Syria gives Tunisia, Libya 72 hours to close their embassies
Global Research
February 12, 2012
Russia Today
Syria’s foreign ministry is giving Tunisia and Libya just 72 hours to close down their embassies in the capital, Damascus. The move comes after the two North African countries announced similar measures against Syria. Libya said earlier this week it had given Syria’s charge d’affaires and his staff in Tripoli three days to leave the country, and Tunisia has also started procedures to expel the Syrian ambassador and withdraw recognition of the Syrian leadership under President Bashar al-Assad.
DARPA Set to Drop Computer “F-Bombs” to Spy on Public
By Nicholas WestIt’s bad enough that drones have been welcomed by Congress into American skies, as well as already being used around the planet to conduct surveillance and bomb select countries from remote locations.
The latest proposed addition to the drone spy program is even creepier: disposable computers with software programs funded by DARPA to be dropped as self-destructing “bombs.”
Now, not only will drones surveil and hack from above, but they will drop a payload to interface with hidden computers on the ground, completely integrating a full-spectrum data transmission and control grid.
The name of the project, as well as its announcement at a hacker convention called ShmooCon, had this non-techie convinced that it had to be satire or a hoax, but the project has also been noted by Forbes and Wired, which only serves to illustrate how far off into our dystopian technocratic police state we have wandered. It seems that we are being acclimated to how funny and cool our futuristic spy toys have become. This fun has culminated in the planned dropping of F-BOMBS (Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors) to combat “Bad Men With Guns.”
The F-BOMB introduces the idea of disposable surveillance as a guard against forensic evaluation and the ability to track the source of the drop. Creator, Brendan O’Connor, has received DARPA funding to implement a software package into his nearly non-traceable surveillance hardware as cheaply as possible with easy-to-obtain components.
Back in August, another DIY project was introduced as the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform (since renamed Project Vespid). This modified military drone was put together from parts legally obtained on the Internet by two hackers (intelligence agency consultants, actually) Rich Perkins and Mike Tassey, who presented their work at a Black Hat conference. The release was supported by a breathless Wolf Blitzer who seized upon the announcement to illustrate the new threat of being hacked from above. Brendan O’Connor has reduced the DIY cost of similar capabilities to no more than a few hundred dollars with his F-BOMB project.
O’Connor summarizes the value and capabilities of his new Sacrificial Computing for Land and Sky concept in the video that follows, highlighting that his surveillance tool can be planted manually, or dropped from specialized drone aircraft:
Similar to the creators of the home-made WASP hacking drone, O’Connor states that he is merely exposing the vulnerabilities of networks and their users.
Despite its name, O’Connor says the F-BOMB is designed to be a platform for all sorts of applications on its Linux operating system. Outfit it with temperature or humidity sensors, for instance, and it can be used for meteorological research or other innocent data-collecting. But install some Wifi-cracking software or add a $15 GPS module, and it can snoop on data networks or track a target’s location, O’Connor adds. As is often the case with these kinds of hacker projects, he says the devices are only intended for penetration testing–finding security flaws in clients’ networks in order to fix them–and wouldn’t comment on what DARPA might do with the technology (Source)
However, this rings false (or profoundly naive), as O’Connor also has received his funding from the very organization that is at the forefront of using taxpayer money to eradicate privacy around the world, including that of American citizens. As a result, the government already can:
- Hack your personal information (source)
- Monitor your private phone calls (source)
- Read your private e-mails (source)
- Spoof cell phone towers (source)
- Break down firewalls (source)
- Jam cellular frequencies causing denial of service (source)
- Disrupt and manipulate Wi-Fi signals (source)
- Track your every move (source)
Although O’Connor said that he wouldn’t comment on what DARPA might do with the technology, his own business website Malice Afterthought indicates a solid working relationship with military intelligence:
Our principal, Brendan O’Connor, has taught at the US military’s cybersecurity school as well as working for both VeriSign and Sun Microsystems in their security divisions; he has also worked for DARPA and startups as a combination engineer, dreamer, and mad scientist capable of making even the most challenging tasks into reality.
