Radio Moscow

Found some really cool soviet pics I'd like to share. Radio Moscow logo [source Wikipedia] Radio Moscow stamp 1979 [source Postmaster USSR - Wikipedia] I love how the light over the radio tower looks like an interrogation light overhead.  Well, it does if you have a vivid imagination. Russia is all imagination to me.

ASSANGE - Supreme Court Appeal, Sweden - Feb 2015

Source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JuTlL5otKpo Now: Supreme Court Appeal Swe  Next: European Court of Human Rights [should appeal fail] ASSANGE is not a threat to the United States; he is a threat to corrupt authority. This is the only threat within WikiLeaks.  [Hrafnsson] ........................................................................................................... While this might sound pessimistic, I think it's realistic to expect the appeal to be denied, going by Sweden's appalling role in keeping Assange on hold for the Americans for over 4 years now.  Nonetheless:   good luck with the appeal.

CLOUD COMPUTING & SURVELLANCE: Caspar Bowden - European Parliament - Oct 2012 (Video)

Source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yIJQPeYOn9Y#t=0 Caspar Bowden forsees PRISM in October 2012 Secret access by foreign govts in context of cloud computing: Cloud providers are transnational companies ... [Caspar Bowden 2012] subject to conflicts of international public law. Biggest threat not from Patriot Act but from a law still largely unknown. ... the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act 2008 Cloud computing a grave threat to sovereignty of European data None of the regulatory proposals so far [2012] appreciated the gravity of the situation. Details of FISA unknown to Commission or data protection authorities until 2011. ... without any of the safeguards applicable to US citizens (in direct contradiction to what public told in EU Parliament). FISAAA passed 2008 to legalise surveillance which US govt began circa 9/11, which became known as 'warrantless wiretapping'. Mass surveillance of interl communications using super computers to trawl through data has been practised for a long time. The system known as Echelon was itself investigated by the European Parliament in 2000. Question that led to warrantless wiretapping scandal was: *had Americans had been caught up in intl surveillance systems?* Note: 'warrantless wiretapping' (ie mass US surveillance) scandal = issue in 2012, prior to Snowden expose (May 2013) Recommended: Find speech of William Binney, one of whilsteblowers @ NY conference in June & consider yourself implications. William Binney: a crypto-mathematician & NSA senior official nearly 40 years LINK: Interview: June 14, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErRQeQd39zw William Binney was NSA engineer who built a vast data mining system for NSA, designed for mass surveillance, foreign & intl. European policy makers have not understood that they were intended the targets of the surveillance system that Binney built. Under Euro Convention of Human Rights & EU fundamental rights = illegal to discriminate protection according to nationality. Everyone in the jurisdiction of Europe has an equal right to have their privacy protected from unjustified surveillance. FISAAA only protects US persons. Europe = legitimate purpose of covert surveillance is LIMITED to combating serious crime & national or economic security. Europe: one member state cannot lawfully spy on another member's citizens merely for some foreign policy objective/advantage. FISAAA expressly authorises surveillance of info with respect to foreign-based political organisation (or territory) ... [FISAAA authority] ... that relates to the affairs of the United States. [Pretty much covers everywhere - blanket authority] FISAAA vastly broader definition than anything that is lawful under ECHR, so foreigners' data in the cloud could be scanned ie. Given broad FISAAA authority 2008, foreign data in the cloud could be scanned by USA for purely political surveillance. Any data that was moved to cloud that was previously