I got a lot of letters from folks this week about an online column for Forbes written by a self-proclaimed Ayn Rand devotee named Harry Binswanger (if that's a nom de plume, it's not bad, although I might have gone for "Harry Kingbanger" or "Harry Wandwanker"). The piece had the entertainingly provocative title, "Give Back? Yes, It's Time for the 99% to Give Back to the 1%" and contained a number of innovatively slavish proposals to aid the beleaguered and misunderstood rich, including a not-kidding-at-all plan to exempt anyone who makes over a million dollars from income taxes.
You know that home Wi-Fi network you have? The one with the super-complicated password you came up with to keep your neighbors from jacking your connection?
Chances are, Google knows that password.
If you've ever logged on to your network with an Android device, or even if it was just a friend logging on just once, chances are Google has your password stored in their servers. In fact, it's very possible that Google knows just about every Wi-Fi password in the world.
It's not a secret, exactly, as Michael Horowitz at Computer World points out in a recent blog post. The issue has been covered by several prominent blogs, but during the current privacy backlash against tech companies, the collection of millions of Wi-Fi passwords has mostly flown under the radar.
But it's a notable issue. As Horowitz points out, an estimate 748 million Android phones will be sold in 2013 (a figure that does not include tablets). And most of these devices are backing up Wi-Fi passwords as part of their default settings.
"Many (probably most) of these Android phones and tablets are phoning home to Google, backing up Wi-Fi passwords along with other assorted settings," he writes. "And, although they have never said so directly, it is obvious that Google can read the passwords."
This has been the default setting for Wi-Fi passwords since version 2.2 of the Android operation system. It's been presented as a positive feature for users, one that makes it easier to save data and configure a new phone. But for those who don't want the feature, it can be tricky to change. Depending on which version of the Android platform you have, you either have to go to "Backup my Data" or "Backup and Reset" to do the necessary configuration.
But it's not just your home Wi-Fi account. Android phones are set to automatically remember the passwords of any Wi-Fi network according to the Register:
"The list of Wi-Fi networks and passwords stored on a device is likely to extend far beyond a user's home, and include hotels, shops, libraries, friends' houses, offices and all manner of other places. Adding this information to the extensive maps of Wi-Fi access points built up over years by Google and others, and suddenly fandroids face a greater risk to their privacy if this data is scrutinised by outside agents.
These revelations are troubling for privacy advocates who fear all this information is ripe for government cherry picking if any U.S. intelligence agency were to compel Google to give up information on one of its users. As Micah Lee of the Electronic Frontier Foundation blogged, its reasonable to expect that these passwords are not secure in Google's servers, readable by anyone.
"[T]he passwords are in plaintext, too," Lee writes. "When you format an Android phone and set it up on first run, after you login to your Google account and restore your backup, it immediately connects to wifi using a saved password. There’s no sort of password hash that your Android phone could send your router to authenticate besides the password itself."
It's a serious concern for the many who've suddenly become more conscious of online privacy issues in the wake of NSA leaker Edward Snowden's revelations about the PRISM program for monitoring and collecting data. But Google is hardly the only company backing up such information while trying to keep users in the dark.
As cryptographer Matthew Green proved with a simple experiment, Apple is storing user iMessages without user password or device key protection. Similarly, files stored on Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive are readable as well. But Horowitz says Wi-Fi passwords present a critical vulnerability.
When contacted by ArsTechnica about this issue, a Google spokesperson responded by highlighting the convenience of automatic backup.
"Our optional ‘Backup my data’ feature makes it easier to switch to a new Android device by using your Google Account and password to restore some of your previous settings. This helps you avoid the hassle of setting up a new device from scratch. At any point, you can disable this feature, which will cause data to be erased. This data is encrypted in transit, accessible only when the user has an authenticated connection to Google and stored at Google data centers, which have strong protections against digital and physical attacks.”
The rise of Al Qaeda in Syria and the predictable bloodbath that followed is the documented work of US, Israel, & Saudi Arabia Tens of thousands of deaths, devastated cities, and the scattering of terrified Syrian minorities add up to a catastrophe that has unfolded in Syria over the last 2 years.