We should all know by now that we don’t have to be technology experts to envision some rather dark applications that are no longer security challenges, but are part of an agenda to fundamentally alter our reality and perceived social contract within a supposedly free society. That reality has little to do with protecting citizens’ data and privacy, and everything to do with covering the tracks of government’s ubiquitous intrusion into our private lives, as well as ramping-up their violation of the Constitution by presuming guilt over innocence, and subjecting citizens to their mad science and mad dreams.
Additional sources:
http://singularityhub.com/2012/02/03/hold-dropping-the-f-bomb-a-disposable-spy-computer…
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/f-bomb-shmoocon/
RELATED ACTIVIST POST ARTICLE:
How Close Are We to a Nano-based Surveillance State?
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Read other articles by Nicholas West here.
Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning in France
By Marion Douet
Reuters
February 13, 2012
(Reuters) – A French court on Monday declared U.S. biotech giant Monsanto(MON.N) guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides.
In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois says he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto’s (MON.N) Lasso weedkiller in 2004.
He blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.
The ruling was given by a court in Lyon, southeast France, which ordered an expert opinion of Francois’s losses to establish the sum of damages.
Lawyers for Monsanto could not immediately be reached for comment.
Previous health claims from farmers have foundered because of the difficulty of establishing clear links between illnesses and exposure to pesticides.
“I am alive today, but part of the farming population is going to be sacrificed and is going to die because of this,” Francois, 47, told Reuters.
Pissed off!!! [geo-engineering video from Phoenix]
YouTube – dvmcgovern
February 1, 2012
Ok people, I had to post this because I am so mad and disgusted at what is being done to us. I cannot fathom the level of malevolence that it takes to perpetrate this upon the people of the Earth. The is Satan’s work pure and simple. The Father said that unless He shortened the time of evil that all life would perish. I can tell you a lot of people are perishing because of this evil. It will only get worse. Trust me.
[hat tip: Michael Edwards from Activist Post]
300,000 Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto in Federal Court: Decision on March 31st to Go to Trial
- Dees Illustration
By Jane Ayers
Nation of Change
February 12, 2012
Little did Willie Nelson know when he recorded “Crazy” years ago just how crazy it would become for our cherished family farmers in America. Nelson, President of Farm Aid, has recently called for the national Occupy movement to declare an “Occupy the Food System” action.
Nelson states, “Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, destruction of our soil…”
Hundreds of citizens, (even including NYC chefs in their white chef hats) joined Occupy the Food System groups, ie Food Democracy Now, gathered outside the Federal Courts in Manhattan on January 31st, to support organic family farmers in their landmark lawsuit against Big Agribusiness giant Monsanto. (Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association v. Monsanto) Oral arguments were heard that day concerning the lawsuit by 83 plaintiffs representing over 300,000 organic farmers, organic seed growers, and organic seed businesses.
The lawsuit addresses the bizarre and shocking issue of Monsanto harassing and threatening organic farmers with lawsuits of “patent infringement” if any organic farmer ends up with any trace amount of GM seeds on their organic farmland.
Judge Naomi Buckwald heard the oral arguments on Monsanto’s Motion to Dismiss, and the legal team from Public Patent Foundation represented the rights of American organic farmers against Monsanto, maker of GM seeds, [and additionally, Agent Orange, dioxin, etc.]
After hearing the arguments, Judge Buckwald stated that on March 31st she will hand down her decision on whether the lawsuit will move forward to trial.
Not only does this lawsuit debate the issue of Monsanto potentially ruining the organic farmers’ pure seeds and crops with the introduction of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) seeds anywhere near the organic farms, but additionally any nearby GM fields can withstand Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides, thus possibly further contaminating the organic farms nearby if Roundup is used.
Of course, the organic farmers don’t want anything to do with that ole contaminated GM seed in the first place. In fact, that is why they are certified organic farmers. Hello? But now they have to worry about getting sued by the very monster they abhor, and even have to spend extra money and land (for buffers which only sometimes deter the contaminated seed from being swept by the wind into their crop land). At this point, they are even having to resort to not growing at all the following organic plants: soybeans, corn, cotton, sugar beets, and canola, …just to protect themselves from having any (unwanted) plant that Monsanto could possibly sue them over.
“Crazy, crazy for feeling so…..”
