Citizenfour

CITIZENFOUR is a Oscar winning real life thriller, unfolding by the minute, giving audiences unprecedented access to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Poitras had already been working on a film about surveillance for two years when Snowden contacted her, using the name CITIZENFOUR,in January 2013. He reached out to her because he knew she had long been a target of government surveillance, stopped at airports numerous times, and had refused to be intimidated. When Snowden revealed he was a high-level analyst driven to expose the massive surveillance of Americans by the NSA, Poitras persuaded him to let her film.

CITIZENFOUR places you in the room with Poitras, Greenwald, and Snowden as they attempt to manage the media storm raging outside, forced to make quick decisions that will impact their lives and all of those around them

AnonSweden

Here’s How We Take Back the Internet

Here’s an extremely interesting, educational, and important video interview with Edward Snowden on the right to privacy. Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it. “Your rights matter,” he say, “because you never know when you’re going to need them.”

HoweStreet.com

Iraq illegally detains, tortures and rapes thousands of women

Iraqi authorities are detaining thousands of women illegally and subjecting many to torture and ill-treatment, including the threat of sexual abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Thursday.

Many women were detained for months or even years without charge before seeing a judge, HRW said, and security forces often questioned them about their male relatives' activities rather than crimes in which they themselves were implicated.

In custody, women described being kicked, slapped, hung upside-down and beaten on the soles of their feet, given electric shocks, threatened with sexual assault by security forces during interrogation, and even raped in front of their relatives and children.

"The abuses of women we documented are in many ways at the heart of the current crisis in Iraq," said HRW's deputy Middle East and North Africa director Joe Stork in a statement accompanying the report, titled: "'No One Is Safe': Abuses of Women in Iraq's Criminal Justice System."

"These abuses have caused a deep-seated anger and lack of trust between Iraq's diverse communities and security forces, and all Iraqis are paying the price."

More on Reuters - HRW

Blackwater Founder’s Mercenary Army Abandoned in Somali Desert

Last year it was revealed that Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince had been put in charge of building a mercenary army in northern Somalia, with funding from the United Arab Emirates and a goal of attacking the various pirate factions along the Somali coast.

It apparently seemed like a good idea at the time, but the United Arab Emirates has gotten sick of throwing money at the operation and pulled the plug. Now, the hundreds of mercenaries are sitting on a secret desert base with potentially millions of dollars in heavy weapons illegally smuggled into Somalia and nothing to do.

The decision apparently came after an April incident when the fighters attacked and killed a South African trainer. The corporation put in charge of the mission, the shadowy Sterling Corporate Services, insisted at the time that it was an isolated incident, but quickly withdrew its trainers, leaving the recruits stranded on a base in the Puntland desert.

But they likely won’t stay on that base for long, as those familiar with the situation say that the fighters, who were not ideologically motivated to join the anti-piracy fight in the first place, are liable to take their weapons and head out looking for new employers, with pirates among the likely bidders.

Antiwar.com - stratrisks.com

Olympics firm, G4S, in Israeli Security Controversy

Leaked Video Shows US Contractors Randomly Killing Civilians

Employees of the US military contracting group Academi (formerly Xe, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide) are seen in new leaked video shooting their machine guns at random while driving through the streets of Baghdad, crashing into other cars and even running over a pedestrian without hesitation. Academi received a $250 million contract by the Obama administration to provide military services in Afghanistan.  The Daily Conversation

Also see “The Warrior Class”: The Blackwater Videos on Harpers - Academi (aka Blackwater) on Wikipedia

'Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don't pay'

A growing body of evidence collected by the Guardian that shows Iraqi state security officers are systematically arresting people on trumped-up charges, torturing them and extorting bribes from their families for their release. Endemic corruption in Iraq has created a new industry in which senior security service officers buy their authority over particular neighbourhoods by bribing politicians, junior officers pay their seniors monthly stipends and everyone gets a return on their investment by extorting money from the families of detainees.

