A US drone killed six people in northwest Pakistan Thursday in only the second such strike outside the country’s lawless tribal districts, threatening to inflame tensions between Washington and Islamabad.
The missile attack targeted a religious seminary that security officials said belonged to the Haqqani network — blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan — in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Earlier this month the network’s chief financier Nasirudddin Haqqani was gunned down in mysterious circumstances in a village on the edge of Islamabad.
Thursday’s drone strike was the first in the country since Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a similar attack in the North Waziristan tribal district on November 1.
That attack prompted a furious response from Pakistan, with the interior minister accusing Washington of sabotaging fledgling peace efforts with the Taliban and opposition parties calling for a blockade of NATO supply lines to Afghanistan.
“The drone strike targeting the seminary killed six people,” police official Farid Khan told AFP.
Two local security officials identified two of the dead as Mufti Ahmad Jan and Mufti Hameedullah and said they were both members of the Haqqani network.
“The seminary belonged to one Qari Noor Muhammad, a previously unknown figure. It was not clear if he was present in the seminary at the time of attack”, an official said.
Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, who are blamed for numerous bloody attacks in Afghanistan including one on the US embassy in Kabul in 2011.
US officials have in the past accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of links to the Haqqani network, which has bases in the tribal districts.
Since 2004 the United States has carried out hundreds of missile attacks from unmanned aircraft on suspected militants linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The vast majority of them have hit targets in the seven tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, which have a separate legal and political governance system from the rest of the country.
Thursday was the first time a US drone hit a district inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only previous strike outside the tribal areas came in Bannu district, a so-called “frontier region”.
The number and identity of casualties is often hard to determine because the tribal areas are off-limits to foreign journalists and aid organisations, but the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates deaths at between 2,500 and 3,700.
Hundreds of civilians have died in the attacks, according to various estimates, prompting outrage in Pakistan and abroad.
A major report last month from rights campaigners Amnesty International said the US may be guilty of war crimes.
The Pakistani government officially condemns drone strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and last month Sharif urged US President Barack Obama to halt the programme during a meeting in Washington.
Despite their deep unpopularity in Pakistan, the US sees them as a vital tool in the fight against militants in the tribal areas.
Blackwater founder Erik Prince personifies the hidden hand in America’s terror wars.
His company secretly armed and maintained drones in Pakistan, trained CIA hit teams and collected $2 billion as a U.S. government security contractor.
Mr. Prince said he looks back on that adventure as “13 lost years.” The billions of dollars are gone now, and he blames the U.S. government.
After a series of federal investigations, government contract battles and critical congressional hearings, Mr. Prince sold Blackwater in 2010. In the wake of continued controversy over his most recent pursuits while based in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Prince has returned to Virginia to write a new chapter of his life—as an entrepreneur buying oil, land and minerals in Africa.
In interviews, Mr. Prince and former Blackwater officials provided previously unreported details of the company’s dealings with the CIA and its former director, Leon Panetta. Blackwater’s fortunes, which dimmed as the Iraq war dragged on, sank markedly when President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and sought distance from President George W. Bush’s war policies.
A chief target of Mr. Prince’s ire is Mr. Panetta, who in 2009 shut down the covert training operation for CIA “hit teams” that former Blackwater officials said took place on Mr. Prince’s Virginia property.
At the time, former Blackwater officials said, the company also was working on America’s clandestine drone program. Former company officials said that a few dozen Blackwater employees, taking the place of American military forces, maintained drones armed with Hellfire missiles in Pakistan. The company didn’t fly them, but prepared them to launch attacks.
When that information became public in 2009, right after Mr. Panetta canceled the Blackwater hit-team training, the CIA director ended the company’s role in maintaining the drones.
Mr. Prince said he is convinced that Mr. Panetta outed him as a CIA “asset” at a closed congressional hearing that year, adding that it was unthinkable for a CIA director to reveal the real name of a covert operative to lawmakers.
“No one was out to scapegoat anyone in the relationship with Blackwater, but there were some issues that arose that prompted a serious look at contracts with the company,” said one former CIA official involved in the discussions. “There was a perception that they were trying to run some of their own operations untethered from agency oversight.”
Along with its clandestine work, Blackwater had a much more public role providing security for American diplomats and CIA personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blackwater guards were caricatured as war-zone cowboys.
Blackwater convoys were feared in Iraq. The drivers were under State Department orders to do everything necessary to protect the department’s workers—directives that Mr. Prince alleges forced Blackwater to use aggressive tactics.
The State Department didn’t comment on the allegation.
Paul Bremer, the Neo-Con American diplomat who oversaw the U.S. government’s early invasion in Iraq liked them. “Their job was to keep me alive,” said Mr. Bremer. “I can say they never fired a shot in my presence, so they weren’t a bunch of cowboys running around shooting at people.”
Blackwater guards were involved in a series of deadly shooting incidents that alienated Iraqi citizens and the government. In September 2007, they killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.
Last month, the Justice Department renewed the prosecution of four Blackwater guards involved in the shooting, which still generates anger in Iraq.
“On balance, I think [Blackwater] operated in irresponsible ways which led to a lot of hostility toward our country,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and former chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who grilled Mr. Prince during a 2007 hearing. “They were overpaid for their work, and there was little, if any, accountability to the U.S. or the Iraqi governments.”
