GERMANY: Is Merkel a CIA Asset?

Is Merkel a CIA Asset? 17:54 30.04.2015 (updated 18:22 30.04.2015) Finian Cunningham The claims that Merkel’s government knew about German state intelligence spying on behalf of the Americans against the country's own industrial interests raise disturbing questions about the integrity of German government leaders. The apparent betrayal of German national interests by Chancellor Angela Merkel is not only evident over the recent industrial spying scandal on behalf of America. The slavish pursuit by Merkel of Washington's anti-Russian policy over Ukraine — in contradistinction to her country's national interests — also cogently suggests that the chancellor is serving a foreign master. Recent reports that German state intelligence was spying on behalf of the Americans against the country's own industrial interests are bad enough. But then added to that are claims that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel knew about the espionage — and turned a blind eye. This raises disturbing questions about the integrity of German government leaders, and primarily Angela Merkel. Is Merkel an asset for American intelligence, serving the geopolitical interests of Washington rather than the good of her own nation, or the wider good of Europe? The news story in question refers to reports in the German media last week of how Germany's Federal Intelligence (BND) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) in spying on multinational European defence companies, including EADS and Eurocopter. The specific eavesdropping on these firms — in which Germany has major national economic interests — reportedly dates back to 2008. It is inconceivable that the highest levels of German government, including Chancellor Merkel — did not know about the industrial espionage. Yet Merkel appears to have countenanced the illegal activity, even though such activity would have vitiated German national interests, affording advantage to American competitors. First of all, the idea that German state intelligence is thoroughly penetrated by American secret agencies is not an outlandish theory. Far from it. The functioning of the BND as part of the American intelligence apparatus has been going on for decades, since the US oversaw the postwar rehabilitation of defeated Nazi Germany. The Americans and the British wove German intelligence — much of it inherited from the Nazi war machine — into their European-wide operations. German historian Josef Foschepoth and expert on postwar allied intelligence operations says that the West German government signed a secret pact with Washington and London, in 1968, known as the NATO Status of Forces Agreement. That pact mandates "intensive collaboration" and continues to this day — more than two decades since the reunification of Germany. In essence, the American secret services like the NSA and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have a free hand to carry out massive surveillance in Germany against whomever they want, whether private citizens or industrial companies. And all with the help of German state intelligence and the federal government. The tip of this iceberg in espionage and snooping was further revealed with the disclosures in 2013 by former American NSA operative Edward Snowden. Among the trove of revelations made by Snowden was the finding that American intelligence had been tapping the personal communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The eavesdropping dated back to 2002 — three years before the leader of the Christian Democrat Union first became chancellor. The telling thing is how puny and pusillanimous was the reaction from the German authorities to this disclosure of illicit spying by Washington. Apart from an initial bout of handwringing by Merkel and other Berlin figures, the whole scandal was quickly swept under the carpet as if it never happened. That suggests that the German government was already well aware of its compromised, subservient relation to Washington, as manifested by intrusive access to communications at the highest level. As noted above such a master-servant relationship between the US and Germany was a fundamental tenet of the postwar American reconstitution of that country, and the predominant role devolved to NATO by Washington over European security affairs. The German government was apprised of, indeed was a willing party to, its subservient role to American intelligence and the free hand given to the latter. So, when the rest of the world learnt of American government spying on Merkel back in 2013 from the Edward Snowden's leaks, perhaps the least surprised person would have been Merkel and her administration. Hence the meek response from Berlin towards Washington and, to any objective observer, its shockingly invasive conduct against German "allies". Further explosive testimony on the systematic penetration of American intelligence of German institutions came in recent months from former senior newspaper editor, Udo Ulfkotte. In several media interviews and in a best-selling book, Ulfkotte tells how German journalists and politicians are routinely recruited as CIA assets to spin stories or promulgate policies that are aimed at serving the geopolitical interests of Washington, not the interests of the German people. The former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung — one of Germany's best-known newspapers — confessed that he was one of the CIA's assets for many years, publishing stories that he knew to be false and which were damaging to international relations, and in particular antagonistic towards Russia. [  .  .  .  ] EXTRACT ONLY - FULL AT SOURCE - here COMMENT pusillanimous = timid Lengthy article.  Rest of it is at link provided. Thought this was cool.  Haven't caught up with the German industrial spying scandal.  Must have been too lazy to check links. Germany, Nazis and CIA / USA links go all the way back to the Gehlen Organisation - established 1946 by the US occupational forces.  So, basically, German intelligence is an offshoot of Nazi intelligence under the control of the CIA/USA 'Daddy'. "The American secret service works closely with the BND. The BND founder's Nazi background did not disturb the CIA. Reinhard Gehlen, a high-ranking intelligence officer in Hitler's Wehrmacht, brought extensive files about the Russian military with him.  The BND has recently been attracting more public attention than ever before, not because of its anniversary but because of revelations that its agents in Iraq have been working with American intelligence. Such collaboration has caused a huge stir in Ger­many's parliament, the Bundestag, where opposition to America's war in Iraq remains strong.  Close working relations between German and American spy services are anything but new. Cooperation began as far back as 1946, before the Federal Republic even existed. Indeed, it constituted the first institutional relationship between the two countries after World War II." "As Richard Helms, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who was in the early postwar period responsible for Central and Eastern Europe, makes clear in his memoirs, Gehlen's deal with first the U.S. Army and later the CIA did not foresee his spy organization working for the Americans but in a joint operation with them.  At first, the army funded the organization by selling gasoline, cigarettes and other American goodies on the black market. Soon after the German currency reform in 1948, the CIA assumed funding. The CIA sponsored the Gehlen organization until April 1956, when it was taken over by the German government in Bonn, becoming the Bundesnachrichtendienst [BND]". [Source - 2006 - here]  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Iraq stands out. All this sneaky intelligence stuff keeps surprising me, but it shouldn't be surprising.  It's not really sneaky; it's just how it is.  The front end is a lie.  The back end is the truth. It doesn't matter who appears to be in government or what kind of opposition there is to anything; what appears at the front end is fake.  Those that hold the real power behind the scenes do what they want. I'd wager that's the rule rather than the exception. Don't understand why the Germans would undermine their own interests, unless there's a bigger prize for German interests ... or German interest are no longer 'German interests' because Germany is owned by foreign interests?