Little did Willie Nelson know when he recorded “Crazy” years ago just how crazy it would become for our cherished family farmers in America. Nelson, President of Farm Aid, has recently called for theNationNation of Change
How the Arab League Has Become a Tool of Western Imperialism
By Finian Cunningham
Global Research
February 9, 2012
It’s an intrigue befitting the machinations of classical colonialism in past centuries, such as the Sykes-Picot carve-up of the Middle Eastern Levant territories, or the betrayal of the Arabs after World War I, or the theft of Mesopotamia’s oil by British capitalists.
Only this time, it is Arabs who are helping the neocolonial powers to deceive and subjugate other Arabs. Enter the Arab League.
Over the past year, the 22-member organization has emerged as a useful deceptive cover for Western powers as they seek to redraw the political contours of the Arab World, and beyond, for their own strategic interests.
The momentous popular upheavals that began in early 2011 across the Arab World have in many ways been co-opted or manipulated by Western imperialist powers to minimize democratic gains and to refashion the political map to their continuing advantage. A feat of achievement considering that these same powers have for decades supported the repressive regimes that have inflicted so much misery and suffering.
The leitmotif for Western intervention is “responsibility to protect” (R2P) – the notion that these powers are motivated by concern for human rights and the protection of civilian lives. But given that the United States, Britain, France and other NATO states have been conducting criminal wars of aggression over the past decade in mainly Muslim lands, with a death toll exceeding one million and casualties amounting to many more millions, these powers found themselves with a huge credibility problem when it came to contriving a pretext to intervene in the Arab upheavals.
What better than to shroud the Western agenda for intervention in Arab affairs with an appearance of Arab support? The League of Arab States has fulfilled this role. Since its inception in 1945, it has only ever suspended two member states. The first of these was Libya in March 2011; the second is Syria, suspended eight months later in November.
Ostensibly, the Arab League has been motivated to take such measures because it purportedly shares the concern of Washington, London, Paris, for the safety of civilians being violently repressed by their rulers. Without the League’s sanction, the intervention of Western powers would ring decidedly hollow and smack of old-fashioned colonialism. This is in fact what it is, but the addition of Arab voices to the Western sanctimonious chorus lends a crucial veneer of international solidarity.
The arrangement works like this: foment violence and instability within the country of choice, arm dissident groups, and direct these same groups with covert special forces; when government forces move to quell the insurrection, then accuse them of violating human rights. The Arab League then suspends the country, marking it out for international pariah status, which in turn provides a pretext for Western powers to mount military strikes, committing atrocities in the name of “responsibility to protect”, and engineering regime change in the interests of the Western powers. It’s neocolonialism in Arab lands – with the help of other Arab states.
Libya can be seen as a dress rehearsal for this routine, which is now being played out feverishly with Syria. Recall that it was the spurning of Libya in March by other League members that immediately presaged the seven-month NATO aerial bombardment of that country, resulting in possibly thousands of civilian deaths, a crime that is not yet fully realized because of a corporate-controlled media blackout, but a despicable crime nevertheless with bloodied Arab hands involved.
It appears that the Arab League is now taking on an even more pronounced role as the routine finesses. Clearly in Syria what is happening is an insurrection that is being fomented and armed by foreign governments, with Turkey and Saudi Arabia taking a lead role in arming the so-called Free Syrian Army against the state forces of President Bashar Al Assad.
And it was the Arab League that brought the motion last week at the UN Security Council aimed at shackling the Assad government and setting it up for Libya-style NATO military intervention. The veto by Russia and China has for the moment derailed that plan. No doubt, Russia and China have learnt the lesson of Libya where a similar Security Council sanction was used by Western powers to launch a blitzkrieg on that country – in the name of the specious R2P.
The insidious role of the Arab League as the West’s hound-dog can be gleaned from the comment by British Foreign Secretary William Hague following the Russian and Chinese veto at the UN.
Hague said: “Russia and China faced a simple choice today: would they support the people of Syria and the Arab League, or not? They decided not to, and instead sided with the Syrian regime and its brutal suppression of the Syrian people in support of their national interests.”
