Zero Hedge....
NY AG Says Android, Windows Phones Will Have "Kill Switch"
"It's for your own good, remember." AsBloomberg reports, based on a study showing the "stunning effectiveness of kill switches," Google and Microsoft have agreed to NY AG Schneidermann's calls that such 'security measures' be incorporated in all new Android and Windows phones (following Apple's inclusion in September). With Android phones making up 80.2% of global shipments this year, "control" will be pleased...
Google and Microsoft will incorporate a “kill switch” into the next versions of their smartphone operating systems as evidence mounts that such security measures may be deterring theft, the New York attorney general’s office said.Mobile phone technology companies have faced pressure from public officials during the past year to add mechanisms to allow smartphone owners to disable the devices if they are lost or stolen, limiting their resale potential.More than 30 percent of robberies in major cities involve mobile phones, with some instances of theft also including violence, according to the Federal Communications Commission.Following Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s release of a kill switch in September, thefts of iPhones in some cities “plummeted,”said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who helped start a law enforcement coalition aimed at addressing the thefts.The Secure Our Smartphones Initiative group said in a report today that robberies involving Apple products in New York dropped 19 percent in the first five months of 2014 compared with the same period last year. In San Francisco and London, robberies involving Apple products dropped 38 percent and 24 percent, respectively, according to Schneiderman’s office.“The statistics released today illustrate the stunning effectiveness of kill switches and the commitments of Google and Microsoft are giant steps toward consumer safety,” Schneiderman said in a statement.
We are sure this is well intentioned... but worry of the unintended consequences (hackers able to entirely kill phones) and of course the libertarian perspective where 'control' is given to TPTB... how many more police violence cellphone clips? Turkey killed Twitter, why not kill all phones for a weekend?
Info Wars....
BORDER AGENTS QUITTING OVER CATCH AND RELEASE OF KNOWN GANG MEMBERS
Desperate agents' pleas for help ignored, as DHS bankrolls invasion
Image Credits: KRGV
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Customs and Border Protection agents are quitting the agency in protest of the practice of releasing minors from detention known to be gang members, a South Texas news outlet reports.
Regardless of whether the minors are inked with gang-affiliated tattoos, and regardless of whether they admit to agents that they are actual gang members, so long as they have no US criminal record, CBP agents are being forced to release them onto the streets of America, a Border Patrol union representative says.
“They are confirmed either by tattoos or by self admission,” the vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307in the Rio Grande Valley, Chris Cabrera, told KRGV. “But since they have no criminal record in the United States, and they happen to be minors, they’re reunited with their family in the U.S.”
Many of the gang members, as Infowars exposed, are also being fed, housed and provided bus tickets and vouchers to other parts of the country by the very same agency.
Cabrera says the practice of releasing gang members, in addition to being unable to adequately deal with the overwhelming flood of immigrants crossing into the Rio Grande Valley, is testing the morale of agents, many of whom are “already looking for other jobs,” according to KRGV.
“We all know that if you arrest and release, then the arrest is meaningless,” Cabrera said, echoing sentiments expressed by an ICE agent earlier in the week to Infowars.
“We can put as many people as we want on the border, but if we’re gonna catch them, hook them up and then release them, then what good is it gonna do?” the ICE agent, whose name was withheld to protect his identity, told us.
Some of the minors tell agents they’re fleeing their home countries to escape the out-of-control violence there. Cabrera notes it is difficult to discern whether the minors are truthful, but says he believes many of them have been coached.
“You ask them their name and where they’re from, they say that there is violence in my home country and they’ll kill me if you return me,” Cabrera stated. “I do believe there is violence in their home country, but I also believe that a lot of them have been coached.”
Cabrera also admits that a number of gang members have been released in South Texas. “We’ve seen a few. Not too many, but we’ve seen a few in the Rio Grande Valley,” he says.
Previously, Cabrera had told the National Review agents were encountering Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) members, a violent gang spanning from Central America up through Canada, whose initiation rituals include committing violent acts against innocents, including rape and even murder.
