Assad's Secretive Cyber Force

Assad's Secretive Cyber Force

By Margaret Weiss

April 12, 2012

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3478

Cyber bullets are bullets nonetheless. And bullets kill.

For the past year, the Assad regime's brutal repression of the opposition has received extensive coverage in the mainstream media. Less well reported, however, has been the regime's equally comprehensive crackdown on its internet opponents. Syria has a long and distinguished record of cyber repression, earning a Reporters Without Borders "Enemy of the Internet"

sobriquet three years running. And since the revolution started, with the technological assistance of Iran and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hizballah, the operational tempo of the pro-regime Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has increased dramatically. With no end in sight to the fighting on the ground, the cyber battles promise to escalate.

Regime Tactics

One of the regime's techniques is to slow internet transmission speeds and periodically shut down the internet completely before a major demonstration in order to hamper the ability of anti-regime protestors to organize.

Opposition activists become unable to upload photos or videos or to provide live coverage of events on the ground. It has been reported that the internet and mobile phones were shut down during the regime's recent assault in Baba Amr. Meanwhile, internet intelligence company Renesys reports that on June 3, 2011, two-thirds of Syrian networks were shut down, presumably in an attempt to prevent opposition activists from organizing following the regime's brutal murder of thirteen-year-old Hamza al-Khatib. Syria's internet depends on one major internet service provider, or ISP, the state-owned Syrian Telecom Establishment, making a shutdown relatively easy.

(In contrast, internet traffic in Egypt passes through multiple ISPs, which is why the attempted shutdown during the early days of the Tahrir Square demonstrations was unsuccessful.)

The Syrian regime has also used other cyber techniques to undermine the opposition. During the early days of the uprising, opposition activists on Twitter used the hashtag "#Syria" to spread information about the demonstrations and the violent government crackdown that ensued. Within a couple of months, however, #Syria became bombarded by pro-regime messages, threats, and verbal attacks. Syrian intelligence agents were thought to be behind the spamming. In addition, spam bots -- accounts set up to send spam

-- were created to barrage #Syria at fixed intervals with topics ranging from photography to pro-regime news and threats against opposition tweeters.

Pro-regime elements also used a cyber technique referred to as "man-in-the-middle," whereby an attacker controls a victim's communications by intercepting incoming and outgoing messages, unbeknownst to the victim.

In May 2011, Infowar Monitor reported that Syrians who logged onto the secure HTTPS version of Facebook fell victim to man-in-the-middle attacks by a perpetrator -- thought to be the Syrian Telecom Ministry -- who substituted Facebook's security certificate with a fake one. The attacker was thus able to access their Facebook accounts and direct all communications.

The Mysterious SEA

Although the SEA is the regime's prime weapon in the cyber crackdown, the extent of the group's ties to the regime is uncertain. The domain name for the SEA's website was registered by the Syrian Computer Society, which Bashar al-Assad headed in the 1990s before becoming president. Assad affirmed his continued support of the SEA in a June 2011 speech: "Young people...have proven themselves to be an active power. There is the electronic army which has been a real army in virtual reality."

The SEA's focus is two-pronged: promoting a pro-Assad narrative about events inside Syria and opposing anti-regime activists. The SEA defaces what it perceives as hostile news and opposition sites, and has barraged Facebook pages belonging to no less than the European Union, President Obama, the State Department, Oprah Winfrey, Human Rights Watch, and Aljazeera with pro-Assad comments. (The SEA explained that Winfrey's page was targeted to influence U.S. public opinion.) The SEA has also targeted Israeli websites, many of which contain no political content. One of the SEA's first Facebook pages (the group has created numerous pages, only to have them removed by

Facebook) offered supporters software to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against "enemy" websites. In such an attack, the offending website is bombarded with huge amounts of data, preventing legitimate traffic from accessing the site and eventually causing it to crash. Websites attacked in this way include a Syrian news forum, a UK town council, a number of Italian online stores, an Italian tourism guide, and a Syrian singer living in Egypt who expressed support for the revolution. A Facebook page called the Syrian Hackers School, which appears to have been removed, provided pro-regime activists with basic software that could easily be tailored to their own purposes.

The more than 100 websites defaced by the SEA in June 2011 resolve to just

15 IP addresses: by exploiting one vulnerability on a shared server the hackers were able to breach the websites en masse. Moreover, because many of the sites targeted by the SEA contained no political or Syria-related content whatsoever, they were likely attacked simply because they were easy targets. Furthermore, Infowar Monitor pointed out that the SEA released information about hacked Israeli sites gradually, likely in an effort to create excitement among its fans and avoid having to work to find new vulnerable sites. Lastly, the DoS software posted to Facebook by the SEA was very basic and allowed opposition activists to easily convert it for their own purposes.