processed on EU org premises has been vulnerable. A.29 working party issued opinion on cloud computing Far from waking up to risks of mass surveillance, they endorse mechanisms A.29 endorse mech's devised decade ago eg. outsourcing direct marketing & call centres as suitable 4 cloud computing COLOSSAL RISK A.29 warning prohibit direct disclosures by cloud providers to non-EU govts, unless this falls within established international agreements However, A.29 believes the real risk comes from Patriot Act & case by case demands for data. No appreciation of risk .. A.29 no appreciation of risk of continuous & systematic mass surveillance of cloud data. Software fabric of US cloud providers is maintained from ops centres in US, so mass surveillance possible through remote control [Cloud providers: ops centres in US] so, USG can secretly order companies to comply to demand for access to Euro cloud data. Any data put into clouds can be accessed directly & secretly by USA, to bypass agreements covering law enforcement sector US can bypass: eg PNR & Swift Agreements etc. A.29 fully envisage & *permit* secret disclosures of data / loopholes have already been built in. Encrypt. data to & from cloud irrelevant b/c FISAAA lets data extraction from inside data centre after data decrypted for processing No way EU data protect. authority can know if cloud is wiretapped, if software powering cloud controlled out EU jurisdiction Mass surveillance of cloud would be done in software using power of cloud itself to scan & filter data for further analysis Huge new data centres belonging to NSA are being built for this purpose. No commercial audit process can possibly uncover secret use of national security laws of another country. Until problem is fixed by revising US legislation or treaty, only prudent policy is a) physically confining cloud facilities ... .. under exclusive EU jurisdiction. b) using open-source software b/c backdoor insertion risk in closed-source software. FISAAA can order backdoor insertion into closed-source software. Closing legal loopholes for cloud surveillance is not enough, however. Not credible that national data protection authorities can mount effective enforcement actions v. coys size of Microsoft or Google $1-billion fine on Microsoft for competition offences took the EU nearly 10 yrs, while Microsoft derived profits in excess. Coys can afford to lawyer up to tie cases in knots. Same thing will happen w. fines under regulations & 2% = small cost of business. ie. 2% = small cost of doing business to access the 5-million consumers of the EU Need: dedicated & centrally operating prosecution authority for major cases of transnational data protection enforcement. Also need: capacity to fight long legal battles with adequate professional resources.  New Board & independence of Comm. influence. Only in this way can enforcement become sufficiently credible to alter corporate behaviour. Deterrent to US companies ignoring EU protection law = very substantial rewards to be offered to corporate whistleblowers Need: corporate whitleblower rewards of sufficient size to overcome US secrecy laws & cast-iron legal protection, as well. Such methods have been effective against tax evasion & competition cases; why not data protection? It is not too late to wake up from the long sleepwalk towards an irreversible loss of data sovereignty. Unless 3rd countries prepared to offer Europeans the same protections they offer own citizens, the clouds will have to part. COMMENT Found this very interesting and have transcribed a rough take of what was presented before the EU Parliament by Caspar Bowden, in 2012. The current status of the proposals is unknown to me. What was also conveyed is that: European law prohibits state surveillance of the ordinary, lawful, democratic, political activities of individuals or groups. Somebody ought to let the British police and authorities know about this, as they're forever conducting aggressive spying and infiltration campaigns against political activists and protesters (Oh, and mass surveillance of ordinary citizens).

