Stimulus Bill Created Jobs…Even For The Dead

The Washington Examiner finds out just how effective the Obama stimulus bill has been:

“In Senator [Russ] Feingold’s [D-Wisc.] new ad, he features some footage designed to make the argument that his $787 stimulus bill created Wisconsin jobs.

One piece of footage features a nameplate being placed outside an office or cubicle, and it appears the person named does not exist – not in voter databases, nothing on Lexus-Nexus, no such person on Facebook or other social media.  In fact, the only Elizabeth Ackland that could be found in Wisconsin died in 1877.

Based on the administration’s repeated claims about how much worse things would be without the stimulus, we can only assume that Elizabeth Ackland would have died in 1876 or earlier if it hadn’t passed.”

Court Says No To Warrantless GPS Tracking

From The Electronic Frontier Foundation a victory for the EFF and the ACLU in a case (US v. Maynard) before the DC appellate court:

“Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today firmly rejected government claims that federal agents have an unfettered right to install Global Positioning System (GPS) location-tracking devices on anyone’s car without a search warrant.

In United States v. Maynard, FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car while it was on private property and then used it to track the position of the automobile every ten seconds for a full month, all without securing a search warrant. In an amicus brief filed in the case, EFF and the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital argued that unsupervised use of such tactics would open the door for police to abuse their power and continuously track anyone’s physical location for any reason, without ever having to go to a judge to prove the surveillance is justified.

The court agreed that such round-the-clock surveillance required a search warrant based on probable cause. The court expressly rejected the government’s argument that such extended, 24-hours-per-day surveillance without warrants was constitutional based on previous rulings about limited, point-to-point surveillance of public activities using radio-based tracking beepers. Recognizing that the Supreme Court had never considered location tracking of such length and scope, the court noted: “When it comes to privacy…the whole may be more revealing than its parts.”

The court continued: “It is one thing for a passerby to observe or even to follow someone during a single journey as he goes to the market or returns home from work. It is another thing entirely for that stranger to pick up the scent again the next day and the day after that, week in and week out, dogging his prey until he has identified all the places, people, amusements, and chores that make up that person’s hitherto private routine.”

“The court correctly recognized the important differences between limited surveillance of public activities possible through visual surveillance or traditional ‘bumper beepers,’ and the sort of extended, invasive, pervasive, always-on tracking that GPS devices allow,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. “This same logic applies in cases of cell phone tracking, and we hope that this decision will be followed by courts that are currently grappling with the question of whether the government must obtain a warrant before using your cell phone as a tracking device.”

“GPS tracking enables the police to know when you visit your doctor, your lawyer, your church, or your lover,” said Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the ACLU-NCA. “And if many people are tracked, GPS data will show when and where they cross paths. Judicial supervision of this powerful technology is essential if we are to preserve individual liberty. Today’s decision helps brings the Fourth Amendment into the 21st Century.”

Attorneys Daniel Prywes and Kip Wainscott of Bryan Cave LLP also volunteered their services to assist in preparing the EFF-ACLU brief.

For the full opinion:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/US_v_Jones/maynard_decision.pdf

For more information on the case, formerly known as U.S. v. Jones:
http://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-jones

Contacts:

Kevin Bankston
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org

Cindy Cohn
Legal Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
cindy@eff.org

Related Issues: Locational PrivacyPrivacy

State Department Report On Terrorism in 2009

McClatchey’s Nukes & Spooks reviews the State Department’s Report on Terrorism for 2009:

“The State Department put out its annual Country Reports on Terrorism today, (three months late, we might add).

Here are a few of the highlights, some of them a bit surprising:

* While Osama bin Laden’s core al Qaida organization remains the most potent threat to U.S. interests at home and abroad, it wasn’t even in the Top Three terrorist groups when it comes to deadly attacks in 2009. Those slots were occupied by the Taliban; the Somalia-based al Shabaab group; and the al Qaida in Iraq “franchise.”

(Lila:  Wasn’t Wikileaks’ first leak about al-Shabaab (it was received with widespread disbelief)? And haven’t the Taliban and Iraq received prominence in its latest leaks?)

* There were just 25 U.S. noncombatant fatalities from terrorism worldwide. (The US government definition of terrorism excludes attacks on U.S. military personnel). While we don’t have the figures at hand, undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism.

