Category: Politics

A close look at celebrity corruption.

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Syrian Electronic Army Intel Leaked by Snowden

Syrian Electronic Army Logo
Syrian Electronic Army Logo

MOSCOW, Russia – In an unexpected turn of events on Wednesday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden outed a supposedly rag-tag group of Syrian rebel hackers as a sophisticated persona management project. Little has been known about the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) since inception, but most believe them to be residing in Damascus, Syria. Aside from a few shoddily written VICE interviews and an excellent write-up from Brian Krebs, there hasn’t been much information about the inner-workings of the crew.

Today, Internet Chronicle correspondents had a chance to catch up with Snowden for a few rounds of Moscow Mules while we discussed how the Syrian Electronic Army may be, in fact, more illusory than we could have possibly imagined.

The Internet Chronicle: Did you know about the Syrian Electronic Avenue before they became mainstream?

Edward Snowden: I did. The intel passed through my data center numerous times, months before they even began to make waves with their arbitrarily chosen attacks that were, of course, dignified ex post facto.

IC: Fascinating. Do you know if they are truly Syrian freedom fighters or something else entirely?

ES: OK, from what I saw, it’s hard to tell either way. As the United States’ hands are dipped in all sorts of fucking gunk, there’s no telling what’s really going on. However, I got to see plenty of internal memorandums referencing SEA as a group of roughly six people. The company Infragard was mentioned quite a bit in the slides that I saw.

IC: Infragard? You mean the private government cybersecurity contracting firm?

ES: Correct. They came up quite a bit in our paperwork, as they tend to work closely with pretty much every government agency involved in covert operations. As do Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, and of course Booz Allen Hamilton.

IC: So what you’re saying is SEA is a creation of a private security firm contracted out by the U.S. government?

Edward Snowden
Snowden is widely regarded as a hero.

ES: From the information that I saw, that didn’t seem important at the time, but in retrospect, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s plain to see that if you analyze the language they use, you can tell they have been trained to type in broken English, which is a common tactic deployed by the CIA, later adopted into persona management projects spearheaded by HBGary Federal in their Romas/COIN program that was uncovered by the now incarcerated journalist, the Hunter S. Thompson of our era, Barrett Brown. It really makes you think.

People don’t realize that these private contractors are truly the enemies. They’ve even forced Obama’s hand into nuking Syria and killing 5 million people, all because of the cyberwarfare via anti-rhetoric perpetuated by the SEA. Obama’s just the puppet for the masterminds at the Infragard splinter-cell persona management project. We’ve been trained to see this group as simple hacktivist merry-pranksters fighting a war against Twitter accounts and whois information. Yet, they are something far more insidious.

IC: The popular theme being thrown around these days is “the next war will be fought online.” Could this be the beginning?

ES: Absolutely. In fact, I would go so far as saying it has been going on for far longer than we even realize. Nation-state actors have been deployed via persona management firms for years now, ever since Tom Ryan Blog, aka th3j35t3r, tricked people into believing he was a porn star and got a heaps of classified information from unsuspecting troglodytes on Facebook. These types of spurious entities are really only the beginning. Imagine villages, even entire cities completely fabricated by military contractors! Think about the hacking power they would have and the ability to steer public interest. Scary shit, man.

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Hate News Politics Society Status Quo

Ehrenreich: Government says ‘Die’ to Poor

Nation Editor Barbara Ehrenreich said the Government's Message to the Poor is 'Die'
Nation Editor Barbara Ehrenreich said the Government’s Message to the Poor is ‘Die’

WASHINGTON – Barbara Ehrenreich, contributing editor at The Nation, suggested on August 15 that the government’s message to poor people is essentially to “die.” Asked by The Internet Chronicle about the roots of New York City’s stop-and-frisk program, Ehrenreich alluded to a Michigan woman’s struggle to escape a 30-day prison sentence for being unable to pay for a son’s incarceration. Ehrenreich was speaking at the Lamont Street Collective.

“There’s a punitive mentality in this country,” said Ehrenreich, “that is not entirely sane.”

New York City Police have a long-standing policy of halting, interrogating, and searching pedestrians – judicial critics have said, without probable cause. In an August 12 decision, federal District Judge Shira Scheindlin rejected the city’s stop-and-frisk policy, saying that it amounted to “indirect racial profiling.” The vast majority of those stopped in 2012 alone were black or Hispanic.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended the policy. And Tuesday, city attorneys sent a letter to Scheindlin citing statistics that use of the policy had declined by more than half over a year.

According to a statement by the American Civil Liberties Union, Edwina Nowlin, a Detroit, Michigan native, served 28 days of her sentence before the organization’s having successfully interceded.