International organizations including the UN call it the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century, and despite this, have put little effort into tracking down the actual genesis of the conflict, the key players perpetuating the violence, and in prescribing the obvious solutions to this conflict.
With a recent initiative by Russia and Syria blunting the West’s pro-war drive, Western propagandists have attempted to reassert their crumbling narrative regarding the conflict, past, present, and future.
The Genesis of Syria’s Conflict
We are told by Western politicians and Western media houses that the conflict in Syria began with a spontaneous “peaceful,” “pro-democracy” uprising influenced by similar demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt. We are told that these peaceful protests were brutally crushed by the Syrian government and resulted in the militarization of the so-called “opposition.”
This is a verified lie.
In an April 2011 AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, admitted that [emphasis added]:
“US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years [starting in 2009] to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.”The report went on to admit that the US (emphasis added) “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world.A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt,Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.”
Not only were the protests in Syria planned, funded, and directed by the US State Department, years before the so-called “Arab Spring” began, but so were the alleged protests that “triggered” events in Syria – namely similarly engineered protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and the violent US-led subversion carried out in Libya.
What’s more disturbing is that the US-engineered “protests” were not designed to overthrow targeted governments, but instead to serve as a smokescreen for similarly pre-planned armed subversion. As early as 2007, under then President George Bush, the arming, funding, and otherwise supporting of sectarian extremists across the Middle East to undermine Lebanon, Syria, and Iran was put into motion.
“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”
Six years later, it could not be more obvious that indeed, militants aligned to Al Qaeda have been armed, equipped, and unleashed in an unprecedented wave of US-Saudi-Israeli state-sponsored terrorism against Syria and neighboring Lebanon. With safe havens in NATO-member Turkey, US-occupied Jordan, and pouring in from Saudi-friendly regions of Lebanon, it could not be clearer who is behind the rise and perpetuation of Al Qaeda in Syria.
And even in Hersh’s 2007 report, “The Redirection,” it is made clear that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had already begun financing and preparing the sectarian extremist “Muslim Brotherhood” in Syria for the upcoming sectarian bloodbath the West had on the drawing board. Hersh would report:
“[Walid] Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.”
The article would continue by explaining how already in 2007 US and Saudi backing had begun benefiting the Brotherhood:
“There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.”
And yet today, the West feigns ignorance to what they claim is the inexplicable, unfortunate, “unforeseeable” rise and perpetuation of Al Qaeda and their defacto political arm, the sectarian Muslim Brotherhood.
Who’s Behind Al Qaeda in Syria
Al Qaeda in Syria constitutes the summation of the so-called “opposition.” Despite rhetoric of the contrary, all credible reports actually citing evidence, including sources from across the West, have determined that Al Qaeda is the “opposition.”
Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.
The West has admitted throughout the conflict that it, along with its regional axis, including Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, have been funneling in hundreds of millions of dollars, equipment, and thousands of tons of arms at a time to militants operating in and along Syria’s borders.
In the Telegraph’s March 2013 article titled, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’,” it is reported:
It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November
The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.
The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.
British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.
With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.
The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.
And now, the US fully admits that the CIA and US State Department are openly arming, funding, and equipping fighters in Syria. The Washington Post’s September 2013 article, “U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels,” admits:
The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.
Clearly, based on previous admissions, claiming this is a “major escalation” is a verifiable lie. The US has already sent the total summation of material support to terrorists operating in Syria over the past 2-3 years it could possibly muster – recent admissions are solely for public consumption. The failure of this material support to turn the tide in the fighting is precisely what triggered the recent fabrications of chemical weapons use in Syria and the subsequent, Iraq-esque attempt to justify direct US military intervention.
One must wonder, how if the US has been funding “moderate rebel groups,” to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and arming them with thousands of tons of weaponry at a time, has Al Qaeda still emerged as the prominent militant group inside Syria? How has Al Qaeda managed to raise the funds and execute this unprecedented logistical feat of a multinational invasion of Syria if the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and Qatar are solely funding “moderates?” Bake sales and carpooling?
