Is America a Police State?

March 13, 2017 at 5:12 pm
Written by Anti-Media News Desk

The latest WikiLeaks revelations tell us the answer is yes.

(ANTIWAR Op-Ed) WikiLeaks and Julian Assange would have gone down in history as the greatest enemies of government oppression of all kinds in any case, but their latest release – a comprehensive exposé of the US intelligence community’s cyberwar tools and techniques – is truly the capstone of their career. And given that this release – dubbed “Vault 7” – amounts to just one percent of the documents they intend to publish, one can only look forward to the coming days with a mixture of joyful anticipation and ominous fear.

Fear because the power of the Deep State is even more forbidding – and seemingly invincible – than anyone knew. Joyful anticipation because, for the first time, it is dawning on the most unlikely peoplethat we are, for all intents and purposes, living in a police state. I was struck by this while watching Sean Hannity’s show last [Wednesday] night – yes, Fox is my go-to news channel – and listening to both Hannity and his guests, including the ultra-conservative Laura Ingraham, inveigh against the “Deep State.” For people like Hannity, Ingraham, and Newt Gingrich (of all people!) to be talking about the Surveillance State with fear – and outrage – in their voices says two things about our current predicament: 1) Due to the heroic efforts of Julian Assange in exposing the power and ruthlessness of the Deep State, the political landscape in this country is undergoing a major realignment, with conservatives returning to their historic role as the greatest defenders of civil liberties, and 2) American “liberalism” – which now champions the Deep State as the savior of the country – has become a toxic brew that is fundamentally totalitarian.

On the first point: yes, there are more than a few holdouts, like Bill O’Reilly and the neocons, but the latter are increasingly isolated, and the former is increasingly irrelevant. What we are seeing, as the role of the “intelligence community” in basically leading a seditious conspiracy against a sitting President is revealed, is a complete switch in the political polarities in this country: what passes for the “left” has become the biggest advocate of the Surveillance State, and the rising populist right is coming to the hard-won conclusion that we are rapidly becoming a police state.

Ah, but wait! That’s not the whole story: bear with me for a while.

The material in “Vault 7” is extensive: it ranges from examining the ways in which a Samsung television set that is seemingly turned off can be– and no doubt has been – used to spy on the conversations and activities of a room’s occupants, to the various ways in which our spooks infiltrate and subvert common electronic devices, such as the I-Phone, in order to gather information. “Infected phones,” we are told in the introduction to the material, “can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.” The CIA is even working on remotely controlling the electronic steering systems installed in cars – a perfect route to pulling off an assassination that looks like an “accident.” Not that the intelligence services of the “leader of the Free World” would ever consider such an act.

The massive infection of commonly used software and electronic devices leads to a major problem: proliferation. As these viruses and other invasive programs are unleashed on an unsuspecting public, they fall into the hands of a variety of bad actors: foreign governments, criminals, and teenagers on a lark (not necessarily in descending order of malevolence). This plague is being spread over the Internet by a veritable army of CIA hackers: “By the end of 2016,” WikiLeaks tells us, “the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence(CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’ malware.” The inevitable end result: a world infected with so much malware that computers become almost useless – and this parlous condition is paid for by you, the American taxpayer.

This is, in effect, the cybernetic equivalent of the Iraq war – an invasion that led to such unintended consequences as the rise of ISIS, the devastation of Syria, and the empowerment of Iran. In short, a war that made us less safe.

One aspect of the Vault 7 data dump that’s drawing particular attention is the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s “Umbrage group,” which, we are told, “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.” The idea is to mask the Agency’s cyberwar operations by attempting to hide the unique forensic attributes of its techniques. The process of attribution, WikiLeaks explains, is “analogous to finding the same distinctive knife wound on multiple separate murder victims. The unique wounding style creates suspicion that a single murderer is responsible. As soon one murder in the set is solved then the other murders also find likely attribution.”

So how does the CIA hide its “fingerprints”?

It simply draws on computer code used by its adversaries – and not only Russia – and inserts it into its own handcrafted malware and other invasive programs, thus leaving Russian (or Chinese, or North Korean) fingerprints on the handiwork of CIA hackers.

Now you’ll recall that the attribution of the DNC/Podesta email hacks was “proved” by the DNC’s hired hands on the basis of the supposedlyunique characteristics of the programs used by the supposed Russian hackers. One of these alleged Russians even left behind the name of Felix Dzerzhinsky – founder of the Soviet KGB – embedded in the code, hardly the height of subtlety. So now we learn that the CIA has perfected the art of imitating its rivals, mimicking the Russians – or whomever – in a perfect setup for a “false flag” scenario.

