DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google and NSA

Source: Legal Times

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.

The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear the dispute March 20.

EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in early 2010, noting media reports at the time that the NSA and Google had agreed to a partnership following the cyber attacks in China that year against Google.

EPIC asked for, among other things, communication between the NSA and Google about Gmail and Google’s “decision to fail to routinely encrypt” messages before Jan. 13, 2010.

The NSA’s response to the request for records noted that the agency “works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associations” to ensure the availability of secure information systems. The agency, however, refused to confirm or deny any partnership with Google.

"Kony 2012" A New Recruiting Tool for US-UK Aggressions and Genocide in Africa

Source: Infowars

Editor's Note: Dr. Tarpley aslo discusses Russian elections and Syria's destabilization

Source: Land Destroyer Report

Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a massive swath of Africa from the north all the way to the south, the portion over which Rhodes is spanning in the illustration. In memory of his megalomania, the British would name what is now modern day Zimbabwe after him, calling it "Rhodesia."

Today, US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, is spreading across Africa in the footsteps of Cecil Rhodes. As reported by allAfrica.com, Vice Admiral Moeller at an AFRICOM meeting held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 would declare that protecting "the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market" was one of AFRICOM's guiding principles. Of course by "global market," the admiral means the Fortune 500 corporations of Wall Street and London.

In our politically sensitive modern age, pillaging Africa in the footsteps of shameless and quite racist imperialists is very difficult to do. Therefore, Joseph Kony, Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, starving children, pirates, and every other geopolitical ploy and contrivance imaginable, and some left yet unimagined have been used to justify AFRICOM's expanding presence on a continent they have no business setting foot on.

Ironically, ploys like KONY 2012 have liberal youth clamoring for what is perhaps the next dark chapter in large scale racist imperial enslavement, plundering, and exploitation.

For excellent analysis on the KONY 2012 scam, please read Nile Bowie's "Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa," and BlackStarNews.com's "KONY 2012, Invisible Children's Pro-AFRICOM and Museveni Propaganda."

Al Jazeera Journalists Quit Channel Citing Bias on Syria Coverage

Source: RT

Qatar's aggressive stance towards Assad has led to a string of resignations at the country's al-Jazeera TV news channel. Those who left describe bias at the station which they say has become a tool to target the Syrian regime. RT's Paula Slier describes those accusations.

Lawmakers Push for US Invasion of Africa Following KONY 2012 Fraud

Source: Infowars
Paul Joseph Watson

Two House lawmakers have introduced a resolution that seeks to deepen US Military involvement in Africa on the back of the Kony 2012 hoax, despite the fact that Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army have been virtually inactive for six years.

“The resolution, introduced by Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. and Ed Royce, R-Calif., calls for, among other things, expanding the number of regional forces in Africa to protect civilians and placing restrictions on individuals or governments found to be supporting Kony,” reports CBS News.

As we have seen from US involvement in Libya and its attempts to destabilize Syria, the “humanitarian” justification is merely an excuse for expanding US hegemony into Africa where China has aggressively staked its claim.

As we highlighted on Monday, the establishment-manufactured hype surrounding Kony 2012 is nothing more than a cynical ruse designed to manipulate naive do-gooders into legitimizing another US-backed “humanitarian” assault aimed at swallowing up Africa’s resources and land under Africom.

While Joseph Kony and his army disappeared six years ago, Ugandans are being killed and evicted in their thousands by western entities right now – but nobody is making ‘viral’ films about the crisis and no celebrities are tweeting their displeasure.

Invisible Children, the group behind Kony 2012 has created a groundswell of support for Uganda’s dictator Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, a man who has been in control of the country for 30 years and was returned to power in an election last year that was rife with fraud according to European Union observers.

Man on Moon and Mars landing: Russia Space Plans Unveiled

Source: RT


Russian probes will visit Mars, Jupiter and Venus, while Russian cosmonauts will set foot on the surface of the Moon -- all by 2030. At least according to the plans of the country's space agency.

Stratfor and the Privatization of Intelligence

Source: Boiling Frogs Post and Corbett Report



TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

Late last year, hackers with the anonymous hacking group LulzSec raided the servers of Strategic Forecasting, Inc., or Stratfor, a private intelligence company in Austin, Texas, coming away with some 5 million emails. Last month, Wikileaks began publishing the emails as “The Global Intelligence Files” to much fanfare.

