We’ve been highlighting the actions of our government to renew, fix or eliminate Section 702 of the FISA act. Sadly, our US Congress isn’t taking reform too seriously. Protections for US citizens don’t seem in the forefront of their efforts.
Mass surveillance works two different ways. So called upstream surveillance collects information as it travels over the internet backbone. Downstream surveillance collects information from companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
The very international nature of the internet might actually gain us more protection. Foreign countries are starting to use their court system to question the companies involved in the downstream collection of information. Court rulings are challenging those companies actions insofar as it infringes on their citizens protections.
If this keeps up, those companies very existence will depend on our US Congress changing protection laws for us.
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The recent deaths of four American soldiers in Niger was tragic, but the real tragedy has been the cover up of what happened. The facts and details seem to change daily and the timeline explanations are as squirrely as the Vegas shooting investigation.
The military is trying to make us believe that this is nothing more than a typical foreign internal defense mission that went bad. The blame went on a newly created threat, the Islamic Threat in the Sahel, which the DoD abbreviated as ISIS. Of course it has no connection in reality to the ISIS in the Middle East, but they are hoping we fall for it.
It looks like this was a continuation of a failed policy that started as Human Terrain Operations. When it failed miserably, it was reborn as Cultural Knowledge Consortium. When it failed, it was reborn as the Global Cultural Knowledge Network.
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The Niger disaster has a long history. And sadly this isn’t new.
What I find sad is that this isn’t a new plan or concept. We’ve been doing this for years, yet none of us have heard anything about it. What’s funny is that in our continued failures in the Middle East, if any of this stuff really worked, you know the military would be touting its success on the front pages of every media outlet around. …
The sanctions war against Russia all lead back to the coup in the Ukraine. The EU and the US spent billions to topple the government and install NATO weaponry on Russia’s borders.
Russia called foul and we countered with sanctions to punish Russia’s economy. Russia has done well in spite of the sanctions, but the battle against those who would stand up to the EU and the US goes on.…
Both the neo cons and neo libs are the war party as we all know. If it was only about ideology, they might be excused. Opinions vary and we can all debate the pros and cons.
Sadly for those of us who pay the taxes that fund their shenanigans, it’s rarely about ideology. It’s either about making lots of money off of our military industrial complex, or about doing the bidding of our handlers like Israel or Saudi Arabia.
Turkey decided to buy a better air defense system for far less money. Nato has promised “consequences”. No one is questioning Turkey spending their own money in a prudent manner. The complaint is that it isn’t a US system and it comes from the evil Russians.
This will be interesting to watch as it develops. …
Sloppy work on the part of the Mueller team, but I doubt that anyone will really care. This has always been about trying to turn Manafort into a “snitch” and to punish those who might try to stand up to the deep state.
The author of this article makes a good point. They suggest that if meddling in the Ukraine is a crime then what haven’t John McCain and Victoria Nuland been indicted yet.…
Yesterday we got the huge announcement – Paul Manafort was indicted.
For those of us who have been paying attention, we recognize that this isn’t really about Paul Manafort. There are two dynamics going on here, and none of them are good for the rest of us.
The deep state hates us and our representative Donald Trump. They tried their best to get him to lose both the nomination and the election and now they continue to do their best to cause us to stop supporting him. So far they’ve failed miserably.
Manafort was the target of the deep state, with their thinking they can get Manafort to lie about Trump in order to escape legal punishment. We’ll see how that works.
It’s interesting to see what they are charging Manafort with. He was hired to look out for the interests of the democratically-elected president of Ukrain. Today’s post is a reminder of how the US orchestrated a coup in the Ukraine. For those who don’t remember, the US spent over $5 BILLION on this coup to replace the democratically-elected leader with what turned out to be actual Nazis! Folks use the term a lot, but these guys really are! What was the former President’s crime? He was friendly to Russia.
Of course our “good friend” John McCain was on the ground in the Ukraine, touting the evils of the Russians. The Russians responded to this coup to protect Crimea, and they whole series of sanctions that continue to this day started.
The Neo goal was to get Ukraine both into the EU and NATO and put western weaponry on the border of Russia.…
Diplomacy kept the Cold War from ever going nuclear. With the fall of the Soviet Union, our diplomacy changed from the State Department to the Department of Defense. Brute force became the strategy and the tactic.
Our two largest “competitors” on the world stage, China and Russia have taken different roads in their path to becoming a challenger to the US’s sole superpower status.
China is doing it primarily with economic methods, building alliances throughout the world. Russia has worked it primarily through protecting its homeland. The Soviet Union experienced 26.6 to 40 MILLION casualties during WWII, so defending their borders is very understandable.
The “hatred” of Russia by the US isn’t understandable, yet with 7000 nuclear warheads, we can’t push too hard. You’d think that real diplomacy would be a good start. Perhaps chastising them for something that they don’t do and we do isn’t too smart.…
Well, the crazies are planning a protest. This is one of the reported stories out there right now. There are more “fake news” memes out there trying to convince the masses of us that this is a nationwide “protest” and that they have lots of support.
Well, let’s turn this information into knowledge.
The organizers themselves have announced that these protests are planned for 14 cities: Atlanta GA, Austin TX, Boston MA, Chicago IL, Cleveland OH, Honolulu HI, Los Angeles CA, New York City NY, Omaha NE, Philadelphia PA, Pittsfield MA, Portland OR, Seattle WA, and San Francisco CA.
Take a look at how these places voted.
Imagine my surprise to discover that 17 out of the 18 counties involved are 487 counties! The only outlier is Omaha, Nebraska. Nebraska went 60.3% for Trump. Omaha went almost 48% for Hillary which was the highest percentage in Nebraska. What’s amazing is that San Francisco only came in third in highest percentage of Hillary nuts. Two of the counties that make up New York City came in first and second with 88.7% and 87.2%. That’s virtually everyone! And we wonder why New York is so screwed up.…
With our exposure of 497 counties, we seek to cause people to ignore a lot of the bs that we see that the media would like you to believe was a nationwide phenomenon. .It’s very obvious that these people are active where they live.
The reasoning is obvious Cities and counties that are 487s at the national level are incredibly liberal at the local level. Local laws, local politicians, local law enforcement and local juries are all from the same belief system. They have no expectations of betting into trouble for their antics.
We see this over and over again.
I recently decided to check up on these folks that tore down the Confederate monument in Durham, NC. You might remember that they tore this down right in front of the police, who did nothing at the time.
They later arrested them. To date they haven’t been tried. The media of course is trying to sell this as a crime of consciousness. …