SNOWDEN, ASSANGE & WIKILEAKS: USA - NSA Police-State Dictatorship & Corporate Media State-Aligned Propaganda

John Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden: Pseudo-satire in defense of NSA surveillance  By Thomas Gaist 9 April 2015 Comedy host John Oliver conducted an interview with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow recently that was broadcast Sunday on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” In the process, Oliver exposed his solidarity with the American state and its vast, illegal spying operations. He took the opportunity of the conversation to come out harshly against Snowden’s decision to leak large quantities of NSA documents. Pushing for a confession that his actions were potentially “harmful,” the British-born Oliver demanded to know whether Snowden had personally read every single document contained in the files that the former NSA employee transferred to journalists beginning in the summer of 2013. “I have evaluated all of the documents that are in the archive. I do understand what I turned over,” Snowden replied. “There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading what’s in the documents. Because when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents, the last thing you’d want to do is read them,” Oliver retorted sarcastically. He went on, “You have to own that. You’re giving documents with information that could be harmful.” Oliver repeated the favored arguments of the Obama administration and intelligence establishment to the effect that the preservation of “national security” required the elimination of civil liberties, such as Fourth Amendment protections against arbitrary searches and seizures. “We all want perfect privacy and perfect safety, but those two things cannot coexist,” Oliver said, comparing the NSA spy programs to a “Badass pet falcon,” which he asserted could not live together with “an adorable pet vole named Herbert.” Oliver’s attack on Snowden reached extraordinary and insulting heights. At one point, he interrupted the internationally respected whistleblower for sounding too much like “the IT guy from work… Please don’t teach me anything. I don’t want to learn. You smell like canned soup,” Oliver said to the courageous defender of democratic rights, who has now endured nearly two years of persecution and exile. Oliver’s hostility towards Snowden and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is an expression of his staunch support, almost universally shared among well-to-do strata in American society, for the continuation of the US government’s surveillance programs. In a couple of brief asides, Oliver half-heartedly suggested that minor reforms to the system of authoritarian shadow courts and antidemocratic laws erected to legitimize the spying might be necessary. But the development and permanent maintenance of mass surveillance programs by the US government went unquestioned. If nothing else, the Snowden interview should help clear matters up for those who still had illusions about Oliver, Jon Stewart and their ilk. Behind their sophomoric antics, designed to dupe more naïve elements looking for something genuinely antiestablishment, lies a run-of-the-mill, conformist outlook, in keeping with the lavish material rewards they receive. (Oliver made an estimated $2,000,000 in 2013.) In one of a few moments when he adopted a serious tone, Oliver cited the failure of the New York Times to fully redact one of the NSA slides, an oversight he claimed was a “f***-up” that exposed a US intelligence operation against al Qaeda in Mosul, Iraq. In another, he warned viewers that WikiLeaks’ Assange was “even less careful than Snowden” about the material he was leaking. He mocked Assange, who remains trapped inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London as a result of his efforts to expose US war crimes, comparing him to “a sandwich bag full of biscuit dough wearing a Stevie Nicks wig.” Pointing to video clips of street interviewees who showed increased concern over surveillance after Oliver referred to reports that NSA agents view nude pictures sent by targets via email and text message, the comedy host contended that Americans’ interest in the matter does not extend beyond such matters. From here, Oliver arrived at the notion that the failure of even minimal reform of the surveillance operations to gain traction results from the fact that ordinary Americans can only be convinced to think about politics through appeals of the most backward kind. “Domestic surveillance, Americans give some of a sh** about. Foreign surveillance, American don’t give any sh** about,” Oliver said. When Snowden noted that such abuses are “seen as no big deal in the culture of the NSA,” and that agency employees “see naked pictures all the time,” Oliver issued another absurd slander against the US population. “This is the most visible line in the sand for people. ‘Can they see my dick?’” Oliver said. If wide sections of the population lack accurate knowledge about recent developments in government spying, it is the outcome of the systematic and deliberate efforts to conceal the truth by the corporate media to which Oliver belongs. Snowden made patient efforts to work around Oliver’s willful ignorance and class arrogance, seeking to explain that along with the “dick pictures” obsessed over by Oliver, the NSA is collecting every other form of data on the planet, from US and non-US individuals alike, in open violation of the US Bill of Rights and international law. “If you have your email somewhere like Gmail, hosted on a server overseas or transferred overseas or [if it] at anytime crosses outside the borders of the United States, your junk ends up in the database,” Snowden commented. “Google moves data internationally and NSA catches copies during this process, through PRISM, with Google’s involvement. All the major companies, Yahoo, Facebook, the US government deputizes them to be its surveillance sheriffs,” he added. Oliver is not engaging in political satire, of which there is a long and proud tradition, in any meaningful sense of the word. Genuine satire attacks the powerful, exposing their lies and hypocrisy. Oliver, on the other hand, instinctively aligns himself with the US ruling elite and its historically unprecedented surveillance apparatus, one of the foundations of a police-state dictatorship. Sunday’s installment of Last Week was an exercise in pro-NSA propaganda and cultural degradation. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/09/oliv-a09.html COMMENT Great article.  Wish I could think like this guy.  All I thought was:  what an asshole Oliver is, but I'd never have been able to articulate why as well as the article author. Article also ties in nicely with the one I looked at earlier:       Beyond Manufacturing Consent       By: Paul Street Manufacturing Consent:  United States corporate media’s role as propaganda organ for that nation’s imperial establishment US corporate media’s biggest contribution to the engineering of mass “consent.”      US corporate media function of transmitting      ideology and propaganda      in service to .. interrelated hierarchies of empire. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Beyond-Manufacturing-Consent-20150327-0024.html ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ OTHER Vilifying WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning by Hearsay http://wiseupaction.info/2015/04/11/vilifying-wikileaks-julian-assange-and-chelsea-manning-by-hearsay/ 'Vilification by hearsay' article in relation to the recent Sean Penn criticisms of WikiLeaks and Assange.