Effectiveness of Cyber Crackdown

The number of arrests, tortures, or deaths of opposition activists that have occurred as a result of the regime's cyber activities is difficult to determine. But the crackdown is more sophisticated than similar efforts in other countries, such as Egypt. The SEA and other pro-Assad activists are familiar with the social media sites and tools regularly employed by the opposition and have effectively targeted opposition members. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, eight journalists in Syria have been killed so far in 2011 and 2012. Others have been arrested and threatened or tortured and then released; still others have gone missing. It is widely believed that American journalist Marie Colvin was killed in Homs thanks to Iranian software that pinpointed her satellite phone transmissions.

Conclusion

The cyber crackdown remains an underreported aspect of the violence in Syria, but it is an issue worthy of more attention. Not only do these regime activities hurt the opposition, they limit visibility into what is really happening on the ground and undermine efforts to build a stronger international consensus on Syria.

Going forward, the United States should do more to prevent American products from reaching the Syrian regime. For example, it is known that the regime used California-based Blue Coat Technology's internet filtering technology to prevent access to opposition websites. At a minimum, the administration should take a cue from the European Parliament, which recently passed a resolution placing controls on the export of dual-use products, including those that can be used to violate human rights. Representative Chris Smith

(R-NJ) has already sponsored a bill that would regulate the export of this technology. Additionally Washington should follow the lead of the EU and the UK, and impose sanctions on Syrians and Iranians who are intimately involved in the cyber war. Absent direct U.S. action on the ground or on the web, these steps will put cyber warriors and the companies that arm them on notice that aiding Assad's crackdown on the internet will be treated with the same gravity as selling arms to the regime.

Margaret Weiss is a research associate at the Washington Institute.

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Massachusetts muslim terrorist sentenced to 17 years

Sudbury terror sympathizer Mehanna sentenced to 17 years

By Laurel J. Sweet  |   Thursday, April 12, 2012  | 

http://www.bostonherald.com

Convicted al-Qaeda sympathizer Tarek Mehanna this morning was sentenced in federal court in Boston to 17 1/2 years in prison for conspiring with terrorists in a failed plot to murder U.S. soldiers in Iraq. A crowd of ardent supporters in the courtroom gave him a standing ovation after he was given the 210-month sentence.

The 29-year-old Sudbury pharmacist also was given seven years supervised release

Federal prosecutors said yesterday Mehanna deserved to spend the next 25 years in prison for being that “rare individual who both attempted to engage in violent actions himself and also worked to recruit others to do so.”

Mehanna was found guilty last year of conspiring to kill in a foreign country and to support terrorists and of lying to investigators in a terrorism investigation.

“His plan to murder American soldiers was thwarted not by capture or a change of heart, but only by his failure to find suitable training” during a 2004 trip to Yemen in pursuit of recruitment to a terrorist camp, prosecutors said in their 13-page sentencing memorandum.

Mehanna used the Internet to spread information about jihad and set up a blog where he posted English translations of Web pages devoted to influential jihad advocates and spiritual patrons in Afghanistan and Iraq, an affidavit said.

This morning, Mehanna gave a defiant and rambling address to the court.

“I never, ever plotted to kill Americans at shopping malls or anywhere else,” he said, twitching at his orange prison scrubs as he spoke for about 20 minutes in his first public statements since his 2009 arrest on terror charges. “Muslims should defend themselves against foreign invaders. This is not terrorism or extremism. It’s self-defense. The government prosecuted me not because they needed to, but simply because they could.”

Discussing “oppression,” he added: “It’s because of America that I am who I am.”

Mehanna also told the court he was prosecuted because he would not become an informant.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty told U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. that Mehanna’s claims were “categorically false,” spurring an outburst by Mehanna.

“You’re a liar, you’re a liar!” Mehanna screamed from his chair. “Sit down!”

O’Toole called a 15 minute recess before sentencing.

In court this morning, defense lawyer Janice Bassil told O’Toole she was approached in the hallway by a juror who asked to address the court. The judge rejected the request.

“I see no reason to do that,” he said. “It would be highly unorthodox and contrary to law.”

He also declined to allow Mehanna’s parents to speak.

Mehanna’s defense team has asked O’Toole for compassion and a stretch behind bars not to exceed 6 1⁄2 years.

In his own plea, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy professor Ahmed Mehanna wrote to the judge that his son, an American-born graduate of Lincoln-Sudbury High School, was upset by the “unjust persecution of Muslims throughout the world” in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that “his view was amplified” by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “and the bad advice of older Muslim friends surrounding him.”

According to prosecutors, Mehanna — who lived with his parents in a two-story Sudbury home with a white picket fence — was rebuffed by the Taliban, which cited his “lack of experience” during his 2004 Yemen jaunt. Mehanna told an informant the experience was nonetheless “it was the best two weeks of his life.”

This morning, he told the court his values were shaped by reading Batman comics as a child. The comics taught him, he said, “There are oppressors, there’s the oppressed, and there are those who step and defend the oppressed.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1061124091

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(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

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Obama is being duped by Iran...

