FBI, DHS, Pentagon, Fed Using Social Media for Spying, Propaganda

Source: Corbett Report


TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation posted a Request for Information last month calling on IT companies to demonstrate their ability to design software for monitoring, mapping and analyzing social media.

The RFI, posted to the government’s Federal Business Opportunities website in January, reveals the FBI’s desire for software capable of monitoring social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to provide alerts and analysis for publicly posted information. The software would require the ability to:

Washington DC: FBI Foils Own Terror Plot (Again)

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

FBI's nation-wide stable of patsies can be switched "live" at any moment.

February 18. 2012 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has once again proven that the only thing Americans need fear, is their own government, with the latest "terror attack" foiled being one entirely of their own design.

USA Today reports that a suspect had been arrested by the FBI who was "en route to the U.S. Capitol allegedly to detonate a suicide bomb." While initial reports portrayed the incident as a narrowly averted terrorist attack, CBS would report that a "high ranking source told CBS News the man was "never a real threat."" The explosives the would-be bomber carried were provided to him by the FBI during what they described as a "lengthy and extensive operation." The only contact the suspect had with "Al Qaeda" was with FBI officials posing as associates of the elusive, omnipresent, bearded terror conglomerate. The FBI, much like their MI5 counterparts in England, have a propensity for recruiting likely candidates from mosques they covertly run.

This is but the latest in a string of national terror plots carried out from start to finish by the FBI, who has made a business of approaching likely candidates and grooming them to carry out terror attacks. In September 2011, another FBI terror operation targeting the Capitol was "foiled," involving a patsy who believed he was to take part in an assault that would involve multiple gunmen and even a drone bomber provided to him by the FBI.

And perhaps the most dubious of all, was the December 2010 Portland "Christmas Tree Bomber," who was also approached by the FBI, provided demolition training, including a demonstration with live explosives performed in a Lincoln County park, and a van within which the patsy believed his handlers had provided him a bomb. The van with the inert device was parked next to a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony where the patsy attempted to detonate it remotely before being arrested by FBI agents.

It would later turn out that Portland had heroically withdrew from the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, (JTTF), with the operation then being carried out behind Portland Mayor Sam Adam's back only for its conclusion to humiliatingly catch the mayor off guard. The city of Portland would eventually rejoin the JTTF after the fallout from the FBI's own terror plot.

Escobar: 'Al-Qaeda agents worm into Syrian rebel army'

Source: RT

The EU states are calling for creating humanitarian corridors in Syria, which some fear could open the door to foreign intervention. But Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar says it's already underway.

Noam Chomsky: America's Decline Is Real -- and Increasingly Self-Inflicted

Source: AlterNet
Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky on how America "lost" the world. 

Read Part 2 of Chomsky's "Decline of America" series here. 

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated -- Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.  Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead.  Right now, in fact.

 

At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops. 

The prime target was South Vietnam.  The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In this, Henry Kissinger’s orders were being carried out -- “anything that flies on anything that moves” -- a call for genocide that is rare in the historical record.  Little of this is remembered.  Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists.

When the invasion was launched 50 years ago, concern was so slight that there were few efforts at justification, hardly more than the president’s impassioned plea that “we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence” and if the conspiracy achieves its ends in Laos and Vietnam, “the gates will be opened wide.”

Elsewhere, he warned further that “the complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history [and] only the strong... can possibly survive,” in this case reflecting on the failure of U.S. aggression and terror to crush Cuban independence.

McCain: Cybersecurity Bill Ineffective Without NSA Monitoring the Net

Source: Wired
Kim Zetter

After three years of haggling to produce bipartisan cybersecurity legislation that addresses the security of the nation’s critical infrastructure systems, the Senate finally got a bill this week that seemed destined to actually pass.

That is, until a hearing on Thursday to discuss the bill in which Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) sideswiped lawmakers behind the proposed legislation and announced that he, and seven other Senate ranking members, were opposed to the bill and would be introducing a competing bill in two weeks to address failings they see in the legislation.