As we reported last week, agents are perturbed that the Obama administration is, in effect, granting “de facto amnesty,” with one agent writing to Infowars, stating that many of those escaping detention “are convicted felons, aliens from special interest countries, and other high risk individuals.”
“The President and the Secretary of Homeland Security will ignore this issue as long as possible in order to let as many illegal aliens gain entry into the United States,” the agent wrote in a letter to us.
Other former Border Patrol agents have also accused the Obama administration of deliberately aiding the invasion of illegal immigrants.
“This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a predictable, orchestrated and contrived assault on the compassionate side of Americans by her political leaders that knowingly puts minor illegal alien children at risk for purely political purposes,” the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers said in a statement earlier this month.
Blacklisted News....
SECRET TRADE AGREEMENT COVERING 68 PERCENT OF WORLD SERVICES PUBLISHED BY WIKILEAKS
SOURCE: RT
Reuters / Toru Hanai
The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement being drafted in secret was published by WikiLeaks on Thursday as the transparency group’s editor commemorated his two-year anniversary confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. Despite vast international ties, however, details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors and largely ignored by the press.
In a statement published by the group alongside the leaked draft this week, WikiLeaks said “proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets,” and have participated in “a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre” by working secretly on a deal that covers more than 68 percent of world trade in services, according to the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research.
Touting the deal earlier this year, the United States Chamber of Commerce said a successful TISA agreement would benefit America’s services industry and its 96 million, or 84 percent, of the nation’s private sector workers. “As its chief goals, the TISA should expand access to foreign markets for US service industries and ensure they receive national and most-favored nation treatment,” the chamber said of the deal in February. “It should also lift foreign governments’ sectoral limits on investment in services,” “eliminate regulatory inconsistencies that at times loom as trade barriers” and “prohibit restrictions on legitimate cross‐border information flows and bar local infrastructure mandates relating to data storage.”
WikiLeaks warns that this largely important trade deal has been hardly discussed in public, however, notwithstanding evidence showing that the policy makers involved want to establish rules that would pertain to services used by billions worldwide.
“The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals – mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt – into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.“The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data.”
Additionally, the current draft also includes language inferring that, upon the finishing of negotiations, the document will be kept classified for five full years.
In Australia, journalists at The Age reported that experts say the proposed changes included within the WikiLeaks document “could undermine Australia’s capacity to independently respond to and weather any future global financial crisis.”
Dr. Patricia Ranald, a research associate at the University of Sydney and convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, told the paper that the documents suggest the US wants to “tie the hands” of other governments, including allied ones, by way of sheer deregulation.
“Amendments from the US are seeking to end publicly provided services like public pension funds, which are referred to as ‘monopolies’ and to limit public regulation of all financial services,” she said. ”They want to freeze financial regulation at existing levels, which would mean that governments could not respond to new developments like another global financial crisis.”
Earlier this week, US Trade Representative Michael Froman said the TISA deal was already well on its way to being put together.
“The basic framework of the agreement is in place, initial market access offers have been exchanged, and sector-specific work in areas like telecommunications andfinancialservices is in full swing,” Froman said, according to Reuters.
The document published this week by WikiLeaks is dated April 14 — two months before Froman last weighed in on the progress of the negotiations and six months after his officehailed previous re-write to the proposal. Along with representatives from Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey and dozens others, American policy makers will met in Geneva, Switzerland later this month starting June 23 to begin the next round of negotiations.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, meanwhile, remains confined to Ecuador’s embassy in London where two years ago this Thursday he arrived seeking asylum. Assange, 42, is wanted for questioning in Sweden but fears his arrival there would prompt a swift extradition to the US due to his role in exposing American state secrets.