Clearly there were never any “moderates.” And just as was plotted under Bush in 2007, extremists – Al Qaeda extremists – were intentionally armed, funded, and funneled into Syria to destabilize the nation through a sectarian bloodbath starting in 2011 under the Obama administration and callously portrayed as a “pro-democracy” uprising “brutally crushed” by the “evil Assad regime.”
The US’ direct, premeditated support of sectarian extremists starting in 2007 and continuing up to and including today, not only solves the “mystery” of Al Qaeda’s perpetuation in Syria, it also exposes the fraud of Western democracy – where two diametrically opposed presidents carried out a singular geopolitical agenda, merely behind the cover of their respective rhetorical right/left political platforms. The American people were never really given a choice despite the illusion of “elections” and “political representation.”
Israel’s Role: The Silent Accomplice and Unilateral Warmonger
Perhaps the most dangerous, and yet-to-be-played card in the West’s hand, is Israel. Israel poses as a silent observer of the Syrian conflict - taking military action unilaterally in what it tenuously claims is preemptive “self-defense.” In reality, it is part of a joint US-Saudi-Israeli axis that has sought to undermine and overthrow Syria and Iran since at least 2007.
Israel is playing a very specific role to keep it isolated from the West and its Arab partners in the region for as long as possible – both to lend extremist forces operating in and around Syria legitimacy they otherwise would not have with overt Israeli backing, as well as to portray Israel as the “victim” of staged or intentionally provoked attacks from within Syria, Lebanon and even Iran. Such “victimization” would allow Israel to retaliate and give Western nations desperately needed justification to also intervene and save their failed proxy war.
This is not mere speculation, but rather a conclusion based on documented policy papers produced by the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution, one of many think-tanks engineering US-Saudi-Israeli policy.
One such policy paper, the 2009 Brookings ”Which Path to Persia?“ report, explicitly states the compartmentalized role Israel would serve in planned subversion and aggression versus Iran and how Israel could offer the West a “foot in the door” to wider military intervention in the region. It states [emphasis added]:
“…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) ” -page 84-85, Which Path to Perisa?, Brookings Institution.
And:
“Israel appears to have done extensive planning and practice for such a strike already, and its aircraft are probably already based as close to Iran as possible. as such, Israel might be able to launch the strike in a matter of weeks or even days, depending on what weather and intelligence conditions it felt it needed. Moreover, since Israel would have much less of a need (or even interest) in securing regional support for the operation, Jerusalem probably would feel less motivated to wait for an Iranian provocation before attacking. In short, Israel could move very fast to implement this option if both Israeli and American leaders wanted it to happen.
However, as noted in the previous chapter, the airstrikes themselves are really just the start of this policy. Again, the Iranians would doubtless rebuild their nuclear sites. They would probably retaliate against Israel, and they might retaliate against the United States, too (which might create a pretext for American airstrikes or even an invasion).” -page 91, Which Path to Perisa?, Brookings Institution.
Similar calls to use Israel, and its regional partner, NATO-member Turkey, to conduct similar provocations versus Syria have been made by Brookings more recently in a report titled, “Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.”
In the report, Brookings describes how Israeli efforts in the south of Syria, combined with Turkey’s aligning of vast amounts of weapons and troops along its border to the north, could help effect violent regime change in Syria:
“In addition, Israel’s intelligence services have a strong knowledge of Syria, as well as assets within the Syrian regime that could be used to subvert the regime’s power base and press for Asad’s removal. Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. Advocates argue this additional pressure could tip the balance against Asad inside Syria, if other forces were aligned properly.” -page 6, Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.
Israel then, still maintaining this posture and attempting to distance itself from the current political struggle over Syria may still be planning intentional or even staged provocations. A recent warning from Russia involving a false flag attack carried out by terrorists inside Syria against Israel provides a very plausible scenario that would give Israel rhetorical justification to strike Syria in hopes of starting a wider war involving pre-positioned Western forces now on standby.