McCain and his colleagues oppose the current bill on the grounds that it would give the Department of Homeland Security regulatory authority over private businesses that own and operate critical infrastructure systems and that it doesn’t grant the National Security Agency, a branch of the Defense Department, any authority to monitor networks in real-time to thwart cyberattacks.

The bill neglects to give authority “to the only institutions currently capable of [protecting the homeland], U.S. Cybercommand and the National Security Agency (NSA),” McCain said in a written statement presented at the hearing. “According to [General Keith Alexander, the Commander of U.S. Cybercommand and the Director of the NSA] in order to stop a cyber attack you have to see it in real time, and you have to have those authorities…. This legislation does nothing to address this significant concern and I question why we have yet to have a serious discussion about who is best suited to protect our country from this threat we all agree is very real and growing.”

The current cybersecurity bill proposes to do what nothing else has succeeded in doing to date – that is, improve the security of critical infrastructure systems. It would do this by giving the government regulatory power over companies that operate such systems to force them to do due diligence.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced the legislation on Tuesday along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).

U.S. move on Balochistan tendentious: Pakistan

Source: The Hindu

Pakistan on Saturday reacted sharply to a resolution introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by three members asserting Balochistan's right to self-determination. Across the political spectrum, there was consensus that this amounted to an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty which could impact U.S.-Pakistan relations. 

Interacting with mediapersons in Karachi, Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani described the resolution introduced by Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher as an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty. Earlier this week, Pakistan had reacted equally sharply over the exclusive hearing held by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations on human rights violations in Balochistan. This sub-committee is also chaired by Mr. Rohrabacher. 

In the official formulation of Pakistan's reaction — put out by the Foreign Office — Minister Hina Rabbani Khar took “strong exception'' and said it was against the very fundamentals of long-standing Pakistan-U.S. relations. Maintaining that it was an isolated move, she said the “draft resolution'' is contrary to the principles of the U.N. Charter and international law. Ms. Khar described the resolution as an unfriendly and irresponsible attempt by a few individuals to create distrust and hoped that this “latest tendentious move'' will not be allowed to sail through the House by a vast majority of U.S. 

Corbett Report Episode 218 - The Philosophy of Liberty: The Magna Carta

Source: Corbett Report
James Corbett

In this age of the destruction of our long tradition of western jurisprudence, it is a document that everyone has heard of but very few have read. The Magna Carta was written nearly 800 years ago, yet still has a profound influence on our thinking about law and government. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we rediscover the tradition of liberties and freedoms affirmed in this ancient agreement.

Documentation:

FBI's Terror Factory Yields DC Suicide Bomber

Source: GreeneWave
Topher Morrison

On Friday, 29-year-old Morroccan, Amine El Khalifi was arrested purportedly on his way to the U.S. Capitol dawning classic terror chic – suicide vest and automatic weapon.  The explosives and gun, however, were merely innocuous props in a sting operation staged by the FBI after a nearly yearlong surveillance and investigation of Mr. Khalifi.

While many are surely applauding the gumshoe tactics of America’s favorite bureau saving us once again from would-be terrorists it is evident to many others like Toni Cartalucci of Land Destroyer Report in a sterling analysis harkening even as far back as the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing:

“That this is but the latest in a string of national terror plots carried out from start to finish by the FBI, who has made a business of approaching likely candidates and grooming them to carry out terror attacks.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News’ now cancelled Freedom Watch also agrees:

Testifying to this suspicion is what is immediately lacking in the original report by the Associated Press, namely the nexus through which FBI members first contacted Mr. Khalifi.  Local police were reportedly tipped off by Frank Dynda, Mr. Khalifi’s former landlord in Arlington, VA, on the suspicion that Khalifi was making bombs, but law enforcement told Mr. Dynda to leave him alone and there is no indication that the FBI was notified.