 “Being duped” is too kind…Zero’s malfeasance is deliberate, and unsurprising for a muslim-marxist

B

[The key here is that elder statesman Uri Lubrani is a close adviser to Moshe Yaalon, the man on the right who keeps Bibi from drifting too far to the left. df]

 

 

Times of Israel, April 12, 2012

 

Friday’s nuclear talks ‘an Iranian trick,’ warns Israel’s last envoy to Tehran

 

Uri Lubrani, now a top adviser to the vice prime minister, says US is being duped

 

By Mitch Ginsburg

 

A former Israeli ambassador to Iran, now serving as an adviser to the minister of strategic affairs, says he has little faith in Friday’s talks on Iran’s nuclear program yielding a breakthrough. He also says the American administration is being duped by Iran, has consistently misread the regime there, and has misunderstood the needs of the people.

 

“I am very, very skeptical about this meeting,” Uri Lubrani, a senior adviser on Iran to Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, told The Times of Israel.

 

“It’s just another trick in a package of tricks meant to buy time,” said Lubrani, who served as Israel’s head of mission in Tehran, with the rank of ambassador, from 1973-1978, the final years of Israel’s warm relations with Iran before the fall of the Shah.

 

The permanent members of the UN Security Council along with a German representative, collectively known as the P5+1, are to conduct negotiations with Iranian representatives this Friday in Istanbul. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that Israel would find acceptable an arrangement in which the regime ceases to enrich uranium, all previously enriched material is removed from the country and a facility in Qom is opened to inspectors. Low-grade uranium, for non-military purposes, could be imported into Iran.

 

“If Iran does all of these things then it will truly seem that it intends to cease its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said in a recent interview with Maariv. The prime minister has also indicated, however, that time is running out on diplomacy and sanctions, and that the moment of truth on possible military intervention is only months away.

 

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has stated that Iran is “logically, religiously and theoretically” opposed to the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons – a stance belied by many of the covert elements of the program and one that the fractured group of powers will attempt to pin down with firm commitments.

 

Lubrani related to these American-led efforts when he said, “The Americans don’t understand the Iranians. They have not even understood that it is possible to stop talking.” Lubrani was apparently indicating that the US has failed to see through Iran’s stalling tactics, and should have already recognized that the diplomatic route was leading nowhere.

 

Lubrani, whose career extends back to a stint as an adviser on Arab affairs to prime minister David Ben-Gurion and an ambassador to Iran with close ties to the Shah during the late seventies, also said that Israel is “too weak and too poor” to do anything non-military in terms of regime change in Iran. The Americans, who do have the capacity, have been sending the wrong signals.

 

Iran’s dissatisfied citizens “look at Syria, and they see that the people there (rising up against the regime) are being shot and that nothing is being done” by the outside world to help them, Lubrani said. If they attempt to rise up, the Iranian people “understand that this will be their fate as well.”

North Korea's Embarrassing Provocation

North Korea’s Embarrassing Provocation

Posted By Ryan Mauro On April 13, 2012

North Korea launched its Unha-3 missile yesterday in defiance of its neighbors and the U.S., but it didn’t go as planned. The missile broke apart only minutes after takeoff. Now, Kim Jong-Un must do something to save face, guaranteeing that he won’t back down from carrying out a third nuclear test in the coming days.

North Korea’s adversaries loudly protested the planned missile launch. The regime claimed it was innocently launching a satellite, but the technology is almost exactly the same as what is needed for a long-range ballistic missile. It was obvious that North Korea was testing its ability to strike as far away as the continental U.S. and Australia. Japan and South Korea threatened to shoot it down if it entered their airspaces. The regime proudly granted the worldwide media permission to come see the rocket, prompting the U.S. government to caution journalists that they could be feeding into its propaganda.

The U.S. warned that it would torpedo a deal struck on February 29 where the North Koreans would permit inspections of its nuclear facilities, end its nuclear weapons programs and stop testing missiles. In return, the U.S. would provide 240,000 metric tons of food desperately needed by the starving population. American officials assured the public that the delivery would be tightly monitored to make sure that the aid wasn’t diverted to the regime.

Kim Jong-Un decided to go back on the deal and spend $800 million on this failed rocket launch; money that could have been spent on 2.5 million tons of corn and 1.4 million tons of rice. North Korean engineers are digging an underground tunnel in preparation for a nuclear weapons test, spending even more money that could save its people. The regime is also spending $50 million on an amusement park and $140 million on upgrading 3,000 apartments used by government officials. Meanwhile, according to the U.N. World Food Program, about 16 of 24 million North Koreans rely on foreign food aid for survival and one-third of the children suffer from chronic malnourishment.

The question being asked is why this happened now. There is a clear pattern to North Korean behavior. Whenever the regime takes a step related to succession, it engages in a provocation. It apparently believes that this is necessary for its survival. The missile test came immediately after Jong-Un was officially made the First Secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party. It also came as the country celebrated the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung, the country’s founder.

Kim Jong-Il had his inner circle pledge its loyalty to Kim Jong-Un only one week after he conducted a nuclear test in 2009. Jong-Un ordered the March 26, 2010 sinking of South Korea’s Cheonan warship as his father prepared him to take over. The November 23, 2010 artillery attack on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong came right after Jong-Il and Jong-Un visited the responsible battalion.