American “Exceptionalism:” The rotting fruits of dead empires, Hitler’s Germany, and racist British imperialism
In a recent speech made by US President Barack Obama, he claimed that the United States was “exceptional,” echoing the delusions of grandeur of corporate-financier interests and the think-tank policy makers in their orbit. “American Exceptionalism,” proclaims that the US is somehow different than all other nations, and by inference, better. It gives the United States the ability to circumvent international law it itself has contrived, to do as it wills both within and beyond its borders, because it “knows better” than the rest of the world.
Its standing alone on the issue of Syria, with even the American public rejecting wholly the concept of another war based on clearly fabricated evidence, shows just where the wellspring of “American Exceptionalism” lies – among the corporate financier elite who invented it.
It is a revolting concept that echos the racist imperialism of Britannia and the unhinged belligerence of Nazi Germany, used to justify the violation of human rights through the subjugation by invasion, occupation and wholesale exploitation of other nations. It seeks to justify what evidence, reason, logic, and global consensus has otherwise opposed, and is the last rhetorical resort for a crumbling empire unable to justify its actions any other way.
A nation basing its actions upon the world stage through such justifications is a dangerous one that depends on the illusion of its superiority. As that illusion crumbles, it will seek to reassert it through increasingly desperate and abhorrent mechanisms. This includes false flag attacks to trigger wars where it can justify the flexing of its military might, and thus scare the international community back in line.
With the West pledging to continue the arming and funding of terrorists in Syria, thus jeopardizing the safety of UN inspectors who will eventually attempt to survey, secure, and neutralize Syria’s chemical weapons, we can see there is no genuine intent to end the violence in Syria with anything less than regime change in favor of Western interests. The goal was never humanitarian in nature, only the propaganda used to perpetuate the conflict was “humanitarian.”
A nation that would intentionally create a humanitarian catastrophe to then use as a pretext for further war is a nation exceptional only in regards to the depths of its own depravity. Like their historical predecessors citing “superiority” and “exceptionalism,” the interests driving America now are destined for their own ignominious place upon the scrap heap of history. The question is, how much damage will they cause between now and then?
Anonymousis having a Hamlet-like crisis of conscience overOpSyria, the group’s operation to hack and expose the Syrian government and its semi-official hacking team, theSyrian Electronic Army (SEA). Some Anonymous members fear there’s significant chance the operation will end up costing actual human lives.
That's because the group claims to have proof of the identities of five key players in the Syrian Electronic Army. Exposing those people, particularly if they happen to be located outside of Syria, could mean their targeting and eventual death at the hands of anti-Assad forces, whether the rebel Free Syrian Army or a foreign government that involves itself in the Syrian civil war.
Naturally, we can’t independently confirm the names, and the group hasn’t provided us with its evidence. But OpSyria seem convinced they’ve dug up the SEA’s real identities, a disparate group of hackers they claim are spread out as far as Romania and Russia.
We asked blackplans, who acts as OpSyria’s press contact, why it hasn’t published those names yet. The answer is nuanced, and complicated. Here is what the OpSyria team believes about the evidence, and why they’re not sharing it—yet.
We are, oddly, concerned about the moral implications. Even though Vice and [security journalist Brian] Krebs seem less concerned. We have identified the leader of the SEA, the rabbit hole is deep. Doxing someone in a warzone. Vice identified one of the leaders, but the main force behind the SEA is someone else. Syrian_34G13, this is why he doesn't talk to the media, even though he is the most tech savvy and western influenced member. We have evidence that he not only has ties to the U.S., but that he used to work for a major corporation before 2011. We have a secondhand account of him meeting with Assad in 2011, we are investigating this angle. The source seems legitimate.
DD: So, you’re convinced they’re a government paramilitary group? From inside Syria or from Russia, as rumored? And what can you tell me about the betrayal you referenced here?
There are a few Russian members, and there are some paid members, [and, according toscreenshots, a fair number of spammers] but there are a core with Syrian government links.Saqerbetrayed the SEA in 2011, sided with anti-government forces, you can seehis defacementsand tweets abruptly end. We have found members discussing this. Notice the SEA has gone a little quiet, refuses to answer any of my tweets. Odd, no?