* For the first time in the last five years, the number of terrorist incidents in South Asia (including Afghanistan and Pakistan), exceeded the number in the Near East (which includes Iraq).

(Lila: Doesn’t that suggest that attacks on foreign countries are the best recruitment posters for terrorism. We’re bombing Af-Pak now; no wonder terrorism is up there)

* Russ Travers, a top official of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a State Department briefing that media reports suggesting an increase in terrorist attacks in Iraq this year are not borne out by data for the first quarter of 2010.

* The number of attacks in Iraq decreased to 2,458 in 2009 from 3,256 in 2008. In terms of fatalities, the numbers were 3,654 in 2009 and 5,013 the year before.

* The number of attacks in Afghanistan nearly doubled, from 1,222 in 2008 to 2,126 in 2009. There was a smaller increase, of 30 percent, in neighboring Pakistan.

* The number of suicide bombings against noncombatants actually declined, by 25 percent, to 299. There were, however, more armed attacks in the style of the 2008 Mumbai, India attacks.

* Well over half of the world’s terrorist victims in 2009 were Muslim.

(Lila: So when the US prosecutes the global war on terrorism, it’s actually defending Muslims from themselves. US tax dollars well spent?).

* The idea that the United States was somehow immune from the radicalization that has taken hold in parts of some immigrant communities in Europe has proven over-optimistic.

The report says: “Not only have there been more cases of Americans becoming operatives for foreign terrorist organizations, we have also seen U.S. citizens rise in prominence as proponents of violent extremism. The most notable is al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula’s Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has become an influential voice of Islamist radicalism among English-speaking extremists.”

(Lila: the more we fight terrorism, the more we’re producing terrorists even among otherwise Westernized Muslims.).

* Finally, as it is every year, Iran was designated the “most active” state sponsor of terrorism. Which is why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.”

(Lila: There we have it. Iraq was the bad war. Iran will be a good war, like Kosovo. There’s little antiwar sentiment these days, as Chossudovsky points out in the piece I cited previously. Iran is A-OK with the liberal establishment. So when Wikileaks leaks stuff about Iraq (the bad war), it suggests that it’s not about antiwar so much as anti-Bush. That may be why Assange talked such a lot about war crimes there.

What, Obama hasn’t committed any? And when Wikileaks leaks such a lot that’s negative about Iran, along with the anti-Bush stuff, you begin to wonder whether that wasn’t the point to begin with….)


Wikileaks On Guns In Your House

“As an analogy, one might argue that everyone should have a loaded gun in the house to protect themselves against home invasions. This seems perfectly reasonable; however experience has shown that once the gun is in the house, it will find other targets.”
— Wikileaks

(Translation: Liberty, self-defense, and taking responsibility for your own security is good in theory; in practice it’s dangerous?)

I found this quote on the Wikileaks website and it again seems (repeat, seems) to suggest an anti-libertarian and authoritarian mind-set at variance with the stated goals of the outfit….

Globo Cop: Homeland Security Trains Cops Around The World

From the website of Homeland Security’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC):

“Since 1995, FLETC has participated in the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) Program. Over the years, academies have been established in Hungary, Thailand, Botswana, and El Salvador.ITT serves as liaison and coordinates FLETC’s activities and participation at each of the ILEAs, providing academic, program, and operational support.

In addition to providing instructors for the core and specialized programs at each of the ILEAs, the FLETC has personnel assigned as the Director of ILEA Gaborone, and Deputy Director of ILEA Bangkok, who provide oversight and program management.

If you would like to learn more about the ILEAs please click on the link below:

ILEA Bangkok
The objectives of ILEA-Bangkok are to support criminal justice institution-building in Asia, with an emphasis on rule of law, and strengthening partnerships and cooperation amongst the law enforcement communities of Asia. Our training addresses problems such as narcotics, terrorism and other transnational crimes, and will promote the use of global crime-fighting tools such as mutual legal assistance and extradition. ILEA’s varied Specialized Courses and the Senior Criminal Justice Executive Programs will discuss specific topics of interest and significance to Asia.
ILEA Budapest
The United States and the Government of Hungary have cooperated to create the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, Hungary. Located on the “Buda” side of the city, the Academy offers training opportunities for up to 130 students at one time. In addition to topical seminars and courses, an International Law Enforcement Academy Program has been established similar to the domestic FBI National Academy Program in the United States, but is conducted with simultaneous translation to eliminate the requirement for students to speak English.
ILEA Gaborone
On 24 July 2000, in view of their long standing and close cooperation in law enforcement and their mutual interest in combating transnational crime, the United States and Botswana governments entered into an agreement for establishing an International Law Enforcement Academy that would provide training for middle managers from eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
ILEA San Salvador
ILEA San Salvador has as its objectives, supporting criminal justice institution building and strengthening partnerships among the regions’ law enforcement community. The training focus is on transnational crimes, human rights, and the rule of law with emphasis on trafficking in narcotics, trafficking in persons, terrorism, money laundering, and other financial crimes.
ILEA San Salvador (Spanish)
Spanish language version.”

