Category: The Regime

Hmm

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I just can’t imagine. Can you?

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has gone to court to protect the files of an influential anti-Iran advocacy group, saying they likely contain information the government does not want disclosed.

The highly unusual move by the Justice Department raises questions about the connections between the American government and the group, United Against Nuclear Iran, a hard-line voice seeking to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The group has a roster of prominent former government officials and a reputation for uncovering information about companies that sometimes do business with Iran, in violation of international sanctions.

The Justice Department has temporarily blocked the group from having to reveal its donor list and other internal documents in a defamation lawsuit filed by a Greek shipping magnate the group accused of doing business with Iran. Government lawyers said they had a “good faith basis to believe that certain information” would jeopardize law enforcement investigations, reveal investigative techniques or identify confidential sources if released.

Judge Edgardo Ramos of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York called the government’s involvement “very curious.” But since March, he has agreed not to force the group to reveal the information. The government has until Thursday to say whether it will formally claim law enforcement privilege and try to keep the information secret permanently.

The intervention by the Justice Department added a new layer of mystery to an already intriguing case. Lawyers for Victor Restis, who filed the defamation suit, have accused the group of being funded by unidentified foreign interests and are trying to force the testimony of Israeli’s former intelligence chief and a prominent Israeli businessman.

10K Palestinians protest in West Bank, two killed

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

http://youtu.be/7RP0_66GTuI

I was just reading a story bemoaning how the West Bank never protests. Apparently something has changed, because a massive demonstration last night took place:

Violence broke out Thursday night near the Kalandia checkpoint, located in the West Bank between Jerusalem and Ramallah, as residents of the West Bank village clashed with police in protests against the IDF’s operation in the Gaza Strip.

Some 10,000 Palestinians protested near the checkpoint, throwing rocks, firebombs and fireworks at Israeli security forces, and setting tires ablaze. The IDF forces and Border Police were using crowd dispersal means on the masses.

Hospital officials in Ramallah earlier said three protesters had been killed, but revised that to one killed and three others in critical condition and on life support. Some 200 protesters were injured, a hospital doctor said. Thirteen Israeli police officers were lightly injured.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Office did not immediately confirm the Palestinian casualties. The military was checking reports of live fire targeting Israeli forces at the checkpoint.

The protest erupted after allies of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement marched from the West Bank city of Ramallah to the edges of Jerusalem in protest against Israel’s 17-day-old campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza.

You know what Israel calls the periodic attacks on Gaza? “Mowing the lawn.”

Targeted

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

http://youtu.be/WMIn0W53DQ8

A school that was run as a shelter by the UN was struck this morning. Israel says it wasn’t them, they would “never” target a UN facility:

A United Nations official told reporters in New York on Wednesday that at least 72 United Nations schools, hospitals and offices have been damaged in the latest fighting, even though they are visibly marked.

“Each and every one of their GPS references have been provided to the Israeli military,” the official, said John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Blood and children, everywhere. I can’t look any more today.

Shooting at journalists

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

GAZA Crisis July 2014

It’s sadly ironic that the Israelis have adopted so many Nazi-like tactics:

Gunshots have been fired into Al Jazeera’s bureau in the Gaza Strip amid an intensified bombardment campaign on the Palestinian enclave.

The shots caused panic among the civilians living in the same building but no casualties were reported in the incident on Tuesday morning.

“Two very precise shots were fired straight into our building,” Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from the bureau, said.

“We are high up in the building so we had a very strong vantage point over the area. But we have evacuated.

“Our office building also has many residential apartments. People [are] leaving, panicked.”

The bureau is situated in a residential area of Gaza City.

The attack came a day after Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was quoted by local media as saying his country will work to close down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel.

Al Jazeera “has abandoned even the perception of being a reliable news organisation and broadcasts from Gaza and to the world anti-Israel incitement, lies, and encouragement to the terrorists,” Lieberman said.

Israel wants Gaza’s natural gas deposits

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

140515-D-BW835-937

This is a couple of weeks old, but still quite relevant:

Yesterday, Israeli defence minister and former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon announced that Operation Protective Edge marks the beginning of a protracted assault on Hamas. The operation “won’t end in just a few days,” he said, adding that “we are preparing to expand the operation by all means standing at our disposal so as to continue striking Hamas.”

This morning, he said:

“We continue with strikes that draw a very heavy price from Hamas. We are destroying weapons, terror infrastructures, command and control systems, Hamas institutions, regime buildings, the houses of terrorists, and killing terrorists of various ranks of command… The campaign against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very heavy.”