Ehrenreich, the New York Times bestselling author of “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” blamed the rise of New York City’s financial sector in the 1980s and 1990s for the persecution of the poor. “Gentrification,” she said, has become rationale for targeting the impoverished.

Said Ehrenreich, Nowlin “was picked up by the cops on the street and charged with not only the usual homeless crime of being in the street and so forth but with failing to pay for her son’s – 16-year-old son’s – room and board in jail … So [Nowlin] gets picked up and she gets put in jail for that. Then she gets a paycheck. She thinks it can be applied to her son’s room and board, but no, it’s immediately confiscated for her room and board in jail.”

Added Ehrenreich, “Now, what is going on here? What are they thinking? I mean, the message to people who don’t have money is, ‘die;’ you know, just be dead; be gone.”

Ehrenreich also said that the mass incarceration of the poor – the design, she claims, of the Bloomberg administration’s embrace of stop-and-frisk – initiated under the aegis of beautification.

At the close of her talk, she said that her opposition to stop-and-frisk not due to its enforcement being racist but because police should not have grounds to randomly halt and interrogate innocent individuals whatsoever.

The author’s comments on August 15 are in the video below:

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Law News Politics Society Status Quo Uncontrollable Patriotism World

Syrian Liberation Looming, Commerce Dept.: Streaming Al Jazeera English a ‘Felony’

Domestic Extremists: Al Jazeera America's Coverage is Covering up the Truth about Syria
Domestic Extremists: Al Jazeera America’s Coverage is Covering up the Truth about Syria

WASHINGTON – As a full-scale NATO offensive against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad looms, the Obama administration’s Commerce Department is ensuring that Americans have full access to accurate information about the upcoming struggle. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said Tuesday that any Americans attempting to Web-stream Al Jazeera English, as opposed to Al Jazeera America, would face felony charges.

In an on-the-record teleconference Tuesday Sec. Penny Pritzker said, “Al Jazeera America is the go-to source for Americans interested in news about the conflict. In a time of war, it’s time for Americans to unify around one story and one nation.”

State Public Affairs Undersecretary Tara Sonenshine joined Sec. Pritzker on the call, and added what she described as “much-needed” context to State Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Spring 2011 advisement that Al Jazeera English had proven the “real news.”

It was then, in the midst of the Arab spring, that Sec. Clinton said, “Al Jazeera has been the leader in … literally changing people’s minds and attitudes” and that it had been “really effective.”

Ms. Sonenshine addressed complaints by disloyal Al Jazeera staff, published in Lebanon’s Al Akhbar, that Al Jazeera had become oblivious to suffering allegedly caused at the hands of the Free Syrian Army’s freedom fighters.

Screenshot: Al Jazeera English, Inappropriate for Americans
Screenshot: Al Jazeera English, Inappropriate for Americans

Ms Sec. Sonenshine said, “Unfortunately, frivolous public statements by violators of NDAs [nondisclosure agreements] have compromised what remains an interest in global awareness and the free flow of information.”

The high-level officials’ comments echo a Commerce Department position articulated last month. A department Green Paper made clear the administration’s position that Congress should “enact legislation adopting the same range of penalties for criminal streaming of copyrighted works as now exists for criminal reproduction and distribution.” As the liberation of Syria has become more certain, Congress has acted to ensure that violators of intellectual property rights are delivered justice.

“Would-be offenders,” said Ms. Sonenshine, “should understand our commitment to protecting the innovation of all of our global partners, including Al Jazeera America. I want the international community to understand we take our IP [intellectual property] obligations as seriously as ever.”

Al Jazeera provided what the state secretary regarded as “cutting-edge” coverage of the Arab Spring. Since then, the Qatar-based news service has launched a new channel, Al Jazeera America, tailored especially to the interests and – said Undersecretary Sonenshine – self-interests of middle-class Americans.

Sec. Pritzer cited her concern that citizens might become “confused” about the United States’ and al-Qaeda’s new, mutual front against the barbarism of the Assad regime. Al-Qaeda, a Salafist and Wahhabist group slandered throughout the Gulf, is now on the front lines against the Syrian evildoers.

“While Americans have every right to feel misgivings over al-Qaeda’s role in perpetrating the 9/11 attacks,” said Sec. Pritzker, “it is far more important, for national security, for them to now remember the plight of Syrians suffering from the Assad regime’s morally obscene deployment of weapons of mass destruction.” Added Pritzer, “The agenda of freedom in the Middle East is larger than any given sect or clique. We can’t kowtow to domestic extremists bent on enforcing their grudges on the rest of civil society.”