The failure of yesterday’s missile test is not only embarrassing for the regime. It also hurts his business of exporting WMD-related technology. A similar missile test in 2009 failed and the intelligence community believes a follow-up nuclear test that year did as well. That is not going to encourage North Korea’s customers like Iran, Syria and Burma to buy the regime’s weapons and expertise.

However, nuclear weapons expert Dr. Peter Vincent Pry of EMPact America believes that North Korea’s nuclear weapons tests are being misunderstood. He was told by a group of Russian nuclear scientists in 2004 that some of their colleagues were in North Korea to work on a “super-EMP” weapon that could conceivably destroy all unprotected electronic equipment in the U.S. Pry explains that the U.S. judged the nuclear test to be a failure because it was only 3-kilotons strong, but it may have been an EMP weapon instead of a traditional nuclear weapon. If that is the case, it is U.S. analysts that failed, not North Korea’s nuclear test.

The U.S. now faces two dilemmas. If it says the deal to deliver food aid is cancelled, then millions of innocent and trapped North Koreans could die or suffer immensely. If the U.S. delivers the food anyway, then it could encourage further provocations.

The second dilemma is that Kim Jong-Un is determined to grab the attention of the West. If the U.S. decides not to reward his behavior by dismissing it, he will become more aggressive. If the U.S. does give him the attention he wants, then that guarantees he’ll continue this pattern. And as the regime becomes weaker, the more it will rely on provocations to maintain its grip.

A smooth change in regimes is obviously ideal, but instability could have disastrous consequences. North Korea has thousands of chemical and biological weapons, a massive arsenal of conventional weapons and soldiers, weapons scientists, hackers and special forces that could fall into unsavory hands. As the regime goes down, it could lash out in the hopes that a war will save it.

The West has no good options when it comes to North Korea and no matter how you look at it, the future is frightening.

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Alarms over Obama coup against Constitution surging

 

http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/alarms-over-obama-coup-against-constitution-surging/print/

There always have been those few who have launched diatribes over the dictatorial actions of any given U.S. presidential administration, over civil rights, foreign affairs, the economy, the draft or a dozen other topics – even though the Constitution was written specifically to prevent the collection of too much power by one branch of government.

Now, again, there are words like “egocentric megalomaniac” being ascribed to the White House, and warnings about detention camps and government surveillance of its citizens.

But where previous generations of warnings emanated from lone wolves with their fax machines in dusty spare rooms, the current alarms are being issued by the likes of Investors Business Daily, First Amendment authority Nat Hentoff, New York Times best-selling author Robert Ringer and their equals.

“A second term free of electoral restraints [for Obama] may be a frightening prospect,” IBD wrote in a commentary in the last week. “This is, after all, a president who has said he can’t wait for Congress to act and will govern by executive order and regulations if necessary. He has questioned the Supreme Court’s ‘unprecedented’ review of Obamacare.”

The publication pointed out that the Obama administration already is in contempt of court – in a court dispute over its ban on oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

When U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman ruled that the Obama Interior Department unconstitutionally imposed an offshore drilling moratorium, the agency “simply established a second ban that was virtually identical.”

“Judge Feldman was not amused. ‘Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,’ Feldman said in his ruling. ‘Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second moratorium …. provides this court with clear and convincing evidence of its contempt,’” the editorial said.

The issue recently was brought into the headlines by comments from Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News analyst who said, “I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism. A few months ago he was saying the Congress doesn’t count. The Congress doesn’t mean anything. I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation. Now he’s basically saying the Supreme Court doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t review our legislation.

“That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing,” Napolitano said.

His comments came after statements from Obama that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn’t take the “unprecedented” action of actually overturning the Obamacare law, even though that is exactly what courts do when justices determine the legislation is unconstitutional.

“I think he [Obama] has some problems with understanding the Constitution, or accepting limitations on his power,” said Napolitano. “Look, they’re equal branches of government, but with respect to what the law means and what the Constitution means, the court is superior to the president.”

What’s really happening here? Read about your country in “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”

His comments came recently on Neil Cavuto’s program, when the discussion turned to the U.S. Supreme Court’s discussion of the unconstitutionality of Obamacare and Obama’s verbal attack on the court shortly after the oral arguments.

Here are Napolitano’s comments:

“No president in modern times has questioned [the Supreme Court's] authority. They have questioned the way the authority has been exercised,” he said. “Not their right to make the decision.

“This is an extreme view of the Supreme Court and the Constitution, one that has not been articulated since Andrew Jackson was in the White House,” he said.

Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the state of New Jersey. He tried more than 150 jury trials during his time on the bench from 1987 to 1995, including criminal, civil, equity and family cases.

For 11 years, he served as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School, where he provided instruction in constitutional law and jurisprudence. Napolitano returned to private law practice in 1995 and began television broadcasting in the same year.