UK - Privacy International - Surveillance Industry - Surveillance General

Meet the privacy activists who spy on the surveillance industry by Daniel Rivero Illustration by Shutterstock, Elena Scotti/Fusion April 6, 2015 http://fusion.net/story/112390/unveiling-secrets-of-the-international-surveillance-trade-one-fake-company-at-a-time/ LONDON– On the second floor of a narrow brick building [...] Once he’s infiltrated the trade show, he’ll pose as an industry insider, chatting up company representatives, swapping business cards, and picking up shiny brochures that advertise the invasive capabilities of bleeding-edge surveillance technology. Few of the features are ever marketed or revealed openly to the general public, and if the group didn’t go through the pains of going undercover, it wouldn’t know the lengths to which law enforcement and the intelligence community are going to keep tabs on their citizens. “I don’t know when we’ll get to use this [company], but we need a lot of these to do our research,” Omanovic tells me. (He asked Fusion not to reveal the name of the company in order to not blow its cover.) The strange tactic– hacking into an expo in order to come into close proximity with government hackers and monitors– is a regular part of operations at Privacy International, a London-based anti-surveillance advocacy group founded 25 years ago. Omanovic is one of a few activists for the group who goes undercover to collect the surveillance promotional documents. “At last count we had about 1,400 files,” Matt Rice, PI’s Scottish-born advocacy officer says while sifting through a file cabinet full of the brochures. “[The files] help us understand what these companies are capable of, and what’s being sold around the world,” he says. The brochures vary in scope and claims. Some showcase cell site simulators, commonly called Stingrays, which allow police to intercept cell phone activity within a certain area. Others provide details about Finfisher– surveillance software that is marketed exclusively to governments, which allows officials to put spyware on a target’s home computer or mobile device to watch their Skype calls, Facebook and email activity. The technology buyers at these conferences are the usual suspects — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service– but also representatives of repressive regimes —Bahrain, Sudan, pre-revolutionary Libya– as the group has revealed in attendees lists it has surfaced. At times, companies’ claims can raise eyebrows. One brochure shows a soldier, draped in fatigues, holding a portable device up to the faces of a sombre group of Arabs. “Innocent civilian or insurgent?,” the pamphlet asks. “Not certain?” “Our systems are.” The treasure trove of compiled documents was available as an online database, but PI recently took it offline, saying the website had security vulnerabilities that could have compromised information of anyone who wanted to donate to the organization online. They are building a new one. The group hopes that the exposure of what Western companies are selling to foreign governments will help the organization achieve its larger goal: ending the sale of hardware and software to governments that use it to monitor their populations in ways that violate basic privacy rights. The group acknowledges that it might seem they are taking an extremist position when it comes to privacy, but “we’re not against surveillance,” Michael Rispoli, head of PI’s communications, tells me. “Governments need to keep people safe, whether it’s from criminals or terrorists or what it may be, but surveillance needs to be done in accordance with human rights, and in accordance with the rule of law.” The group is waging its fight in courtrooms. In February of last year, it filed a criminal complaint to the UK’s National Cyber Crime Unit of the National Crime Agency, asking it to investigate British technology allegedly used repeatedly by the Ethiopian government to intercept the communications of an Ethiopian national. Even after Tadesse Kersmo applied for– and was granted– asylum in the UK on the basis of being a political refugee, the Ethiopian government kept electronically spying on him, the group says, using technology from British firm Gamma International. The group currently has six lawsuits in action, mostly taking on large, yet opaque surveillance companies and the British government. Gamma International did not respond to Fusion’s request for comment on the lawsuit, which alleges that exporting the software to Ethiopian authorities means the company assisted in illegal electronic spying. “The irony that he was given refugee status here, while a British company is facilitating intrusions into his basic right to privacy isn’t just ironic, it’s wrong,” Rispoli says. “It’s so obvious that there should be laws in place to prevent it.” PI says it has uncovered other questionable business relationships between oppressive regimes and technology companies based in other Western countries. An investigative report the group put out a few months ago on surveillance in Central Asia said that British and Swiss companies, along with Israeli and Israeli-American companies with close ties to the Israeli military, are providing surveillance infrastructure and technical support to countries like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan– some of the worst-ranking countries in the world when it comes to freedom of speech, according to Freedom House. Only North Korea ranks lower than them. PI says it used confidential sources, whose accounts have been corroborated, to reach those conclusions. Not only are these companies complicit in human rights violations, the Central Asia report alleges, but they know they are. Fusion reached out to the companies named in the report, NICE Systems (Israel), Verint Israel (U.S./ Israel), Gamma (UK), or Dreamlab (Switzerland), and none have responded to repeated requests for comment. The report is a “blueprint” for the future of the organization’s output, says Rice, the advocacy officer. “It’s the first time we’ve done something that really looks at the infrastructure, the laws, and putting it all together to get a view on how the system actually works in a country, or even a whole region,” says Rice. “What we can do is take that [report], and have specific findings and testimonials to present to companies, to different bodies and parliamentarians, and say this is why we need these things addressed,” adds Omanovic, the researcher and fake company designer. The tactic is starting to show signs of progress, he says. One afternoon, Omanovic was huddled over a table in the back room, taking part in what looked like an intense conference call. “European Commission,” he says afterwards. The Commission has been looking at surveillance exports since it was revealed that Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain were using European tech to crack down on protesters during the Arab Spring, he added. Now, PI is consulting with some members, and together they “hope to bring in a regulation specifically on this subject by year’s end.” *** Privacy International has come a long way from the “sterile bar of an anonymous business hotel in Luxembourg,” where founder Simon Davies, then a lone wolf privacy campaigner, hosted its first meeting with a handful of people 25 years ago. In a blog post commemorating that anniversary, Davies (who left the organization about five years ago) described the general state of privacy advocacy when that first meeting was held:     “Those were strange times. Privacy was an arcane subject that was on very few radar screens. The Internet had barely emerged, digital telephony was just beginning, the NSA was just a conspiracy theory and email was almost non-existent (we called it electronic mail back then). We communicated by fax machines, snail mail – and through actual real face to face meetings that you travelled thousands of miles to attend.” Immediately, there were disagreements about the scope of issues the organization should focus on, as detailed in the group’s first report, filed in 1991. Some of the group’s 120-odd loosely affiliated members and advisors wanted the organization to focus on small privacy flare-ups; others wanted it to take on huge, international privacy policies, from “transborder data flows” to medical research. Disputes arose as to what “privacy” actually meant at the time. It took years for the group to narrow down the scope of its mandate to something manageable and coherent. Gus Hosein, current executive director, describes the 90’s as a time when the organization “just knew that it was fighting against something.” He became part of the loose collective in 1996, three days after moving to the UK from New Haven, Connecticut, thanks to a chance encounter with Davies at the London Economics School. For the first thirteen years he worked with PI, he says, the group’s headquarters was the school pub. They were fighting then some of the same battles that are back in the news cycle today, such as the U.S. government wanting to ban encryption, calling it a tool for criminals to hide their communications from law enforcement. “[We were] fighting against the Clinton Administration and its cryptography policy, fighting against new intersections of law, or proposals in countries X, Y and Z, and almost every day you would find something to fight around,” he says. Just as privacy issues stemming from the dot com boom were starting to stabilize, 9/11 happened. That’s when Hosein says “the shit hit the fan.” In the immediate wake of that tragedy, Washington pushed through the Patriot Act and