Stand by for European Caliphate and the Destruction of the World Economy

ꕤ Article SOURCE https://archive.is/aUSD8#selection-4373.0-4589.360 Read Putin’s U.N. General Assembly speech Washington Post September 28 at 2:51 PM EXTRACT ONLY FULL ARTICLE - LINKED https://archive.is/aUSD8#selection-4373.0-4589.360 In 1945, the countries that defeated Nazism joined their efforts to lay solid foundations for the postwar world order. But I remind you that the key decisions on the principles guiding the cooperation among states, as well as on the establishment of the United Nations, were made in our country, in Yalta, at the meeting of the anti-Hitler coalition leaders.  The Yalta system was actually born in travail. It was won at the cost of tens of millions of lives and two world wars. This swept through the planet in the 20th century. Let us be fair. It helped humanity through turbulent, at times dramatic, events of the last seven decades. It saved the world from large-scale upheavals.  The United Nations is unique in its legitimacy, representation and universality. It is true that lately the U.N. has been widely criticized for supposedly not being efficient enough, and for the fact that the decision-making on fundamental issues stalls due to insurmountable differences, first of all, among the members of the Security Council. However, I'd like to point out there have always been differences in the U.N. throughout all these 70 years of existence. The veto right has always been exercised by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, the Soviet Union and Russia later, alike. It is absolutely natural for so diverse and representative an organization. When the U.N. was established, its founders did not in the least think that there would always be unanimity. The mission of the organization is to seek and reach compromises, and its strength comes from taking different views and opinions into consideration. Decisions debated within the U.N. are either taken as resolutions or not. As diplomats say, they either pass or do not pass. [...] Whatever actions any state might take bypassing this procedure are illegitimate. They run counter to the charter and defy international law. We all know that after the end of the Cold War — everyone is aware of that — a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that if they were strong and exceptional, they knew better and they did not have to reckon with the U.N., which, instead of [acting to] automatically authorize and legitimize the necessary decisions, often creates obstacles or, in other words, stands in the way. It has now become commonplace to see that in its original form, it has become obsolete and completed its historical mission. Of course, the world is changing and the U.N. must be consistent with this natural transformation. Russia stands ready to work together with its partners on the basis of full consensus, but we consider the attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations as extremely dangerous. They could lead to a collapse of the entire architecture of international organizations, and then indeed there would be no other rules left but the rule of force. We would get a world dominated by selfishness rather than collective work, a world increasingly characterized by dictate rather than equality. There would be less of a chain of democracy and freedom, and that would be a world where true independent states would be replaced by an ever-growing number of de facto protectorates and externally controlled territories. What is the state sovereignty, after all, that has been mentioned by our colleagues here? It is basically about freedom and the right to choose freely one's own future for every person, nation and state. By the way, dear colleagues, the same holds true of the question of the so-called legitimacy of state authority. One should not play with or manipulate words. Every term in international law and international affairs should be clear, transparent and have uniformly understood criteria. We are all different, and we should respect that. No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has once and for all recognized as the only right one. We should all remember what our past has taught us. It seemed, however, that far from learning from others' mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them, and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called democratic ones, continues. It would suffice to look at the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, as has been mentioned by previous speakers. Certainly political and social problems in this region have been piling up for a long time, and people there wish for changes naturally. But how did it actually turn out? Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster.  Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life. I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realize now what you've done? But I am afraid no one is going to answer that. Indeed, policies based on self-conceit and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned. It is now obvious that the power vacuum created in some countries of the Middle East and North Africa through the emergence of anarchy areas,  which immediately started to be filled with extremists and terrorists. Tens of thousands of militants are fighting under the banners of the so-called Islamic State. Its ranks include former Iraqi servicemen who were thrown out into the street after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Many recruits also come from Libya, a country whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. And now, the ranks of radicals are being joined by the members of the so-called moderate Syrian opposition supported by the Western countries. First, they are armed and trained and then they defect to the so-called Islamic State. Besides, the Islamic State itself did not just come from nowhere. It was also initially forged as a tool against undesirable secular regimes. Having established a foothold in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has begun actively expanding to other regions. It is seeking dominance in the Islamic world. And not only there, and its plans go further than that. The situation is more than dangerous. In these circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make loud declarations about the threat of international terrorism while turning a blind eye to the channels of financing and supporting terrorists, including the process of trafficking and illicit trade in oil and arms. It would be equally irresponsible to try to manipulate extremist groups and place them at one's service in order to achieve one's own political goals in the hope of later dealing with them or, in other words, liquidating them. To those who do so, I would like to say — dear sirs, no doubt you are dealing with rough and cruel people, but they're in no way primitive or silly. They are just as clever as you are, and you never know who is manipulating whom. And the recent data on arms transferred to this most moderate opposition is the best proof of it. We believe that any attempts to play games with terrorists, let alone to arm them, are not just short-sighted, but fire hazardous (ph). This may result in the global terrorist threat increasing dramatically and engulfing new regions, especially given that Islamic State camps train militants from many countries, including the European countries. Unfortunately, dear colleagues, I have to put it frankly: Russia is not an exception. We cannot allow these criminals who already tasted blood to return back home and continue their evil doings. No one wants this to happen, does he? Russia has always been consistently fighting against terrorism in all its forms. Today, we provide military and technical assistance both to Iraq and Syria and many other countries of the region who are fighting terrorist groups. We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are valiantly fighting terrorism face to face. We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad's armed forces and Kurds (ph) militias are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria. We know about all the problems and contradictions in the region, but which were (ph) based on the reality. Dear colleagues, I must note that such an honest and frank approach of Russia has been recently used as a pretext to accuse it of its growing ambitions, as if those who say it have no ambitions at all. However, it's not about Russia's ambitions, dear colleagues, but about the recognition of the fact that we can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world. What we actually propose is to be guided by common values and common interests, rather than ambitions. On the basis of international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism. Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of forces that are resolutely resisting those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind. And, naturally, the Muslim countries are to play a key role in the coalition, even more so because the Islamic State does not only pose a direct threat to them, but also desecrates one of the greatest world religions by its bloody crimes. The ideologists (ph) of militants make a mockery of Islam and pervert its true humanistic (ph) values. I would like to address Muslim spiritual leaders, as well. Your authority and your guidance are of great importance right now. It is essential to prevent people recruited by militants from making hasty decisions and those who have already been deceived, and who, due to various circumstances found themselves among terrorists, need help in finding a way back to normal life, laying down arms, and putting an end to fratricide. Russia will shortly convene, as the (ph) current president of the Security Council, a ministerial meeting to carry out a comprehensive analysis of threats in the Middle East. First of all, we propose discussing whether it is possible to agree on a resolution aimed at coordinating the actions of all the forces that confront the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations. Once again, this coordination should be based on the principles of the U.N. Charter. We hope that the international community will be able to develop a comprehensive strategy of political stabilization, as well as social and economic recovery, of the Middle East. Then, dear friends, there would be no need for new refugee camps. Today, the flow of people who were forced to leave their homeland has literally engulfed first neighboring countries and then Europe itself. There were hundreds of thousands of them now, and there might be millions before long. In fact, it is a new great and tragic migration of peoples, and it is a harsh lesson for all of us, including Europe. I would like to stress refugees undoubtedly need our compassion and support. However, the — on the way to solve this problem at a fundamental level is to restore their statehood where it has been destroyed, to strengthen the government institutions where they still exist or are being reestablished, to provide comprehensive assistance of military, economic and material nature to countries in a difficult situation. And certainly, to those people who, despite all the ordeals, will not abandon their homes. Literally, any assistance to sovereign states can and must be offered rather than imposed exclusively and solely in accordance with the U.N. Charter. In other words, everything in this field that has been done or will be done pursuant to the norms of international law must be supported by our organization. Everything that contravenes the U.N. Charter must be rejected. Above all, I believe it is of the utmost importance to help restore government's institutions in Libya, support the new government of Iraq and provide comprehensive assistance to the legitimate government of Syria. Dear colleagues, ensuring peace and regional and global stability remains the key objective of the international community with the U.N. at its helm. We believe this means creating a space of equal and indivisible security, which is not for the select few but for everyone. Yet, it is a challenge and complicated and time-consuming task, but there is simply no other alternative. However, the bloc thinking of the times of the Cold War and the desire to explore new geopolitical areas is still present among some of our colleagues. First, they continue their policy of expanding NATO. What for? If the Warsaw Bloc stopped its existence, the Soviet Union have collapsed (ph) and, nevertheless, the NATO continues expanding as well as its military infrastructure. Then they offered the poor Soviet countries a false choice: either to be with the West or with the East. Sooner or later, this logic of confrontation was bound to spark off a grave geopolitical crisis. This is exactly what happened in Ukraine, where the discontent of population with the current authorities was used and the military coup was orchestrated from outside — that triggered a civil war as a result. We're confident that only through full and faithful implementation of the Minsk agreements of February 12th, 2015, can we put an end to the bloodshed and find a way out of the deadlock. Ukraine's territorial integrity cannot be ensured by threat of force and force of arms. What is needed is a genuine consideration for the interests and rights of the people in the Donbas region and respect for their choice. There is a need to coordinate with them as provided for by the Minsk agreements, the key elements of the country's political structure. These steps will guarantee that Ukraine will develop as a civilized society, as an essential link and building a common space of security and economic cooperation, both in Europe and in Eurasia. Ladies and gentlemen, I have mentioned these common space of economic cooperation on purpose. Not long ago, it seemed that in the economic sphere, with its objective market loss, we would launch a leaf (ph) without dividing lines. We would build on transparent and jointly formulated rules, including the WTO principles, stipulating the freedom of trade, and investment and open competition. Nevertheless, today, unilateral sanctions circumventing the U.N. Charter have become commonplace, in addition to pursuing political objectives. The sanctions serve as a means of eliminating competitors. I would like to point out another sign of a growing economic selfishness. Some countries [have] chosen to create closed economic associations, with the establishment being negotiated behind the scenes, in secret from those countries' own citizens, the general public, business community and from other countries. Other states whose interests may be affected are not informed of anything, either. It seems that we are about to be faced with an accomplished fact that the rules of the game have been changed in favor of a narrow group of the privileged, with the WTO having no say. This could unbalance the trade system completely and disintegrate the global economic space. These issues affect the interest of all states and influence the future of the world economy as a whole. That is why we propose discussing them within the U.N. WTO NGO (ph) '20. Contrary to the policy of exclusiveness, Russia proposes harmonizing original economic projects. I refer to the so-called integration of integrations based on universal and transparent rules of international trade. As an example, I would like to cite our plans to interconnect the Eurasian economic union, and China's initiative of the Silk Road economic belt. EXTRACT ONLY FULL ARTICLE - LINKED https://archive.is/aUSD8#selection-4373.0-4589.360 ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT The West is morally corrupt.   Europe is being destroyed by a flood of Middle Eastern and African immigration, created by Western interventions and destruction of functioning states. The terrorists that the West has been arming in the Middle East, will soon have cells set up in Europe, where they're now collecting welfare, and will soon be setting up head-hunter caliphate camps in Europe. And still, the West persists in undermining efforts to defeat the Islamic terrorist chaos in the Middle East, in the hope that the chaos they create will serve the West's regional interests, before eliminating them once they've served their purpose. But that's not all, as well as destruction of Europe, the West is secretly negotiating the collapse of the world economy. I reckon this entire planet should be nuked.  Seriously.  Why wait? ꕤ