Other warnings that have been issued:

• Erik Rush, a columnist and author of sociopolitical fare, including “Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal – America’s Racial Obsession,” wrote about the New Black Panthers, and how their “advancing Marxist agenda is being not-so-subtly choreographed from Barack Obama’s White House.”

“Civil unrest is an Obama administration objective, since it will facilitate crises sufficient for the president to justify suspensions of civil rights. Provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, Obama’s recent National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order, as well as others, have certainly paved the way for such action.

“The question of a fair election in November is also something that deserves our attention. We can take it as given that voter fraud will abound at the hands of ACORN and other like-minded fringe organizations … All of this illustrates the paramount importance of continuing to beat the drum of Obama’s communism in unequivocal terms, regardless of the mincing ridicule we will draw from liberals…”

• Ringer wrote,“I began warning about Barack Obama’s dictatorial ambitions before he even won the 2008 presidential election … Obama’s recent contention that it would be ‘unprecedented’ for the Supreme Court to overrule congressional legislation had dictatorship written all over it.

“I will say yet again what I have been saying for more than three years: If polls indicate that Obama is going to win the upcoming election, no problem. He’ll keep flashing that fake Barry Obama grin until Nov. 7, then move swiftly to begin unleashing a dictatorial full monty – consisting of more regulations, higher taxes and less freedom – that will shock all but his staunchest Marxist allies.

“Nothing will be off limits – a national police force, instant citizenship for all Third World people … forced equalization of income (except for Obama’s wealthy supporters), widespread use of tax audits to carry out vendettas against enemies … suspension of habeas corpus … and much, much more.

“On the other hand, two or three months before the election, if the polls clearly show that Obama is going to go down in defeat, I believe there’s better than a 50-50 chance of a major ‘emergency’ coincidentally making its appearance, convincingly manufactured in such a way as to cause the average entitlement junkie to agree that we must rally around the president and ‘postpone’ the November elections.”

• Craige McMillan, longtime WND commentary author, said, “Why do you think Big Sis needs 20,000 drones patrolling the skies over America and NSA needs a new listening post to read and listen to every personal communication between every American citizen and archive it forever? … Step out of line and the police don’t even need a warrant to download your location data and buddy lists from your cell phone. Then they can go around and talk to your pals about your terrorist tendencies.”
• Nat Henthoff, nationally known authority on the First Amendment,wrote about plans to begin, starting in 2013, for the government to being monitoring and databasing “any form of communication.”

He described the new National Security Agency’s new Utah center – “more than five times larger than the U.S. Capitol” where “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cellphone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails – parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases…” will be archived.

“We are not yet a police state. The First Amendment is still functioning … But with the NSA burrowing ceaselessly into our once very private lives, where are the reminders of the Declaration of Independence and its indictments of King George III?”

• Mychal Massie, the chairman of the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives, also is on record.”Many say Barack Obama is the most divisive, egocentric megalomaniac ever to hold his office. Others say he is the most ruthless and defiantly determined Marxist-Leninist ever to become president. I say he is, by definition and actions, both.
• Vox Day, WND columnist, wrote, “It is becoming increasingly clear that the federal government is completely and utterly out of control, spewing nonsense, issuing irrational threats and stumbling around the world stage like a belligerent drunk with an empty wallet … Americans no longer enjoy the limited government of their forefathers. They suffer from limitless government. TSA is an apt acronym. But it does not stand for the Transportation Security Administration; it stands for the Totalitarian State of America.

As a presidential candidate Obama called for a “national civilian security force” that would be as big and as well-funded as the half-trillion dollar U.S. military. And a study a short time later confirmed that there are several ways to create the suggested “Stability Police Force” so that it legally could operate inside the U.S. borders.

One of the top recommendations in the report from the Rand Corp. was that the capacity and management operations of the U.S. Marshals Service be beefed up and handed the assignment.

The study was released in 2009, only months after Obama made his presidential campaign call for a civilian force as big and as costly as the U.S. military.

In a speech in Colorado Springs, Obama said, “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we set. We’ve got have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

WND reported when a copy of Obama’s Colorado Springs speech posted online apparently was edited to exclude Obama’s specific references to the new force.

A video of his statements is posted here:

The opening of the Rand Corp. report was focused on providing “Stability Police Force” services outside of the U.S. borders. A company spokesman told WND that the report focused exclusively on the idea of a structure that could move into war-torn or riot-damaged cities or nations overseas and restore order.

However, a reading of the text of the report makes it clear that similar concerns about the behavior of U.S. residents were being evaluated, too.

It noted that the plans for the $1 billion a year effort would have to be structured carefully so as not to infringe on the Posse Comitatus Act ban on U.S. military operations inside the U.S.

“The discussions … made clear that the MP option would likely not be available for domestic policing. This makes this option [fulltime and reserve, as the hybrid option would not be viable due to the fact that military personnel could not be embedded in civilian domestic law enforcement agencies…] much more expensive.”

The report discussed the possibility of creating a new agency inside the Department of Defense but noted, “It is unlikely that a military agency would be permitted to perform domestic policing functions … Because of this, the new agency would likely perform SPF functions better than the MP option due to a better ability to create a policing culture, but worse than the Marshals Service option due to the fact that it could not do policing tasks day-to-day.”