But in 2007, a year before Operation Cast Lead, Ya’alon’s concernsfocused on the 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast, valued at $4 billion. Ya’alon dismissed the notion that “Gaza gas can be a key driver of an economically more viable Palestinian state” as “misguided.” The problem, he said, is that:

“Proceeds of a Palestinian gas sale to Israel would likely not trickle down to help an impoverished Palestinian public. Rather, based on Israel’s past experience, the proceeds will likely serve to fund further terror attacks against Israel…

A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition, involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.”

Operation Cast Lead did not succeed in uprooting Hamas, but the conflict did take the lives of 1,387 Palestinians (773 of whom were civilians) and 9 Israelis (3 of whom were civilians).

Go read the rest, there’s more.

What did our spy satellites see in Ukraine?

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

malaysia jet

Robert Parry, who’s one of the better national security reporters out there, says there are reasons to take the media version of the Malaysia jet shootdown with a grain of salt:

So why hasn’t this question of U.S. spy-in-the-sky photos – and what they reveal – been pressed by the major U.S. news media? How can the Washington Post run front-page stories, such as the one on Sunday with the definitive title “U.S. official: Russia gave systems,” without demanding from these U.S. officials details about what the U.S. satellite images disclose?

Instead, the Post’s Michael Birnbaum and Karen DeYoung wrote from Kiev: “The United States has confirmed that Russia supplied sophisticated missile launchers to separatists in eastern Ukraine and that attempts were made to move them back across the Russian border after the Thursday shoot-down of a Malaysian jetliner, a U.S. official said Saturday.

“‘We do believe they were trying to move back into Russia at least three Buk [missile launch] systems,’ the official said. U.S. intelligence was ‘starting to get indications … a little more than a week ago’ that the Russian launchers had been moved into Ukraine, said the official” whose identity was withheld by the Post so the official would discuss intelligence matters.

But catch the curious vagueness of the official’s wording: “we do believe”; “starting to get indications.” Are we supposed to believe – and perhaps more relevant, do the Washington Post writers actually believe – that the U.S. government with the world’s premier intelligence services can’t track three lumbering trucks each carrying large mid-range missiles?

What I’ve been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar matters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailed satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.
Continue reading “What did our spy satellites see in Ukraine?” →

Rape and pillage

~ susie

As you may know, Detroit’s unelected city manager is overseeing water turnoffs in the city. Please read the story and familiarize yourself with the tactics and rationale, because you may rest assured it will eventually be used in your state or town.

By the way, they used a military acoustic device to disperse this rally. Apparently we no longer have the right to peaceably assemble and petition our government for the redress of grievances. Shut up and take it!

Another NSA whistleblower

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

NSA-photo-by-Trevor-Paglen

About Executive Order 12333. “The order as used today threatens our democracy,” John Napier Tye wrote in the Washington Post:

John Napier Tye is speaking out to warn Americans about illegal spying. The former State Department official, who served in the Obama administration from 2011 to 2014, declared Friday that ongoing NSA surveillance abuses are taking place under the auspices of Executive Order 12333, which came into being in 1981, before the era of digital communications, but is being used to collect them promiscuously. Nye alleges that the Obama administration has been violating the Constitution with scant oversight from Congress or the judiciary.

“The order as used today threatens our democracy,” he wrote in The Washington Post. “I am coming forward because I think Americans deserve an honest answer to the simple question: What kind of data is the NSA collecting on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?”

If you’ve paid casual attention to the Edward Snowden leaks and statements by national-security officials, you might be under the impression that the Obama administration is already on record denying that this sort of spying goes on. In fact, denials about NSA spying are almost always carefully worded to address activities under particular legal authorities, like Section 215 of the Patriot Act or Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. An official will talk about what is or isn’t done “under this program,” eliding the fact that the NSA spies on Americans under numerous different programs, despite regularly claiming to be an exclusively foreign spy agency.

Executive Order 12333 is old news to national-security insiders and the journalists who cover them, but is largely unknown to the American public, in part because officials have a perverse institutional incentive to obscure its role. But some insiders are troubled by such affronts to representative democracy. A tiny subset screw up the courage to inform their fellow citizens.

Tye is but the latest surveillance whistleblower, though he took pains to distinguish himself from Snowden and his approach to dissent. “Before I left the State Department, I filed a complaint with the department’s inspector general, arguing that the current system of collection and storage of communications by U.S. persons under Executive Order 12333 violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures,” Tye explained. “I have also brought my complaint to the House and Senate intelligence committees and to the inspector general of the NSA.”

These steps—which many say Snowden should’ve taken—produced no changes to the objectionable NSA spying and wouldn’t be garnering attention at all if not for Snowden’s leaks. It is nevertheless telling that another civil servant with deep establishment loyalties and every incentive to keep quiet felt compelled to speak out.