Western Prisoners of Technotyranny of Shadow Governments in the Service of Corporate Elites

ꕤ Article SOURCE https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_nsas_technotyranny_one_nation_under_surveillance The NSA’s Technotyranny: One Nation Under Surveillance By John W. Whitehead May 26, 2015     “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”—William Binney, NSA whistleblower We now have a fourth branch of government. As I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC. You might know this branch of government as Surveillance, but I prefer “technotyranny,” a term coined by investigative journalist James Bamford to refer to an age of technological tyranny made possible by government secrets, government lies, government spies and their corporate ties. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead. The police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state. Having already transformed local police into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are preparing to turn the nation’s soldier cops into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more. This is about to be the new face of policing in America. The National Security Agency (NSA) has been a perfect red herring, distracting us from the government’s broader, technology-driven campaign to render us helpless in the face of its prying eyes. In fact, long before the NSA became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And of course that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. The raging debate over the fate of the NSA’s blatantly unconstitutional, illegal and ongoing domestic surveillance programs is just so much noise, what Shakespeare referred to as “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It means nothing: the legislation, the revelations, the task forces, and the filibusters. The government is not giving up, nor is it giving in. It has stopped listening to us. It has long since ceased to take orders from “we the people.” If you haven’t figured it out yet, none of it—the military drills, the surveillance, the militarized police, the strip searches, the random pat downs, the stop-and-frisks, even the police-worn body cameras—is about fighting terrorism. It’s about controlling the populace. Despite the fact that its data snooping has been shown to be ineffective at detecting, let alone stopping, any actual terror attacks, the NSA continues to operate largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like, beyond the scrutiny of most of Congress and the taxpayers who are forced to fund its multi-billion dollar secret black ops budget. Legislation such as the USA Patriot Act serves only to legitimize the actions of a secret agency run by a shadow government. Even the proposed and ultimately defeated USA Freedom Act, which purported to restrict the reach of the NSA’s phone surveillance program—at least on paper—by requiring the agency to secure a warrant before surveillance could be carried out on American citizens and prohibiting the agency from storing any data collected on Americans, amounted to little more than a paper tiger: threatening in appearance, but lacking any real bite. The question of how to deal with the NSA—an agency that operates outside of the system of checks and balances established by the Constitution—is a divisive issue that polarizes even those who have opposed the NSA’s warrantless surveillance from the get-go, forcing all of us—cynics, idealists, politicians and realists alike—to grapple with a deeply unsatisfactory and dubious political “solution” to a problem that operates beyond the reach of voters and politicians: how do you trust a government that lies, cheats, steals, sidesteps the law, and then absolves itself of wrongdoing to actually obey the law? Since its official start in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman issued a secret executive order establishing the NSA as the hub of the government’s foreign intelligence activities, the agency—nicknamed “No Such Agency”—has operated covertly, unaccountable to Congress all the while using taxpayer dollars to fund its secret operations. It was only when the agency ballooned to 90,000 employees in 1969, making it the largest intelligence agency in the world with a significant footprint outside Washington, DC, that it became more difficult to deny its existence. In the aftermath of Watergate in 1975, the Senate held meetings under the Church Committee in order to determine exactly what sorts of illicit activities the American intelligence apparatus was engaged in under the direction of President Nixon, and how future violations of the law could be stopped. It was the first time the NSA was exposed to public scrutiny since its creation. The investigation revealed a sophisticated operation whose surveillance programs paid little heed to such things as the Constitution. For instance, under Project SHAMROCK, the NSA spied on telegrams to and from the U.S., as well as the correspondence of American citizens. Moreover, as the Saturday Evening Post reports, “Under Project MINARET, the NSA monitored the communications of civil rights leaders and opponents of the Vietnam War, including targets such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohammed Ali, Jane Fonda, and two active U.S. Senators. The NSA had launched this program in 1967 to monitor suspected terrorists and drug traffickers, but successive presidents used it to track all manner of political dissidents.” Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated the NSA, understood only too well the dangers inherent in allowing the government to overstep its authority in the name of national security. Church recognized that such surveillance powers “at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.” Noting that the NSA could enable a dictator “to impose total tyranny” upon an utterly defenseless American public, Church declared that he did not “want to see this country ever go across the bridge” of constitutional protection, congressional oversight and popular demand for privacy. He avowed that “we,” implicating both Congress and its constituency in this duty, “must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” The result was the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the creation of the FISA Court, which was supposed to oversee and correct how intelligence information is collected and collated. The law requires that the NSA get clearance from the FISA Court, a secret surveillance court, before it can carry out surveillance on American citizens. Fast forward to the present day, and the so-called solution to the problem of government entities engaging in unjustified and illegal surveillance—the FISA Court—has unwittingly become