the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, setting an international precedent of invasive pat-downs and extensive monitoring in the name of anti-terrorism. Hosein, being an American, followed the laws closely, and the group started issuing criticism of what it considered unreasonable searches. In the UK, a public debate about issuing national identification cards sprung up. PI fought it vehemently. “All of a sudden we’re being called upon to respond to core policy-making in Western governments, so whereas policy and surveillance were often left to some tech expert within the Department of Justice or whatever, now it had gone to mainstream policy,” he says. “We were overwhelmed because we were still just a ragtag bunch of people trying to fight fights without funding, and we were taking on the might of the executive arm of government.” The era was marked by a collective struggle to catch up. “I don’t think anyone had any real successes in that era,” Hosein says. But around 2008, the group’s advocacy work in India, Thailand and the Philippines started to gain the attention of donors, and the team decided it was time to organize. The three staff members then started the formal process of becoming a charity, after being registered as a corporation for ten years. By the time it got its first office in 2011 (around the time its founder, Davies, walked away to pursue other ventures) the Arab Spring was dominating international headlines. “With the Arab Spring and the rise of attention to human rights and technology, that’s when PI actually started to realize our vision, and become an organization that could grow,” Hosein says. “Four years ago we had three employees, and now we have 16 people,” he says with a hint of pride. *** “This is a real vindication for [Edward] Snowden,” Eric King, PI’s deputy director says about one of the organization’s recent legal victories over the UK’s foremost digital spy agency, known as the Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ. PI used the documents made public by Snowden to get the British court that oversees GCHQ to determine that all intelligence sharing between GCHQ and the National Security Administration (NSA) was illegal up until December 2014. Ironically, the court went on to say that the sharing was only illegal because of lack of public disclosure of the program. Now that details of the program were made public thanks to the lawsuit, the court said, the operation is now legal and GCHQ can keep doing what it was doing. “It’s like they’re creating the law on the fly,” King says. “[The UK government] is knowingly breaking the law and then retroactively justifying themselves. Even though we got the court to admit this whole program was illegal, the things they’re saying now are wholly inadequate to protect our privacy in this country.” Nevertheless, it was a “highly significant ruling,” says Elizabeth Knight, Legal Director of fellow UK-based civil liberties organization Open Rights Group. “It was the first time the [courts have] found the UK’s intelligence services to be in breach of human rights law,” she says. “The ruling is a welcome first step towards demonstrating that the UK government’s surveillance practices breach human rights law.” In an email, a GCHQ spokesperson downplayed the significance of the ruling, saying that PI only won the case in one respect: on a “transparency issue,” rather than on the substance of the data sharing program. “The rulings re-affirm that the processes and safeguards within these regimes were fully adequate at all times, so we have not therefore needed to make any changes to policy or practice as a result of the judgement,” the spokesperson says. Before coming on board four years ago, King, a 25-year old Wales native, worked at Reprieve, a non-profit that provides legal support to prisoners. Some of its clients are at Guantanamo Bay and other off-the-grid prisons, something that made him mindful of security concerns when the group was communicating with clients. King worried that every time he made a call to his clients, they were being monitored. “No one could answer those questions, and that’s what got me going on this,” says King. Right now, he tells me, most of the group’s legal actions have to do with fighting the “Five Eyes”– the nickname given to the intertwined intelligence networks of the UK, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand. One of the campaigns, stemming from the lawsuit against GCHQ that established a need for transparency, is asking GCHQ to confirm if the agency illegally collected information about the people who signed a “Did the GCHQ Illegally Spy On You?” petition. So far, 10,000 people have signed up to be told whether their communications or online activity were collected by the UK spy agency when it conducted mass surveillance of the Internet. If a court actually forces GCHQ to confirm whether those individuals were spied on, PI will then ask that all retrieved data be deleted from the database. “It’s such an important campaign not only because people have the right to know, but it’s going to bring it home to people and politicians that regular, everyday people are caught up in this international scandal,” King says. “You don’t even have to be British to be caught up in it. People all over the world are being tracked in that program.” Eerke Boiten, a senior lecturer at the interdisciplinary Cyber Security Centre at the University of Kent, says that considering recent legal victories, he can’t write off the effort, even if he would have dismissed it just a year ago. “We have now finally seen some breakthroughs in transparency in response to Snowden, and the sense that intelligence oversight needs an overhaul is increasing,” he wrote in an email to me. “So although the [British government] will do its best to shore up the GCHQ legal position to ensure it doesn’t need to respond to this, their job will be harder than before.” “Privacy International have a recent record of pushing the right legal buttons,” he says. “They may win again.” A GCHQ spokesperson says that the agency will “of course comply with any direction or order” a court might give it, stemming from the campaign. King is also the head of PI’s research arm– organizing in-depth investigations into national surveillance ecosystems, in tandem with partner groups in countries around the world. The partners hail from places as disparate as Kenya and Mexico. One recently released report features testimonials from people who reported being heavily surveilled in Morocco. Another coming out of Colombia will be more of an “exposé,” with previously unreported details on surveillance in that country, he says. And then there’s the stuff that King pioneered: the method of sneaking into industry conferences by using a shadow company. He developed the technique Omanovic is using. King can’t go to the conferences undercover anymore because his face is now too well known. When asked why he started sneaking into the shows, he says: “Law enforcement doesn’t like talking about [surveillance]. Governments don’t talk about it. And for the most part our engagement with companies is limited to when we sue them,” he laughs. When it comes to the surveillance field, you would be hard pressed to find a company that does exactly what it says it does, King tells me. So when he or someone else at PI sets up a fake company, they expect to get about as much scrutiny as the next ambiguous, potentially official organization that lines up behind them. Collectively, PI has been blacklisted and been led out of a few conferences over the past four years they have been doing this, he estimates. “If we have to navigate some spooky places to get what we need, then that’s what we’ll do,” he says. Sometimes you have to walk through a dark room to turn on a light. Privacy International sees a world with a lot of dark rooms. “Being shadowy is acceptable in this world.” http://fusion.net/story/112390/unveiling-secrets-of-the-international-surveillance-trade-one-fake-company-at-a-time/ Highlights are for me.  Link to source article for an easier read. Great article.  Not sure I'll remember all of this information. Prior advocacy work: India Thailand Philippines More investigations coming: Kenya Mexico  Colombia   Completed report:  heavily surveilled in Morocco (strong USA ally, with heavy French & Spanish trade, credit and investment). StingRays are used routinely by Chicago Police Dept: Chicago PD seized drug money = first purchases 2005 incl. StingRay surveillance' digital 'hoovers' http://inthesetimes.com/article/17808/who-do-you-protect-who-do-you-surveil  Central Asia report software companies that have not responded: NICE Systems (Israel) Verint Israel (US / Israel) Gamma (UK) Dreamlab (Switzerland) Most of Privacy International legal actions have to do with fighting the “Five Eyes” - ie.  "intertwined intelligence networks of the UK, Canada, the US, Australia & New Zealand." Six court actions in progress currently. Sales to repressive governments include: Bahrain Sudan Libya (pre-revolutionary) Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Egypt, Tunisia & Bahrain - used European surveillance technology (crackdown protesters). European Commission -  has been looking at surveillance export. Expansive surveillance set down by: Patriot Act (USA) Aviation and Transportation Security Act (USA) Intelligence sharing between USA (NSA) and UK (GCHQ) ruled illegal prior 2014 because undisclosed.  However: "Now that details of the program were made public thanks to the lawsuit, the court said, the operation is now legal and GCHQ can keep doing what it was doing." That outcome sounds rather bizarre to me.