After months of the nonstop campaign to demonize the Russians as “subverting our democracy” and supposedly throwing the election to Donald Trump by hacking the DNC and Podesta, a new possibility begins to emerge. I say “possibility” because, despite the craziness that is fast becoming the norm, there has got to be a limit to it – or does there?

No, I’m not suggesting the CIA hacked the DNC and poor hapless John Podesta. Yet others are suggesting something even more explosive.

In an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News television program, retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a former senior intelligence officer, told the audience that he had heard from his intelligence contacts that retired NSA officials were responsible for hacking the DNC and Podesta, and then releasing the materials to WikiLeaks His co-guest,William Binney, a former NSA insider who was among the first to expose the extent of that agency’s surveillance of American citizens, agreed.

This is nothing new: Judge Andrew Napolitano said the same thing months ago. The alleged motivation was animus toward Mrs. Clinton.

Although “the Russians did it” is now the accepted conventional wisdom, which hardly anyone bothers to question anymore, the level of evidence proffered to support this conclusion has been laughably inadequate. And you’ll note that, although the CIA and the FBI, along with other intelligence agencies, advanced this hypothesis with “high confidence,” the NSA demurred, awarding it with only “moderate” confidence.

And one more thing: I found it extremely odd that, when the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email was discovered, party officials refused to let the FBI and other law enforcement agencies examine either their server or Podesta’s devices. Instead, they gave it over to CrowdStrike, a private firm that regularly does business with the DNC. CrowdStrike then came out with the now-accepted analysis that it was a Russian job.

Could it be that the “explanation” for the hacking was determined in advance?

I don’t know the answer to that question. Nor do I necessarily buy Col. Shaffer’s thesis. What I’m saying is that it’s entirely possible – indeed, it is just as likely, given what we know now, as pinning the blame Vladimir Putin.

So what is the lesson of all this?

We have created a monster, a Deep State with such unchecked power, armed with such Orwellian technology, that it represents a clear and present danger to our constitutional republic. This threat is underscored not only by the latest WikiLeaks revelations, but also by the intelligence community’s intervention in our domestic politics, which has been documented in the headlines of the nation’s newspapers for the past few months.

This cancer has been allowed to grow, undiagnosed and unopposed, within the vitals of our government in the name of “national security.” Accelerated by our foreign policy of perpetual war, the national security bureaucracy has accumulated immense power, and our elected leaders have neglected to provide any oversight. Indeed, they are at its mercy.

The latest WikiLeaks revelations should be a wake-up call for all of us who want to preserve what’s left of our constitutionally-guaranteed liberties. Either we slay the monster or it will enslave us.

Opinion by Justin Raimondo / Republished with permission / AntiWar.com / Report a typo / Image:nolifebeforecoffee

Police find Jeep buried under 20 feet of snow in the Donner Pass

(CHP Truckee)

The Donner Pass has claimed another victim.

The California Highway Patrol has discovered a Jeep Cherokee buried under 20 feet of snow on the side of a road outside of Truckee.

The area sees some of the highest snowfall in the United States and has been hit particularly hard this year, with walls of snow bordering many of its major roads.

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I-80 no chain controls at this time. Drive safe and enjoy the beautiful day..

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The police told Jalopnik that the Jeep was likely abandoned on the side of the road, plowed under, and further entombed by the giant snowblowers that keep the road clear. Apparently one of them seriously damaged the truck as it was carving a canyon into the snow, which led to its discovery.

app-facebook CHP - Truckee el jueves Oh the things we find playing hide and seek in the winter! Be ready for traffic delays on SR-89 as Squaw Valley is set to host the FIS Ski World Cup Friday and Saturday. 1.564 191 2.029

A broken rear window reveals that the interior is empty, so its owner wasn’t trapped in it. The CHP doesn’t know who that is, and covered the license plate in the photo posted on its Facebook page, but if you left it there, you hopefully remember.

OPPOSITE EXTREME? JEEP BURIED IN SAND DUNE FOR 40 YEARS FINALLY UNEARTHED

Just don’t head back to retrieve it anytime soon. Since it’s not blocking the road, and sits under layers of stratified snow and ice, the police are leaving it up to Mother Nature to thaw it out.

Corrupt banking is nothing new, but it’s incredibly detrimental, which is why, in many countries it is taken seriously by their respective governments. It harms the livelihoods, economies, and democracies of countries. It ensures poor countries remain poor, promotes conflict and instability, and kicks weak environments to the ground.

The most recent example of corrupt baking comes out of Spain, where former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Rodrigo Rato received four years and six months behind bars for embezzlement during his time heading Caja Madrid and Bankia, which were both having difficulties at the time.