DD: It could be a death sentence, couldn’t it?
They don't know what to do, members still in Syria cannot back out now. Their fates are tied to those of Assad now.
Still, we have to ask ourselves, do we risk their actual blood on our hands? It is the definition ofserious business.
DD: Yes, and not something everyone thinks about when they want to join the cool kids in Anonymous. I'd be surprised if Deeb [the man identified by Vice's Motherboard as the leader of the SEA] feels safe.
There is much internal debate on that issue. We are still digging, it is very much an ongoing project. We have pages and pages of information.
Groups claiming affiliation with the online hacker collectiveAnonymous launched a coordinated assault on Israeli websites Wednesday in an action timed to commemorate the 12th anniversary of 9/11.
"Dear corrupt governments of the world, it has come to our attention that unfortunately we see on a regular basis our Palestinian brothers and sisters being treated unjustly,” said an unidentified spokesman in a video posted to YouTube earlier this month slamming Israeli leaders for the country's settlement policy and treatment of Palestinian citizens. "If you will not bend to public opinion and rethink your political courses … Anonymous will attack where we think it will hurt the most in what is the only thing that dictates the action of world leaders: economics."
Using the Twitter hashtag #OpIsraelReborn, a nod to a previous hacking offensive against the Jewish state earlier this year that coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day, a coalition led by the group AnonGhost has called on sympathizers to take down or deface the website Israeli government agencies as well as businesses based in Israel.
"The special thing in it is that we gonna strikes [sic] this time some big central servers of Israels and it will harm them economically," AnonGhost founder The Mauritania Attacker told the Hackers Post in a recent interview. "We are targeting Israel cyber because they didn’t understand yet that there is no state Called [sic] Israel it is Palestine."
Middle Eastern tech site Arab Crunch noted that the website ofIsrael Defense was forced offline on Wednesday morning by a DDOS (denial of service) attack. The webpage Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was briefly brought down in a similar action, but was soon brought back online.
While AnonGhost took the lead, other groups carried out their own actions. For example, the website of Israel-based Saifan Precision Instruments was hacked by a group calling themselves the Indonesian Cyber Army. They replaced the company’s website with a page that blasted Queen's "We Will Rock You" and advised the site's administrator to "please patch your system."
Similarly, Birthright Forum, a portal for young people taking Birthright trips, was also brought down and replaced with a page bearing information about the hack.
In total, AnonGhost claimed that over 400 websites had been either taken down or defaced in the operation.
In addition, hundreds of Israeli Internet users have reported slowdowns in their service that the government's National Cyber Bureau confirmed to Haaretz are related to the online attacks.
Shlomo Eisenberg, an Israeli cyber intelligence expert told Haaretz that the original #OpIsrael attack, which was also publicized by AnonGhost, was neither as successful or as sophisticated as initially threatened. "AnonGhost's high media presence attracts 'Script Kiddies'—youths who use automatic tools to attack," Eisenberg insisted, but warned that "these may be joined by programmers with better skills."
#OpIsraelReborn is only the latest installment in a back-and-forth hacking contest between Internet denizens claiming to represent each side of the Israeli-Palestinian debate. Following the original #OpIsrael, a group of Israeli hackers countered with their own #OpIslam counteroffensive. AnonGhost responded with a similar attack, #OpIsraelReloaded in June.
Owing to the amorphous, non-hierarchical nature of Anonymous, it's no surprise some of its associated hacktivists have spoken out against #OpIsrael. "This needs to be killed with fire," tweeted Anonymous activist @blackplans, who called those participating in the operation "Jihadi interlopers" and noted that many Anonymous-affiliated groups haven't been actively trumpeting their involvement.
Drew's Pizzeria in Champaign, Ill., is well known around Big 10 country for its ability to make a crappy pizza seem charming and almost delectable, but recently, the shop, located just down the road from the University of Illinois, has taken on another likeness or calling card: being the pizza shop around Big 10 country that's using Twitter to promote rabid displays of chauvinism and sexual exploitation.