The report said the U.S. Secret Service also could be an option: “Much like the Marshals Service, the Secret Service focuses on law enforcement missions within the United States. When not deployed abroad, an SPF housed in the Secret Service could perform a wide range of domestic functions without running into legal barriers.”

A company official was unable to explain the study’s references to policing in the United States.

The Colorado Springs event wasn’t the only time Obama preached of his requirement for a “civilian security” force.

Radio talk show Mark Levin discussed it in a broadcast:

He cited Obama’s statement at a dedication ceremony for a facility at the National Defense University.

There, Obama said, “American must also balance and integrate all elements of our national power. We cannot continue to push the burden onto our military alone, nor leave dormant any aspect of the full arsenal of American capability. That’s why my administration is committed to renewing diplomacy as a tool of American power and to developing our civilian national security capabilities.”

What? Levin said.

“What does that mean? … Is he crazy? … He needs a civilian national security force … just as powerful … as our military?”

“The military has tanks, advanced weapons. What does he mean? … I know what his ideology is. That’s why I’m getting nervous…. Will the shirts be brown? Will they be clicking their heels as they walk?”

The Rand report also cited the Special Operations Group, which is headquartered at Camp Beauregard, La.

“It consists of about 100 deputies who respond to emergencies such as natural disasters, civil disturbances, and terrorist incidents and restores order during riots and mob violence. The SOG conducts missions in fugitive apprehension, high-profile prisoner movements, witness security operations, national emergencies and civil disorders. SOG deputies receive specialized tactical training, including crowd control and quelling civil disorder.”

The report continued, “During the 2000 World Trade Organization protests in the nation’s capitol, SOG teams played a key role in crowd control. They also took responsibility for protecting dignitaries going to and from the conference.”

Further, during protests in Puerto Rico, “The SOG was asked by the Navy on six separate occasions to quell disturbances. In calling upon the Marshals Service, the Navy was able to avoid concerns about the Posse Comitatus Act that might have arisen had it undertaken an armed mission in Puerto Rico.”

The report said specifically that should such a force be created under the military police division, “relief from the Posse Comitatus Act would be required to permit its members to perform domestic law enforcement functions.”

As the presidential campaign advanced in 2008, another video appeared online that for many crystallized their concerns over such a “corps.” It shows a squad of young men marching and shouting praises to Obama:

Rand officials said the study looked at the need for “a U.S. Stability Police Force, the major capabilities it would need if created, where in the federal government it would best be headquartered, and how it should be staffed.”

The federally funded research was done specifically for the U.S. Army.

The study also said, “Our analysis clearly indicates that the United States needs an SPF or some other way to accomplish the SPF mission.”

WND also has reported that U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., introduced the Universal National Service Act that would require “all persons” from ages 18 to 42 “to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security.”

His idea was to authorize “the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes.”

Rangel’s plan specified that “national service” means “military service or service in a civilian capacity that, as determined by the president, promotes national defense, including national or community service and service related to homeland security.”

“It is the obligation of every citizen of the United States, and every other person residing in the United States, who is between the ages 18 and 42 to perform a period of national service as prescribed in this title,” it specified.

It would require that the president provide “for the induction” of people to the service corps.

“Except as otherwise provided in this section, the period of national service performed by a person under this title shall be two years,” Rangel wrote.

Conscientious objectors would be ordered “to perform national civilian service … as the president may prescribe.”

WND also reported when Obama signed into law the “GIVE Act,” H.R. 1388, which massively expands the National Service Corporation and allocates to it billions of dollars.

Officials said at that time the law would allow for the “managing” of up to 8 or 9 million people.

That bill included a “National Service Reserve Corps” whose members have completed a “term of national service,” “training” and “not less than 10 hours of volunteering each year.”

Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WND, used his daily column when the issue originally arose to alert Americans of the plans. He then elevated the issue with a call to all reporters to start asking questions.

“If we’re going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn’t this rather a big deal?” Farah wrote. “I thought Democrats generally believed the U.S. spent too much on the military. How is it possible their candidate [at the time] is seeking to create some kind of massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force put together?

“Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?” Farah wrote.

Talk about being dumber than rocks.

 

B

 

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/al-sharpton-equates-trayvon-martin-case-jesus-crucifixion

 

Al Sharpton Equates Trayvon Martin Case With Jesus’ Crucifixion

By Elizabeth Harrington

April 13, 2012

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The Rev. Al Sharpton (AP Photo)

(CNSNews.com) – “Inequities” in the criminal justice system go back to the time of Jesus, and protests stemming from the Trayvon Martin case – some of them led by the Rev. Al Sharpton -- were intended to right some of those wrongs, Sharpton said.

“We believe in Jesus, they crucified him and never had a charge,” the Rev. Sharpton told a gathering of his National Action Network in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “They never charged, there wasn’t no crime on his indictment. So we’ve got to deal with the inequities of the criminal justice system. The fact that we (black people) are overly-incarcerated, the fact that we go to court and are treated differently, and the fact that when we’re victimized there is not the same response. That’s what Trayvon was about.”