The details of the corruption reveal a prime example of elitists misusing their power for personal gain, forgetting their moral compass and dedication to promoting and providing a better environment for people who rely on them to thrive in. For instance, Rato was one of 65 people within the banking system accused of having paid for personal expenses with Caja Madrid and Bankia credit cards, but never declaring them to tax authorities, or explaining the circumstances. Such expenses include petrol for their cars, supermarket shopping, holidays, luxury bags, and parties in nightclubs.

According to the report, “Thousands of small-scale investors lost their money after they were persuaded to convert their savings to shares ahead of the flotation of Bankia in 2011, with Rato at the reins. Less than a year later, he resigned as it became known that Bankia was in dire straits.”

Rato is the third former chief to be called out for illegal activity, proving the incredible corruption festering within the banking system. In fact, Rato’s successor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was tried in 2015 on pimping charges in a sex scandal. He was ultimately acquitted, despite the fact that he admitted to engaging in illicit sex with prostitutes at the Hotel Carlton in France, where a series of orgies took place. The court chose to agree with Strauss-Kahn, however, who said had no clue the women were being paid.

Then, Christine Lagarde, who took over from Strauss-Kahn and is the current IMF chief, was found guilty of negligence in her handling of a long-running fraud case. Lagarde was not found negligent in her decision to seek an out-of-court settlement with tycoon Bernard Tapie, but was found so regarding her failure to contest the award to him of about 400 million euros, which then led to a misuse of public funds. The verdict was infuriating for many, as Lagarde was able to escape true punishment, and instead kept her job.

(collective-evolution.com)

In a week in which much has occurred of geopolitical importance, the evolution of the domestic political situation in Belarus has not received as much attention as it should have. Public protests against the regime of Alexander Lukashenka that began in mid February in response to a tax on those employed for less than half of a year have grown and morphed into a demand for systemic political change, and have thus set up a showdown with a regime not accustomed to challenge, while stoking fears in the Kremlin that it may be facing another “color revolution” on its border, potentially triggering a muscular Russian response. Outside observers could be forgiven for not seeing change in the wind in Belarus, where on the surface everything looked the same. Change has, nevertheless, been coming, even to “the last dictatorship of Europe”, spurred by the Ukraine crisis, which set in motion a series of changes in Lukashenka’s approach both to the West and to Putin, which changes have been working themselves out gradually since.

Moscow has reverted to its typical use of energy as a geopolitical weapon, threatening to make Belarus pay the same rate for its Russian natural gas as does Europe – a significant increase. This led Lukashenka to respond angrily last Thursday: “If some people believe that they can constantly pressure us and bring us to our knees, this will never happen.” A month ago, Lukashenka similarly lashed out angrily at the Kremlin, accusing it of violating treaties (in reference to Russia's decision to establish border controls at the previously open Russian-Belarus border) and using its role as sole energy supplier to Belarus in order “to grab us by the throat”. Signaling that he valued independence above secure energy supplies, Lukashenka asserted “independence cannot be compared with oil”. (Ibid.) Lukashenka also recently gave a speech to his armed forces in which he emphasized Belarus' territorial integrity, a pointed comment aimed at Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko during their meeting in Minsk, Belarus, Wednesday, June 8, 2016. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The current spate of protests began in mid February in response to the government's plans to tax the unemployed the equivalent of approximately $250 – a tax which has been called various names including the “social parasite tax”, the “anti-sponging tax”, and the “vagrant tax”. As Mitchell Polman explained in The Hill a few days ago, the regime has been adept at using economic coercion in order to ensure political quiescence in a country in which the vast majority of workers are employed either in state owned enterprises and industries or directly by state itself.

Conditions are different now, however, resulting in a citizenry no longer being so willing to let itself be controlled. The Belarusian economy has struggled for the past couple of years, having been impacted both by the dramatic drop in oil prices from their June 2014 highs, as well as by the severe economic troubles in neighboring Russia, Belarus' most important trading partner by far and the country to whose economy Belarus is most closely tied. This has made life more difficult both for Belarusian citizens and for a government needing to find ways to staunch the fiscal bleeding. The means the government has come up with in order to do that has added to the burden on the people, exacerbating their frustration at their worsening economic condition. Among other things, the government has raised the retirement age in a bid to reduce the burden on state coffers (as of 1 January 2017).

The tax on unemployment has become the straw that broke the camel's back, bringing people out onto the streets. Many were just making it before the unemployment tax kicked in, but will be unable to do so should Lukashenka go forward with it. The total numbers protesting don't sound large to a Westerner, with the protests starting with a bit over 2,000 people in Minsk in mid February and growing to possibly 5,000 people there, with hundreds more in each of Brest (on the Polish border), Mogilev, Bobruysk, and Gomel (a city in southeastern Belarus near the territorial confluence of the Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, the symbolism of which is likely to have caused some anxiety in the Kremlin), and around 1,000 in the eastern city of Vitebsk, also near the Russian border. Although the total numbers are relatively small, the fact that they have occurred at all and that the government has allowed them to continue in a country in which the internal security services has retained the name “KGB” and in which past protests have elicited strong government crackdowns illustrates just how much things have changed in Belarus.