CIA-Mossad Links To Mumbai Terror Attack

For those who think that a CIA-Mossad link to 9-11 strains credulity, I would suggest reading a short history of both organizations’ involvement in false-flags over the past fifty years. The following analysis of the Mumbai terror attack is suggestive:

“Now who has the last laugh? That is the question; I only have pity for those who cannot see reality and who were so glib to buy into what the media and political troubleshooters were saying about the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Consider this:

As a BBC report notes, at least some of the Mumbai attackers were not Indian and certainly not Muslim. Pappu Mishra, a cafe proprietor at the gothic Victorian Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, described “two sprightly young men dressed in black” with AK47s who were “foreign looking, fair skinned.”Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad, saw at least two men who started the firing outside the Leopold Cafe. “They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed,” Amir told the BBC.

According to Andrew G. Marshall, the ISI “has long been referred to as Pakistan’s ‘secret government’ or ‘shadow state.’ It’s long-standing ties and reliance upon American and British intelligence have not let up, therefore actions taken by the ISI should be viewed in the context of being a Central Asian outpost of Anglo-American covert intelligence operations.“The presence of “foreign looking, fair skinned” commandos who calmly gunned down dozens of people after drinking a few beers indicates that the Mumbai attacks were likely the work of the Anglo-American covert intelligence operatives, not indigenous Indian Muslims or for that matter Arab al-Qaeda terrorists. The attacks prepare the ground for the break-up of Pakistan and the furtherance of destabilizing terrorism in the Middle East and Asia. The Mumbai attacks had little to do with India or the relationship between Muslim Pakistanis and Hindu Indians.”Pakistan’s position as a strategic focal point cannot be underestimated. It borders India, Afghanistan, China and Iran,” concludes Marshall. “Destabilizing and ultimately breaking Pakistan up into several countries or regions will naturally spread chaos and destabilization into neighboring countries. This is also true of Iraq on the other side of Iran, as the Anglo-American have undertaken, primarily through Iraq, a strategy of balkanizing the entire Middle East in a new imperial project.” (See Marshall’s Divide and Conquer: The Anglo-American Imperial Project.)

Now I ask specifically: WHO HAS EGG ON THE FACE? MY DETRACTORS OR ME?

Andrew Marshall is a respected author; he is clearly saying here that terrorists looked like Anglo-American covert operatives and that the entire Mumbai operation was an attempt by Anglo-American forces to destabilize India and push it further into the Israel-US orbit. Marshall also says that Americans are keen to dismember Pakistan–it is clear that in this project, America needs India as a firm ally–it cannot afford Indo-Pak friendship at least on a long-term basis. The Mumbai attack thus was multi-layered–and one of the reasons could be to warn India that the Anglo-American elite has the power to penetrate India, with the help of its own people. Clearly, the attackers would not have come from the sea route without some kind of a connivance of Gujarat and Maharashtra Governments with the terrorists, and the connivance of RSS type Hindutva elements as I will prove later in the piece.

This afore-mentioned report appeared on the BBC, a news agency which pro-west, Muslim-haters and all NRIs love to see. NOW I ASK THESE PEOPLE: why are you adopting double standards? Now a BBC report is incovenient because it militates against your idea of what happened in Mumbai?

Even the Indian Government is aware of this reality. That is why it is not issuing statements in a hurry and that is why the kind of Islamo-phobia seen earlier after Bomb Blasts is not being seen now.

A second report is more shocking–some news channels captured it but then it went off air:

One Police officer who encountered the gunmen as they entered the Jewish Center (Nariman House) said the attackers were white. “I went into the building late last night” he said. “I got a shock because they were white. I was expecting them to look like us. They fired three shots. I fired 10 back”.

