I Am A Syrian Living in Syria: “It was Never a Revolution nor a Civil War. The Terrorists are sent by your Government”

I Am A Syrian Living in Syria: “It was Never a Revolution nor a Civil War. The Terrorists are sent by your Government”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/i-am-a-syrian-living-in-syria-it-was-never-a-revolution-nor-a-civil-war-the-terrorists-are-sent-by-your-government/5544450

By: Mark Taliano
Date: 2016-09-07

Two years ago, “Majd” wrote these words on a Facebook posting:

“ I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your goverment. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country.

We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.

The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people… The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK,  etc. Everyone knows that here.

American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone.

Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank.

High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history

Clerk Note: {forgotten}

+++

High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/25/blitzed-norman-ohler-adolf-hitler-nazi-drug-abuse-interview

By: Rachel Cooke
Date: 2016-09-25

The German writer Norman Ohler lives on the top floor of a 19th-century apartment building on the south bank of the river Spree in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Visiting him there is a vertiginous experience. For one thing, he works – and likes to entertain visitors – in what he calls his “writing tower”, a flimsy-seeming, glass-walled turret perched right on the very edge of the roof. (Look down, if you dare, and you will see his little boat moored far below.) For another, there is the fact that from this vantage point it is possible to discern two Berlins, one thrusting and breezy, the other spectral and grey. To our left, busy with traffic, is the Oberbaum Bridge, where there was once a cold war checkpoint, and beyond it the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall, its doleful length rudely interrupted by the block of luxury flats that went up in 2013. As for the large building immediately opposite, these days it’s the home of Universal Music. Not so very long ago, however, it was the GDR’s egg storage facility.

Does all this press on Ohler as he sits at his desk, the light bouncing off the screen of his laptop? Is it ghostly sometimes? “Yes, it is strange,” he says, smiling at my giddiness. But then he has long believed in a certain kind of time travel. “I remember the 90s. The wall had just come down, and I was experimenting with party drugs like ecstasy and LSD. The techno scene had started up, and there were all these empty buildings in the east where the youth [from east and west] would meet for the first time. They were hardcore, some of those guys from the east – they didn’t understand foreigners at all – and the ecstasy helped them to lose some of their hatred and suspicion. Sometimes, then, you could step into a room, and you could just see the past. Of course, it’s not like that now. I don’t take drugs any more. But I can remember it, and maybe that was why I was able to write this book.”

Norman Ohler photographed in Berlin last week. Photograph: MalteJaeger/laif

The book in question is The Total Rush – or, to use its superior English title, Blitzed – which reveals the astonishing and hitherto largely untold story of the Third Reich’s relationship with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, morphine and, above all, methamphetamines (aka crystal meth), and of their effect not only on Hitler’s final days – the Führer, by Ohler’s account, was an absolute junkie with ruined veins by the time he retreated to the last of his bunkers – but on the Wehrmacht’s successful invasion of France in 1940. Published in Germany last year, where it became a bestseller, it has since been translated into 18 languages, a fact that delights Ohler, but also amazes him.

Does the U.S. Ignore Its Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria?

Does the U.S. Ignore Its Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/opinion/does-the-us-ignore-its-civilian-casualties-in-iraq-and-syria.html

By: Chris Woods
Date: 2016-08-17

LONDON — In barely a generation, air power has shifted from indiscriminate to discriminating. Thanks to advances in precision guidance, American bombs and missiles now generally get to where they’re intended. But human or machine error, bad luck or faulty military math still lead to unforeseen civilian deaths. And as the United States and its allies continue their bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, many more noncombatants are perishing than they seem prepared to admit.

During July, the number of reported civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes reached the highest level since the air war began in August 2014. On July 19, 78 or more civilians were reported killed near the Islamic State-occupied city of Manbij, Syria, many of them women and children. In the successful battle for Manbij alone, at least 200 civilians were reportedly killed.

The United States and its allies have taken care to mitigate harm to civilians, and the United States Central Command is investigating the July 19 incident. But with the fight moving deeper into the towns and cities of Iraq and Syria — where millions remain under the Islamic State’s thumb — the risk is rising. Denmark, a member of the coalition, recently warned that civilian deaths might be “unavoidable” in this new phase of the war. Yet the allies appear poorly equipped to properly assess the numbers already being killed.