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 ...

UKRAINE Puppet State 'Ministry of Truth': Calling On Warrior-Trolls

Facebook frontline: Kiev calls up 'online army' amid information war Published time: February 25, 2015 04:40 A day after Ukraine announced it is joining the information war by creating an 'online army,' the Information Policy Ministry entered into its first controversy. It has reportedly called on bloggers to create accounts to spread information useful to Kiev. The ministry has begun accepting applications from people wanting to join the online army. Once users are registered, they reportedly receive instructions on how to proceed. One of the users published the first set of instructions he allegedly received from the “internet army headquarters.” The task outline is to create as many fake accounts on social media as possible without raising suspicion. The instructions explain that it is preferable to set up a new email account that uses a Western server. It also advises to set up new Twitter, Facebook, and VKontakte accounts (the Russian equivalent of Facebook). The instructions also detail that users must use real names, be careful not to add too many friends (in order to seem legitimate), and select their geographic location to be in eastern Ukraine or Crimea. In order for the account to seem more authentic, users are encouraged to write a few personal posts and comment on non-political issues. However, another instruction was distributed to bloggers on the same day. It gave the same blueprint for creating a fake account in Crimea or Donbass, but claimed that is the way “information agents of Kremlin work.” The fact that two versions of the text were being passed around received some negative comments on the Facebook page where in the information was published. Vesti, a Ukrainian media source, reported that blogger Aleksander Baraboshko – who is an aide to Ukrainian Information Policy Minister Yury Stets – said the version regarding “information agents of the Kremlin” is the correct one, while the other version may have been sent out to some users due to a computer glitch.  [Wow, in attacking Russians, they're constantly showing themselves up as obviously manipulative and rather vulgar.] Ukraine’s Information Policy Ministry was created in late 2014 to pursue information security in the country. Journalists dubbed the new institution the ‘Ministry of Truth’ after the propaganda ministry in George Orwell's novel '1984.' In early December, the ministry announced the creation of an information warfare department. “You don’t need trolls and bots to deliver truthful information to those communicating on the internet. It is obvious for social network veterans,” Tass news agency quoted Ukraine’s information policy minister, Yury Stets, as saying back in January. “To do so we need to unite people influential in social media and they will tell the truth to everyone who reads them.” [Ukraine's top trolls & bots are MFA:  Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, as well as NATO & US Embassy UKR (Pyatt)]. These tactics follow Stets’ official announcement on Sunday, which revealed plans to create a national TV channel called ‘Ukrainian Tomorrow,’ which would broadcast to an international audience. [How about 'Ukraine Pillaged'?] Ukraine is taking the information war very seriously. On Saturday, Kiev said it is stripping more than 100 Russian media outlets of their accreditation. The list includes TASS, Rossiya Segodnya, and all Russian TV channels except Dozhd, according to government spokesperson Yelena Gitlyanskaya. The outlets will reportedly be without accreditation until the end of the Ukraine conflict. Russia has criticized Kiev’s decision. “The openly discriminatory decision by Ukraine's parliament to strip Russian mass media of accreditation at the bodies of state power is an extension of the policy to clear the country's media space of alternative points of view,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a statement on Saturday.  [Lavrov's really cool.  Seems really savvy & laid back.] The decision comes as a “backdrop to the latest resolutions (the Minsk peace agreement) by the Normandy Quartet's leaders” and “calls into question Kiev's interest in a peace settlement,” Lavrov added. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Saturday that Moscow will not respond to Kiev’s actions by limiting the work of Ukrainian media. “Russia is a country where media activity is regulated by law, and where Russian and foreign journalists have equal rights to obtain information,” he said.  [The Russian govt is actually a real govt that knows how to conduct itself with dignity, unlike the clowns on a string in Ukraine.] SOURCE: http://on.rt.com/vjbnul COMMENT Saw an article about this elsewhere yesterday, but I dismissed the call for social media trolls as the effort of some desperate 'lone wolf' of the Ukraine troll world, as the site I checked out was registered on a hidden identity basis. Ukraine 'Ministry of Truth' can put lipstick on a pig all it likes, there's no hiding the truth from people: s  Source:  thicktoast.com Read about United Arab Emirates & US weapons to Ukraine: "Nothing says you want peace like shopping for weapons from the same country arming ISIS." http://www.thicktoast.com/uae-arms-kiev/

Events Leading to WWII List, Italian Colonialism in Africa & Current Events Libya