Military Attack Against Syria Without Congressional Approval Could Lead To Obama’s Impeachment

Source: RT


‘Impeach Obama’ Bill: Use of military without Congress approval ‘high crime’

An American military attack on Syria could effectively lead to the impeachment of President Barack Obama. Congressmen say that any war without congressional authorization would be “unconstitutional”.

Republican Representative Walter B. Jones Jr. has come up with a resolution demanding Obama’s impeachment in case his administration starts another military action without the approval of Congress. This came as a reaction to the American Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announcing that in order to carry out the offensive, the US military needs permission from the UN and NATO alone. 

Jones’s resolution states that the prime authority to rule on the attack is the US Congress, not international bodies, be it NATO or UN. 

“Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a president without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, Section 4 of the constitution,” Jones’s resolution said. 

In an exchange which occurred at a session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that in case the Obama administration decides to strike Syria, it would merely “inform” Congress after the decision has been made. 

“Our goal would be to seek international permission and we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this,” Panetta said. “Whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress, I think those are issues I think we would have to discuss as we decide what to do here.”

Responding to Panetta, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said he was “breathless” to hear the statement.

The Bloody Road to Damascus

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Prof. James Petras

The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State

 

There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria is a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’ is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. Due to a lack of domestic support, however, to be successful, direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonize the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime and strengthen Western imperial control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US and, in the long run, it eliminates another independent secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

In order to mobilize world support behind this Western, Israeli and Gulf State-funded power grab, several propaganda ploys have been used to justify another blatant violation of a country’s sovereignty after their successful destruction of the secular governments of Iraq and Libya.

The Larger Context: Serial Aggression

The current Western campaign against the independent Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperial-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta’s seizure of power and murderous campaign to jail, torture and assassinate over 10,000 pro-democracy protestors.

An Israeli Attack Against Iran "Would Destroy Chance of Peace for Generations"

Source: Global Research
Richard Silverstein

In an interview in The Nation, David Grossman, Israel’s leading novelist and moral conscience, expresses the conviction that Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak want a war against Iran:

…He said he had “a very bad feeling” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were going to order an attack, even against America’s wishes. “There is a dynamic to all these warlike declarations,” he said.

I’ve written often in the past about David Grossman as an admirable, but attenuated figure.  As a liberal Zionist who is a moral bellwether for Israeli centrist and leftists, but one who is constrained by many of the limitations inherent in those defending major elements of the Israeli status quo.  With Grossman, the glass is always both half empty and half-full.  He is someone always willing to sound the alarm about the worst depredations of the rightist governments who have afflicted Israel for the past decade or more.  But he is also someone who never wants to be too far ahead of his countrymen.  He is one of them, and feels their moral confusion and remains constrained, as they are, about Israel’s predicament and how to get out of it.

The good news is that Grossman has launched an assault on Bibi and Barak’s plan to assault Iran.  He’s gone so far as to accept that an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be far less bad than an Israeli attack on Iran in order to prevent this outcome.

In both Larry Derfner’s Nation interview and Grossman’s own Haaretz op-ed (Hebrew), he’s offered cogent analysis of the thinking of the Israeli leadership.  He’s especially good at placing their mindset in the context of Jewish history:

He [Netanyahu] has this idea that we are the people of eternity, am ha’netzach from the Bible, and our negotiations, as he sees it, are with eternity, with the primal currents of history and mankind, while the United States, with all due respect, is just another superpower like Rome or Athens or Babylon, and we’ve survived them all,” said Grossman. “I’m afraid that this way of thinking might encourage Netanyahu to take the step” of attacking Iran.

Forget Kony, Ugandans Are Being Slaughtered By Their Own Western-backed Government

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

While the political left and an army of Hollywood trendies are clamoring for a U.S. Military invasion of Uganda to capture Joseph Kony, a man who has not even been in the country for six years, Ugandan authorities, backed by the World Bank and British carbon trading companies, are slaughtering Ugandan villagers and stealing their land in a brutal new form of neo-colonialism that has gone largely unnoticed.