The Nariman House affair brings the Mossad angle to the fore. Two of the `hostages’ killed in the Narimam House were identified as Rabbi Gabreil Holtzberg and his wife Rivka. They ran the center as spokespersons of the Chabad Lubavitch movement.

Now the Chabad movement is one of the many sects within Israel and Judaism. But of late it has come under the Zionist influence. Now what is Zionism? A brief digression would suffice: Zionism is the political ideology of racist Jews, just like Hindutva is the political ideology of a section of `race conscious’ Hindus. Just as a majority of Sanatani Hindus have opposed Hindutva, a majority of Jews oppose Zionism and its fascist-anti-religious tone.

In opposition to the teachings of Judaism, the orthodox Jew religion, Zionists want to dominate the world; they see the `Jewish race’ as the most important, almost divine, race in the world. Zionists are opposed to democracy and even the concept of nationhood. Zionists believe in creating murder and mayhem as a matter of policy.

(Lila: The statement that Zionism is a racist ideology is controversial. There is a great deal of debate over the definition of Zionism. Is it simply a variant of nineteenth-century linguistic nationalism, as some of its adherents insist, is it a special but initially benign case of protection for a victimized group, is it race-based or religion-based or some mixture of the two, is it increasingly overt racism, or is it, as I believe, simply a tactic in a much larger and more long-term project, a forward position of imperialism concocted to create maximum dissension in the region targeted, in the same way that Pakistan was a concoction to divide South Asia?)

In America, Zionists have entered into an alliance with the American elites–the White-Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) forces–which rule America. The reasons for this alliance lie in the way the Zionist agenda matches with that of the American corporate and WASP elite and is beyond the scope of this article.”

[Lila: Here, I believe the author betrays his lack of understanding of the complexity of racial/religious affiliation within the US and confuses Christian Zionists (Protestants) and the liberal-left center with the broader WASP community…. ]

“People who do not understand Zionism will never be able to understand what happened in Mumbai.

Back to members of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement killed at Nariman House–people have asked how come the Rabbi and his wife were killed if Mossad is involved in the Mumbai terror attack?

The answer to this is being forwarded by Jewish anti-Zionist websites.”

(Lila: You can read a brief history of the Chabad connection on the page Media Control on this blog).

“They also detail the sectarian history of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement:

The attack on Mumbai spotlights the ultra-orthodox (haredi) Chabad-Lubavitch community and its international outreach network. When Chabad outreach (keruv) started in the 1950s, it seemed rather intellectually dishonest because the organization used nostalgia for a never-existent Jewish past as a hook to enmesh secular or secularized Jews in ultra-orthodox (haredi) practice as hozrim bitshuvah (returnees, sometimes improperly called baalei tshuvah), but on the whole the activity was mostly harmless in contrast with current Chabad activities, which long ago crossed the border into dangerous territory.

As the Lubavitcher organization has become larger and wealthier — partially because mobilization for keruv has brought large contributions, members have shown a propensity for corruption.

Yet, the Lubavitchers have worked closely with Jewish racists like Lawrence Summers and Alan Dershowitz in the ongoing attempt to control discourse on American campuses.”

(Lila: I don’t know if either of these two men are racists and suggest that this might be an overstatement. Dershowitz is very belligerent, certainly).

“The wealthy Russian Lubavitcher hozer bitshuvah Lev Leviev openly supports Zionist terrorism and settlement building in the Palestinan occupied territories. Possibly because of Leviev Chabad-Lubavitch has openly become involved in Putin’s struggles with Russian Jewish oligarchs.

Still, there is an even more sinister aspect to the Lubavitcher organization.

Because Lubavitcher outreach offices are located in some of the most important political, corporate and university centers throughout the world, the Lubavitchers have put together a network that is incomparable for corporate and international espionage as well as for the secret exchange of information. Because Chabad Houses could potentially act as safe houses, where there would be no record of a person’s stay.

Most people do not take the Lubavitchers seriously, but I have visited Chabad houses and encountered senior Israeli government or military officials (and probably intelligence agents). One can easily imagine that Neocon intelligentsia trying to develop a relationship with Hindutva (?????????) intelligentsia or politicians might have used the Chabad Nariman House as a meeting place.