The Untold Financial Story of 9/11: Bailing Out Alan Greenspan’s Legacy. Billions of Financial Dealings by the Fed in Immediate Wake of 9/11

Clerk Note: Follow the money. 9/11 was a robbery on many levels, from the gold below WTC-4; to the Black Eagle & Marcos Funds used for black ops and as collateral for playing with the Russian markets whose note was to come due 9/11; to the missing Pentagon $2.3 Trillion on 9/10; to the Hallibuton-style war profiteering in Afghanistan & Iraq; to Homeland Security and TSA and TSA machines; to the billions laundered in the days after 9/11. Connect the dots and the housing bubble and financial crisis were spawns.

+++

The Untold Financial Story of 9/11: Bailing Out Alan Greenspan’s Legacy. Billions of Financial Dealings by the Fed in Immediate Wake of 9/11

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-untold-financial-story-of-911-bailing-out-alan-greenspans-legacy-billions-of-financial-dealings-by-the-fed-in-immediate-wake-of-911/5545246

By: Pam Mertens and Russ Mertens
Date: 2016-09-11

Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and yet the American public remains in the dark about critical details of hundreds of billions of dollars of financial dealings by the Federal Reserve in the days, weeks and months that followed 9/11.

What has also been lost in the official 9/11 Commission Report, Congressional hearings and academic studies, is how Wall Street, on the day the planes slammed into the World Trade Towers, was on the cusp of being exposed by the New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, as the orchestrator of a fraud of unprecedented proportion against the investing public. That investigation was stalled for more than six months. It would have been politically incorrect to do perp walks outside Wall Street’s biggest investment banks as families mourned the loss of their loved ones; as U.S. savings bonds were renamed Patriot Bonds to rally patriotism around the country; and Congress paid homage to the heroes at the big banks, the stock exchanges and the Federal Reserve for getting the system back up and running in less than a week.

The loony policies of laissez-faire capitalism of Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, who worshiped at the feet of Ayn Rand, were also bailed out by the events of  9/11. Members of the Senate Banking Committee praised him on September 20, 2001 for his performance. Amazingly, at this hearing, just nine days after the attack, not one Senator asked Greenspan how much money the Fed had spent or to whom it went. The percolating collapse of Wall Street was held off for seven more years until 2008 when it finally became impossible to deny that Greenspan’s brand of financial deregulation and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act he had pushed for, had left Wall Street in ruins – without any assault from the skies.

Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore

Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore

http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-i-dont-speak-of-911-anymore/5545103

By: Edward Curtin
Date: 2016-09-11

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a non-teaching day for me.  I was home when the phone rang at 9 A.M.  It was my daughter, who was on a week’s vacation with her future husband.  “Turn on the TV,” she said.  “Why?” I asked. “Haven’t you heard?  A plane hit the World Trade Tower.”

I turned the TV on and watched a plane crash into the Tower.  I said, “They just showed a replay.”  She quickly corrected me, “No, that’s another plane.”  And we talked as we watched in horror, learning that it was the South Tower this time.  Sitting next to my daughter was my future son-in-law; he had not had a day off from work in a year.  He had finally taken a week’s vacation so they could go to Cape Cod.  He worked on the 100^th floor of the South Tower.  By chance, he had escaped the death that claimed 176 of his co-workers.

That was my introduction to the attacks.  Fifteen years have disappeared behind us, yet it seems like yesterday.  And yet again, it seems like long, long ago.

Over the next few days, as the government and the media accused Osama bin Laden and 19 Arabs of being responsible for the attacks, I told a friend that what I was hearing wasn’t believable; the official story was full of holes.  It was a reaction that I couldn’t fully explain, but it set me on a search for the truth.  I proceeded in fits and starts, but by the fall of 2004, with the help of the extraordinary work of David Ray Griffin and other early skeptics, I could articulate the reasons for my initial intuition.  I set about creating a college course on what had come to be called 9/11.

But I no longer refer to the events of that day by those numbers.  Let me explain why.