Following the release of Kony 2012, a film made by a shadowy charity with links to USAID, the Tweetosphere exploded with a deluge of leftist politicos and clueless celebrities jumping on the bandwagon to call for Barack Obama to launch yet another act of “humanitarian” bloodletting to go after Kony, leader the of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRC).

In their haste to appear trendy and in vogue with a viral trend that was all over the social networks like a bad rash within the space of 24 hours, those advocating an increased military intervention on top of the 100 US troops already sent into Uganda last year, most notably habitual “humanitarian” warmonger Angelina Jolie, didn’t concern themselves with the facts.

The propaganda campaign that has put Joseph Kony on a par with Osama Bin Laden and Hitler is a crude hoax to legitimize the US military-industrial complex’s agenda to re-colonize Africa under Africom.

“Not surprisingly, the [film] is seriously misleading, falsely implying there’s war raging in Northern Uganda when there’s not. In fact, Kony has not been in the country for six years; his group is a much-depleted rump, numbering a few hundred people at most,” writes ABC Australia’s Jeff Sparrow.

Ugandan journalist Angelo Izama calls Kony 2012 a “misrepresentation,” noting that the film’s “portrayal of [Kony's] alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era,” and that the problems facing the country in 2012 are AIDS, Hepatitis, prostitution and unemployment, none of which would be alleviated by a U.S. military invasion on the pretext of hunting a man who is not even in the country.

AFRICA: The Legacy of Cecil Rhodes' Anglo-American Empire

Source: Global Research
Dan Gordon

"Click this Button or African children will die”: How the “Kony 2012” video drafted a Facebook army to support the militarization of Africa”

In 1877 the British Empire was at the height of its glory, the Spanish Empire would soon collapse, and a young Oxford student named Cecil Rhodes was gripped by a sudden religious vision. Rhodes scrawled out a manifesto. In it, he called for an “Anglo-American Empire” that would begin in the heart of Africa and spread out to conquer the known world. 

“Africa is still lying ready for us,” he wrote. “It is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes-that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race; more of the best, the most human, most honorable race the world possesses.” 

Rhodes went on to found the DeBeers diamond cartel and devote his company’s vast wealth to the colonial project in Africa. He couldn’t have known that, just over a century later, a new invention called the Internet would be tweaking his message, smoothing out his more inflammatory language, and sending his ideas around the globe through YouTube and Facebook. Nor would he ever had imagined that the first black president of the United States would be the one to carry his vision to its ultimate conclusion, under the guise of “humanitarian intervention.” 

Fast-forward to March of 2012, when the non-profit “TRI” launched an online video called “Kony 2012.” Filled with lightning cuts, footage of battle-scarred African children, and tearful appeals to emotion, the movie rallies its viewers around a single goal: stopping the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and its leader Joseph Kony. With the help of the U.S. military, of course, and Oprah Winfrey. 

At first glance, that’s not such a bad idea. After all, the Lord’s Resistance Army has kidnapped perhaps thousands of Ugandan children and forced them into their militia in their bid to topple the Ugandan government. The fact that the movie ignores, however, is that Uganda’s government, and its U.S.-backed leader, Yoweri Museveni, doesn’t appear to have a much better record when it comes to human rights. 

U.S. Soldier Kills Afghan Civilians in Kandahar

Source: BBC

A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say.

He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire in at least two homes; women and children were among the dead.

The soldier has not been named, but is thought to be a staff sergeant.

He is reported to have walked off his base at around 03:00 local time (22:30 GMT Saturday) and headed to nearby villages, moving methodically from house to house.

"Eleven members of my family are dead. They are all dead," Haji Samad, an elder from Najeeban village, told the AFP news agency.

Iranian Media Continues to be Attacked by Foreign Entities

Source: End The Lie
Madison Ruppert

A string of attacks on Iranian media continues with reports of jamming signals coming from an unknown location interrupting broadcasts for two hours.

According to Iran’s Press TV, broadcasts of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s (IRIB) international channels on the Hotbird satellite provider were cut out for two hours by these signals.