ARMY SPIED ON ACTIVIST'S MEETINGS IN THEIR HOMES, CALL CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TERRORISM
SOURCE: MASS PRIVATE I
An attorney pursuing a lawsuit against alleged domestic United States military spying says during depositions in the case a civilian employee who worked for the Army admitted he was paid to attend activist meetings at private homes in the state of Washington. And a fusion center intelligence employee, who coordinated with the military, also considered civil disobedience to be “terrorism.”The lawsuit is known as Panagacos v. Towery. It accuses the US military of directing John Jacob Towery, who worked for the US Army Force Protection Division at Fort Lewis, to infiltrate a group called the Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) in Olympia and Tacoma, Washington. It also accuses the cities of Olympia and Tacoma of coordinating with the military to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of activists.
Click here to read more.
PMR organized demonstrations from 2006 to 2009 against the “use of civilian ports in Puget Sound for striker vehicles and other military cargo being shipped over to Iraq and then shipped to Pakistan or Afghanistan,” according to Larry Hildes, who is one of the National Lawyers Guild attorneys representing activists targeted by the military.
Nonviolent civil disobedience was a part of some of the demonstrations, and at one demonstration in May 2006, police used pepper spray on demonstrators.
Thomas Rudd, head of Force Protection, is accused of directing Towery to identify activists “in order to facilitate their arrest without probable cause.” Rudd apparently instructed Towery to build friendships and provide reports on what activists were planning, which Rudd could share with government agencies.
Both Towery and Rudd are accused of coordinating with local law enforcement in the state of Washington to “silence” PMR activists.
According to Hildes, Towery admitted during depositions that he had not only been paid by the Army to go to PMR meetings in private homes but was also paid to attend meetings related to actions planned for the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention in 2008.
Chris Adamson, who was the director of a regional intelligence group of the Department of Homeland Security’s Washington Fusion Center and a lieutenant of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, stated in depositions that “civil disobedience is terrorism,” according to Hildes.
He claimed to attorneys that, while he admired Martin Luther King Jr., even what the civil rights movement had done had a “criminal nexus” and “he would have expected them to be investigated as terrorists.”
Hildes said Adamson believed if activists were using up “law enforcement resources with the intent of committing any criminal act,” it was “terrorism.”
Adamson played a key role in having two of the plaintiffs in the case, Brendan Dunn and Jeffery Berryhill, listed in a database as “domestic terrorists.”
Hildes recalled that during a deposition with Colonel Lois Beard, who was one of the commanders in the 42nd Military Police Battalion, she said “of course we’re monitoring the peace movement because they’re anti-military.” They might demonstrate against us so we need to have an “operational awareness of what they are doing.”
Attorneys gave Beard multiple opportunities to change her answer, but she stuck to it. She was one of Towery’s arrest supervisors.
Towery reportedly claimed to NLG attorneys conducting his deposition that the term “anarchist” was used to refer to everyone as a “term of convenience.” Hildes said it was “more convenient to refer to everyone without bothering with whether everyone is anarchists or not or whether they had any potential for violence or not.”
A boss of Towery’s, who Hildes did not specify, said during deposition at least three times, “There are no limits to intelligence sharing to defend the homeland.” Lawyers are calling this one of the most “Dr. Strangelovian” statements they have heard so far in the case.
“All of them have said if someone arrested at an demonstration that was good enough proof of a criminal nexus,” Hildes recalled. “It didn’t matter what the courts did. It didn’t matter if they were ever charged with anything. The fact that they were arrested by the police is good enough. And therefore they receive extra attention and more than likely will be arrested again because their presence indicated that the demonstration was going to be more militant and potentially violent, even though none of these folks ever committed an act of violence.”
Hildes said that attorneys now have admissions from depositions that everything they have said was happening was committed with the “intent of disrupting” demonstrations because of “who our folks were.”
“We want to get that in front of a jury,” Hildes stated.
“There’s clear intent to violate our client’s rights,” he argued. “We’re trying to hold not only Towery and Rudd but the city of Olympia and the city of Tacoma liable because they did most of the arrests and harassment.”