September 11, 2001: The 15th Anniversary of the Crime and Cover-up of the Century

September 11, 2001: The 15th Anniversary of the Crime and Cover-up of the Century

http://www.globalresearch.ca/september-11-2001-the-15th-anniversary-of-the-crime-and-cover-up-of-the-century/5544414

By: Dr. Gary G. Kohls
Date: 2016-09-07

WTC Building exploding into fine dust (it is not burning down) by pre-planted explosives in an obvious controlled demolition.

The arrow points to a “squib” of exploding gas which is commonly seen with controlled demolitions. Some of the “splinters” seen (the only solid objects that did not pulverize into dust) are actually chunks of steel beams that were being exploded upward and laterally. The nicely-sectioned steel beams and girders were soon ordered by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be trucked away and shipped to China – an order that constitutes disturbing a crime scene – which is a federal crime.

I just received the latest PBS (Public Broadcasting System) monthly schedule for September and discovered that PBS’s newest documentary, entitled “9/11: Inside the Pentagon” will be broad-casting and the re-broadcasting the program a total of 8 times over the week surrounding 9/11/16!

Facebook and Israeli Government Team Up to Censor Posts

Facebook and Israeli Government Team Up to Censor Posts

Justice minister says Facebook already complies with 95 percent of Israel's take-down requests

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/12/facebook-and-israeli-government-team-censor-posts

By: Andrea Germanos
Date: 2016-09-12

Israel and Facebook will team up to delete content the country views as inciting violence, the Associated Press reports Monday.

"The joint Facebook-Israel censorship efforts, needless to say, will be directed at Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians who oppose Israeli occupation," Glenn Greenwald writes at The Intercept.

Groups Worry About Impact Of Police Moves To Block Social Media

Groups Worry About Impact Of Police Moves To Block Social Media

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/08/30/491826167/groups-worry-about-impact-of-police-moves-to-block-social-media

By: Martin Kaste
Date: 2016-08-30

When should police be able to deactivate your social media account?

The question is becoming more urgent, as people use real-time connections in the middle of critical incidents involving law enforcement.

In the case of Korryn Gaines in Baltimore County, Md., earlier this month, police said that a suspect actively using a social media connection makes a standoff worse.

Gaines posted videos to Instagram of the unfolding standoff with police, who were outside her apartment trying to get her to surrender. After an hours-long standoff, Gaines was shot and killed by Baltimore County police.

The Slot Machine in Your Pocket

The Slot Machine in Your Pocket

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/smartphone-addiction-is-part-of-the-design-a-1104237.html

By: Tristan Harris
Date: 2016-07-27

When we get sucked into our smartphones or distracted, we think it's just an accident and our responsibility. But it's not. It's also because smartphones and apps hijack our innate psychological biases and vulnerabilities.

I learned about our minds' vulnerabilities when I was a magician. Magicians start by looking for blind spots, vulnerabilities and biases of people's minds, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people's buttons, you can play them like a piano. And this is exactly what technology does to your mind. App designers play your psychological vulnerabilities in the race to grab your attention.

I want to show you how they do it, and offer hope that we have an opportunity to demand a different future from technology companies.

If you're an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine.

The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices? One major reason why is the number one psychological ingredient in slot machines: intermittent variable rewards.

If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user's action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.

Playpen: The Story of the FBI’s Unprecedented and Illegal Hacking Operation

Playpen: The Story of the FBI’s Unprecedented and Illegal Hacking Operation

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/playpen-story-fbis-unprecedented-and-illegal-hacking-operation

By: Mark Rumold
Date: 2016-09-15

In December 2014, the FBI received a tip from a foreign law enforcement agency that a Tor Hidden Service site called “Playpen” was hosting child pornography. That tip would ultimately lead to the largest known hacking operation in U.S. law enforcement history.

The Playpen investigation—driven by the FBI’s hacking campaign—resulted in hundreds of criminal prosecutions that are currently working their way through the federal courts. The issues in these cases are technical and the alleged crimes are distasteful. As a result, relatively little attention has been paid to the significant legal questions these cases raise.