As has become evident through a Craigslist post and a series of tweets sent from the now-defunct @DrewsPizzaCU account, the shop has spent the past two weeks promoting a deal in which women will be given a free pizza pie if they lift up their shirts and show the guys behind the counter their breasts.
That's right, ladies, according to what's most likely a team of pimple-faced stoners working the late night shift at an area pizza joint in the middle of America, your breasts are now worth $10.99 of baked dough and melted cheese.
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for the fact that they're idiots who decided to use the shop's very public Twitter account to promote the fact that they were offering such a crude deal.
You will be amazed by the things that a dying military veteran wrote in a letter to the two U.S. Senators that are representing his state. Like so many other Americans, this elderly vet is absolutely disgusted by the corruption and the incompetence that he sees coming out of Washington. In the past, I have also written about how $1.4 billion is spent on the Obamas each year and about how Congress is living the high life at our expense, but in this letter this dying military veteran puts things much more eloquently than I did. The name of the vet that wrote this letter is Bill Schoonover, and it was written on April 3rd, 2013. Even though his representatives in Congress will probably never take the time to read this letter, I think that you will agree that the emotions that Mr. Schoonover has expressed in this letter are shared by millions upon millions of other Americans all across the country…
Dear Senator:
I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt important – honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.
Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year! Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.
Last year, the president spent an estimated 1.4 $billion on himself and his family. The vice president spends $millions on hotels. They have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives and Senate have become America ‘s answer to the Saudi royal family. You have become the “perfumed princes and princesses” of our country.
In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. “Obama Care,” a bill which no more than a handful of senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.
You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the “one percenters,” consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).
You understand very well the only two rules you need to know – (1) How to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote ) who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called “safety net” has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps – pretty much all Democrat voters – and the program is absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight?
I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second oldest profession (politics), bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.
As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 – 1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” I’m only guessing that this applies to the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?
While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.
As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me “You’ll just have to take a pill,” while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.
The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares. This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the chance to read one person’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its senators and representatives.
I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $17 trillion national debt for which your children and ours, and your grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up the tab.
My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy this country I deeply love and put it so far in debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power. For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.
Sincerely,
Bill Schoonover
Pretty incredible, eh?
Mr. Schoonover may not get to live through the horror that the full implementation of Obamacare will bring, but most of the rest of us will get to experience it.
As CNSNews.com recently noted, the federal regulations governing Obamacare are already more than 8 times longer than the entire Gutenberg Bible. We are heading toward an unprecedented bureaucratic nightmare…
Since March 2010, when President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and its companion Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA), the administration has published in the Federal Register 109 final regulations governing how Obamacare will be implemented.
These regulations add up to 10,516 pages in the Federal Register—or more than eight times as many pages as there are in the Gutenberg Bible, which has 642 two-sided leaves or 1,286 pages.
And health insurance premiums are already starting to go through the roof at the same time that many Americans are having their hours cut back at work as a result of Obamacare.
We are seeing a fundamental transformation of the workforce, and it is all thanks to Obama. Billionaire Mort Zuckerman made the following statement on the McLaughlin Group this past weekend…
“Part-time employment is going to grow from 25 percent of the workforce to close to 50 percent of the workforce in part because of the problems of healthcare obligations.”
Can you survive on a part-time income?
In the years ahead you might have to.
And of course the Republicans are doing nothing to stop the implementation of Obamacare even though they have had opportunity after opportunity…
“When the Democrats passed Obamacare, every single Republican in the House and the Senate voted against it. Every single Republican in the House and Senate vowed to do something about it,” said L. Brent Bozell III, the chairman of ForAmerica.org. He noted that Republicans took control of the House in 2010 by campaigning against Obamacare.
“Sean, the problem is, they have done nothing about it,” Bozell told Sean Hannity Monday night. And while Republican lawmakers talk about all the things they have done to defund and repeal Obamacare, “they have done nothing of substance,” Bozell said.
Our politicians don’t want any part of Obamacare themselves, but they are more than happy to force it on the rest of us.