Sharpton and his National Action Network have led a number of protest rallies in recent weeks, demanding the arrest of neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, who told police he shot 17-year-old Trayvon in self-defense.

Sharpton, who hosts both a radio and TV show on MSNBC, said Martin’s attorney Benjamin Crump called him last month, requesting publicity about Trayvon’s death:

“The reason they called us was to try and make it a big case,” Sharpton said. “I put Crump on the radio show that day and on the television show that night, and we began building.

“Then everybody say, ‘Well they ain’t gonna get nothing done no how.’ And it kept going and rallying and people got involved -- culminating, as you know, yesterday (when Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder).

“Now they are going to attack those of us involved, ‘cause that’s what they always do. Part of the job of activists is, you want them to attack you and not the victim and the family. You want to absolve it to you. So I’m ready for all of that.”

As for criticism that his tactics are racially polarizing, Sharpton said, “If nobody is upset with you, you are not doing much of anything.”

Sharpton said he doesn’t know what happened on Feb. 26, the night Zimmerman shot Martin. All he knows is that Trayvon was “an unarmed young man that committed no crime,” while Zimmerman was “an armed man that was not even a law enforcement officer or a registered watchman.”

“He should have been arrested and have to stand trial. That’s all we say,” Sharpton added.

Sharpton said he will continue to fight Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, the self-defense statute that could be used in Zimmerman’s defense.

“The reason this (Zimmerman) case is serious is the ramifications of this will determine Stand Your Ground in 21 states,” Sharpton explained. He said most of the cases the National Action Network takes have “broad” civil rights implications.

 

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Remembering scum Mike Wallace

Remembering Mike Wallace

Posted By Bruce Bawer On April 13, 2012

Channel surfing the other night, I ran across All the President’s Men for what felt like the thousandth time. I came in about twenty minutes before the end, and – not for the first time – I felt compelled to watch it to the end. What a splendidly written, brilliantly directed, terrifically acted movie! What a stirring story! What a beautiful piece of filmmaking, from the cinematography to the lighting design! And what a crock!

All the President’s Men converted a generation of innocent, impressionable, pre-Internet Americans – myself included – into unthinking fans of the mainstream news media. Some people in the government might be out to screw us over, and certainly every last man and woman in corporate America was up to no good, but the knights in shining armor at the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the network news divisions were there to come to our rescue – to save our freedoms and preserve our Constitution, wielding the truth like a shining sword.

As I watched Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, in the last shot of the film, taking down Richard M. Nixon one typewriter keystroke at a time, my thoughts naturally turned to Mike Wallace, who since his death the other day at the age of 285 – sorry, 93 – has been celebrated by many commentators as the quintessential embodiment of the crusading, principled, virtuous mainstream news media in its now-bygone, widely lamented heyday. His death, indeed, has provided his colleagues in the traditional media with a magnificent opportunity – which many of them, of course, have seized upon – to try to resurrect the heroic myth perpetrated by All the President’s Men and many other films. (Remember, for example, another Redford film from 1976, Three Days of the Condor, in which he’s betrayed and hunted down by the CIA and ends up, incriminating evidence finally in hand, at the entrance to the New York Times building, the logo of that newspaper symbolizing his, and justice’s, salvation?) A typical posthumous tribute to Wallace in the Washington Post began as follows: “Mike Wallace had a glorious career at CBS, racking up 21 Emmy awards and an endless reel of great interviewing moments. And to think that this fantastic career….” Check, please!

Admittedly, Wallace was a gifted showman. Every cheesy TV show that has ever made use of ambush interviews owes him a huge debt of gratitude. But too often his antics left a vaguely – or not so vaguely – bad taste in one’s mouth. Yes, the used-car salesman in Cowpie, Oklahoma, who turned back odometers deserved to get nabbed for it – but did he deserve to be nabbed in front a nationwide audience? Did this pathetic petty swindler deserve to be cast as this week’s dastardly villain opposite the golden champion of American fair play and hero of the common man – portrayed, as always, by Wallace, this moneyed member of the Manhattan media elite?

What was especially unpalatable about Wallace’s work on 60 Minutes is that one week he’d self-righteously bring down some small-time crook in some shabby little office in flyover America – killing a fly with a cannon – and the next week he’d turn out an unctuous, nauseating puff piece on some insufferable celebrity or other. I’ll never forget the image of him laughing it up with real-estate magnates Harry and Leona Helmsley on the roof of one of their New York hotels. One had the impression (and perhaps he even said something to this effect; I don’t remember) that he and the Helmsleys were chums, or at least went to some of the same parties or had mutual friends among the bicoastal glitterati. The Helmsleys – both of whom, not very long afterwards, would end up behind bars – were ripe for exposé treatment, but their profile by Mike Wallace, investigative journalist extraordinaire, was framed as a portrait of a husband and wife of a certain age who, t hough high-powered and successful businesspeople, were, far more importantly, still just as deeply in love with each other as ever.