But make no mistake: these cases are laying the foundation for the future expansion of law enforcement hacking in domestic criminal investigations, and the precedent these cases create is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of Internet users for years to come. In a series of blog posts in the coming days and weeks, we'll explain what the legal issues are and why these cases matter to Internet users the world over.

Alien life, or noise? Russian telescope detects 'strong signal' from sun-like star

Alien life, or noise? Russian telescope detects 'strong signal' from sun-like star

Signal detected a year ago from HD164595, only 95 light years away and with at least one planet, but Seti scientists are scanning the area and have yet to find it

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/29/russian-radio-telescope-strong-signal-hd164595-seti

By: Sam Thielman
Date: 2016-08-29

As David Bowie might have sung: is there life on HD164595b?

A Russian radio telescope scanning the skies has observed “a strong signal” from a nearby star, HD164595, in the constellation Hercules. The star is a scant 95 light years away and 99% of the size of Earth’s own sun. It has at least one planet, HD164595b, which is about the size of Neptune and has a 40-day year.

How Solar Panels Work

How Solar Panels Work

https://www.saveonenergy.com/how-solar-panels-work/

By: Save On Energy
Date: 2016-09-27

Solar power is talked about a lot these days. Whether it’s a new solar panel installation on your neighbor’s roof or one of the growing numbers of solar panel “farms” located near many highways, this technology is showing up more and more in our daily lives.

This is an exciting time for solar power. According to industry reports, solar power made up about 40% of all new electric capacity installed in 2014. In addition, the nation’s solar capacity by the end of 2016 is projected to be double what it was at the beginning of 2015, while costs continue to decline and panel efficiencies increase.

The question many people have is: How exactly do those panels work? Unlike power from a wind turbine or even a power plant, solar panels don’t seem to have any moving parts -- so how exactly is that energy being produced?

Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM

Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/analog-last-defense-against-drm

By: Elliot Harmon
Date: 2016-09-08

With the recent iPhone 7 announcement, Apple confirmed what had already been widely speculated: that the new smartphone won’t have a traditional, analog headphone jack. Instead, the only ways to connect the phone to an external headset or speaker will be via Bluetooth, through the phone’s AirPlay feature, or through Apple’s proprietary Lightning port.

Apple’s motivations for abandoning the analog jack are opaque, but likely benign. Apple is obsessed with simple, clean design, and this move lets the company remove one more piece of clutter from the phone’s body. The decision may also have been a part of the move to a water-resistant iPhone. And certainly, many people choose a wireless listening experience.

As Oceans Continue to Warm, Consequences Grow More Dire, Study Says

As Oceans Continue to Warm, Consequences Grow More Dire, Study Says

Much of the heat of global warming has been absorbed by the sea, with a steep cost to marine life, ecosystems and the people that depend on them.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07092016/oceans-climate-change-marine-global-warming-temperatures-study-coral-reef-bleaching

By: Nicholas Kusnetz
Date: 2016-09-07

The coming century will likely bring dangerous and dramatic changes to the planet's oceans, with ever strengthening storms, annual bleaching of almost all coral reefs, loss of biodiversity and severe impacts on fisheries and aquaculture unless humans slash greenhouse gas emissions.

These are the findings of a comprehensive review of the effects of warming oceans, issued Monday by International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and compiled by more than 80 scientists from 12 countries. The report chronicles how the seas have absorbed the vast majority of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by carbon emissions in recent decades, and how that energy is already altering the planet's weather systems and ecology, from deep ocean trenches to alpine glaciers.

"Ocean warming is one of this generation's greatest hidden challenges—and one for which we are completely unprepared," Inger Andersen, IUCN's director general, said in a statement. "The only way to preserve the rich diversity of marine life, and to safeguard the protection and resources the ocean provides us with, is to cut greenhouse gas emissions rapidly and substantially."

How Obama Is Enabling the Next President to Launch Illegal Wars

How Obama Is Enabling the Next President to Launch Illegal Wars

If his administration gets its way, it would be even easier for future commanders in chief to take military action without approval from Congress.

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/08/how-obama-enabling-next-president-launch-illegal-wars/131005/

By: Bruce Ackerman
Date: 2016-08-24

Podcast: Why nuclear war looks inevitable

Podcast: Why nuclear war looks inevitable

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclear-war-podcast-idUSKCN11K23T

By: Jason Fields
Date: 2016-09-21

Several developments have the potential to move the hands of the nuclear doom clock closer to midnight.