There is, however, mention of the infamous Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, VA.  According to the AP its imam “Johari Abdul-Malik…along with other Muslim leaders meets regularly with the FBI.”  Considering the federal government has had a long relationship with Al-Hijrah, this makes sense.

From January 2001 to April of 2002, influential Al-Qaeda member and recently assassinated American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki used to preside as imam at the Falls Church mosque while also according to Fox News as a “lunch guest of military brass at the Pentagon within months of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.”

While the FBI, according to the AP, assuaged imam Abdul-Malik that Khalifi was “not a regular [my emphasis] at [his] mosque” it is interesting that two of the alleged Sept. 11 hijackers worshipped there as did the Fort Hood terrorist, Maj. Nidal Hasan.

Time and time again it looks as though the “lengthy and extensive operation” the likes of which lead to the arrest of Mr. Khalifi are in fact calculating entrapments designed to aggrandize law enforcement.  Under traditional law entrapment is illegal, however as Fox 19’s Ben Swann suggests, it is now called the War on Terror justified under legislation like the PATRIOT Act.

US Special Forces Want Wider Global Operations

Source: PhilStar

Satur C. Ocampo

Last Thursday I received an emailed letter from an Australian who was in Manila last February 4 and read my column piece that day, about the new US defense plan calling for expanded American role and military presence in the Philippines.

Minus the compliments, let me share what Kenneth A. Fenwick, whom I don’t know personally, wrote:

“The US, in its belt tightening, has a new strategy to use other people’s and countries’ assets to continue its hegemony the best it can. My country, Australia, which may as well be another star on the US flag, has fallen to US pressure, and is allowing them to use our military bases here — for our own benefit of course.

“America at present is like a playboy with ten credit cards full to the hilt, and screams to be given another credit card, like a spoilt child, to continue with its flamboyance. But how long can the playboy keep it up?

“The propaganda, which is only fairy tales for adults, is thick everywhere. Just send in the troops, murder whoever you want, and call them peace keepers. If people who throw stones at American interests are called radicals, then what would you call someone who owns 11 aircraft carriers with full-blown battle fleets, and the biggest collection of weapons of mass destruction on the planet? Dangerous!

“If the Philippines lets America worm its way back into controlling the political mindset and system in your country, then throw away your Constitution; America did.”

I’ll not comment on Fenwick’s letter, except to say that I chuckled over his acerbic remark that his country “may as well be another star on the US flag.” It reminds me of some Filipinos who wish that were the case for the Philippines. I reacted the same way to his analogy of America with a playboy behaving like a spoiled brat.

But to pursue the subject seriously, let’s look closer into another aspect of the changes being proposed in the US defense plan, besides “rebalancing” towards Asia-Pacific as America withdraws from its Iraq and Afghanistan wars (discussed in this space last Feb. 4).

Corbett Report Interviews Catherine Austin Fitts on the Breakaway Civilization

Source: Corbett Report

James Corbett
 

Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari.com joins us to discuss the problem facing us in the wake of the financial coup d’etat — the breakaway civilization who believes themselves to be history’s actors — and the solution, what she calls Rethinking Diversification. We discuss what a decentralized, wealth-building society would look like and what we can do to take the power away from our would-be tyrants.

Syrian Girl - Why Al Qaeda is Al CIAda

Source: 108Morris


We are also told about the Salafists, and a little on the secular nature of Syria, and the competing goals of the Gulf States, particularly Qatar to rule by religion.
Some supporting links from Syrian Girl:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/fake-al-qaeda-actors-exposed-adam-gadah...
http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/flashback-israeli-agents-accused-creati...
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/08/1038950271656.html
http://polidics.com/cia/top-ranking-cia-operatives-admit-al-qaeda-is-a-comple...