During two trips to the country before and after the US withdrawal from the country on 18 December, the Guardian interviewed 14 detainees and five officers in different branches of the security service in Baghdad. All the detainees said they had had to pay money to be freed, even though most had been acquitted in the courts. Some had been jailed for three days and some, like Yassir, for five years. In three cases, officers changed a detainee's "confession" – often extracted under torture – in return for money. In one case, an officer lost the detainee's documents in return for a bribe and he was released due to lack of evidence. One prisoner we interviewed is still in jail and in the middle of negotiations with officers.

Release does not mean escape. According to one officer we spoke to, men who are released are often detained again because a family that has paid once to get their sons out of a detention centre makes an easy target for more extortion.

Much more on The Guardian

Army Must Rely On Private Firms

Defence cuts mean British military commanders will have to rely on private security firms to carry out future operations, a retired general has said.

Major General Graham Binns said the UK's Ministry of Defence appeared more "reticent" about using armed contractors to support missions than other countries and other Whitehall departments.

He called on the Government to introduce a system for selecting and vetting a number of approved private security companies, which would be required to train regularly with troops. Maj Gen Binns, who commanded coalition forces in southern Iraq from mid-2007 to early 2008, is chief executive of British private security company Aegis Defence Services.

The Guardian

‪Private corporations acting like out-of-control Police?

Filmed at Secret Garden Party 2011, at the main gate.

Charlie Veitch‬‏ on YouTube – Love Police Website

Ongoing Hunger Strike at Pelican Bay Prison, USA

Fake Al Qaeda Actors EXPOSED! Adam Gadahn & Yousef al-Khattab

whatreallyhappened.com

Freedom and the US constitution

In your face violations of the US constitution as expected from our leader and police as well as rent a cops.

Bohemian Grove 2009

"This years elite retreat at Bohemian Grove is fast approaching. Many of the Grove’s guests will be flying into Santa Rosa Airport on the 10th of July, a Friday. They will travel West towards a small town called Monte Rio via highway 116, or River Road to discuss events and policy in private.

In the spirit of past rallies and protests organized by the Bohemian Grove Action Network, 9/11 Truth and anti-globalization activists will maintain a presence at the Grove. This is the first weekend of the retreat and they will be performing their Cremation of Care ceremony. I must mention that while the elite are here meeting privately, our focus is what the elite do outside the Grove.

Bohemian Grove 2009 Protests : Indybay

The "Cremation of Care" Ritual. Yes folks, here they are – America's corporate leaders, dressed in robes, burning their collective conscience at the feet of a statue of a 40-foot owl. Pretty weird. Or is it?  Much more information at the Bohemian Grove Action Network

Extract from Dark Secrets: Inside the Bohemian Grove Of Alex Jones. Look at the Global Elite and their strange ritual.

Cheney 'silenced CIA over spy plan'

Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, deliberately withheld details of a secret CIA spy programme from the US congress for eight years, a newspaper has reported.

Cheney, who was vice-president to George Bush between 2001 and January this year, ordered the CIA not to tell congress of a new "counter-terrorism" programme, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

The details of the intelligence programme, launched after the attacks on the US in September 2001, remain secret.

According to the Time's sources, Cheney's role in stifling the information was revealed by Leon Panetta, who now heads the CIA and who ordered the programme to be stopped in June.

Al Jazeera

Conspiracy fever: As rumours swell that the government staged 7/7, victims' relatives call for a proper inquiry

families of the dead victims and an increasing number of 7/7 survivors claim there are inconsistencies and basic mistakes in the official accounts that need explanation.

And they are demanding a full public inquiry to answer key questions about what the Intelligence Services and the police did and did not know before the bombings.

Meanwhile, the Government's determined refusal to meet their demands is having a very dangerous side-effect - fuelling myriad conspiracy theories about 7/7. Books, blogs and several video documentaries point to oddities in the official accounts.

The survivors are so intent on an independent inquiry that they are now taking legal action in the High Court to try to force the Home Secretary Alan Johnson to authorise it.

Central to the puzzle is which train the four Muslims caught from Luton to London on the morning of the bomb blasts - bearing in mind that the three separate Tube explosions at Edgware Road, Aldgate and King's Cross occurred together at exactly 8.50am, followed by the red bus an hour later near Tavistock Square.