High-power jamming signals were transmitted on the 12437 MHz frequency from 9:00 to 11:00 GMT on Saturday, March 10, 2012.

During this time, the broadcasts of the IRIB’s international channels were interrupted on multiple occasions.

The channels that were knocked out were Press TV, Iran’s 24-hour English-language international channel along with Al-Alam, Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, Al-Kowsar, along with Sahar 1 and 2 channels.

The jamming of IRIB signals is one of many recent attacks on Iranian media outlets.

According to Press TV, British technicians operating out of Bahrain jammed IRIB channels, again on the Hotbird satellite, blocking provincial channels along with international stations like Press TV and others.

Hackers out of the United States and Israel have also launched cyber attacks on Press TV’s website, according to Press TV.

While this report is not independently confirmed as far as I know, it is far from unreasonable to believe that such activities are taking place given the previous cyber attacks on Iran.

FBI Creating a System for Monitoring All Conversations on Social Networking Sites

Source: Natural News
J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) If you're a regular reader of NaturalNews, you're already well aware of the fact that government, the courts and private industry have all essentially disregarded the intent and meaning of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment privacy protections in the age of information technology. It seems that you give up your right to be "secure" in your "persons, houses, papers, and effects" if you dare to use a social media network or virtually any other information exchange system.

The latest onslaught comes from the FBI, which is only the most recent federal agency seeking to monitor all of your conversations on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The bureau has placed a request from tech firms to develop a program that would enable agents to sift through waves of "publicly available" information, ostensibly to look for keywords related to terrorism, criminal activity and other threats to national security.

'Early warning' system?

The goal, according to the bureau's request, is to develop a sort of early warning system that provides real-time intelligence to improve "the FBI's overall situational awareness." The proposed program must "have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats."

The FBI joins DARPA - the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in searching for a program that can "monitor" social media chatter (DARPA, ironically enough, invented the Internet, not Al Gore). The difference there, however, is that the Defense Department and the CIA focus on threats overseas; the FBI, meanwhile, is a domestic law enforcement apparatus, and as such, subject to constitutional restrictions regarding the development of its cases.

Corbett Report Episode 221 - Reclaiming Skepticism

Source: Corbett Report
James Corbett

Skeptics are those who advocate taking a provisional approach to all claims and carefully evaluating all the evidence before coming to a conclusion. In other words, the very process that The Corbett Report is engaged in every week, right? Well, not according to the self-professed “skeptics,” many of whom are content to skewer others for their logical fallacies yet frequently deploy logical fallacies of their own when “debunking” the “conspiracy theorists” that seem to be popping up everywhere. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we note the hypocrisies of the supposed “skeptics” and embrace the term as our own.

Unexplained “Phoenix Lights” Explosion Caught Live on News Broadcast

Source: Yahoo

Phoenix's FOX 10 reporter Andrea Robinson was in the middle of an on-air report when an unexplained, bright white explosion appeared in the distance behind her.

The strange blast was caught on tape and aired live during Robinson's report. At first, news station employees thought the explosion was a transformer. But when FOX 10 checked with local utility providers APS and Salt River Project, they were told no transformers had blown in the area.

While the source of the explosion remains a mystery, it comes just before the 15th anniversary of one of the most-famous UFO sightings in recent history. On March 13, 1997, a cluster of glowing orbs moving in a V-shaped formation was spotted in the skies above Phoenix. That incident was also caught on film. The origin of the light formation has since been endlessly analyzed and debated.

Arizona is also home to Travis Walton, who famously claimed to have been abducted by a UFO in 1975. Walton has written a number of books on the subject, and his story was turned into the 1993 film "Fire in the Sky."

And while Phoenix officials remain stumped by the strange light explosion, FOX 10 has reached out to the public asking for assistance in explaining exactly what was caught on film.

 

LSD 'May Aid Alcoholism Treatment'

Source: The Independent
Ella Pickover

Psychedelic drug LSD could be used as an effective method to treat alcoholism, scientists say.

The use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), coupled with relapse prevention treatments, could help alcoholics steer clear of the bottle, research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology suggests.

Teri Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen, who were performing research fellowships at Harvard Medical School in the US, examined a number of previous studies, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s, and found that a number of clinics used LSD to treat alcoholism with some success.