“What we are showing is across all of these lines, there is a culture and policy of going after our folks simply because they were associated with PMR and [Students for a Democratic Society] and were demonstrating against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we’re showing that culture goes up through the Army hierarchy. In fact, Beard admitted to bragging to Army command at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, and at the Pentagon about how successful the intelligence gathering was at disrupting PMR’s ability to ‘achieve their objectives’ and frustrating them.”
The efforts by the military worked. PMR has not engaged in any demonstrations since 2009. Some of the group’s key organizers even chose to leave the state of Washington.
Despite the impact on individuals in the group, the military sees the operation they ran in coordination with local law enforcement as being completely justified.
The U.S. Army, DHS and police believe dissent is Terrorism, America has become a POLICE STATE!
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/06/16/lawyer-military-employee-admitted-he-was-paid-by-army-to-attend-private-activist-meetings-in-homes/
Zero Hedge.....
Iraq 3.0: Obama Sends "Military Advisors" To Iraq; Kerry Tasked With Making Iraq Sects "Rise Above"
Moments ago, president Obama announced what was informally known for days but only today was officially disclose to the public: namely that he’s sending up to 300 American troops to Iraq in the wake of escalating chaos in that nation. Actually: correction, make that "military advisors." Please don't call them troops because otherwise the US public may realize that Obama has just become only the third president in as many decades to launch his own private Iraq war.
Specifically, Obama said that "American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq again... We do not have the ability to simply solve this problem by sending in thousands of troops and committing the kind of blood and treasure that has already been expended."
He is right: this time the fighting will be done by "military advisors" soon to be far more numerous than merely "thousands", operating under the watchful, remote controlled eyes of America's drone army.
As Politico succinctly summarizes, "It’s a politically uncomfortable move for a president who won election in large part due to his opposition to the Iraq War and who has touted the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq in 2011 as one of the key achievements of his presidency."
Naturally, coming from the president who has made the focus of his second term to rule via Executive Orders, this latest escalation would be just that - another unilateral action. Only this time Nancy Pelosi agreed to abdicate Congressional checks and balances on private presidential wars:
Obama added he would consult with Congress as he goes, but did not indicate he would return for another authorization vote.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she and the other congressional leaders who met with Obama at the White House Wednesday told him that he does not need any additional authority to act if the action is being taken in the interests of national security, and that no one in the meeting raised an objection. According to Pelosi, Obama said his lawyers were studying that question, but that she hoped another vote wouldn’t be required.
That was just the beginning. Where things got bizarre, is when Obama said that "we are not looking to control their assets and their energy." The stupidity of this comment hardly deserve a comment: sowhy is Obama going in: as the pro bono mercenary army of an Iraqi president whom as we reported earlier Obama now wants replaced? Or maybe it is just to fight the ISIS rebels that the US has been secretly arming and training across the border in Syria.
But where things got outright surreal is when Obama announced that he’s sending John Kerry to Iraq consultations around a political solution. Kerry's mission? To help resolve 1400 years of infighting, sectarian hatred, violence and animosity and generally assure that, as Obama put it, the next leader will unite the sects and that Iraqi leaders must, wait for it, "rise above their differences."
Just because US Congress, where the left and the right hardly shoot at each other on sight, apparently has been so successful at rising above an ideological divide that has never been wider, it is now Iraq's turn to unite, overcome countless centuries of sectarian hatred, and come in a righteous circle singing Kumbaya. And if they refuse, US "military advisors" on the ground will help them.
That, in a nutshell, is the pretext for the latest US war in Iraq - Obama's own private foray into a conflict that he will no longer be able to blame on "Bush."
West Hindering UN Work on Russia’s Draft Resolution on Ukraine – Moscow
UN Security Council (Archive)
© RIA Novosti. STF. Archive
17:07 19/06/2014
MOSCOW, June 19 (RIA Novosti) – The West is hindering the UN Security Council’s work on a draft resolution on Ukraine and Russia has called on the Council to show its commitment to the peaceful resolution of the country’s crisis, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Thursday.