Gol (gol = river) Noticed the list of events leading to WWII while I was reading about the Russians fighting off the Japanese invaders of Soviet Russian/Mongolian territory. Came across the Khalkhin Gol battles while reading about Russia's Georgy Zhukov, who is said to have excelled at operational and strategic command (wikipedia). Was interested in him because I'd seen him in the WWII Germany footage. Source: Wikipedia Khalkhin Gol doesn't get a mention in the list, maybe because it was an undeclared war.  It would be part of Japan's expansionism attempts, which would have started with the invasion of Manchuria 1931 (above).  No, scratch that.  It looks like the Japanese were at it in 1918-22 when they invaded Siberia while Russia was in revolutionary turmoil (but maybe historians aren't counting Japanese expansionist attempts from there).  Scrap that as well.  The Japanese in Siberia scenario appears to have been spurred on by the West (British-US sending warships to Vladivostok) to counter the communist revolutionaries, and the Japanese wanted the action.  The 'international coalition' withdrew its forces but the amassed Japanese troops (and thousands of civilian settlers) moved inland and stayed on).  Looks the Japanese pulled out because (a) the Bolsheviks got the upper hand in Russia and (b) the occupation came at a high cost for Japan (over half the national budget for 2 years).  The following were also players in the Khalkhin Gol battles: Grigori Shtern (shot/executed after confessing under torture that he had been German spy).  Shtern was in charge of the front line & in command of Zhukov, if I understand correctly. Yakov Smushkevich (in charge of aviation, shot/executed 1941) Khorloogiin Choibalsan (Mongolian nationalist) source:  wikipedia Grigori Shtern (shot/executed 1941, left) and Georgy Zhukov (right). Khorloogiin Choibalsan (centre). Wikipedia on Smushkevich and Shtern indicates they were both executed and both subsequently 'rehabilitated' in the early 1950s, so I guess that means their honour was restored. Smushkevich's daughter recalled the arrest in an interview with Moscow News, concluding that maybe Nazi intelligence services had the Soviet Russians convinced that 'faithful fighters are enemies' (here). Finding the who's who hard to follow.  Problem with remembering the names.  Find it hard to keep the names straight.  Some of the histories are quite involved as well.   The list of WWII lead-up events will keep me busy with look-ups, but I'll only be skimming the surface.  Even though it's only surface information, the embarrassing part is I'll probably not take a great deal of this in.  But something's better than nothing (and it's interesting information), so I'll keep checking things out. Italian colonialism in Africa struck me as extremely brutal: Italian Somaliland Colony 1889-1936 from 1936 > = Italian East Africa colony ie Italian Somaliland + Italian Eritrea + Ethiopian Empire No probs killing monks & nuns at monastery, plus 30,000 Ethiopians in 3 days. [see wikipedia] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_East_Africa Right now the Italians are agitating for military intervention in Libya, so the guess is Italian industrialists have investments there and their politicians are pushing for intervention to protect Italian corporate interests.  So it's like colonialism has never ended. The push for intervention comes after an alleged ISIS execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, which is quite a convenient event for the Western backed Tobruk government (yes, there's two Libya governments:  Tripoli (not recognised by West) and Tobruk), and convenient for those in the West that seek to intervene in the region. Having a hard time believing this event is genuine (rather than staged).  On the other hand, maybe it is genuine.  I don't know.  It's just weird that it plays into the hands of those who seek Western military intervention. The video is said to have come out of the Al Hayat Media Center (HMC), which is supposed to be Islamic State controlled.   Back in June 2014, Daily Mail reported that IS were publishing an English language propaganda magazine via "AlHayat Media Center - the propaganda wing of ISIS".   So maybe the Libya report is genuine.

VIDEO Series - Berlin 1900 - 1945

Berlin 1900 (final scenes 1914) SOURCE >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C1IGNLg-RSU ........................................ Berlin 1900 / 1910 Video [12:10] Part 2  SOURCE >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-dF1IjU0Njc ........................................ Berlin 1935-6 in Farbe / Colour  Video [8:25]  German narration SOURCE >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ywiHc6PCfWg ........................................ BERLIN - May 14, 1945 (HD) Video [4:57] SOURCE >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wP_PRwiRkmw ........................................ Mixed WWII footage, incl. Japanese surrender VIDEO [5:37] SOURCE >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BPF7LkC_kkc Amazing watching these videos, particularly the turn of the century (1900) video, which is first in the set. History, heritage, the labour of generation upon generation, life -- what was ordinary life -- is captured. It's captured not only on film, but also in the splendour of the streets; in beautiful parks; in cafes; by the seaside; in the shop signs; in shop windows; in architecture; in clothing; in hair arrangements; in rituals; and in a host of artefacts of progress and civilisation.  The film footage captures ordinary life on cusp of great and devastating change, in the heart of Europe. Watching this amazing and moving footage is also like watching a nightmare or a horror movie unfold, unable to call out in warning. The footage is also mesmerising to watch because life 70-100 years ago seems surprisingly modern and much closer to our time than one would expect.  If you can see past the horses and the vintage vehicles, those streets seem so much like our streets today.  I can imagine myself there. Another thing I find really mind-blowing is knowing all those people on film and in that era, as well as all those generations before them that built that amazing city (on the verge of being destroyed), have also lived there before us and have all died and disappeared for all time.  Even though I know that life is finite, I am still amazed by how short life is, how eternal death is, and how small and unimportant we are.  Overall existence is just one long stream of indifferent life and indifferent death, or that's how it seems to me.