They said they found evidence for a clear and consistent beneficial effect of a low dose of LSD for treating alcohol dependency.

They examined 536 participants, across six medical trials, and found that 59% of LSD patients had improved compared to 38% of control patients.

Researchers said the positive effects of a single dose of the drug, tested by a standardised assessment of problem alcohol use, appeared to last for up to 12 months.

However, they suggested the repeated use of the medication, coupled with preventative treatments, might provide more sustained results.

Investigators of one trial which was examined said: "It was rather common for patients to claim significant insights into their problems, to feel that they had been given a new lease on life, and to make a strong resolution to discontinue their drinking."

Mr Johansen said: "Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked."

Eleven Killed as Israel Strikes Gaza Overnight

Source: RT

At least 11 Palestinians, including two militant leaders, have been killed and a dozen wounded in a series of air strikes by the Israeli Air Force on the Gaza Strip. The attacks were launched in response to the shelling of Israeli territory from Gaza.

­A senior Palestinian militant Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, was killed in the first strikes by Israeli warplanes, along with another senior member of the PRC, Mahmoud Hannani. The PRC, which has strong ties with Hamas, is known to have carried out rocket attacks against Israel, and the Israelis say al-Qaisi was targeted because he was planning an attack.

In response to the attack that killed al-Qaisi Palestinian militants fired approximately 40 rockets from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday night. Israeli sources say at least eight people suffered injuries in the shelling, one of whom was seriously wounded.

The IAF then performed another series of airstrikes on various targets in the Gaza strip on Friday night in response to these latest attacks. The latest airstrike killed three Palestinians after an Apache-fired rocket hit a house and a car, Al Jazeera reports, citing medical sources.

Three of those killed in the air raids reportedly belonged to a military wing of the Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades.

Some of the targets of Israeli war jets included empty military training camps in different parts of Gaza Strip.

America’s Secret Space Plane in Orbit for Over a Year and Nobody Knows Why

Source: Daily Mail

The X-37B has been circling the Earth at 17,000mph and was due to land in California in December.

The U.S Air Force’s highly secret unmanned space plane was supposed to stay in space for nine months, but it’s now been there for a year and three days – and no one knows what it’s doing.

The experimental craft has been circling Earth at 17,000 miles per hour and was due to land in California in December.

However the mission of the X-37B orbital test vehicle was extended – for unknown reasons.

The plane resembles a mini space shuttle and is the second to fly in space.

The first one landed last December at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California after more than seven months in orbit.

The 29-foot, solar-powered craft had an original mission of 270 days.

The Air Force said the second mission was to further test the technology but the ultimate purpose has largely remained a mystery.

The vehicle’s systems program director, Lieutenant-colonel Tom McIntyre, told the Los Angeles Times in December: ’We initially planned for a nine-month mission. Keeping the X-37 in orbit will provide us with additional experimentation opportunities and allow us to extract the maximum value out of the mission.’

The Pentagon’s ’freakily fast’ robo-cheetah

Source: The Week

A galloping robot set a new speed record for multi-legged machines — clocking in at 18 mph
 
The awkward march of the military’s Robo-mule was sturdy, if inelegant. Now, the newest animal-inspired robot sponsored by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) takes its cues from a much faster beast: The cheetah. Built by robotics firm Boston Dynamics, robo-cheetah just set a new speed record for multi-legged robots, clocking in at 18 miles per hour. The machine’s cat-like spine actually flexes and extends to maximize the robot’s stride, and the galloping machine is "constantly tipping forward, falling and regaining equilibrium with every step" — just like real animals. Soon, robo-cheetah will be "running much faster and outdoors," says Boston Dynamics’ Alfred Rizzi. "We really want to understand the limits of what is possible for fast-moving robots."

The reaction: Robo-cheetah is "freakily fast," says Katie Drummond at Wired. Consider human world-record holder Usain Bolt, "who clocked an amazing 28 mph during the 100-meter sprint in 2009." Robo-cheetah is right on his heels, and may surpass Bolt soon. At this rate, says Andy Greenberg at Forbes, such robots may one day "leave flesh-and-blood animals in the dust, too.