3022-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

By participating in what he now calls the US’s ‘genocidal military campaign’ against Iraq, former marine Vincent Emanuele says he ‘helped create ISIS‘:

I think about the hundreds of prisoners we took captive and tortured in makeshift detention facilities staffed by teenagers from Tennessee, New York and Oregon.

[Prisoners who got released were dropped off in] the middle of the desert … several miles from their homes…

Who knows how long they survived… no one cared.

…one former U.S. prisoner who survived: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi…

I could recall countless horrific anecdotes from my time in Iraq. Innocent people were not only routinely rounded-up, tortured and imprisoned, they were also incinerated by the hundreds of thousands, some studies suggest by the millions.

Only the Iraqis understand the pure evil that’s been waged on their nation. They remember the West’s role in the eight year war between Iraq and Iran; they remember Clinton’s sanctions in the 1990s, policies which resulted in the deaths of well over 500,000 people, largely women and children. Then, 2003 came and the West finished the job. Today, Iraq is an utterly devastated nation. The people are poisoned and maimed, and the natural environment is toxic from bombs laced with depleted uranium.

This point can never be overstated… the scale of destruction the West has inflicted in the Middle East is absolutely unimaginable to the vast majority of … Westerners[, who] consistently and naively ask, “Why do they hate us?”

By Jay Syrmopoulos

On Friday, Congress passed a $1.15 trillion omnibus spending package to continue funding the federal government, which included an already defeated, and extremely controversial cyber security bill, that was inserted into the spending package as a means of assuring its passage.

In spite of this massive revelation and horrific blow to privacy, the mainstream media remains mum. While many outlets are covering the passage of the spending bill, they are completely omitting anything about CISA.

The New York Times, for example, broke the story Friday morning about Congress passing the omnibus measure. However, they conveniently left out any mention of CISA.

Aside from the tech sites who know about the dangers of this measure, the entire realm of mainstream media is choosing to remain silent.

The Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), quietly pushed back in 2014 before being shut down by civil rights and privacy advocates, was added into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill by House Speaker Paul Ryan as a means circumventing rampant opposition to the anti-privacy legislation.

The CISA legislation, which Rep. Justin Amash called “the worst anti-privacy legislation since the USA PATRIOT Act,” has now been passed by Congress and will be signed into law by President Obama as part of the government spending package.

Advocates of the CISA provisions say their aim is to help prevent cyber threats, but critics say that the legislation essentially gives corporations legal immunity when sharing consumers’ private data about hacks and digital breaches with the Department of Homeland Security.

According to a report by Wired:

It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness.

Originally, the CISA anti-privacy legislation was shelved after a public outcry against the bill, but corporations soon realized the bill would provide them with legal immunity for sharing customers’ private data with the government and began a renewed effort to pass CISA.

And miraculously, even in defeat, a bad bill became worse, and a crisis became an opportunity.

“They took a bad bill, and they made it worse,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute, told Wired.

“They’ve got this bill that’s kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they’ve seen an opportunity to push it through without debate. And they’re taking that opportunity.”

By including CISA into the government’s overall spending package, it meant that for anti-privacy legislation to be defeated the spending bill had to also be defeated, which would have meant a government shutdown beginning next week.

“Unfortunately, this misguided cyber legislation does little to protect Americans’ security and a great deal more to threaten our privacy than the flawed Senate version. Americans demand real solutions that will protect them from foreign hackers, not knee-jerk responses that allow companies to fork over huge amounts of their customers’ private data with only cursory review.” Sen. Ron Wyden said of the insertion of the CISA into the spending bill.

It’s a shameful testament to the power of corporations and the intelligence community, to craft legislation that the American people clearly don’t support and then hide it within a budget bill to gain passage of the legislation, due to the fact that the public would never support it otherwise. What’s more is that the Praetorian guard, also known as the mainstream media is choosing to keep it out of the public’s eye.

“There’s plenty wrong with this omnibus, but there’s nothing more egregious than the cyber language they secretly slipped in,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) told The Hill by email.

Sadly, this seems to be business as usual in Washington, D.C.

When corporations and government craft and push their own legislation, which by large measure individuals and the public don’t support, corporate fascism is clearly at the doorstep. A dangerous stage is being set for turnkey totalitarianism in the United States.