Government, Power, Expansion & Keeping the Rabble in Line

Weekend Edition April 3-5, 2015 The Government's Intelligent Design When the Government Views Its Own Population as the Enemy by CHRIS WRIGHT The public debate over government surveillance that was, if not inaugurated, at least intensified by the publication of documents provided by Edward Snowden has been, in some respects, surreal and deluded. One side claims that the NSA’s mass surveillance is necessary to protect the public from terrorism, that in fact it has thwarted many “potential terrorist events.” The other side claims, with much more justification, that bulk data collection does little or nothing to protect ordinary civilians. But few commentators draw another, more subversive conclusion: government has no interest in protecting its citizens (as such) in the first place. In fact, its interest is precisely the opposite: to expose its citizens–with privileged exceptions–to harm. Sounds absurd, of course. But consider, first, the recent historical record, which certainly does not support the idea that the U.S. government cares about protecting Americans. Exhibit 1 is the attacks of 9/11. It became a commonplace long ago for leftists and liberals to cite the White House memo of August 6, 2001 that bore the heading “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” which was apparently ignored at the time by the Bush administration. Perhaps more damning is Lawrence Wright’s 2006 book The Looming Tower, which made it abundantly clear that the CIA and the FBI had not prioritized the fight against terrorism even after the 1993 Twin Tower bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. If one were malicious enough, one might attribute competence to government institutions rather than mere criminal bungling: perhaps the ridiculously counterproductive–from the perspective of thwarting terrorism–organization and efforts of the CIA and FBI before 9/11 were, by some twisted institutional logic, designed to make possible precisely what happened, a major terrorist event. Another commonplace is the observation that George W. Bush’s Iraq war, far from mitigating terrorism, increased it substantially, perhaps sevenfold. This was predictable and predicted in 2003, a fact that, by elementary logic, means that the Bush administration at the very least was perfectly happy to expose American (and of course foreign) civilians to greater threats. The same logic applies to Obama’s global drone war, which apparently has killed 50 civilians for every 1 terrorist. Not surprisingly, it has fueled terrorism, and thus increased threats to Americans. (In fact, the drone campaign itself is terrorism, but here I am confining myself to the conventional American understanding of the word, as applying only to people that the U.S. government doesn’t like.) One could go on listing such facts indefinitely. For instance, the sordid lesson to draw from the Hurricane Katrina debacle in 2005 is that protecting Americans from a natural disaster was not a priority of government at any level, at least not of the governments involved. The wrightworkersdeplorable actions of police in the hurricane’s aftermath confirm this conclusion. The victims were treated as criminals, not people who needed and deserved protection. In addition to ample historical evidence, one can also consider simple logic. Returning to the NSA’s mass surveillance, it shouldn’t be hard for government officials to comprehend that the more time and resources they devote to monitoring ordinary civilians, the less time and resources they are devoting to monitoring plausible terrorist threats. In fact, almost every major terrorist attack in the West during the past fifteen years has been committed by people who were already known to law enforcement. Such was the case, for instance, with regard to one of the brothers accused of the 2013 Boston marathon bombings. But the government, obligingly, was too busy spying on ordinary Americans to pay much attention to him, so he was able to carry out his attack unhindered. But why, you ask, would it be in the interest of government to expose the public to harm? This question cannot be answered except in the context of specific historical circumstances, in this case the circumstances of neoliberal capitalism. In a society that is experiencing stratospheric income inequality, high unemployment and long-term economic stagnation, retrenchment of social welfare programs, the reality and threat of environmental collapse, and, in short, ever-greater social discontent and instability, institutional power-centers will want to increase their control over the population. As a proud plutocrat put it in a warning to his wealthy brethren, “the pitchforks are coming.” And the plutocrats, together with their government representatives, want to be prepared for that. The question is how to justify the expansion of government’s surveillance and police powers that is necessary to keep the rabble in line. Clearly, pretexts are needed. And pretexts are provided whenever a terrorist attack occurs, especially if it occurs on American soil. This may be a virtual truism, but rarely is the implication articulated: in this respect, it is in the interest of government and the top “1%” in income/wealth for civilians periodically to be victims of terrorism. If the terrorist threat disappears, so does the useful pretext. The “pretext” phenomenon has other dimensions. Naomi Klein discusses one of them in her famous book The Shock Doctrine, where she argues that in the last forty years, in the wake of catastrophes of whatever sort–natural, military, terrorist, economic–elites have taken advantage of popular disorientation and disorganization to force regimes of privatization upon the population. “Neoliberalism-by-blitzkrieg,” one might call it. A prime example is what happened to New Orleans after Katrina: with the public’s capacity to resist weakened, nearly all public schools were privatized. Under the pretext of education reform, “corporate profiteers and politicians have zeroed in on black communities, leaving behind devastation and destabilization,” says a spokesperson of a New Orleans community group. So, for the neoliberal state-corporate nexus, the devastation of a particular society, including a domestic region, can be eminently useful not only in smashing popular resistance to power but also in giving elites an opportunity to ram through programs they could not have otherwise. Convenient pretexts can always be thought of. On a more general level, the relevant principle has been stated concisely by Noam Chomsky: the primary enemy of any government is (the majority of) its own population. For the population always wants more power and economic security than it has, and it is willing to fight for it (as the history of the labor movement shows)–which entails, however, the relative diminution of the power of the rich and their political minions. This corollary explains, of course, the U.S. government’s continually savage treatment, through centuries, of workers, the lower classes, left-wing activists, African-Americans, protesters and dissidents and “ordinary people” of all kinds. They must be humiliated, harmed, killed, beaten down, made examples of if they step out of line, kept in a state of constant fear and obedience (however