BBC: Lets Kill the Internet and Start Over

Source: The Daily Bell

Viewpoint: The internet is broken – we need to start over … Last year, the level and ferocity of cyber-attacks on the internet reached such a horrendous level that some are now thinking the unthinkable: to let the internet wither on the vine and start up a new more robust one instead. On being asked if we should start again, many – maybe most – immediately argue that the internet is such an integral part of our social and economic fabric that even considering a change in its fundamental structure is inconceivable and rather frivolous. I was one of those. However, recently the evidence suggests that our efforts to secure the internet are becoming less and less effective, and so the idea of a radical alternative suddenly starts to look less laughable. – BBC/ Prof Alan Woodward, Department of Computing, University of Surrey

Dominant Social Theme: Look, can we talk? The Internet is paedophiles’ best friend and a virus manufacturer besides. If we get rid of it, we’ll all be a lot safer. And especially the children. Good Lord, the children! The children!

Free-Market Analysis: It is clear to us by now that the Anglosphere power elite is increasingly desperate to shut down the Internet any way it can. This article posted at the BBC (whether or not the author understands he’s been enlisted on behalf of a larger Western elite agenda) is a good example of a sub dominant social theme within the context of this aim.

The power elite wants to run the world, and what we call the Internet Reformation has badly dented their plans. How does one run a secret, super-duper conspiracy to create a New World Order when one’s every move is plastered on the Internet the very next day?

It’s next to impossible. The elites have invested heavily in making their global operations “user friendly.” They’ve tried to pretend that increasingly authoritarian Western governments and global facilities such as the IMF and UN have agendas that are entirely supportive of human rights and individual prosperity.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What the Internet has shown us with increasing clarity over this past decade is that Western banking elites and their enablers and associates will stop at nothing in their quest for ultimate power.

They wish for one-world government (the UN), a one-world military (NATO), a one-world court (the recently formed Soros-sponsored International Criminal Court), a one-world central bank (the IMF), etc.

The exposure of the elite’s goals and its methodologies – its dependence on the corrupt counterfeiting practices of central banks for the trillion-dollar torrents of capital necessary to build world government – has led to an upswell of indignation and scrutiny around the world.

War Propaganda Corporate Media Steers World Toward Disaster

Source: Infowars
Kurt Nimmo

The establishment media has slipped into overdrive. It is determined to fan the flames of hysteria and set the stage for a devastating attack on Iran.

On Thursday, CNN’s Erin Burnet interviewed New York’s Rep. Peter King who said Iran will unleash Hezbollah in America and the result will be worse than an attack with ballistic missiles.

King and Burnet threw around a slew of lies and fabrications in order to fan the flames of hysteria – from the cartoonish plot by a failed Iranian used car salesman to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador cooked up by the DEA and the FBI to highly suspect and largely inept attacks on Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia and Thailand.

Law enforcement officials in New York and Los Angeles “are keeping an eye out for potential Iranian operatives or anyone with links to the country’s proxy terrorist group, Hezbollah,” reports Fox News. The public can now expect more cops dressed in black with automatic weapons at airports, subways and bus terminals.

Following attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand attributed to Iran and Hezbollah by Israel, the United States and the corporate media, the NYPD’s intelligence boss said Iran is the number one threat to the Big Apple.

In Los Angeles, a city with one of the largest Iranian communities outside Iran, the hysterical and unlikely prospect of an Iranian attack has overshadowed intelligence briefings for weeks.

Israel is barraging a complaisant corporate media with all sorts of dire predictions, especially in regard to the safety of Jews around the world. “Iran and Hezbollah are continuing to try to carry out other attacks on targets abroad,” an Israeli counterterrorism official said Friday, without offering specific details or bothering to provide evidence. “That means asking Israelis abroad to be vigilant.”