The video posted below is less than 2 minutes long, but I think that it is one of the best videos about Obamacare that I have seen. I think that you will agree that it is extremely funny…
So what do you think about all of this?
Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…
Few major mainstream American news outlets exposed the sordid details of a 2009 United Nations (UN) fact finding report that revealed how Israel’s military illegally aimed chemical missiles at a United Nations Relief & Work Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees in a 22-day invasion of the Gaza strip that began in 2008 called “Operation Cast Lead.”
As the U.S. and world media watch to learn if claims that President Barack Obama will execute a military strike against Syria, without a vote of Congress or the support of the UN, the same media outlets are burying information that suggests preparation for war could be premature.
Little media attention is being paid to claims from a UN commission that Syrian rebels, not government soldiers under President Bashar al-Assad’s control, were responsible for recent chemical weapons attacks that killed over 300 Syrians.
“During our investigation for crimes against humanity and war crimes, we collect some witness testimony that has made to appear that some chemical weapons were used. In particular, nerve gas,” said Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
”What appears to our investigation is that this was used by the opposition, by the rebels. We have no indication at all that the Syria government have used chemical weapons.”
What’s also questionable is why Obama has drawn a “line in the sand” over highly questionable allegations that Syrian soldiers used chemical weapons when the Israeli military was proven, and officials have admitted, to using chemical warfare to attack a United Nations relief compound. The facility provided shelter and medical attention to Palestinian refugees in 2009.
Cleveland Challenger obtained a copy of the 575 page 2009 UN report that a fact finding mission headed by ex-South African Judge Richard Goldstone prepared after an investigation of the events surrounding Operation Cast Lead.
The Israeli missile and ground assault on the Gaza strip began on December 27, 2008 and ended on January 18, 2009. The attack resulted in an estimated 1100 to 14oo Palestinian deaths. 13 Israeli soldiers were killed. Four died from friendly fire.
The invasion was stimulated by Israel’s claims that rockets were being fired at Israeli’s by Hamas militants. Three Israeli civilians and one soldier were killed by Hamas’ rockets in the days leading up to the assault that led to an estimated $1.3 billion in damage to Palestinian property and businesses.
Israel’s military was also accused by the UN fact finding mission of violating war protocols by using Palestinians as human shields, murdering unarmed civilians, destroying water and sewer treatment plants, and wiping out food supplies and production facilities to starve the population.
The UN commission Goldstone led met extensively with Palestinian officials, victims and survivors after the Israeli military assault. The interviews and investigation led to the discovery of information and evidence that Israel’s military deployed missiles containing “white phosphorous” against civilians and the hospital.
White phosphorous is a highly-combustible chemical agent that burns on contact with air. In humans it burns upon contact with skin and creates very deep tissue wounds.
It can also cause death when inhaled. It’s customary use has been as a “smoke screen” although it is illegal to use against civilians in times of war. The UN commission found Israel’s use of the burning agent against the hospital to be particularly deplorable.
When first questioned about the white phosphorous missile allegations that struck the UNRWA compound, the Israeli military’s first response was to issue a denial. On January 15, 2009, three days before the attack ended, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the chemical weapon attack a “grave error” and allegedly apologized to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.
On the same day, Israeli President Shimon Peres apologized for the attack, but added the false claim that Israeli troops were being fired upon from inside the facility.
Did you know that a 3rd building fell on 9-11? That bill board is today over Times Square. It was placed there through donations to a campaign called Rethink 9/11.
In fact, that group has placed posters and signs across the world, from Australia, to Canada, from San Francisco to right here in New York City.
So what is Rethink 9/11? Wouldn't only a fringe group of people would still question 9/11? Perhaps not, because today we will tell you about new polling that shows a majority of those polled either question the official 9/11 story or don’t believe it at all. Is that possible?
Saudi Arabia has sent death-row inmates from several nations to fight against the Syrian government in exchange for commuting their sentences, the Assyrian International News Agency reports.
Citing what it calls a "top secret memo" in April from the Ministry of Interior, AINA says the Saudi offered 1,239 inmates a pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, which were were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom. Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, a minority Shiite sect.