At the same time, his domestic political position is coming increasingly into question. More than 400,000 of those billed have refused to pay the unemployment tax altogether, facing Lukashenka with widespread civil disobedience. The tax appears to have been a straw that broke the camels back, waking many Belarusians to a desire for deeper political change, andthe protests have morphed into a demand for broad, systemic political change. The fact that protests are occurring not just in Minsk, but in multiple other cities, as well as evidence that discontent is widespread in the countryside, indicates that Lukashenka's position is less secure than most outside observers had assumed.

Lukashenka is not in an enviable position – he cannot afford to antagonize Moscow too greatly as his continued rule depends upon Russian support. At the same time, he doesn't want to throw away all of the effort he has undertaken over the past three years to warm ties with the West, an effort that has been bearing some fruit, through a crackdown on the protestors. Reverting to form appears to no longer be a possibility in any case.

He has been forced to make concessions to the protestors, and both they and the nascent political opposition in Belarus (which had been extremely timid previously but has been emboldened by the success of the protests) sense that the regime is, for the first time, hesitant and vulnerable. Two weeks ago the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that, consistent with its decree of a year ago, it would not be deploying riot police in the streets to counter the protests, announcing that it saw no point in doing so “just for the sake of demonstrating strength”, which action in effect ceded the streets to the protestors. Last Thursday, Lukashenka suspended the taxthat triggered the original protests, although not yet rescinding it. Protest leaders are refusing to accept the mere “suspension” of the tax that Lukashenka has offered, and are demanding broader and deeper changes. Lukashenka has also promised to discipline government officials who unfairly labeled citizens “parasites”, and called last week for the creation of space for peaceful dialogue between citizens and government officials. His statement on this revealed the delicate balance he is attempting to pursue, both domestically and in terms of the carefully watching West and Russia, respectively, in terms of allowing greater freedoms while maintaining political control: “People should have places where they can express their opinions, as in developed countries in the West. But all attempts to create disorder or violence should be stopped immediately.”

He is attempting to placate the crowds in the hopes that they will dissipate. Indications are, however, that they will not. The people sense the possibility, for the first time, of real change, and are not likely to let it go. If they continue and Lukashenka's regime appears to be in serious danger, the Kremlin will then calculate whether it can continue to dominate Belarusian politics through control over Lukashenka's likely successors. Putin would not lose sleep over Lukashenka's departure, as long as he can continue to control what occurs in Minsk. After the financial and reputational costs, as well as the negative economic impact of sanctions, on Russia after its takeover of Crimea and military actions in eastern Ukraine (not to mention the financial costs of Russia's actions in Syria, which have also been great), the last thing Putin needs is to become embroiled in another conflict in Belarus. Also, at this point early in the tenure of US President Donald Trump, whom Moscow has seen as its best hope for a potentially more cooperative relationship with the United States, it would seem that the situation in Belarus would have to become very threatening to Moscow's position there to justify his taking any aggressive action that would be certain to foreclose the possibility of Russian-US cooperation – in Syria or elsewhere – or a potential broader understanding with Washington. Any muscular action on Putin's part would further sour relations with the US and EU, accentuate the already heightened fear of Russian intentions in the Baltics, Poland, Romania, etc., and justify the recent deployment of NATO troops and assets in Poland and the Baltics. Such action would also exacerbate the financial burden Russia is already bearing as a result of its takeover of Crimea (which as been a budgetary black hole), and its military involvement in eastern Ukraine and in Syria, and worsen the country's budget deficits. However, should the situation evolve to the point at which Moscow is no longer certain that its interests are secure in Belarus it will become more likely that it will take more forceful action in order to protect its position there. Such action would in turn set up the first real confrontation between Vladimir Putin and the new Administration of Donald Trump.

Belarus, then, bears watching closely in the coming days and weeks. The nature of the changes occurring there, and the manner in which those changes occur and outside powers respond to them, will determine not just Belarusian domestic politics and foreign policy, but also do much to shape Russian-Western relations moving forward. What appears clear is that the people of Belarus have had enough. Whether Lukashenka goes into exile, cracks down and remains in power at the cost of alienating the West, or Putin makes an aggressive move in an attempt to retain the Russian position there, in any case, change is coming to Belarus - the only question is the pace at which it comes.

(forbes.co)