the enabler of such activities, rubberstamping almost every warrant request submitted to it. The 9/11 attacks served as a watershed moment in our nation’s history, ushering in an era in which immoral and/or illegal government activities such as surveillance, torture, strip searches, SWAT team raids are sanctioned as part of the quest to keep us “safe.” In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans’ phone calls and emails. That wireless wiretap program was reportedly ended in 2007 after the New York Times reported on it, to mass indignation. Nothing changed under Barack Obama. In fact, the violations worsened, with the NSA authorized to secretly collect internet and telephone data on millions of Americans, as well as on foreign governments. It was only after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 that the American people fully understood the extent to which they had been betrayed once again. What this brief history of the NSA makes clear is that you cannot reform the NSA. As long as the government is allowed to make a mockery of the law—be it the Constitution, the FISA Act or any other law intended to limit its reach and curtail its activities—and is permitted to operate behind closed doors, [relying] on secret courts, secret budgets and secret interpretations of the laws of the land, there will be no reform. Presidents, politicians, and court rulings have come and gone over the course of the NSA’s 60-year history, but none of them have done much to put an end to the NSA’s “technotyranny.” The beast has outgrown its chains. It will not be restrained. The growing tension seen and felt throughout the country is a tension between those who wield power on behalf of the government—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the militarized police, the technocrats, the faceless unelected bureaucrats who blindly obey and carry out government directives, no matter how immoral or unjust, and the corporations—and those among the populace who are finally waking up to the mounting injustices, seething corruption and endless tyrannies that are transforming our country into a technocrized police state. At every turn, we have been handicapped in our quest for transparency, accountability and a representative democracy by an establishment culture of secrecy: secret agencies, secret experiments, secret military bases, secret surveillance, secret budgets, and secret court rulings, all of which exist beyond our reach, operate outside our knowledge, and do not answer to “we the people.” What we have failed to truly comprehend is that the NSA is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under surveillance and, thus, under control. For example, Google openly works with the NSA, Amazon has built a massive $600 million intelligence database for the CIA, and the telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us for the government. In other words, Corporate America is making a hefty profit by aiding and abetting the government in its domestic surveillance efforts. Conveniently, as the Intercept recently revealed, many of the NSA’s loudest defenders have financial ties to NSA contractors. Thus, if this secret regime not only exists but thrives, it is because we have allowed it through our ignorance, apathy and naïve trust in politicians who take their orders from Corporate America rather than the Constitution. If this shadow government persists, it is because we have yet to get outraged enough to push back against its power grabs and put an end to its high-handed tactics. And if this unelected bureaucracy succeeds in trampling underfoot our last vestiges of privacy and freedom, it will be because we let ourselves be fooled into believing that politics matters, that voting makes a difference, that politicians actually represent the citizenry, that the courts care about justice, and that everything that is being done is in our best interests. Indeed, as political scientist Michael J. Glennon warns, you can vote all you want, but the people you elect aren’t actually the ones calling the shots. “The American people are deluded … that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy,” stated Glennon. “They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. But … policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.” In other words, it doesn’t matter who occupies the White House: the secret government with its secret agencies, secret budgets and secret programs won’t change. It will simply continue to operate in secret until some whistleblower comes along to momentarily pull back the curtain and we dutifully—and fleetingly—play the part of the outraged public, demanding accountability and rattling our cages, all the while bringing about little real reform. Thus, the lesson of the NSA and its vast network of domestic spy partners is simply this: once you allow the government to start breaking the law, no matter how seemingly justifiable the reason, you relinquish the contract between you and the government which establishes that the government works for and obeys you, the citizen—the employer—the master. Once the government starts operating outside the law, answerable to no one but itself, there’s no way to rein it back in, short of revolution. And by revolution, I mean doing away with the entire structure, because the corruption and lawlessness have become that pervasive. https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_nsas_technotyranny_one_nation_under_surveillance ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT I switched my attention to another topic because the mass non-European invasion in Europe was seriously freaking me out, while the events in Israel were also beginning to do my head in.  But reading this is just as depressing. What applies in the US, applies elsewhere.  It's just different nations and different agencies, operating in much the same way and in cooperation with their US counterparts and allies (see Five Eyes & note the German BND cooperation with US spying, along with the Five Eyes partners). It sounds like all ordinary people are doomed to being controlled by shadow unelected governments, that are operating in the service of the corporate elite's interests, and evidently a law unto themselves. Can't see a revolution coming any time soon, so we're all prisoners and the entire Western democratic government edifice is a lie. ꕤ

CBS '60 Minutes' 2011 - Julian Assange - Transcript of Interview - Questions PLANTED by US Government

ꕤ Article SOURCE http://www.cbsnews.com/news/julian-assange-the-man-behind-wikileaks-26-01-2011/7/ E-mail released by US Govt Note 60 Minutes confirms they raised "a number of questions and concerns" that the US Govt planted with them. Ooop ... there goes the credibility of mainstream 'journalism' and mainstream media. CBS News Transcript (from CBS News Site) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/julian-assange-the-man-behind-wikileaks-26-01-2011/7/ 2011 Jan 26 CBSNews Julian Assange, The Man Behind WikiLeaks Segment: Julian Assange, Part 1 Talks To Steve Kroft About The U.S. Attempt To Indict Him And The Criticism Aimed At Him For Publishing Just a few months ago, most people had never heard of a Web site called WikiLeaks, or of its mysterious and eccentric founder, Julian Assange. But in that short period of time both have managed to rattle the worlds of journalism, diplomacy, and national security. WikiLeaks, which solicits and publishes secrets and suppressed material from whistleblowers around the world, has been under cyber attack from governments that want to shut it down. And Assange is currently under legal attack from the U.S. government which would like to charge him with espionage for publishing volumes of classified material from the Pentagon