According to an English translation of the memo, besides Saudis, the prisoners included Afghans, Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Somalis, Sudanese, Syrians and Yemenis. All faced "execution by sword" for murder, rape or drug smuggling.
Russia, which has backed Assad, objected to the bargain and allegedly threatened to bring the issue to the United Nations, said an unidentified former Iraqi member of Parliament who confirmed the memo's authenticity, says AINA, an independent outlet.
"Initially Saudi Arabia denied the existence of this program. But the testimony of the released prisoners forced the Saudi government to admit, in private circles, its existence," AINA writes.
"The Saudis agreed to stop their clandestine activities and work towards finding a political solution on condition that knowledge of this program would not be made public."
US White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough made the unbelievable admission this week that Western interests have concluded Syria carried out an alleged chemical attack in eastern Damascus based on "common sense" rather than "irrefutable evidence." Slate's "White House: “Common-Sense Test” And Not “Irrefutable” Evidence Hold Assad Responsible," states [emphasis added]:
White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough went on the Sunday talk shows to drum up support for what he called a “targeted, limited effort” that will change “the momentum on the battle field” in Syria. Yet he also acknowledged on CNN that the evidence that ties Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus that allegedly killed 1,429 people has more to do with a “common-sense test” rather than “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence.”
And while McDonogh, and his collaborators both in Washington and abroad, claim their planned assault on Syria is not a repeat of Iraq in terms of scale, it is clear that in terms of deception it is.
Slate would continue by stating [emphasis added]:
Now do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence? This is not a court of law and intelligence does not work that way.” Meanwhile, McDonough also emphasized on NBC that “nobody is rebutting the intelligence; nobody doubts the intelligence.”
The answer highlights how the White House still has not shown the public a concrete piece of intelligence that directly connect Assad’s regime to the alleged chemical weapons attack, as the Associated Press points out in a detailed story.
The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence - no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications - connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.
In its absence, Damascus and its ally Russia have aggressively pushed another scenario: that rebels carried out the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Neither has produced evidence for that case, either. That's left more questions than answers as the U.S. threatens a possible military strike.
What is also clear is the documented conspiracy to overthrow the Syrian government and destabilize neighboring Iran and Lebanon with a sectarian bloodbath by directly funding, arming, and otherwise providing material support for sectarian extremist groups aligned with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and who hold allegiance to Al Qaeda. This conspiracy began under the Bush administration as early as 2007 and has continued onward throughout the Obama administration.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection," stated (emphasis added):
"To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."
More recently, it would be revealed that the United States, the United Kingdom, and its regional axis including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have sent millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weaponry to a predominantly Al Qaeda led terrorist force operating inside and along Syria's borders.
It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November.
The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.
The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria's neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came "from several other European countries including Britain", without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.
British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.
These are the same extremists drawn from Al Qaeda, the United States has warned for well over a decade might obtain chemical weapons and use them against a civilian population to achieve their goals. This points the finger directly toward Western-backed terrorists regarding the recent alleged chemical attack in Damascus, not the Syrian government. The attack would enable the United States and its military axis to take a more active and direct role in supporting these terrorist forces who have this past year suffered tremendous irreversible loses against a prevailing Syrian Arab Army.
"Common sense" points the finger in the opposite direction White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough has suggested. Without any actual evidence coming from a nation who has waged war habitually on fabricated justification, and who is clearly involved in a long-standing conspiracy to overthrow the Syrian government, and who is responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe it feigns interest in now ending, the world has understandably and universally opposed this latest act of unprovoked military aggression.
Unfortunately, the decision on whether or not the US goes ahead anyway with another act of unprovoked war and 21st century conquest, does not hinge on real common sense or the will of the American people who categorically oppose any military operation, but rather on the compromised, corporate-financier purchased US Congress. In Congress, astoundingly, the lack of evidence is not at the center of debate, but rather what the consequences of America's proposed military assault might be, and whether the assault should be, in fact, expanded.
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