Here’s a Jewish writer who is saying that he has visited Chabad houses and that he has seen covert operations going on and the involvement of senior Government and military officials of Israel. This Jewish writer is also talking openly about a Neo-Con-Chabad-Hindutva tie-up!

The Jewish writer mentions the Mossad involvement in Chabad Houses:

Because the Lubavitchers provide an unconditional welcome to all Jewish people in the hope of bringing them closer to the Lubavitcher way of life, the Lubavitchers have been open to potential subversion by Israeli intelligence organizations. Mossad and Shin Bet found it quite easy to penetrate the haredi community during the Yossele Affair. Jewish politics has often involved infiltration and subversion of one political group by another. The David Project Israel Advocacy organization has used its educational programs as a means to infiltrate more mainstream Jewish communal organizations with radical Islamophobes and Jabotinskian Zionists.”

(Lila; I have previously written about the David project, see “Begging for the Brownshirts” at Counterpunch, 2005)

“To Zionize haredi groups that practice outreach, the Israeli government need only give encouragement to Zionistically indoctrinated Hebrew-speaking young people to participate in outreach programs, and in a few years the targeted haredi community is thoroughly enmeshed in Zionist thinking while Israeli intelligence organizations have a new crop of saya`nim in place ready to serve in Zionist covert operations.

What is a sayanim? Go to the link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayanim and it states that “Sayanim (Hebrew: “helpers”) is a term used to describe Jews living outside Israel who volunteer to provide assistance to the Mossad.[1] This assistance includes facilitating medical care, money, logistics, and even overt intelligence gathering, yet sayanim are only paid for their expenses. No official number is known, but estimates put the number of sayanim in the thousands. The existence of this large body of volunteers is one reason why the Mossad operates with fewer case officers than fellow intelligence agencies”

Now back to the link

http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/12/
chabad-lubavitch-dangerous-game.html

from which I was quoting the Jewish writer originally. He says that the Lubavitcher shluchim (outreach emissaries) Gavriel Noach and Rivka Holtzberg fit the `sayanim’ profile to a “T” — especially Rivkah.

So the two people killed in Nariman House fit the Sayanim, that is Jewish people outside Israel who volunteer to provide assistance to Mossad, profile!

NOW WHAT OTHER PROOF DO YOU WANT?

The Jewish writer of the afore-mentioned link himself asks the question: WOULD MOSSAD HAVE KILLED THE RABBI AND HIS WIFE IN NARIMAN HOUSE?
AND HE PROVIDES THE ANSWER:

Zionists have always used dead Jewish people to build sympathy for Zionist goals and as cover for Zionist crimes against humanity.”

(Lila: This is, let me repeat, NOT unique to Jewish people. All groups have used this subterfuge, or others like it, including Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. However, because of the status of the Jewish community in the West, its dominance in the media and academics, the issue is rarely raised  as it relates to it. In other words, PC/self-censorship has, unfortunately, made it almost impossible to impute such motives/actions to Jewish groups….until the advent of the Internet.

Thus the real culprit is statist coddling of an official victim group.  I hasten to add, that before the coddling of “victim” groups, the state was “coddling” the dominant group. So my remarks shouldn’t be taken as denying the existence of victims or victim groups. But the problem isn’t solved by state subsidies. It’s aggravated by it.

This coddling was also made worse by the preeminent position of the Jewish community in finance. Power corrupts. And great power in almost every walk of life has led to great corruption. Certain deeply chauvinistic elements in the community have been bolstered. Again, my criticism is only of elements in the group, albeit powerful and dominant elements.

Besides this corruption of the community, organized crime groups  (the Russian-Jewish mafia) were incentivized to enter the US in the 1970s when immigration policies aimed at the refusenik population in Soviet Russia were put in place. See “Media Control” at this blog. See also Deep Capture blog for details about the specific financiers linked to the Russian-Jewish mafia.

Again, please note, that the Russian-Jewish mafia is not the only mafia that entered the US with the unwitting (?) connivance of immigration policy. Several Asian organized crime groups have also entered in recent decades….however, while they’ve been described and criticized, the Israeli/Jewish mafia has largely been out of bounds until recently. By subjecting them to the same critique as others, our understanding of the financial crisis becomes much deeper and more real. We then begin to see what critics of immigration  fail to see, the influence of organized crime on  the culture. Criminality fostered by the state is the true proximate source of the increasing levels of crime in the country, from street-crime to  drug-smuggling to money-laundering and other kinds of white-collar crime usually blamed  on culture. Note the word proximate. The long-term causes of drug-smuggling, rising street crime, and money-laundering are, of course, to be found in state policies that incentivize  people to shun open markets and create black markets. Yet, nativists, even libertarian nativists, continue to ignore this reality and  place the entire blame on ordinary immigrants  and “cultural differences,” rather than on the toxicity of the  nexus between the state and organized crime.

