live in influences not just what we think, but how we think, in a way that a discourse about other ideas isn’t able to. Any teenager can tell you that life’s most meaningful experiences aren’t the ones you necessarily desired, but the ones that actually transformed your very sense of what you desire.
We can only desire based on what we know. It is our present experience of what we are and are not able to do that largely determines our sense for what is possible. This is why same sex relationships, in violation of sodomy laws, were a necessary precondition for the legalization of same sex marriage. This is also why those maintaining positions of power will always encourage the freedom to talk about ideas, but never to act.
Technology And Law Enforcement
Law enforcement used to be harder – and that was by design. If a law enforcement agency wanted to track someone, it required physically assigning a law enforcement agent to follow that person around. Tracking everybody would be inconceivable, because it would require having as many law enforcement agents as people.
Today things are very different. Almost everyone carries a tracking device (their mobile phone) at all times, which reports their location to a handful of telecoms, which are required by law to provide that information to the government. Tracking everyone is no longer inconceivable, and is in fact happening all the time. We know that Sprint alone responded to 8 million law enforcement requests for real time customer location just in 2008. They got so many requests that they built an automated system to handle them.
Combined with ballooning law enforcement budgets, this trend towards automation, which includes things like license plate scanners and domestically deployed drones, represents a significant shift in the way that law enforcement operates.
Police already abuse the immense power they have, but if everyone’s every actions are being monitored, and everyone technically violates some obscure law at some time, then punishment becomes purely selective. Those in power will essentially have what they need to punish anyone they’d like, whenever they choose, as if there were no rules at all.
Even ignoring this obvious potential for new abuse, it’s also substantially closer to that dystopian reality of a world where law enforcement is 100% effective, eliminating the possibility to experience alternative ideas that might better suit us.
Compromise
Some will say that it’s necessary to balance privacy against security, and that it’s important to find the right compromise between the two. Even if you believe that, a good negotiator doesn’t begin a conversation with someone whose position is at the exact opposite extreme by leading with concessions.
And that’s exactly what we’re dealing with. Not a balance of forces which are looking for the perfect compromise between security and privacy, but an enormous steam roller built out of careers and billions in revenue from surveillance contracts and technology. To negotiate with that, we can’t lead with concessions, but rather with all the opposition we can muster.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 17 2013 23:59 utc | 55

Clearly the Gülen movement/Turkish police is in full out war against Erdogan/MIT.

Posted by: somebody | Jun 20 2013 6:22 utc | 57

one thing u gotta hand it to the muricuns, they’r real hard working chaps
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-soldiers-in-nepal-on-chinas-tibet-border-on-a-reconnaissance-humanitarian-mission/5305643

Posted by: denk | Jun 22 2013 6:58 utc | 59

Michael Hastings Sent Email About FBI Probe Hours Before Death
hmmm

Posted by: b | Jun 23 2013 16:03 utc | 61

those who plan to go see the movie World War Z may like to read this blog review first:
http://mattcornell.org/blog/2013/06/where-the-z-stands-for-zionism/
‘….But the utopia is short-lived. This easing of borders becomes Jerusalem’s downfall. At the crossing, the noise of an Arab woman’s celebratory song attracts a zombie horde. The zombies form a pyramid to climb over the apartheid wall as the IDF tries to kill them. This is a very disturbing image. It is impossible not to see this scene as an apocalyptic evocation of Israeli fears of Arab invasion, whether through literal acts of violence or “demographic threat.” The city is finally overtaken by zombies. In compromising security for brotherhood, Israel’s worst fears are realized. ‘
In the final escape from Jersualem, an IDF soldier sacrifices himself with a grenade to help Gerry get away (ironically, a suicide bombing). Gerry and a wounded female IDF soldier are the only survivors and become the film’s central heroes. The US and Israel (with a benevolent assist from the UN) working together to save civilization from a unknowable, unstoppable terror.’

Posted by: brian | Jun 24 2013 7:52 utc | 63

brian | Jun 24, 2013 3:52:56 AM | 63, downloading now, PB – of course. Superman was all Christian, a bit weird, as that was not the theme as a Kid. In that, Zombies don’t have enemies other than all that is living, unlike this one, that is so RoJ (Rule of Jew)- Hate to say that; do I fuck, it’s so true!. Although I did enjoy District 9 as an alternative in many ways, but not a Zombie flick by any definition at all. This could be the next thing, suicide Zombies ‘infiltration of the West’, a bit like Indiana Jones V’s Nazi ghost warriors, again!

Posted by: kev | Jun 24 2013 13:29 utc | 65