“Frankly speaking, we are perplexed that many western members of the Security Council are continuing to look for various pretexts to maximally hinder the work on the Russian project, which opens true possibilities in starting the process of settling the situation in Ukraine using political methods through broad national dialogue and holding constitutional reforms that have been needed long ago,” Lukashevich said.
“We call on UN Security Council members to support the Russian draft and therefore prove their commitment to the peaceful resolution of the crisis in Ukraine,” Lukashevich said.
Russia earlier this week submitted a revised draft resolution to the UN Security Council that includes references confirming the commitment of the UN Security Council to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
The draft resolution also takes into consideration comments by UN Security Council member states, and includes changes to the activity of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The document includes parts of two earlier resolutions that Russia circulated calling for humanitarian aid, a ceasefire and a national dialogue in crisis-hit Ukraine.
Amid the rising independence movement in Ukraine’s eastern regions, authorities in Kiev launched a large-scale military operation in mid-April. The operation, which has triggered violent clashes between independence supporters and government soldiers and led to numerous casualties, has repeatedly been condemned by Moscow.
Reason......
Biden Threatens Russia as Ukraine Ceasefire Looks Unlikely
youtube-screencapWell, that didn't last long. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko yesterday announced plans for a ceasefire with the pro-Russian militants who control parts of eastern Ukraine. Fighting has already resumed, and NATO claims that Russia is again building up troops along the Ukrainian border. Vice President Joe Biden today weighed in on the situation.
Biden warned today that the U.S. will "impose further costs on Russia" if the country doesn't rein in the separatists. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a similar threat earlier this week when insurgents shot down a Ukrainian military plane, killing all 49 people on board. The U.S. has been expanding its economic sanctions against Russia since mid-March.
Reuters reports on today's action:
Both Ukrainian government and rebel accounts of the fighting suggested a major battle involving armoured vehicles including tanks. One military source said 4,000 separatists were involved, while rebels sources in Donetsk said Ukrainian infantry supported by 20 tanks and many other armoured vehicles were storming the village of Yampil, about 12 kilometres east of Krasny Liman.A top rebel commander, Igor Strelkov, reported "heavy losses" in equipment and arms among the separatists, faced with a huge superiority in heavy armour on the government side at Yampil."We beat off the first attack and destroyed one tank. But it is difficult to take on 20 tanks. The battle is going on. Our people are holding but we can't rule out that they [government forces] will break through," Strelkov, who is also known as Girkin, said in a video statement. He urged Moscow to "take some measures."
On top of this setback to Poroshenko's peace plan, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen asserts that Russia is only fanning the flames:
I can confirm that we now see a new Russian military buildup — at least a few thousand more Russian troops deployed to the Ukrainian border — and we see troop maneuvers in the neighborhood of Ukraine. … If they're deployed to seal the border and stop the flow of weapons and fighters that would be a positive step. But that's not what we're seeing.
Likewise, last week the Ukrainian government said that several tanks had crossed the border from Russia through a separatist-held checkpoint, a claim that NATO backed up with satellite images. There is evidence that some of the fighters for the so-called people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are actually hired mercenaries from Chechnya andIngushetia.
Good morning, TGIF.
ReplyDeleteNice move in the PM's yesterday, but any move like that makes me wonder who knows what. Also wondering how high this move goes. I guess it could be the start of the Chinese unwind mentioned on ZH. Their reasoning sounded plausible.
You guys and gals have a great day.
Happy Friday ! Gold and silver does seem to acting in a manner consistent with ZH's theorem - let's see what happens moving forward !
ReplyDeleteIraq clusterfuck continues - US in a box if it insists on PM Maliki's departure for military strikes - he just will dig his heels deeper in the ground and refuse to go . Then what does the US do ?
Stay tuned ! Have a great day !