The tributes have made it clear that we’re supposed to remember Wallace as a man of conviction – a dedicated newsman whose tough interviewing technique was rooted in a determination to ferret out the truth and entrap the guilty. It may be salutary to recall that before he became a tough, no-holds-barred investigative reporter, he was a game-show host. To watch some of the interviews from his pre-60 Minutes show The Mike Wallace Interview, moreover – a number of which are available online at the University of Texas website – is to wonder whether the interrogation business was all just schtick, just showbiz. In one episode, he actually interrogates the Broadway lyricist, librettist, and producer Oscar Hammerstein II as if the guy just turned back a whole parking lot full of odometers. The charge: excessive sentimentality! Exhibit A: the lyrics of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “I Whistle a Happy Tune.” Watch it – Wallace’s faux aggressiveness, combined with Hammerstein’s bemused tolerance (which proves him to be every bit as good-natured as his lyrics, and as much of a gentleman as Wallace was not) actually makes for quite hilarious viewing.

In another interview from that period, Steve Allen mentions having just done a parody of Wallace’s show on his, Allen’s, own show. (I wish that were online.) Wallace doesn’t seem to have been terribly amused by Allen’s mockery. Nor was he at all amused, many years later, when Andy Rooney thought it might be a funny idea, for his own lightweight segment at the end of 60 Minutes, to take a camera crew down the hall to Wallace’s office and ambush him. That bit, tellingly, never aired. In short: Wallace could dish it out, but he considered himself above having to take it, and certainly had no sense of humor about himself. In that regard, he was indeed the very model of the pre-Internet news-media elite.

(Note, incidentally, that Wallace begins the Hammerstein show by singing the praises of Parliament cigarettes, and begins the Allen show by waxing equally enthusiastic about Benson and Hedges. As he gives these sponsors their due, he sounds no more or less earnest than he does in his interrogations of Hammerstein and Allen. Not that there’s nothing wrong with being a TV commercial pitchman: just don’t confuse that with being a bold crusader for the truth.)

Then there’s the small matter of Wallace’s reporting about Israel and about his fellow Jews. After his death, the Jewish Daily Forward ran an admiring article headlined “Remembering Mike Wallace, A Jew Unafraid of the Truth.” On the contrary, when it came to Jews, Israel, and related subjects, Wallace did indeed seem to be afraid – afraid, that is, of bucking the received opinions of the mainstream news media and the cultural elite. . After Wallace retired in 2006, CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) ran a right-on-target piece by Kate Naseef entitled “Mike Wallace’s Middle East Problem.” Among Naseef’s observations:

The aggressive questioner in Wallace was not in evidence when he interviewed Yasir Arafat in 1989….Wallace accepted Arafat’s responses largely without question. He asked if Arafat had renounced “military operations” inside Israel. Arafat’s response was, “Any people who are facing occupation or oppression have the right to use all methods.” Wallace did not probe with a follow-up question….The late David Bar-Illan, then editorials editor at The Jerusalem Post, suggested that Wallace “acted like a public-relations agent for Arafat” in the 1989 interview….

In a 1987 story on Soviet Jews, including refuseniks, invited to immigrate to Israel, Wallace concluded that “one and a half million Soviets identified as Jews apparently live more or less satisfying lives.” Wallace acknowledged that Russia had a history of harboring antisemitism, but then said that anti-Jewish activities were against the law, without mentioning that the law was frequently broken — often by the government….

In late 1990, Wallace reported on Arab riots on the Temple Mount, in which several thousand people stoned Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall before beleaguered Israeli police shot some rioters in regaining control. He based his report almost exclusively on Palestinian sources [and] reversed the order of events, making it appear that the stone-throwing riot followed the police shooting rather than led to it….

In 1975 and 1984, Wallace filed reports on Syria that minimized the oppression of Syrian Jews and obscured the dictatorial nature of Hafez al-Assad’s regime.

And there’s more where that came from.

Finally, some of us still remember the notorious 1987 panel discussion on PBS during which Wallace and Peter Jennings, in the presence of several members of the military, were presented with a hypothetical question: if they were reporting from behind enemy lines in a war and learned that the enemy was preparing to ambush and kill American soldiers, would they tip off the Americans or just stand by and report? When Jennings said, hesitantly, that he’d warn the Americans, a thoroughly unhesitant Wallace upbraided him, saying: “You don’t have a higher duty….You’re a reporter!” Whereupon an embarrassed Jennings awkwardly and apologetically reversed himself.

James Fallows recounted Wallace’s entire rant – in all its smugness, self-assurance, and self-satisfaction – in a 1996 Atlantic article appropriately entitled “Why Americans Hate the Media.” Not to speak overly ill of the dead, but – well, just watch the video of that repulsive exchange and try to think of Mike Wallace as anything other than a prime example of why, now that we have other sources of reportage and commentary, the traditional news media are, indeed, dying off as fast as the dudes on 60 Minutes.

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