and the State Department. "60 Minutes" and correspondent Steve Kroft spent two days with him in Great Britain where he is under house arrest, while fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning in two sexual assault cases, which he's called part of a smear campaign against him. In his most extensive television interview to date, Assange talked to us about his work, his vision and the prospects of facing criminal charges in the United States. Steve Kroft: You've been called a lot of names. You've been characterized as a hero and as a villain. A martyr. Terrorist. Julian Assange: I'm not yet a martyr. Kroft: Right. Assange: Let's keep it that way. For now, Assange is holed up on [this] bucolic 600-acre English estate with an ankle bracelet, a 10 p.m. curfew, and a slow Internet connection. He declined to talk to us about the allegations in Sweden, on the advice of his attorney. He has not been charged and proclaims his innocence. Kroft: Well, I suppose if you have to be under house arrest, there could be worse places. Assange: Well it's a gilded cage. It's still a cage. But when you are forced to stay somewhere against your will, it does become something that you want to leave. Kroft: It's a radical departure from the lifestyle that the peripatetic Internet muckraker is used to - bounding from city to city, country to country, and regularly changing his cell phones, hair styles and general appearance, he says, to elude surveillance and avoid being killed, kidnapped or arrested. And there are reasons for his paranoia: in the last four years, WikiLeaks has released information that played some role in deciding the 2007 election in Kenya, and fueling the anger that recently brought down the government in Tunisia. It has also divulged the membership rolls of a neo Nazi organization in Great Britain, and secret documents from the Church of Scientology. And that was before Assange began publishing U.S. secrets, provoking what he calls threatening statements from people close to power. Kroft: What statements are you referring to? Assange: The statements by the Vice President Biden saying, for instance that I was a high-tech terrorist. Sarah Palin calling to our organization to be dealt with like the Taliban, and be hunted down. There's calls either for my assassination or the assassination of my staff or for us to be kidnapped and renditioned back to the United States to be executed. Kroft: Well as you know, we have a First Amendment and people can say whatever they want, including politicians. I don't think that many people in the United States took seriously the idea that you were a terrorist. Assange: I would like to believe that. On the other hand the incitements to murder are a serious issue. And unfortunately there is a portion of the population that will believe in them and may carry them out. Kroft:  If nothing else, WikiLeaks is the latest demonstration that a small group of people with a powerful idea can harness technology and affect large institutions. In WikiLeaks' case it was the idea to aggregate state and corporate secrets by setting up an online electronic drop box where whistleblowers around the world could anonymously upload sensitive and suppressed information. The secrets are stored on servers around the world, beyond the reach of governments or law enforcement, then released worldwide on the Internet. Assange: The U.S. does not have the technology to take the site down Kroft: Because? Assange: Just the way our technology is constructed, the way the Internet is constructed. It's quite hard to stop things reappearing. So, we've had attacks on particular domain names. Little pieces of infrastructure knocked out. But we now have some 2,000 fully independent in every way Web sites, where we're publishing around the world. Kroft: WikiLeaks first caught the attention of most Americans last April when it released a video which shows a U.S. Apache helicopter crew in Iraq opening fire on a group of suspected insurgents who were standing on a street corner in Baghdad. Some of the men were armed, but two of them were journalists from Reuters. At least a dozen people were killed in the attack, some of them innocent civilians. Then last July, WikiLeaks released 76,000 classified field reports of U.S. operations in Afghanistan that provided a chaotic and bleak ground level view of the war. In October there were another 400,000 classified documents released from Iraq showing that civilian casualties there were much higher than the Pentagon had claimed; and finally in November, thousands of State Department cables that lifted the veil on highly sensitive back room diplomacy. The documents revealed that Arab leaders were lobbying the U.S. to attack Iran, and that the State Department had been secretly collecting intelligence on leaders at the United Nations. It triggered outcries that Assange was a political actor trying to damage the U.S. government. [Plant] Kroft: Are you a subversive? Assange: I'm sure there are certain views amongst Hillary Clinton and her lot that we are subverting their authority. But you're right, we are subverting illegitimate authority. The question is whether the authority is legitimate or whether it is illegitimate. Kroft: Do you consider the U.S. State Department a legitimate authority? Assange: It's legitimate insofar as its actions are legitimate. It has actions that are not legitimate. [Plant?] Kroft: And you've gone after the ones that you think are illegitimate? Assange: We don't go after. That's a bit of a misconception. We don't go after a particular country. We don't go after a particular organizational group. We just stick to our promise of publishing the material that is likely to have a significant impact. Kroft: To increase the impact of the U.S. documents, Assange decided to share them with some of the leading news organizations in the world, including The New York Times - a relationship that grew testy when Assange published the first set of war logs without removing the names of Afghans who were cooperating with U.S. forces. Kroft: The most persistent criticism from within the press has been that you have behaved recklessly from time to time. And the example that they cite is the fact that you've decided to release Afghan documents without redacting the names of people who had provided intelligence to the U.S. government. Assange: There's no evidence, or any credible allegation, or even any allegation from an official body that we have caused any individual at any time to come to harm in the past four years. Kroft: The Pentagon said that they've gone through all of these documents and they found the names of 300 people. Assange: Well, that's new public information to us. It's possible that there are 300 names in the publically released Afghan material. We don't pretend that that process is absolutely perfect. We did hold back one in five documents for extra harm minimization review and we also improved our process. So, when Iraq came around there was not even a single name in it. Kroft: I mean, there have been reports of people quoting Taliban leaders, saying that they had the names of these people and that they were going to take retribution. Assange: The Taliban is not a coherent outfit. But we don't say that it is absolutely impossible that anything we ever publish will ever result in harm. We cannot say that. [Plant?] Kroft: There's a perception on the part of some people who believe that your agenda right now is anti-American. Assange: Not at all. In fact, our founding values are those of the U.S. revolution. They are those of the people like Jefferson and Madison. And we have a number of Americans in our organization. If you're a whistleblower and you have material that is important, we will accept it, we will defend you and we will publish it. You can't turn away material simply because it comes from the United States. Kroft:  After the release of the State Department cables, Attorney General Eric Holder condemned WikiLeaks for putting national security at risk. "There's a real basis. There is a predicate for us to believe that crimes have been committed here," Holder said at a press conference. Holder announced that the Justice Department and the Pentagon were conducting a criminal investigation. They are reportedly looking at the Espionage Act of 1917 and other statutes to find a way to prosecute Assange and extradite him to the U.S. Assange: It's completely outrageous. Kroft: Are you surprised? Assange: I am surprised, actually. [LMAO ... 