Russia: Our Space Program is Being Sabotaged

Source: Giza Death Star
Dr. Joseph Farrell

Russia has, of course, long been a space program powerhouse. Sergei Korolev and his team racked up an impressive lists of “firsts” in the early days of the Cold War and the space race: Russia was the first to orbit a man-made satellite, the Sputnik, Russia was the first to orbit living creatures, and later, a man, and successfully return him to Earth. Russia was the first to put a woman into space. Russian probes stretched out across the heavens to the Moon, to Venus, to Mars. And Russia has maintained, to this day, a reliable stable of “workhorses” of  heavy-lift launch vehicles, and continues – along with the European Space Agency – to be laying the careful steps of manned space missions to the Moon and eventually Mars.

But recent events – such as the recent failure of a Russian Mars probe – have set that country’s space program back. Make no mistake, as President Dmitri Medvedev said a few weeks ago, Russia intends to maintain a vigorous manned and unmanned presence in space as part of its national interest. So setbacks or no, budgetary problems or no, Russia, unlike its short-sighted American counterpart, intends to stay in space.

All that said, the head of Russia’s space program recently suggested that the string of failures that has affected that nation’s space posture might not be entirely accidental:
Russia hints at foul play in its space failures

I hope you caught the implications of those first few lines:

“Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin told the Izvestia daily he could not understand why several launches went awry at precisely the moment the spacecraft were traveling through areas invisible to Russian radar.

“‘It is unclear why our setbacks often occur when the vessels are traveling through what for Russia is the ‘dark’ side of the Earth — in areas where we do not see the craft and do not receive its telemetry readings,’ he said.

“‘I do not want to blame anyone, but today there are some very powerful countermeasures that can be used against spacecraft whose use we cannot exclude,’ Popovkin told the daily.”

Now on the face of it, this seems to me to begging a few questions. First, the idea that there is a “dark side” of the Earth blind to Russia seems on the face of it to be absurd. Russia, like the USA, has laced the globe with a network of spy satellites, and it is inconceivable that the Russian government would not have a similar network of communications satellites simply for defense purposes if nothing else. The idea that Russia would have a space program where its manned and unmanned probes are not able to receive telemetry readings is equally absurd. And Mr. Popovkin is not a stupid man. He knows this.

Drone Industry's Lobbying Plan To Expand Over Domestic Law Enfocement Markets

Source: Republic Report
Lee Fang

Drones are mainly associated with the Predator airships that patrol the Afghanistan sky. But thanks to a bipartisan vote last week, the public can expect 30,000 domestic drones flying over the United States in the next eight years.

The dramatic change in policy, which has raised concerns with everyone from civil liberties groups like the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation to the pilot association and the Independent Institute, as well as conservative think tanks, occurred thanks to an aggressive and well-organized effort by drone makers and their lobbyists.

Yesterday, we reported how the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVS), a drone trade group, actually doubled its recent lobbying expenses. Today, we report on a PowerPoint presentation put together by top AUVS lobbyists Michael Toscano, Mario Mairena, and Ben Gielow. The lobby group — which maintains an official partnership in Congress with Reps. Buck McKeon (R-CA), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), and dozens of other lawmakers — was the driving force behind the domestic drone decision passed last week. In the presentation obtained by Republic Report, there are several fascinating concerns raised by the lobbyists:

– Page 5: Drone lobbyists claimed access to airspace and “Global Conflict – particularly U.S. and allied nation involvement in future conflicts” will “either positively or negatively” influence “market growth” for the industry.

– Page 6: The drone lobbyists take full credit for authoring the expansion of domestic drone use codified in the FAA authorization bill passed last week, noting “the only changes made to the UAS section of the House FAA bill were made at the request of AUVSI. Our suggestions were often taken word-for-word.”

– Pages 10-12: The drone industry eagerly anticipates that civil drone use, including use of drones for “suspect tracking” by law enforcement, will soon eclipse military use of drones. Under a section called “Challenges facing UAS,” the lobbyists listed “Civil Liberties.”

View the presentation below:

Drone Lobby Presentation

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