This is British spin on facts and truth at its best. Firstly, Russia and China decided to side with the “Syrian regime” because – despite biased Western media coverage – the government of Assad appears to retain the support of the Syrian people, and therefore it retains sovereign legitimacy. And the “brutal repression” that the solemn Hague speaks of relates to violence that Western and foreign Arab states have assiduously fomented in Syria, as they did in Libya.
Secondly, the position of Russia and China concurs with that of the Arab League’s own observer mission to Syria. The mission actually reported that much of the violence was being conducted by an “armed entity” and “armed opposition groups” involved in the killing of civilians – flatly contradicting the Western corporate media’s portrayal of unilateral state brutality. Indeed, the observer mission was subsequently cancelled by the League’s secretariat because the mission was exposing this Western disinformation [1]. So, far from not supporting the Arab League, as Britain’s William Hague contends, Russia and China have acted more consistently with the League’s observer mission. It is the executive of the League that has not supported their own people on the ground with regard to accurately reporting the situation in Syria.
Thirdly, note the way the British Foreign Secretary emphasizes that Russia and China “did not support the Arab League” in its move to have Syria sanctioned. Those few words blow the cover of the Arab League’s real purpose.
For it is the Arab League that is serving as a stamp of moral and political legitimacy for Western military aggression in Syria in the same way as Libya before. Washington, London and other Western powers are disguising their neocolonial strategy under an Arab cover of humanitarian concern and Arab League states are obliging for their own selfish interests.
The bigger picture here is the Western ploy of manipulating restive Arab populations to engineer regime change where the incumbent government is considered inconvenient to Western strategic interests. Syria is a major prize in that its support for Palestinian rights against Western-backed Israeli aggression is but one of many inconveniences. Its backing for the Hezbollah resistance against American imperialism in the Middle East is another. Of most immediate concern to Washington and allies is beyond Syria itself – its long-time alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US and its allies are convulsed by the desire for regime change in Tehran. Taking out Assad’s Syria is a long-held Western roadmap on the way to taking out Iran. Syria’s present fate of being in Western crosshairs was probably sealed when it rebuffed Washington’s overtures for a deal against Iran back in February 2010 [2].
But the US and Western military roadmap goes beyond re-carving the Middle East. As Michel Chossudovsky cogently explains in his new book, Towards a World War III Scenario, Washington’s military roadmap is aimed at global dominance in which hegemony over the vast energy-producing Middle East and Central Asian regions is crucial to marginalizing the heavyweight rivals of Russia and China. The alliance between the latter two and both Syria and Iran only gives these current targets added impetus for Western regime change.
Getting back to the treacherous role of the Arab League in serving the Western powers’ agenda, it is surely a bitter irony that one of the founding tenets of the League is to “defend the independence and sovereignty” of its members. Syria, which was one of the original seven founders of the League in 1945, is being stabbed in the back by its fellow members precisely to have its independence and sovereignty attacked. And it is the rump of Persian Gulf Arab states within the organization that has emerged as the most treacherous. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with the other Gulf Cooperation Council states of Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, have been most vocal in lending Arab denunciations of Libya and Syria and creating the pretext for Western aggression.
However, deploying these Arab dupes is where Western pretensions of supporting democracy and human rights become unstuck. The Persian Gulf monarchs have been the most repressive towards any popular stirrings for democracy within their own countries. Described variously as kingdoms, shaikdoms, emirates, or sultanates, these states are invariably ruled with iron rods by family dynasties that control their people as little more than serfs. It is surely ridiculous when the absolute despotic rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular exhort the Syrian government to enact greater political reforms when these same countries do not brook any dissent and where it is a crime punishable by law to publicly criticize the royal rulers.
Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has cracked down murderously against peaceful protesters within its own borders. And it was Saudi Arabia – where women are flogged for driving cars unchaperoned and where public executions by beheading are carried every year – that led the invasion force of Gulf Cooperation Council states into Bahrain last Spring to ruthlessly crush peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. In Bahrain, Saudi-led Gulf forces continue with Washington and London’s support to murder women and children in the streets and in their homes [3].