Please share this article with your friends and family who will most assuredly not hear about it on the TV or radio.

Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on Ben Swann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, Raw Story, MintPress News, as well as many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter@sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.

Republished under a Creative Commons License
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/12/worst-anti-privacy-bill-since-the-patriot-act-passes-hidden-in-a-budget-bill-and-media-is-silent.html

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/20/2015 3:50:13 PM
	Islamic State expands Afghan footprint with terror campaign By LYNNE O'DONNELL and HUMAYOON BABUR15 hours ago In this Monday, Nov. 30, 2015 photo, internally displaced girls hold babies after their family left their village in Behsood district of Jalalabad east of Kabul, Afghanistan. It is a makeshift camp with thousands of people who left their homes to escape what is turning out to be an increasingly vicious war for control of the region between the Taliban and fighters of Afghanistan’s Islamic State group affiliate. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) View Gallery JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) — Rahman Wali's younger brother was one of 10 Afghan men forced by Islamic State militants to kneel over bombs buried in the soil in a lush green valley in eastern Nangarhar province. The extremists then detonated the bombs, turning the pastoral countryside into a scene of horror. Related Stories Islamic State: Why Afghanistan isn't panicking – yet Christian Science Monitor Afghan security worsens, casualties spike in 2015: Pentagon Reuters Carter in Afghanistan to review security as violence rises Associated Press Pentagon chief in Afghanistan as violence escalates AFP Top Asian News 4:59 a.m. GMT Associated Press The August killings were recorded on camera and posted on social media like so many IS atrocities across the Mideast — reflecting how the Islamic State is exporting its particular brand of cruelty as the group seeks to enlarge its footprint in Afghanistan. It was through the macabre video that 44-year-old Wali learned the fate of his brother, Rahman Gul, an imam in their remote Shinwar district bordering Pakistan. Gul had been kidnapped weeks earlier, together with his wife and six children who were quickly set free. After his brother's death, Wali and his family fled to the provincial capital of Jalalabad, seeking refuge in a makeshift camp with thousands of others who left their homes in the valleys hugging the border to escape what is turning out to be an increasingly vicious war for control of the region between the Taliban and fighters of Afghanistan's IS affiliate. Reports of an IS presence in Afghanistan first emerged early this year in southern Helmand province, where recruiters believed to have links to the IS leadership in Syria were killed by a U.S. drone strike in February. In the summer, extremists pledging allegiance to IS also surfaced in Nangarhar, where they challenged the Taliban in border clashes. After see-sawing between the two groups, four districts — Achin, Nazyan, Bati Kot and Spin Gar — fell under IS control, according to Gen. John F. Campbell, the U.S. commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. View gallery In this Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015 photo, Rahman Wali, an internally displaced man speaks during an inter … Campbell told The Associated Press in an interview this week that IS loyalists in Afghanistan are now trying to consolidate links to the mothership — the so-called "caliphate" proclaimed on territory IS seized in Syria and Iraq after its blitz there in the summer of 2014. For the present, IS ambitions for Afghanistan seem focused on setting up what it calls "Khorasan Province," taking the name of an ancient province of the Persian Empire that included territories in today's Afghanistan, Iran and some Central Asian states. It parallels names for affiliates elsewhere, such as the IS branch in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which is known as "Sinai Province." "I think ISIL is really trying to establish a base in Nangarhar ... and establish Jalalabad as the base of the Khorasan Province," Campbell said, using an alternative acronym for IS. Several residents who fled the four Nangarhar districts say IS's "reign of terror" there includes extortions, evictions, arbitrary imprisonment and forced marriage for young women. Beheadings and killings with "buried bombs" — such as the gruesome slaying of Wali's brother — are filmed and posted on social media to instill fear, they said. Some spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals for relatives back in the districts. Mimicking IS's media outreach in Syria and Iraq, the Afghan branch also set up a radio station in Nangarhar, "Radio Caliphate," broadcasting at least one hour a day to attract young Afghan men disenchanted by dim job prospects in a war-torn country with an overall 24 percent unemployment rate. The joblessness is even higher among youths targeted in the IS recruitment drive. View gallery In this Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015 photo, an internally displaced girl peeks from a tent after her family … Meanwhile, the Afghan government forces, busy