impossible it may be to fulfill that goal). Power exists but to maintain and expand itself; that is its raison d’être, and that is the key to understanding its every move (at the institutional, not the personal, level). For example, if government is not always blatantly aggressive in harming its own population, that is not because it’s too moral to do so; it is because that might threaten its power, by stirring up more dissent. Concessions have to be made to the masses if in the long run they are to tolerate subordination. The appearance, and to some small extent even the reality, of protecting the population has to be maintained in order to appease the meddlesome outsiders. None of this means that policymakers or bureaucrats or members of the “ruling class” necessarily have these intentions in mind when crafting policies or cracking down on dissent. Doubtless few are clear-headed enough. But the logic of the institutions in which they are embedded–the bureaucratic-expansionist, capitalistic, totalitarian, Panopticon-esque logic–manipulates their minds and, by some mysterious alchemy, is sublimated into rationalizations and pretexts that are usually sincerely believed in. It isn’t hard to come up with pretexts to do what is in one’s institutional self-interest. Humans are born to deceive themselves. So, why not throw off all vestiges of sentimentalism about our rulers? Why not state the truth unequivocally: when a terrorist attack occurs, this is not a failure of government. It is a success; for now power-centers have another excuse to expand themselves, and to fear-monger, and to demonize the Other, and to make more profits from selling military and surveillance technology, and to clamp down ever more on the domestic population. And when the police blindly brutalize innocent civilians or protesters, this is not a failure for government to correct. It is what the police are supposed to do, what they were designed to do and the main reason they exist in the first place. It is government acting intelligently, in its own interests and in the interests of its puppet-masters. The population has to protect itself and stand up for itself, and fight for its freedom and power and security. Because the government certainly won’t. Chris Wright is a doctoral candidate in U.S. labor history, and the author of Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States. His website iswww.wrightswriting.com.”  SOUCE http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/03/when-the-government-views-its-own-population-as-the-enemy/ Parts of this article were interesting to me. Police brutalising civilians not being a government failure, and government acting in its own interests and the interests of its puppet masters, stood out as probably accurate. The parts about government seeking to expand control made sense. But the bit about people being willing to fight for more power and economic security didn't seem likely to me.  People tend to take whatever is dished out, probably because there is no means to resist.

Totalitarian Britain, CIA Lawsuit, Sacred Cows & Incongruous Libertarian Package

UK Police State Unbelievable harassment of politically active university students by the police state in Britain: Monitoring of protest groups “raw, unvarnished intimidation and activist-busting."  http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/25/police-covert-recruit-activists-spies-cambridge?CMP=share_btn_tw ......................................................... VIDEO UK Police try to recruit activist to spy on Cambridge students & political groups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hGQETyhXk ......................................................... CIA IS SUED CIA sued by “non-official cover” operative  “Madhouse: A Forbidden Novel of the CIA"  http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/7805012-74/cia-lawsuit-officer ......................................................... SACRED COWS & INCONGRUOUS LIB PACKAGE Snowden praised for fighting government surveillance… by group that LOVES corporate surveillance By Mark Ames  On February 20, 2015 Last Friday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden Skyped into a Washington DC Marriott Hotel conference hall to proudly accept “The Students For Liberty Alumnus of the Year Award.”  http://pando.com/2015/02/20/strange-bedfellows/ The Gist NSA whistleblower, Snowden, accepts Students for Libery award. Peter Thiel, founder of one of NSA’s biggest contractors, Palantir Technologies Gets Students For Liberty award  "Snowden’s nemesis, former NSA chief Keith Alexander, praised Palantir’s usefulness to the spy agency"  Greenwald has characterized Pando’s criticism of him as CIA plot hatched by Thiel  Thiel Founders Fund $300k in Pando previously Students for Liberty is anything but that: awarded “Event of the Year” to anti-Marxist 'libs' at Honduras’ National University Hey, Students of Liberty: Leftists & journalists in Honduras terrorized since 2009 US-backed coup!!!!!!  Snowden  “If the government will not be stewards of our rights, we can encode our rights into our system.”   Source:  http://pando.com/2015/02/20/strange-bedfellows/ Students For Liberty  gets most of its money from Koch brothers worked closely with US govt big corporate sponsors Students For Liberty’s Board Advisors incl Prince von Liechtenstein offshore banking tax haven of global billionaires / Switzerland too transparent Students For Liberty f. 2008 Alexander McCobin (emp @ Cato Institution, neé “The Charles Koch Foundation”) 💥 Koch Alarm 💥 Students for Liberty Ron Paul + Andrew Napolitano, Cato Institution / FoxNews truther Ron Paul presidential campaign 2012 Thiel funded /Snowden & Greenwald support Sen. Rand Paul Presidential campaign 2016 funded by Thiel’s co-founder at Palantir: Joe Lonsdale (Rand Paul’s finance team) 2011 Palantir sponsored Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Awards winners incl: >Glenn Greenwald >Laura Poitras >Tor Project >EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor >EFF Fellow Cory Doctorow Palantir & Peter Thiel   bravely fighting type of govt surveillance ably assisted by … Palantir & Peter Thiel   [LOL ... Pando] ......................................................... COMMENT Above are some of the things that caught my attention. The police attack on what is supposed to be a democratic right in Britain is disgraceful and, really, quite frightening and totalitarian, if you stop to think about what's going on.  And this is just the tip of an iceberg in Britain. More press on the CIA lawsuit would be good: The officer filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under a pseudonym, Mack L. Charles. The CIA declined to comment but did not dispute the plaintiff's former association with the agency. [1] CIA stands accused of illegally barring publishing of a novel (which isn't a first, as I recall). Finally, there's the hilarious Pando article (I love those guys).  No idea if they're really the 'bad' guys, if they're just funny bastards poking at some sacred cows, or if there is indeed something very odd about the convergence of these incongruous relationships. Trying to keep an open mind, but Koch, Thiel (NSA praise), Students for Liberty and the rest of it is a package way hard to swallow. Koch is 'cook' in German, by the way. Hmmmm ...