The pay-off for these Arab despots is that they continue to enjoy Western patronage and support in suppressing their own people. Additionally, the Sunni monarchs share the Western agenda to destroy the Syrian-Iranian alliance, which garners much greater regional popular respect and influence than any of the Persian Gulf tyrants.
The illegitimacy of Western powers meddling in Syrian affairs and elsewhere and the risible alliance with repressive Arab states in pushing this agenda is only obscured because of the corporate-controlled media’s deliberate blindness towards the deception. An honest appraisal of the protagonists – the Western criminal governments and their Arab tyrants – is, to put it bluntly, a sick joke.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
NOTES
[1] Syria: Arab League Suspends Observer Mission for Revealing Media Disinformation
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29060
[2] Syria: A Clenched US Fist Behind the Hand of Friendship
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17664
[3] ‘Responsibility to Kill’ (R2K): Washington Gives Green Light to Toxic Terror in Bahrain
Al Qaeda Backs US Regime Change in Syria
By Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer
February 12, 2012
US plan-B after UN veto – deploy Al Qaeda “foreign legion.”
It is now a matter of established public record that the “Libyan rebels” the US, through the UN and NATO, funded, armed, trained, recognized politically, and even provided special forces and air support for, were in fact led by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), listed by the US State Department (page 1) as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” Two West Point reports confirm that LIFG was formally joined with Al Qaeda with many of its top leaders constituting the core of Al Qaeda’s upper echelons. These reports also confirm that LIFG fighters were operational in both Afghanistan and Iraq, killing US and British troops and that the vast majority of their fighters were recruited from the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Darnah. In 2011, it would be these two cities that served as the epicenter of NATO-backed resistance against Qaddafi.
More recently it was exposed by French independent reporter Thierry Meyssan of VoltaireNet.org that LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj has left the NATO bombed city of Tripoli and is now directing the “Free Syrian Army” from the border of Turkey (a NATO member since 1952).
In the wake of growing international anger toward Wall Street, London, and its NATO forces, led by Russia and China’s vetoing of their UN Security Council resolution designed to tip off another foreign military intervention, this time in Syria, the corporate media is now reporting that Al Qaeda has called on its supporters to “join the uprising against Assad’s “pernicious, cancerous regime.”” We are expected to believe that Al Qaeda – allegedly depraved, beheading, civilian bombing, trade tower-toppling modern-day Huns – had pinned their hopes on the UNSC to resolve the Syrian conflict through the mechanisms of “international rule of law” and are only just now mobilizing their forces to act after the “disappointing” Russian and Chinese veto. It is a narrative as bizarre as it is contradictory.
Image: G.I. al-Zawahri: Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims from across the Arab World to mobilize and support the Syrian uprising against what he called, “Assad’s pernicious, cancerous regime.” Apparently he held off military involvement because he had faith in the US-backed UNSC resolution, and is only now mobilizing his forces after the “disappointing” veto – a narrative so ridiculous it can only have come from Langley, Virginia.
We are also expected to believe that as large swaths of the global population begin turning against what is obviously fraudulent human rights concerns masking naked global military conquest by the West, the extremist ranks of Al Qaeda whom the West was supposedly locked in mortal combat with for over a decade are one of their few remaining allies. Considering that the West, and more specifically, the CIA, created Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan in the first place, it seems as if the terrorist organization has and still is executing US foreign policy covertly and illegally, when the US military and its NATO allies cannot.
With this official endorsement by Al Qaeda of Syria’s violent, foreign-funded uprising, the West can now begin blaming NATO-backed terrorism on “Al Qaeda” while simultaneously highlighting the urgency and necessity with which NATO must intervene, lest Al Qaeda terrorists fill the void. The Associated Press even made a point of mentioning that the “head of Al Qaeda” claimed Muslims across the Arab World “cannot depend on the West for help,” a comment that so suspiciously compliments the howling protest of U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice recently at the UN, it seems oafishly scripted.
From Afghanistan in the 1980’s, to Libya in 2011, and now Syria in 2012, the one steadfast ally the US can always depend on bringing arms and militants in to carry out its foreign policy when its overstretched military cannot, is Al Qaeda, America’s Arab foreign legion. This illustrates both the fraud of the West’s current “human rights” agenda, as well as the ongoing hoax that is the “War on Terror.”