fighting the Taliban elsewhere, left the two militant groups to battle it out. And battle they did. Hundreds of Taliban fighters — disillusioned with the 14-year war to overthrow the Kabul government — switched allegiance to IS. Though estimates say that IS fighters number a few thousand nationwide, they are still far outnumbered by the Taliban, who have anywhere between 20,000 to 30,000 in their ranks, according to Afghan political analyst Waheed Muzhdah, who worked in the Taliban foreign ministry during their 1996-2001 rule. Still, many admit the IS Afghan branch could pose a serious threat to the unstable nation. In a report released this week, the Pentagon referred to the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Khorasan Province" as an "emergent competitor to other violent extremist groups that have traditionally operated in Afghanistan." View gallery In this Monday, Nov. 30, 2015 photo, Salim Kunduzi, governor of Nangarhar province, speaks during an … "This may result in increased violence among the various extremist groups in 2016," the Dec. 16 report said. Campbell said some foreign IS fighters have joined the Afghans from Iraq and Syria. Former residents said they spotted gunmen from Pakistan and Uzbekistan, as well as Arabic speakers flush with money and apparently better armed than the Taliban. Nangarhar is attractive to IS for its mix of insurgent groups, some of which are based across the border in Pakistan, and criminal gangs involved in lucrative drugs and minerals smuggling. Alarm bells rang when students at the prestigious Nangarhar University staged a pro-IS demonstration on campus in August, sparking arrests by the Afghan intelligence agency and a crackdown on universities nationwide. Governor Salim Kunduzi put IS's battleground strength in Nangarhar at around 400 fighters. The province's mountainous terrain provides perfect ground for an insurgency, and militants can easily resupply from Pakistan, he said. The province can also serve as a staging ground for a push north, along the eastern border and eventually on to Kabul, just 125 kilometers (77.5 miles) to the west, he added. View gallery In this Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015 photo, an internally displaced girl carries firewood on her head after … Both Campbell and Kunduzi agree IS may see Jalalabad as its base for expansion in Afghanistan. "I do not think Daesh will focus only on the east," Kunduzi said, using the Arabic language acronym for the Islamic State group. Nangarhar's chief refugee official, Ghulam Haidar Faqirzai, said that at least 25,200 families — or more than 170,000 people — have been displaced across the province, either directly by IS or by perceived threats from the group. As the winter sets in, needs of the displaced are intensifying, he warned. In a camp on Jalalabad's eastern outskirts, 70-year-old Yaqub, who like many Afghan men uses only one name, said he left his village in Maamand Valley in Achin district six months ago, after "fighters of the black flag" — the Islamic State's banner — dragged him and his son into prison where they were beaten and tortured. He said he still does not know why. "They covered my head with a black bag so I couldn't breathe while they beat me for a whole day, and every day they said they were going to kill me," he said. Yaqub and his son were released after the family paid their captors 200,000 Pakistani rupees, or almost $2,000 — a fortune in Afghanistan, where the average annual income is around $700. "Anything is better than going back there," said Yaqub. ___ O'Donnell reported from Kabul, Afghanistan.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/20/2015 4:30:32 PM
	US Marine who Invaded Iraq: Only Iraqis can Understand Pure Evil, Genocide US has Waged on their Nation Posted on December 19, 2015 by Robert Barsocchini By participating in what he now calls the US’s ‘genocidal military campaign’ against Iraq, former marine Vincent Emanuele says he ‘helped create ISIS‘: I think about the hundreds of prisoners we took captive and tortured in makeshift detention facilities staffed by teenagers from Tennessee, New York and Oregon. [Prisoners who got released were dropped off in] the middle of the desert … several miles from their homes… Who knows how long they survived… no one cared. …one former U.S. prisoner who survived: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi… I could recall countless horrific anecdotes from my time in Iraq. Innocent people were not only routinely rounded-up, tortured and imprisoned, they were also incinerated by the hundreds of thousands, some studies suggest by the millions. Only the Iraqis understand the pure evil that’s been waged on their nation. They remember the West’s role in the eight year war between Iraq and Iran; they remember Clinton’s sanctions in the 1990s, policies which resulted in the deaths of well over 500,000 people, largely women and children. Then, 2003 came and the West finished the job. Today, Iraq is an utterly devastated nation. The people are poisoned and maimed, and the natural environment is toxic from bombs laced with depleted uranium. This point can never be overstated… the scale of destruction the West has inflicted in the Middle East is absolutely unimaginable to the vast majority of … Westerners[, who] consistently and naively ask, “Why do they hate us?” …how the West deals with terrorism will largely depend on whether or not the West continues their terroristic behavior. The obvious way to prevent future ISIS-style organizations from forming is to oppose Western militarism in all its dreadful forms… (washingtonsblog.com) (also read http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/evils_of_the_iraqi_invasion.htm)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/21/2015 12:57:50 AM