'forces of nature'?] Kroft: But you were screwing with the forces of nature. You have made some of the most powerful people in the world your enemies. You had to expect that they might retaliate. Assange: Oh, no. I fully expected they'll retaliate. Kroft: You took, you gathered, you stored all sorts of classified cables and documents. And then released them to the world on the Internet. They see that as a threat. Assange: They see it as highly embarrassing. I think what it's really about is keeping the illusion of control. I'm not surprised about that. I am surprised at how the sort of flagrant disregard for U.S. traditions. That is what I'm surprised about. [Oh, the hypocrisy ... wonder which Aussie gangster said that?  lol] [Plant?] Kroft: You're shocked? Someone in the Australian government said that, "Look, if you play outside the rules you can't expect to be protected by the rules." And you played outside the rules. You've played outside the United States' rules. Assange: No. We've actually played inside the rules. We didn't go out to get the material. We operated just like any U.S. publisher operates. We didn't play outside the rules. We played inside the rules. [Plant?] Kroft: There's a special set of rules in the United States for disclosing classified information. There is longstanding… Assange: There's a special set of rules for soldiers. For members of the State Department, who are disclosing classified information. There's not a special set of rules for publishers to disclose classified information. There is the First Amendment. It covers the case. And there's been no precedent that I'm aware of in the past 50 years of prosecuting a publisher for espionage. It is just not done. Those are the rules. You do not do it. Kroft: No one has accused Assange of stealing secrets. The Apache video and the classified documents were allegedly provided to WikiLeaks by Private First Class Bradley Manning, a low-level intelligence analyst in Iraq who is accused of copying them from a classified government network that a half a million people have access to. Manning is now in solitary confinement at a military prison in Virginia, facing charges that could put him away for 50 years. Kroft: You've called him as a prisoner of a conscience, correct? Assange: I've said that if the allegations against him are true then he is the foremost prisoner of conscience in the United States. There's no allegation it was done for money. There's no allegation it's done for any other reasons than a political reason. Now, I'm sorry if people in the United States don't want to believe that they are keeping a political prisoner. But in Bradley Manning's case, the allegations are that he engaged in an illegal activity for political motivations. Kroft: People in the United States think he's a traitor. Assange: That's clearly not true. Regardless of what happens to Private Manning, any prosecution of Assange will be fraught with problems because WikiLeaks wasn't alone in the publishing the classified material. The New York Times also published some of it. If the government were to try and prosecute WikiLeaks and not The New York Times, it would likely need to prove that Assange was actively involved in a conspiracy to illegally obtain the documents. Kroft: Did you encourage anyone to leak this material to you? Or have you done anything in connection with the U.S. cases in terms of encouraging an individual to provide you with material? Assange: No, never. Kroft: There are people that believe that it has everything to do with the next threat. That if they don't come after you now that what they have done is essentially endorsed small, powerful organization with access to very powerful information releasing it outside their control. And if they let you get away it, then they are encouraging… Assange: Then what? They will have to have freedom of the press? Kroft: That it's encouragement to you… Assange: And? And? Kroft: …or to some other organization? Assange: And to every other publisher. Absolutely correct. It will be encouragement to every other publisher to publish fearlessly. That's what it will encourage. [Plant?]  Kroft: To publish information much more dangerous than this information. Assange: If we're talking about creating threats to small publishers to stop them publishing, the U.S. has lost its way. It has abrogated its founding traditions. It has thrown the First Amendment in the bin. Because publishers must be free to publish. ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Segment: Julian Assange, Part 2 Kroft: Assange is not your average journalist or publisher, and some have argued that he is not really a journalist at all. He is an anti-establishment ideologue with conspiratorial views. He believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth and he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along. Some people have called him an anarchist, which he denies. Assange prefers to be called a libertarian, and believes that the only people who can adequately police the system are those on the inside who are in a position to notice the abuse and blow the whistle. While most reporters pride themselves in gathering information and interpreting it for a larger audience, the WikiLeaks model is different - it prefers to take raw data, make it available and let others decide the meaning. Regardless of whether you agree with this idea or not, it beats close to the heart of the Internet, and a younger generation, and it runs through the life of Assange. Kroft: You obviously have a mistrust of authority. Where does that come from? Assange: I think it comes from experience with various types of authorities. Assange gave us an example from his childhood, a story about him and his mother Christine, who was present at one of his recent court hearings. She was a political activist who helped scientists gather information about nuclear tests conducted by the British in the Australian outback. He remembers them being stopped late one night and questioned by authorities, one of whom said: Assange: Look lady, you're out at two o'clock in the morning with this child…it could be suggested that you're an unfit mother. I suggest you stay out of politics. And which she did for the next ten years in order to make sure nothing happened to me. So that's a very early abuse of power and the secrecy that I saw in my life. His was an unconventional and sometimes tumultuous childhood in which he was frequently uprooted and moved around the countryside. He attended 37 different schools. Kroft: So you've always been a little bit of an outsider? Assange: I've certainly, when I was a child, going from one school to another, you are the outsider to begin with and you have to find your way in. But in most of the places where I stayed long enough, I did find my way in. One of the first places Assange found his way into was populated by teenagers and computers. And he knew how to program them before most people had them. Kroft: You got involved with computers pretty