Finally and most importantly, we can begin to understand why the media, as presently constituted, and the federal government,  cannot possibly be the solution. They  are organs of….and beneficiaries of.. the ruling class, as are the international institutions that ostensibly check and balance individual states).

“Ben-Gurion explicitly stated that he would sacrifice German Jewish children for the sake of Zionism while the Zionist leadership probably learned the benefit of sacrificing Zionist operatives from the 1946 Kielce Pogrom. In this incident (Jewish) Soviet and Zionist agents probably worked together to make sure that surviving Polish Jews chose emigration to Palestine over a return to Poland.

Because the Kielce Zionist recruiters were killed during the pogrom, the events leading up to the pogrom was rendered forever unobtainable.

Some reports of the Mumbai attack indicate that the Holtzbergs rented space to the attack planners over the past few months and thereby helped make the operation far more effective.

An opportunity to interrogate the Holtzbergs would have helped investigators immensely.

AGAIN WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

Another piece of massive evidence: In a telephone interview with CBC News from outside the Center (Nariman House), freelance journalists Arun Asthana said that there are reports that some of the militants had stayed at a guest house there (Nariman House) for upto 15 days before the attack. “They had a huge mass of ammunition, arms and food there”, Asthana said.

Now other reports have also confirmed that a huge mass of food was ordered by the residents of the Nariman House. This food was enough for 30-40 people for several days. Why was this amount of food ordered? Also why was Nariman House not assaulted till the very last? A Gujarati Hindu resident of Mumbai came onto TV on CNN-IBN to say at around 3.30 AM or so, that for two months suspicious activities wree going in Nariman House. A lot of foreigners were seen coming in and going out. This matter was reported to the Police. But no one took action.

The CNN-IBN did not repeat the news; then it was only when the common people of Mumbai threatened to storm the Nariman House the NSG commandos were moved in–why this delay in assaulting Nariman House when only two terrorists were holed in there?

This is sheer official complicity and nothing else–AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE WHOLE NARIMAN HOUSE AFFAIR IS A MUST.

Then it was reported that ” somehow surprising to learn that the terrorists in Cama hospital in Mumbai were fluently speaking Marathi. The terrorists who are said to have fired in Cama hospital talked to an employee clad in civil dress in Marathi, reports a Marathi daily ‘Maharashtra Times’.

The newspaper said the terrorists who targeted ATS chief Hemant Karkare, police commissioner Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar were speaking Marathi fluently.

The newspaper claims the terrorists having fired at two watchmen in uniform asked the other beside them on gunpoint in Marathi, ‘You are here an employee?’ The employee caught the legs of the terrorist and said, ‘I am not working here. My wife has suffered from heart attack and I have come here to admit her.’ The terrorist asked him again in Marathi, ‘You are speaking true or false?’ The employee answered, ‘No, by God I am speaking true.’
On this the terrorist let him go.

NOW WHAT DO WE MAKE OF THAT? Another report says that traditional Jews of Mumbai who have migrated to Israel speak fluent Marathi and are known to have been recruited by Mossad!

The death of Hemant Karkare remains a mystery. All official versions are contradictory: some say he was killed near CST, some that he died near Cama hospital, some near Metro cinema, and some that he was killed while in a Police jeep. Also, where did the bullet hit him? Some say on the neck and some near the heart. Karkare was shown on TV wearing a bullet proof vest–he could not have been shot in neck in that case, unless there was a sniper waiting for him.

Also if he was shot near heart, then when did he take out his vest? No one has even bothered to answer this question. Also, another facet is coming to light: that Karkare was killed near Cama–but Kaamte and Salaskar in the Metro shootout!

