Category Archives: Intelligence

Tidings Of The Vaguest, Least Specific, Most Geographically Inclusive Terrorism

Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State

Cowed into fearful submission by choice, Americans are being bombarded with the “news” of the vaguest, least specific, most geographically inclusive threat of terrorism: Terrorism is everywhere you travel. You’ve got a target on your back. And, while we’re at it, consider yourself lucky to be the recipient of this most astute and accurate news from those who look out for you.

And the reason the NSA saints can look out for you, you ingrates, is that they spy on you. Now can you see what this is about? It’s a proxy for “protecting.”

This alert—what would you do without it? Have a happy holiday?—comes to you thanks to the very “dragnet that scoops up the personal electronic communications of millions of you.”

Or so suggested John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., on Fox News today, again. Is Bolton privy to this non-specific intelligence? No. But being party to the media-military-congressional-industrial complex, he stands ready to reflexively back it up, down to the nuts and bolts of it.

This stalwart supporter of the Surveillance State gave credit to the “National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance powers,” and in particular to PRISM and “X-Keyscore,” which some of us have been protesting—these deserve credit for bringing you the tidings of terrorism. The Fox-News twit offered no cross examination.

U.S. officials have not offered many details on the nature of the threat, but apparently are taking it seriously. … John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the alert indicates the U.S. government must have some “pretty good information” about a possible threat.

Yes, that’s logical (not): From the fact of the warning (and not the facts), we can conclude that there is a threat.

The Guardian provides the necessary skepticism absent among US major media:

US embassy closures used to bolster case for NSA surveillance programs.
Congress told that NSA monitoring led to interception of al-Qaida threats but privacy campaigners fear ulterior political motives. News of the fresh terror alert came as Congress looked increasingly likely to pursue fresh attempts to limit the NSA’s domestic powers when it returns in September.
“The NSA takes in threat information every day. You have to ask, why now? What makes this information different?” added Stepanovich.
“Too much of what we hear from the government about surveillance is either speculation or sweeping assertions that lack corroboration. The question isn’t if these programs used by this NSA can find legitimate threats, it’s if the same threats couldn’t be discovered in a less invasive manner. This situation fails to justify the NSA’s unchecked access to our personal information.”

Glenn Greenwald: Guarding Liberty @ The Guardian

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Technology, Terrorism, The State

More than “Smashing a CNN Government Apologist,” as EPJ’s Robert Wenzel put it, Glenn Greenwald “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee,” Cassius-Clay style, around the unincisive, silly Jeffrey Toobin. Here Greenwald demonstrates why “Major media,” as I wrote, “is like a big amorphous amoeba. This simple, single-celled organism will instinctively act in unison to preserve its integrity.” To maintain equilibrium, morons have to keep the brilliant out.

I’ve searched in vain for follow-up headlines on ABC headline News, UPI, Drudge, Fox News & Business, on and on. US media does not wish to discuss the new twist in an “NSA program [that] reportedly allows analysts to track emails, chats, web searches.”

Liberty’s guardian at The Guardian, the American Glenn Greenwald, is responsible for revealing the following new and horrifying details:

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’

• XKeyscore gives ‘widest-reaching’ collection of online data
• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches
• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history
• NSA’s XKeyscore program – read one of the presentations

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.
US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”
But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.
XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Read on.

UPDATED: Register For ‘Rachel Jeantelology’ Studies

Affirmative Action, Education, Intelligence, Race, Racism

Flamethrower Debbie Schlussel fully expects to see Harvard University start enrolling students (like actress-idiot Eva Longoria who has pursued “degrees” in Hispanic studies) in its new “Rachel Jeantelology” studies.

In “Harvard Establishes Hip-Hop Fellowship in Name of 8th-Grade Dropout Rapper Muslim,” Schlussel musters just the right amount of intellectual respect for a degree from Harvard: zero.

I’m never impressed when I hear someone went to Harvard. It means they went to a school rife with grade inflation, where students caught in a giant cheating scandal were merely given a semester off as “punishment” instead of being expelled, as they should have been. And in survey after survey of American colleges and universities, Harvard students are as dumb and ignorant of basic facts in American history and government as everyone else. Now, there is more reason to sneer at the university …

READ ON.

UPDATE (7/20): As I remarked here, “Rachel Jeantel holds up a mirror to American culture.” Now, “Rachel Jeantel Tells Radio Host Ricky Smiley She Wants To Be A Lawyer.”

UPDATE III: The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins (Walter Block Adjudicates)

Affirmative Action, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Intelligence, Law, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism

“The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… In the course of doing her journalistic due diligence, Van Susteren stumbled upon another falsity peddled by the administration’s front man, Attorney General Eric Holder, mass media and the rest of the “Racial Industrial Complex.”

The slick-tongued Holder had told his primary constituency, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, that “people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat,” and that “‘Stand Your Ground’-style laws —such as the one that figured into the George Zimmerman case—’undermine public safety,’ and ‘create dangerous conflicts in our neighborhoods.'”

Why then did the “Instructions read to the Zimmerman jury by The Honorable Debra S. Nelson, Circuit Judge,” state the reverse? Again, I excerpt from Justice Nelson’s instructions on the “Justifiable Use of Force”:

“If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in anyplace where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

It just so happens that Zimmerman was unable to retreat. As the facts showed, conclusively, Tryavon Martin was atop, pounding Zimmerman into the ground. By trial’s end, the prosecution no longer disputed this unassailable fact.

Holder’s lie was compounded by the fact that, as Van Susteren discovered in the course of digging in federal statutes, the law generally recognizes the right of the person who is not the aggressor to stand his ground. …

The complete column is “The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins.” Read it on WND. .

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UPDATE I: Greta Van Susteren is investigating “The Zimmerman arrest affidavit,“ belatedly, about which a Colorado law-enforcement officer wrote the following last year:

“…is so deficient in properly sourced factual information and full of unsubstantiated, unsourced conclusions, I am appalled that a State’s Attorney would even give it a second look. …”

MORE.

UPDATE II: JIMMY CARTER. I would have expected that an old “white guy” like Jimmy Carter would have a bit of the Cartesian logic in him and come down on the side of the fine jury Zimmerman had. Indeed, here is Former President Jimmy Carter on the George Zimmerman trial:

“I think the jury made the right decision based on the evidence presented,” Carter told Atlanta station WXIA-TV.
“The prosecution inadvertently set the standard so high that the jury had to be convinced that it was a deliberate act by Zimmerman that he was not at all defending himself.” he added.
“It’s not a moral question, it’s a legal question and the American law requires that the jury listens to the evidence presented.”

MORE.

UPDATE III: Walter Block Adjudicates The Law In A Just Society Over at Economic Policy Journal:

Zimmerman was akin to a private (hence justified) cop. He had every right to do what he did. Martin had no right to resist. The only problem I have with this is that Zimmerman should have had some sort of uniform, or badge. Let’s change [the] scenario slightly. Suppose Zimmerman was a real (unjustified govt) cop. There’s no doubt there would not have even have been a trial.