The official reports said the bombers got on the 7.40am train from Luton which would have arrived at King's Cross in good time for them to board the Tube trains.

However, the 7.40am train never ran that morning. It was cancelled.

More on Daily Mail

Big brother is watching: The technologies that keep track of you

The furore around the Chinese government’s Green Dam software has raised the issue of the way modern technology is used to monitor our daily lives. Here, we list seven of the technologies that can be used to keep track of your movements.

CCTV

Closed-circuit television cameras were first used in Germany in 1942 to remotely monitor the launch of V2 rockets. Since then, CCTVs have become one of the most contentious pieces of technology in public use. The government and law enforcement agencies claim the use of video monitoring technology can help reduce crime and improve public safety; critics argue that the cameras serve only to displace crime to unmonitored areas, and do not act as a deterrent. With more than four million CCTV units in the UK, the network of cameras captures the average person around 25 times a day.

RFID tags

Radio frequency identification chips are already widely used in supermarkets and shops for the purpose of stock control, but some people fear their use could be widened to monitor the habits and behaviour of ordinary citizens. At the moment, these tags, which are little bigger than a grain of sand, are embedded into pints of milk and library books. When paired with an RFID reader, the tags can help to provide detailed information about items, such as their location, or how many there are. Although most people are happy for RFID tags to be used in stores to monitor stock levels, they’re less happy about the idea of the chips still sending out a signal once they leave the shop. On a benign level, such tracking capabilities would mean a store would know that people in Hertfordshire prefer blue cashmere jumpers, while those in Aberdeen favour the brown versions. But on a more sinister level, it could also enable them to glean an unprecedented insight into our personal lives, and target their brands to us accordingly. To those people who fear a “surveillance culture”, the ability to tag and track everything from our food to our clothes would be the next step on an already slippery slope.

More of the technologies that keep track of you on the Telegraph website

Lawsuit now accuses Xe contractors of murder, kidnapping, child prostitution

A just-amended lawsuit alleges six additional instances of unprovoked attacks on Iraqi civilians by Blackwater contractors. Three people, including a 9-year-old boy, are said to have died.

Also added to the suit is a racketeering count accusing Blackwater founder Erik Prince of running an ongoing criminal enterprise involved in, among other things, kidnapping and child prostitution.

The child prostitution charge involves young Iraqi girls allegedly being brought to the Blackwater compound in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, identified in the lawsuit as the "Blackwater Man Camp," to provide oral sex to contractors for $1.

The purpose of the racketeering allegations is to demonstrate a "pattern of illegality" by Xe and its affiliated companies, Susan Burke, the plaintiffs' lawyer said.

"What we're very, very worried about is this company hurting other people going forward around the globe," Burke said. "They're moving into Africa, they're moving into other places, and we believe they need judicial supervision."

HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

Xe website (take a look, it’s creepy)

WANT and WISH For Another Terrorist Attack in the U.S.

Beck guest Scheuer "The only chance we have as a country right now is" for bin Laden to "detonate a major weapon" in U S. Via http://www.mediamatters.org.

And the War continues….

LiveLeak.com - Deconstructed

EU security proposals are 'dangerously authoritarian'

The European Union is stepping up efforts to build an enhanced pan-European system of security and surveillance which critics have described as “dangerously authoritarian”.

Civil liberties groups say the proposals would create an EU ID card register, internet surveillance systems, satellite surveillance, automated exit-entry border systems operated by machines reading biometrics and risk profiling systems.

Europe's justice ministers will hold talks on the "domestic security policy" and surveillance network proposals, known in Brussels circles as the "Stockholm programme", on July 15 with the aim of finishing work on the EU's first ever internal security policy by the end of 2009.

Jacques Barrot, the European justice and security commissioner, yesterday publicly declared that the aim was to "develop a domestic security strategy for the EU", once regarded as a strictly national "home affairs" area of policy.

 By Bruno Waterfield – Telegraph

Also see euro-police.noblogs.org

Also see euractiv.com and Secret EU security draft risks uproar with call to pool policing and give US personal data (Guardian), or Brain Scanning May Be Used In EU Security Checks