	Worst Anti-Privacy Bill Since the PATRIOT Act, Passes Hidden in a Budget Bill and Media is SILENT Sat, 12/19/2015 - 22:04 By Jay Syrmopoulos On Friday, Congress passed a $1.15 trillion omnibus spending package to continue funding the federal government, which included an already defeated, and extremely controversial cyber security bill, that was inserted into the spending package as a means of assuring its passage. In spite of this massive revelation and horrific blow to privacy, the mainstream media remains mum. While many outlets are covering the passage of the spending bill, they are completely omitting anything about CISA. The New York Times, for example, broke the story Friday morning about Congress passing the omnibus measure. However, they conveniently left out any mention of CISA. Aside from the tech sites who know about the dangers of this measure, the entire realm of mainstream media is choosing to remain silent. The Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), quietly pushed back in 2014 before being shut down by civil rights and privacy advocates, was added into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill by House Speaker Paul Ryan as a means circumventing rampant opposition to the anti-privacy legislation. The CISA legislation, which Rep. Justin Amash called “the worst anti-privacy legislation since the USA PATRIOT Act,” has now been passed by Congress and will be signed into law by President Obama as part of the government spending package. Advocates of the CISA provisions say their aim is to help prevent cyber threats, but critics say that the legislation essentially gives corporations legal immunity when sharing consumers’ private data about hacks and digital breaches with the Department of Homeland Security. According to a report by Wired: It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness. Originally, the CISA anti-privacy legislation was shelved after a public outcry against the bill, but corporations soon realized the bill would provide them with legal immunity for sharing customers’ private data with the government and began a renewed effort to pass CISA. And miraculously, even in defeat, a bad bill became worse, and a crisis became an opportunity. “They took a bad bill, and they made it worse,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute, told Wired. “They’ve got this bill that’s kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they’ve seen an opportunity to push it through without debate. And they’re taking that opportunity.” By including CISA into the government’s overall spending package, it meant that for anti-privacy legislation to be defeated the spending bill had to also be defeated, which would have meant a government shutdown beginning next week. “Unfortunately, this misguided cyber legislation does little to protect Americans’ security and a great deal more to threaten our privacy than the flawed Senate version. Americans demand real solutions that will protect them from foreign hackers, not knee-jerk responses that allow companies to fork over huge amounts of their customers’ private data with only cursory review.” Sen. Ron Wyden said of the insertion of the CISA into the spending bill. It’s a shameful testament to the power of corporations and the intelligence community, to craft legislation that the American people clearly don’t support and then hide it within a budget bill to gain passage of the legislation, due to the fact that the public would never support it otherwise. What’s more is that the Praetorian guard, also known as the mainstream media is choosing to keep it out of the public’s eye. “There’s plenty wrong with this omnibus, but there’s nothing more egregious than the cyber language they secretly slipped in,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) told The Hill by email. Sadly, this seems to be business as usual in Washington, D.C. When corporations and government craft and push their own legislation, which by large measure individuals and the public don’t support, corporate fascism is clearly at the doorstep. A dangerous stage is being set for turnkey totalitarianism in the United States. Please share this article with your friends and family who will most assuredly not hear about it on the TV or radio. Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on Ben Swann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, Raw Story, MintPress News, as well as many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter@sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu. Republished under a Creative Commons License http://www.activistpost.com/2015/12/worst-anti-privacy-bill-since-the-patriot-act-passes-hidden-in-a-budget-bill-and-media-is-silent.html Category: World News & Politics
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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Worst Anti-Privacy Bill Since the PATRIOT Act, Passes Hidden in a Budget Bill and Media is SILENT

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