Intelligent people–what do you have to say now? It is becoming obvious that…

1. Several terrorists might have been white

2. Were they International mercanaries? If yes, then from which country? Who collected them? It is well known that Mossad and CIA have several mercenary organizations, including so-called Jihadi ones on their list. They create Jihad and manipulate Muslims disaffected by the Islamophobia in the world. Some of them might have been used in the Mumbai attack. But why were they carrying American, British, Mauritian and Malaysian passports?

3. Who were the Marathi speaking Karkare killers? The lane next to the Cama Hospital is a deserted one–it goes straight to the backyard of the Mumbai CID Headquarters. Anonymous sources in the Police have revealed that Karkare was taken there, by a joint team of anti-Karkare, pro-Hindutva Mumbai Police officers, and Chota Rajan men. Now Karkare was opposed to Chota Rajan. Salaskar was anti-Pradeep Sharma, another Mumbai senior Police officer now in jail, for working as Rajan’s shooter. So the Marathi speaking terrorists could either have been Jewish with some connection to Mumbai–or hired killers of the Hindutva brigade or men of Chota Rajan.

4. It seems that several things went on simultaneously–the Mahrashtra Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh was in Kerala when the Mumbai attack began at 9.30 PM on 26th November. Then by 11PM Deshmukh had informed the Home Minister Shivraj Patil–the latter has started proceedings to send the NSG Commandos. So Deshmukh knew about what was happening by 11PM–then why was there no Mumbai Police on various locations between 9.30 and 1am, the time when Karkare arrived? The Mumbai ATS is a separate organization. it does not lead the Mumbai Police. So the 40,000 strong Mumbai Police was absent from the scene of action between 11pm to 1am and then Karkare arrived and he was killed along with his men!

Isn’t there something fishy here? Obviously the Mumbai Police was kept deliberately away between 11pm and 1am, the time period when terrorists were killing people merrily. Then Karkare must have been told–and he went there expecting Mumbai police personals to be there–but there were none or only a few! And he was killed!”


Amaresh Misra is a freelance writer, historian and poet. He is the author of Mangal Pandey: The True Story of an Indian Revolutionary; Lucknow: Fire of Grace: The Story of Its Renaissance, Revolution and the Aftermath, and more recently War of Civilizations: The Road to Delhi and The Long Revolution.
He can be contacted on misra.amaresh@gmail.com

Wikileaks Story Involves Fed Internet Spy Agency? (Updated)

Update1:

OK. I went over to Cryptome to see what former Wikileaks cofounder John Young thinks of this Vigilant agency story. I can’t always figure out whether Young is being facetious or serious in some of his off-the-cuff remarks on the site.

But this is what I saw posted:

Project Vigilant Is A Fraud

The job of the Chief Scientist is to “call bullshit” when someone has an idea that will never work.” Chet Uber, Project Vigilant

Based on this material retrieved from Google cache, Project Vigilant is a fraud. The recent stories about Chet Uber recruiting volunteer Internet spies at Defcon, bragging about having 600 volunteers and advising Adrian Lamo to inform on Bradley Manning have been based on public relations hyperbole.

This material shows:

1. It has no physical address, no proof of legal existence, no assets, no evidence it is governmentally authorized to steal personal and business data, and to train and criminally direct volunteers to steal personal and business data around the world for ostensible government use.

2. No evidence that the stolen personal and business data is provided to governments in compliance with law governing such data.

3. Personal information on volunteers is being harvested for undisclosed purposes by offering a pretentious training and vetting process to ostensibly assure protection of national security secrets around the globe, with claims that federal agencies like the State Deparment will be involved. No qualifications to train in or handle national security secrets are offered.

4. Unpaid services by volunteers are being solicited under guise of patriotism to avoid or minimize financial accounting, salaries, insurance and health benefits, taxation and government oversight.

5. Notable persons have been induced to legitimate Project Vigilant by allowing their names to be used, or used without their permission or knowledge.

6. A plan to enlist children as spies.

7. In January 2010 there were no “fully vetted” volunteers.

8. Most of the project’s officer and advisory positions remain unfilled; the positions appear to be bogus.

9. Mission statements and categories of activities are empty boilerplate.

Along with this post is a google cache of Vigilant which I’m not linking here, but you can find at his site. I’m not posting it mainly because I don’t understand its import and am not even sure I understand what Young is saying about Vigilant…

ORIGINAL POST

This darn Wikileaks affair gets stranger and stranger..

Note: Greenwald describes a Fed spy agency that has its fingerprints over the outing of Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower who leaked the Afghan documents to Wikileaks.