Charlie Hebdo Massacre, France - War on Terrorism - Free Press & Mass Surveillance & Fascism

#Assange and #Snowden are not to blame for Paris bloodbath. Sat Jan 10 18:19:36 UTC 2015 In today’s Daily Mail, “Sir” Max “I have always loved Israel” Hastings claimed that me and Mr. Snowden are responsible for the bloodbath in Paris: “Traitors… Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping”. That a state security vampire like Hastings has pounced on the still warm corpses strewn about Paris is as grotesque as it is predictable. Secrecy breeds corruption, but it also breeds incompetence and the French secret services are no exception to this rule. Currently the French security state has tried to present the killers as super villains in order to hide its own incompetence — something the media has been only too willing to aid and abet. The reality is the Charlie Hebdo killers were bumbling Keystone terrorists, no-hopers, who crashed their car, left their ID, co-ordinated over the phone and swiftly died. To lose nearly two dozen people to them is unforgivable. That double digits were killed is no mark of super powers. A single idiot can do it. In Australia’s Port Arthur massacre, a man with the IQ of 66, literally an idiot, shot 58 people over the course of several hours—because he was armed with an AR-10 semi-automatic and his victims were not. The tragedy in Paris is another example of where competent targeted surveillance, not mass surveillance, was needed. The attackers were well known jihadis. This is not a case of needing to collect a global interception haystack in order to find a needle. The alleged needle in question, Cherif Kouachi, had already been convicted of terrorism offences and served 18 months in prison for it. Both brothers were already on terrorism lists. Far from hiding messages under rocks or using encryption, the alleged conspirators communicated hundreds of times before and during the attacks — on regular phones. The offices of Charlie Hebdo had received many death threats and had been firebombed in 2011 a week after publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The French mass surveillance system is already one of the most pervasive; its primary purpose, like all such systems, is geopolitics. Mass surveillance addiction doesn’t come for free. In France it thieved skilled human and financial resources from targeted monitoring of obvious—the front of the Charlie Hebdo building and people walking out of prison with a terrorism conviction in one hand and numerous jihadi contacts in the other. Yesterday French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said “There was a failing, of course” on French television, “That’s why we have to analyse what happened.”. Valls is right, Hastings is not. So conspicuous is the failure in the Charlie Hebdo killings that serious questions must be asked. Cherif Kouachi had previously been involved in furthering the Sunni insurgency in the Levant. Were the brothers protected by the French services as part of French adventurism in Syria, Libya and elsewhere—as a conduit to funnel money, guns and militants into Africa and the Middle East? Were the brothers protected because they were witting or unwitting informers? Were the brothers protected in order to conduct a mediagenic, budget-boosting arrest seconds before the attack began — but the attack was moved forward? Why was the security architecture of the Charlie Hebdo building so poor? How is it that semi-automatic weapons found their way into France and into the hands of known jihadis? And most of all why has France’s crazed Sunni adventurism in Syria, Libya and other parts of Africa been tolerated despite the inevitable destabalization, radicalization and blowback? https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/16/1671459_insight-military-intervention-in-syria-post-withdrawal.html ASSANGE SOURCE - Twitter. Couldn't resist copying this over.  Nice response to Max Hastings' assertion in Daily Mail, which (in my opinion) could also serve as a notice to others trying to shift blame away from the issue of long-standing Western & European government policies and practices -- including imperialism, colonialism and interventions in the Middle East (and elsewhere) --  which I believe are some of the factors at the root of the Islamic extremist violence that Europe is experiencing. Disturbances caused in the Middle East and elsewhere are responsible for large movements of people from their homelands, which leads to issues associated with identity, religion and culture, resistance to assimilation versus assimilation, and difficulty integrating a clash of cultures, identity and values, which is exploited by nationalists, fundamentalists and extremists in host countries and elsewhere, for political and other gain. This is just my overall impression at the moment, based on my limited knowledge at this time. In an article in Haaretz, I found it interesting that the 'free press' as a whole, are clubbed together as Assange and Snowden supporters. The Haaretz article starts off with a statement posing as question.  It questions: (a) whether 'closer state surveillance' could have prevented the Charlie Hebdo massacre and, if so, it asks: (b) would the 'free press', who have supported Snowden and Assange (presumably the free press as a whole, because the author is not referring to specific publications or journalists), feel like crap (implication), if 'closer state surveillance' could have prevented the massacre (which is contentious, given that experts in that field argue that mass surveillance is *not* the answer, that it is a hindrance and that targeted surveillance is required).  Article Haaretz strikes me as casting very subtle aspersion on free press, as well as Assange and Snowden,  as figures supporting or representing freedom of press (Assange) and freedom from mass surveillance (Snowden & Assange). The Haaretz article also characterises Charlie Hebdo publication as follows: The target can, in Charlie Hebdo, be seen as a kind of marker of the ideology of secular France. That's quite sweeping statement to make about a satirical magazine, even if it is couched in 'can ... be seen' terms. So satire has become a representation or symbol of 'ideology' and this 'ideology' is depicted as a prevailing one in secular France, so presumably the target of Islamist extremist violence is the 'ideology' of  'secular France', is the gist of that sentence? Difficult for me to come to grips with the statement because I don't see the content of a satirical magazine as being a representation of secular cultural 'ideology'; rather, it is (in my view) social or political comment made by the originators of the material, who are entitled to a voice in society that values freedom of expression. The article continues: The big question in the wake of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo is whether the slaughter will bring France out of its corner in the war on Islamist terror. France has seen some appalling crimes – including attacks against Jews – that could be linked, broadly, to the global war against Islamist terror. ... the Internet appears to capture gunmen shouting "Allahu Akbar"("God is greatest" in Arabic) – all eyes will be on France to see what happens next. It’s not that France has been entirely out of the fight on Islamist terror. A few hours before the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Agence France Press reported that the Charles de Gaulle, the aircraft carrier that is the flagship of the French fleet, would be deployed to the Gulf to take part in operations against the Islamist State. France, though, has always seemed to hang back a bit. Gurfinkiel calls this a “tradition,” with the French authorities “hoping to know more” by leaving hostile elements at large in France while keeping an eye on them. That starts to look like a risky strategy in an era of so-called “lone wolf” terrorist attacks. [Gurfinkiel, referred to above, is "Michel Gurfinkiel, a Paris-based pro-Israel journalist"] The focal point seems to be the "global war against Islamist terror" but there are a number of factors beyond that which are not