early? With hacking? Assange: Well, I first became involved with computers when I was 13 or so. And I was unusually adept and I saw a sort of intellectual opportunity understanding how to program, understanding how these complex machines work. And that was part of a social culture in cracking codes to prove that you could do it. And this is something that is very actually normal and healthy amongst young men. You see it in skateboarders competing to show that they are capable in learning the best tricks. Kroft: And your tricks were like breaking into computers at the Department of Defense and Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA and NORTEL, some Canadian banks. Assange: Yeah. All that happened. Kroft:  At age 20, Assange was arrested by the Australian Federal Police and eventually pled guilty to multiple counts of computer hacking. He managed to get off with no jail time because the judge concluded Assange hadn't stolen any information or done any damage. [PLANT?] Kroft: Is that still one of your skills? Assange: Not really. Unfortunately, I've been sort of, you know, promoted up into management, so I don't get to do that so much. But I know the terrain which means I know what is possible. I mean, Bill Gates could program but he certainly doesn't program anymore. But he knows what is possible for other people to do. Kroft:  Except that Assange is not Bill Gates and WikiLeaks is not Microsoft. The shoestring operation that created all the havoc has no permanent offices and is headquartered wherever Assange happens to be. WikiLeaks is a small non-profit organization with a handful of anonymous employees, a secret cadre of international programmers, and a legion of worldwide volunteers. Its finances are administered by the Wau Holland Foundation based in Berlin and named after a famous hacker. According to the ledgers, WikiLeaks took in $1.3 million last year in donations, with expenses of about $500,000. Kroft: For somebody who abhors secrets, you run a pretty secret organization. Assange: That's not true. What we want is transparent government, not transparent people. We are an organization who one of our primary goals is to keep certain things secret to keep the identity of our sources secret so secrecy is an inherent part of our operation. Kroft: The State Department would make the same argument. They have…doing very sensitive work that they're trying to make peace and negotiate situations around the world. Very delicately. It's very important that they do this in secrecy. What's the difference? Assange: We don't say that the State Department should have no secrets. That's not what we're saying. Rather, we say that if there are people in the State Department who say that there is some abuse going on, and there's not a proper mechanism for internal accountability and external accountability, they must have a conduit to get that out to the public. And we are the conduit. Kroft:  Given all the attention that Assange has received, we were curious about how he thought he was being perceived in the United States. He told us that he hasn't had the time to give it much thought. Kroft: Do you want me to give you my characterization of what I think people think? Assange: Sure. Kroft: Mysterious. Little weird. A cult-like figure. Little paranoid. Assange: Well, you're repeating all the ad hominem attacks by our critics. My role when I do something like speak about that we have discovered the deaths of 109,000 individual people in Iraq, 15,000 civilian casualties never before reported anywhere, that's a very serious role. That is not a role where I can engage in humor. So I'm not used to performing under the spotlight. And I am learning this as time's going by. Kroft: You have shown a fair amount of contempt for the mainstream press over the years. Why did you decide to as you used, the word "partner" with them, in some of these most recent releases? Assange: We're a small organization. We're in a position, say, with Cablegate, where we have 3,000 volumes of material that are very important to get out to the public in a responsible manner that have the potential for great change - for example, this recent revolution in Tunisia. It is logistically impossible, so instead our organization delegates its excess source material to other journalists, who will have more impact. Who will do a better job. [Plant?]  Kroft: There is an element of the press, most of the mainstream press, nobody wants to see you prosecuted, because it could affect the way that they do their business. But there's also a feeling within the community that you're not one of them, that you play a different game. Assange: We do play a different game. And I hope we're a new way. [Plant?]  Kroft: The point that they're making I think is that you're not -- you're -- you're a publisher, but you're also an activist. Assange: Wait, whoa. We're a particular type of activist. In the U.S. context, there seems to be communist activists or something, so it's a… Kroft: Right. Agitator. Assange: It's a dirty word in the U.S. Kroft: It's a dirty word. And people think that what you're trying to do is to sabotage the workings of government. [Plant?]  Assange: No. We're not that type of activists. We are free press activists. It's not about saving the whales. It's about giving people the information they need to support whaling or not support whaling. Why? That is the raw ingredients that is needed to make a just and civil society. And without that you're just sailing in the dark. Kroft:   There have been clear signs that Assange - under the threat of possible indictment by the Justice Department - has moderated some of his views. Before releasing the last two batches of classified documents, Assange and his lawyers contacted both the Pentagon and the State Department offering to explore ways to minimize potential harm. In both cases their offer was rebuffed. Assange acknowledged that his fundraising has been hurt by the decision of PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and Bank of America to cease handling donations. But he dismissed reports that WikiLeaks is wracked by internal dissention and mass defections. Assange: We're talking about Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who was a German spokesman, had a limited role in the organization. We had to suspend him some five months ago. Kroft: Describes you as being authoritarian, secretive, punitive. Assange: I'm the boss that suspended him, that's correct. Kroft: You don't care to elaborate? Assange: I think I just did. Kroft: You said you have this package of very damaging documents, sort of a poison pill, that's going to be released if anything bad happens to you. Assange: No, that's not at all true. That's some kind of media hype. What we do have is a system whereby we distribute encrypted backups of things we have yet to publish. There are backups distributed amongst many, many people, 100,000 people and that all we need to do is give them an encrypted key and they will be able to continue on. [Plant?]   Kroft: This wasn't intended to be a blackmail threat. Assange: Not at all. Kroft: What would trigger that encryption code being released? Assange: Anything that prevented us from our ability to publish. So not just for a second, but preventing us significantly from being able to publish. Kroft: Your imprisonment, for example. Assange: If a number of people were imprisoned or assassinated, then we would feel that we could not go on and other people would have to take over our work, and we would release those keys. Kroft: One bank, Bank of America, had its stock go down three to five percent based on a rumor, maybe it's a rumor, maybe you know more about it, that you had the contents of a five gigabyte hard drive belonging to one of its executives. Do you have a five gigabyte hard drive? Assange: I won't make any comment in relation to that upcoming publication. Kroft: You're certainly not denying it. Assange: You know, there'll be a process of elimination if we denied some and admitted others. Kroft: So it might not be Bank of America and you're just gonna let them squirm until you get ready to… Assange: I think it's great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it's them. Kroft: You seem to enjoy stirring things up. Assange: When you see abusive organizations suffer the consequences as a result of their abuse, and you see victims elevated, it's, yes, that's a very pleasurable activity to be involved in. [Plant?]   