A new U.S. nuclear policy has a chance of destabilizing the balance of terror by creating a larger arsenal of smaller weapons.

Why?

The NSA Abroad: The UK Base That Makes US Targeted Killing Possible

The NSA Abroad: The UK Base That Makes US Targeted Killing Possible

Newly revealed documents leaked by Edward Snowden and reported by The Intercept detail the inner workings of the NSA's largest overseas base

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/06/nsa-abroad-uk-base-makes-us-targeted-killing-possible

By: Lauren McCauley
Date: 2016-09-06

In a damning exposé published Monday, The Intercept reporter Ryan Gallagher dives into the inner workings of National Security Agency's (NSA) largest overseas spying base, the U.K.'s Menwith Hill Station, and reveals concrete evidence that the British government is complicit in the United States' targeted killing program.

Citing top-secret documents obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Gallagher reports, "The files reveal for the first time how the NSA has used the British base to aid 'a significant number of capture-kill operations' across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by powerful eavesdropping technology."

And given the British government's repeated assertion that activities at Menwith Hill "have always been, and continue to be" carried out with its "knowledge and consent," the findings are all the more damning.

The National Security Agency's largest overseas spying base, Menwith Hill. (Photo: Trevor Paglen via The Intercept)

Senate report on CIA torture claims spy agency lied about 'ineffective' program

Senate report on CIA torture claims spy agency lied about 'ineffective' program

Report released by Senate after four-year, $40m investigation concludes CIA repeatedly lied abou

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-torture-report-released

By: Spencer Ackerman, Dominic Rushe, and Julian Borger
Date:

The full extent of the CIA’s interrogation and detention programmes launched in the wake of the September 11 terror attack was laid bare in a milestone report by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday that concluded the agency’s use of torture was brutal and ineffective – and that the CIA repeatedly lied about its usefulness.

The report represented the most scathing congressional indictment of the Central Intelligence Agency in nearly four decades. It found that torture “regularly resulted in fabricated information,” said committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, in a statement summarizing the findings. She called the torture programme “a stain on our values and on our history”.

“During the brutal interrogations, the CIA was often unaware the information was fabricated.” She told the Senate the torture program was “morally, legally and administratively misguided” and “far more brutal than people were led to believe”.

The report reveals that use of torture in secret prisons run by the CIA across the world was even more extreme than previously exposed, and included “rectal rehydration” and “rectal feeding”, sleep deprivation lasting almost a week and threats to the families of the detainees.

Could the U.S. election be hacked? It's not so unlikely

Could the U.S. election be hacked? It's not so unlikely

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pringle-election-hacking-1.3713911

By: Ramona Pringle
Date: 2016-08-10

Recent attempts at campaign-directed cyber-attacks have raised red flags about just how vulnerable the upcoming U.S. election is to hackers.

With the FBI currently investigating alleged Russian efforts to undermine the Democratic Party through hacking attempts, how concerned should elections officials – and voters — be about the security of electronic voting procedures?

What is to keep the U.S. election process free of hackers when even large corporations can't keep their data secure?

Yes, It's Possible to Hack the Election

Yes, It's Possible to Hack the Election

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hack-election/story?id=41489017

By: Richard Clarke
Date: 2016-08-19

After reports of alleged Russian hacking into Democratic Party computer networks, some commentators have suggested that the Russians could hack the results of the U.S. elections. Other analysts have, well before this year’s campaign, suggested that election results in the U.S. could be electronically manipulated, including by our fellow Americans. So could an American election’s outcome be altered by a malicious actor on a computer keyboard?

I have had three jobs that, together, taught me at least one thing: If it’s a computer, it can be hacked. For Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, I served as the White House senior cybersecurity policy adviser. For President Barack Obama, I served on his five-person post–Edward Snowden investigative group on the National Security Agency, intelligence and technology. And for over a decade I have advised American corporations on cybersecurity.

Those experiences confirm my belief that if sophisticated hackers want to get into any computer or electronic device, even one that is not connected to the internet, they can do so.