discussed (eg corporate imperialism in the Middle East, the arming of 'moderate'-designated 'rebels', the regime changes in the Middle East that the West is responsible for (eg Libya and, now, pushing for a regime change in Syria), which can be viewed as actually fostering Islamist terror organisations in the region (and, by extension, extremism in regions beyond). The article states: The press has sought largely to stay neutral in the global war on terrorism or has tilted against the hawkish camp. and that view of the supposedly 'neutral' (and/or anti 'war on terrorism') press, is then linked to the original question/statement regarding the position of the press (in light of what amounts to the earlier Assange and Snowden negative association), tied in with the supposed antidote that 'could' have prevented the massacre:  'closer state surveillance'. So the agenda here is to accuse the press of not supporting 'war on terrorism' by (a) not supporting mass surveillance (and by extension, a police or a totalitarian state solution, and therefore large-scale violation of civil liberties) and, presumably, (b) accuse the press of not putting 'war on terrorism' promotional spin on the news; as well as pointing out how lax France tends to be, before committing to military intervention in regions beyond its borders, in addition to dragging its feet implementing law enforcement type controls within its borders.  Therefore, it could be seen as an article perhaps lobbying for pro totalitarian and interventionalist action by (a) France and (b) the press (who is expected to support this). I think that's a reasonable inference to make, but this is just my impression of what I read in Haaretz and I am new to looking at politics, so this is an amateur point of view.  Someone else may see the article and this whole scenario entirely differently.  Here's the Haaretz article headline and link: Will the Charlie Hebdo attack bring France out of its corner in the war on Islamist terror? And how will the free press feel, after it supported Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, if it discovers that closer state surveillance could have foreseen the Paris massacre? By Seth Lipsky | Jan. 7, 2015 | 7:58 PM | 5 Final word on the conclusion (below): But what position will the newspapers take after having expressed support for Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, if it turns out that this attack could have been foreseen by more aggressive collection and mining of the metadata? Thought it was clever to raise a 'question' (but really make a statement) at the beginning of an article and reinforced at the end, kind of 'tarnishing' Snowden and Assange (and the press freedom and freedom from surveillance push), without getting one's hands dirty by bothering to construct an argument that aggressive collection of metadata (mass surveillance) is a proven extremist violence preventative measure (see William Binney, who argues otherwise). Getting back to the Assange post, I'm going to have to pass on the attack 'moved forward' proposition, because I simply cannot believe that this happened.  Way too hard to believe that whoever is running intelligence in France would protect these these guys and, effectively, become a co-conspirator plotting a staged media event that went wrong. On the other hand, CIA were involved in bombing attacks in Italy (Operation Gladio), so anything's possible, and the idea can't be totally ruled out, I suppose. Not sure why there's no mention of the rocket launcher (unless it was a false initial report).  The report that these guys had a rocket launcher blew me away.  Anyway, I thought this might be of interest.  Too bad I can't articulate my impressions clearly. ......................................................................................... LINKS *  Sir Max Hastings Journalist, foreign correspondent, editor. Cousin:  war hero, MI6 operative (Stephen Hastings) August 2014: Hastings one of 200 public figures / signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence. *  Plan Vigipirate France's national security alert system.  Created in 1978. Regularly gets updated whenever there's 'terror bombing campaigns' in France. The fact that this alert system was introduced in the late 70s, gets updated and continues to be required in France, surely poses some questions related to French foreign policy.  * Daily Mail Article:   "MAX HASTINGS: Why the liberals who defended traitors like Snowden and Assange should look at this photo and admit: We were deluded fools" DAILY MAIL EXTRACTS: The price of living in an open society, with the precious freedoms we take for granted, is that all of us, great and small, are vulnerable to attackers consumed by hatred for our culture, its values, and manifest superiority to those from which they come. Globalisation places a disturbing number of such people in our midst, rather than far away in Somalia or Iran. Ummm, I somehow don't think that those who take to enacting terrorist activities merely do so because they hate our manifest cultural superiority.  While 'globalism' did get a mention, what's missing is corporate imperialism combined with geopolitical imperialist ambition. Jihadism, he says, represents a response to ‘the challenge of a secular, urban civilisation that threatens to destroy their traditional values and beliefs’ Yes, but does this pertain to all fundamentalist extremists in all circumstances, or is this just a facet of the fundamentalist extremism?  Also, why is the West arming extremists -- eg currently arming and training Syrian 'moderate rebels', and the West is known to have armed and supported the Mujahadeen. Our principal weapons against terrorists are not tanks, Typhoon fighter jets or warships, but instead intelligence officers using electronic surveillance. Much cant has been peddled recently about the supposed threat to liberty posed by government eavesdropping on our lives. Here we go again.  Another pusher of mass surveillance, which has been given a legal nod in Britain, anyway. I'm starting to get the impression that those who argue for mass surveillance are just closet fascists demanding a totalitarian state -- not because totalitarian mass surveillance is going to prevent terrorist attacks, but because it serves the purposes of those in power. In truth, Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping. Don't know why Assange has been dragged into the 'electronic eavesdropping' alerting of mortal enemies argument; it was Snowden who released the NSA mass surveillance information rather than Assange (although Assange is opposed to mass surveillance). Seeing that mass surveillance didn't even prevent the Boston bombing (which the Russians warned the Americans about), we can give the mass surveillance cheering routine a rest:  mass surveillance is not effective.  But its a great tool when it comes to political assassination:  see General Petraeus. Public safety demands a perpetual balancing act between collective security and the rights of the individual. And it is terrific for surveilling members of the 'free press'.  Also, you'll hear a lot about 'safety' and 'national security' when it comes to government trying to erode civil liberties. Old Max goes on to talk about WWII situation (has anyone declared WWIII yet?), and plays a accompanying violin, romantically depicting brutal wartime assault on civil liberties as:  50 million British people against Hitler.  Yeah, Max, all well and good in WWII Britain, but there's been no declaration of WWIII to justify the gross violations perpetrated by Western totalitarianism. This is the most disgusting war-drums propaganda piece ever. What this guy wants is a totalitarian state and, quite possibly, seeing he would have insider knowledge, that state is perhaps really preparing for outright war (rather than 'war on terrorism'). Here's a reminder of pre-WWII Britain: British Union of Fascists Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976. Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet Leader of British Union of Fascists Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976. Looks like fascism tends to precede war.