Kroft: I mean you see yourself as a check on the power of the United States and other big countries in the world. And in the process of doing that, you have now become powerful yourself. Who is the check on you? Assange: It is our sources who choose to provide us with information or not, depending on how they see our actions. It is our donors who choose to give us money or not. This organization cannot survive for even a few months without the ongoing support of the public. Produced by Howard L. Rosenberg and Tanya Simon http://www.cbsnews.com/news/julian-assange-the-man-behind-wikileaks-26-01-2011/7/ ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- [Plant?] ...  indicates where I think the US government planted questions are.  The transcript isn't 100%. Noticed small discrepancies between audio & text. Waiting for Pt2 to download, so I can listen to that. ꕤ

Surveillance & Intel News

ꕤ Article SOURCE surveillance | intel PETITION #Surveillance #Privacy #uspoli #law stop backdoor govt access to encrypted services - #Petition https://www.savecrypto.org/ #uspoli #surveillance #California Police fake phone tower  spy tech approved by DOJ https://www.revealnews.org/article/east-bay-cellphone-surveillance-plan-gets-attorney-generals-support/ #Berlin campaigners launch Intelexit support group for #NSA & #GCHQ to quit http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/09/30/intelexit_for_nsa_surveillance_self_help_group_for_intelligence_agents_started.html #France Draft Bill #Surveillance mass surveillance carte blanche Similar plans are already in place in the UK and the Netherlands. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/france-must-reject-law-that-gives-carte-blanche-to-mass-surveillance-globally/ #military Nearly 120 soldiers from 163rd and 303rd Military Intelligence Battalions deployed to #Afghanistan http://kdhnews.com/fort_hood_herald/across_the_fort/fort-hood-military-intelligence-troops-deploy-to-afghanistan/article_42e4c9c0-66b0-11e5-8fd1-5f39ca88a06f.html #military US army #SouthKorea hoover up radio transmissions & detect underground tunnels fleet of new spy planes http://theweek.com/articles/577905/new-american-spy-planes-could-spot-kim-jong-uns-secret-tunnels ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/world/asia/kunduz-taliban-afghanistan.html?_r=0 Afghanistan Kunduz Still Held by Taliban, Locals Say, Despite Afghan Government Claims By ALISSA J. RUBIN  OCT. 1, 2015 Afghan soldiers preparing on Wednesday for a counteroffensive to try to retake the city of Kunduz from the Taliban. Credit Najim Rahim/European Pressphoto Agency KABUL, Afghanistan — Kunduz residents and provincial officials said the city remained in Taliban hands on Thursday, despite claims from the Afghan government that it had retaken the city. Kareema Sediqi, a member of the Kunduz provincial council, said that “the city is still in Taliban control,” but that Afghan security forces had advanced as far as a roundabout near the city’s entrance. Interviews with several residents suggested that the situation was fluid, with fighting continuing. Ms. Sediqi, who spoke from Kabul but was in contact with family members trapped in Kunduz, said, “The Afghan security forces are struggling against strong Taliban resistance from Taliban who are wearing A.N.A. uniforms,” referring to the Afghan National Army. It is a common Taliban tactic to obtain uniforms of the government security forces and use them to confuse their enemies. [...] But before residents had gone far from their homes, the Taliban counterattacked, wearing the uniforms of Afghan security forces, with some riding motorcycles and others driving captured Humvees and sports utility vehicles. They pushed back the Afghan forces, who remained on the city’s outskirts, according to Ms. Sediqi and some residents. [...] Saad Mukhtar, the director of public health for Kunduz, said that since the city fell, his office had recorded 49 dead and 332 wounded in local hospitals, including civilians and members of the Afghan security forces. Hundreds of civilians and members of the government forces have been holed up in the airport south of Kunduz, and reinforcements sent from other provinces have been delayed or halted by Taliban resistance in outlying areas. Residents reached in parts of Kunduz Province beyond the city said that the Taliban remained in control in the district of Chardara. That district is one of the most strategically important in the province because a road to the largest city in Afghanistan’s north, Mazar-i-Sharif, runs through it. [...] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/world/asia/kunduz-taliban-afghanistan.html?_r=0 ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Pentagon Pushing to Increase Post-2016 Troop Levels in Afghanistan New Plans Aim to Give Military 'Leeway' on When to Carry Out Drawdown by Jason Ditz, September 30, 2015 Every planned drawdown of US military forces from Afghanistan seems to turn up later than announced and smaller than planned, and despite officials still sticking to the NATO narrative that the Afghan War “ended,” some 10,000 US troops remain there. Officially, the plan is for a major drawdown by the end of next year that will finally catch up with what was supposed to be a 2014 pullout. Unsurprisingly, the Pentagon is once again fighting against following through on the plans, with officials saying the “plans” they are advancing both intend to withhold the troop level reductions deeper into 2017, and to give the Pentagon more “leeway” in when and how many troops get removed from the country after 2017. Already 14 years into the occupation of Afghanistan, the continuing struggles of the Afghan military continues to drag US ground troops into combat, and many officials seem to favor just maintaining the occupation essentially forever instead of ending the war and watching the government continue to lose territory to the same insurgency they’ve been fighting throughout that war. With less and less media coverage of the Afghan War, there seems to be less political interest in seeing the troops brought home, which likely will ensure that the Pentagon proposals to keep troops there get through without too much debate. http://news.antiwar.com/2015/09/30/pentagon-pushing-to-increase-post-2016-troop-levels-in-afghanistan/ ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Thought I'd look up to see what's going on with Afghanistan, seeing the US is sending out over 100 intelligence staff. Looks like Taliban's winning? Fourteen years is such a long time to occupy a country. Surprised how sophisticated Taliban are, wearing uniforms of Afghan government troops etc. It sounds like life goes on around the fighting and bystanders get shot if they're unlucky. Don't know enough about Afghanistan to make anything of what's going on. ------- Spy planes that find tunnels is pretty cool ... & especially handy near Gaza. ------- The French are going to subject everyone to mass surveillance, which is pretty standard for countries that expose themselves to internal risks. ꕤ