He takes this  link at its face value, something I’m not sure is warranted. To me, the connection suggests that there’s much more to Wikileaks than meets the eye. Besides, I don’t see how you can object to the disappearance of privacy from the net, which Greenwald laments, and then support Wikileaks. Assange talks out of both sides of his mouth on the issue, as I’ve noted.

The  WL  model is part and parcel of the problem. And no, WL did not “reveal” the extent of domestic espionage. It confirmed it. That’s quite a different thing.

Altogether strange.

Just like the bizarre food-fight between Wikipedia and the FBI over the reproduction of the FBI seal on the Wikipedia site. Personally, I think someone in intel thought that one up yesterday to divert some of the  public glare from Wikileaks‘ fight with the Fed (assuming it’s not staged in some way) in the direction of Wikipedia.

[Update at 2:49PM: After I blogged this this morning around 9 AM, David Kramer at LRC blog a couple of hours later suggests, more benignly, that the FBI mistook Wikipedia for Wikileaks…so I’m adding that interpretation here as another possibility. I admit I have a jaded eye].

I’m in two minds about Wikileaks. But I’m pretty sure Wikipedia is compromised badly.

Glenn Greenwald, via Lew Rockwell:

Uber is the Executive Director of a highly secretive group called Project Vigilant, which, as Greenberg writes, “monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers” and “hands much of that information to federal agencies.” More on that in a minute.  Uber revealed yesterday that Lamo, the hacker who turned in Manning to the federal government for allegedly confessing to being the WikiLeaks leaker, was a “volunteer analyst” for Project Vigilant; that it was Uber who directed Lamo to federal authorities to inform on Manning by using his contacts to put Lamo in touch with the “highest level people in the government” at “three letter agencies”; and, according to a Wired report this morning, it was Uber who strongly pressured Lamo to inform by telling him (falsely) that he’d likely be arrested if he failed to turn over to federal agents everything he received from Manning.

So, while Lamo has repeatedly denied (including in his interview with me) that he ever worked with federal authorities, it turns out that he was a “volunteer analyst” for an entity which collects private Internet data in order to process it and turn it over to the Federal Government.  That makes the whole Manning case all the more strange:  Manning not only abruptly contacted a disreputable hacker out of the blue and confessed to major crimes over the Interent, but the hacker he arbitrarily chose just happened to be an “analyst” for a group that monitors on a massive scale the private Internet activities of American citizens in order to inform on them to U.S. law enforcement agencies (on a side note, if you want to judge what Adrian Lamo is, watch him in this amazing BBC interview; I’ve never seen someone behave quite like him on television before).

In terms of what they mean for the Manning case, those revelations require a lot more analysis, but I want to focus on the much more important aspect of these revelations:  namely, what Project Vigilant does as well as the booming private domestic espionage industry of which they are a part.  There’s very little public information about this organization, but what they essentially are is some sort of vigilante group that collects vast amount of private data about the Internet activities of millions of citizens, processes that data into usable form, and then literally turns it over to the U.S. Government, claiming its motive is to help the Government detect Terrorists and other criminals.  From the Forbes report:

According to Uber, one of Project Vigilant’s manifold methods for gathering intelligence includes collecting information from a dozen regional U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs). Uber declined to name those ISPs, but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users’ Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies. A Vigilant press release says that the organization tracks more than 250 million IP addresses a day and can “develop portfolios on any name, screen name or IP address.”

They’re tracking 250 million IP addresses a day, compiling dossiers, and then turning them over to federal agencies — with the ability to link that information to “any name.”  As this June, 2010 article from the Examiner — one of the very few ever written about the group — put it:

Project Vigilant has been operating in near total secrecy for over a decade, monitoring potential domestic terrorist activity and tracking various criminal activities on the Web. In a series of exclusive interviews with some of the group’s leaders, it’s clear that the people doing this work are among the most sophisticated and experienced experts in today’s rapidly moving world of Internet security.”

Patrick Buchanan: Why A War Against Iran?

“Why, with all the issues going for them, House Republicans would announce full-throated support for a pre-emptive war on Iran that Americans would have to fight and finish, escapes me.

But if this is where a Republican House would take America, into yet another war, best that we know it before voting this fall.”

—  Patrick Buchanan (Lew Rockwell blog)