Following the Nisour Square shooting, the U.S. tightened its oversight and training of contractors to try to prevent another such incident, said Alex Gerlach, a State Department spokesman.
After the Obama administration cut most ties with Blackwater, Mr. Prince sold the company and moved to Abu Dhabi, where he quickly became embroiled in further controversy. Mr. Prince said he served as an adviser in setting up a privately trained antipiracy security force in Somalia that was accused of violating a United Nations arms embargo. And he was a consultant on a failed effort to set up a security force in Abu Dhabi made up largely of former Colombian soldiers.
In August 2012, Blackwater – now called Academi – paid a $7.5 million fine relating to allegations of arms smuggling when Prince was in charge.
Now, Mr. Prince said, he is done working for the U.S. government. He has invested millions in setting up Frontier Resource Group, a private-equity firm that operates in more than a dozen African countries. The company raised $100 million to invest in infrastructure Africa in conjunction with Chinese companies.
The firm is building an oil refinery in South Sudan, owns a cement factory in the Democratic Republic of Congo, conducts aerial gas and oil surveys across the continent, and is looking at taking over idle oil wells damaged by insurgents in Nigeria, he said.
“Africa is so far the most unexplored part of the world, and I think China has seen a lot of promise in Africa,” Prince, who served with SEAL Team 8 in Haiti and the Balkans, said during a visit to Hong Kong, later telling the South China Morning Post: “The problem is if you go alone, you bear the country risk on your own. You have to get support and maintenance there.”
Which means exactly what? Well, no one really seems to know. Prince’s objectives in Africa are obscured, while FRG’s goals are vague and convoluted.
“The view of his new company is very limited, and very opaque. If you look at his website it seems like a front for funding and training local security forces to provide security for resource projects in African nations, particularly for the Chinese,” Geoffrey Ingersoll, a former member of the Marine Corps and a Military and Defense reporter for Business Insider, told Guyism.com.
Will FRG’s new business partners care how the company achieves its goals? Not really, no.
“The Chinese are cut-throat capitalists. They’re much more concerned with their workers not getting kidnapped, and with making money. the over-arching concern is that they want to dominate Africa, geopolitically and economically,” Ingersoll said.
“What I think he wants to do is bring in contractors to employ and train organic security forces. That way, you only need a handful of former SEALs to command 200 men, and those 200 men you can pay small salaries because they’re from sub-Saharan Africa The tactic is called a ‘force multiplier’ – and comes straight out of the Marine Corps ‘small wars’ manual.”
FRG could face competition from… Blackwater.
“Academi is supposedly moving it’s operation to Africa, because the Americans have grown tired of their uncontrollable, heavily subsidized child acting like a rich kid addicted to cocaine and crashing Lamborghinis,” Ingersoll said.
As it turns out, Prince might need more than an army to conquer Africa. WSJ/guyism.com
Despite the botched launch of Obamacare, the United States as a whole, because of its opposition to the health-care law and support of gun rights, is still more of an embarrassment than the president, said Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein. He also asserted that then-senator Obama wouldn’t have been “beating” on George W. Bush if Bush had rolled out a dysfunctional program as president.
Weinstein, a big donor to the president, downplayed the problems with Obamacare’s implementation and the misleading promise that Americans could keep their insurance plans, saying that Obama “made a mistake — he’s human.”
“This is the only country in the world where we don’t have a health-care,” he told CNN’s Piers Morgan over the weekend “Countries embarrass us around the world — this is the only country in the world where we don’t have a gun law.”
“Obama’s not embarrassing — the country’s embarrassing,” he said. – nationalreview.com
Oprah Winfrey is going around the world telling everyone that Americans are racist while she promotes her new race-baiting film.
Oprah Winfrey has been a prominent supporter of Barack Obama. She thinks that both he and the Office of President have been treated with contempt because of the colour of his skin.
“There’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.”
Meanwhile Senators have dug up new report of an Obamacare failure so dismal it is hard to believe.
Among four major insurance companies, a total of only five people have enrolled in the president’s health plan in Washington, D.C.
Delaware reported only four people had enrolled in Obamacare as of Tuesday, even though the state used a $4 million grant to hire four community organizations to provide marketplace guides. That worked out to $1 million spent on each enrollee.
The worst numbers from any state to report is actually just a single number, as in the number one. Just one person has reportedly enrolled in Obamacare in North Carolina. And even that person is technically still not enrolled, having yet to pay. So, zero people enrolled in Obamacare as of Oct. 15.
Cyber-attacks are increasingly becoming the primary threat against the United States, according to the head of the FBI.
During his first testimony as the new FBI director, James Comey told Congress on Thursday that while the threat of traditional terrorist strikes inside the United States is now lower than it was before 2001, the potential threat from cyber-attacks continues to rise.
“That’s where the bad guys will go,” Comey said, as quoted by the Guardian. “There are no safe neighborhoods. All of us are neighbors [online].”
Comey’s comments were echoed by Rand Beers, the acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, both of whom also testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
The three officials agreed that while the potential for an attack on the scale of 9/11 is more likely to occur overseas, Congress should be wary of rolling back surveillance programs like the one employed by the National Security Agency. Over the next decade, cyber-attacks are likely to become the primary domestic threat, they said.
The officials added that any changes to the US surveillance program should be on the “margins,” and not directly affect the agencies’ “core capabilities.”
In fact, Beers and Comey both pushed Congress to expand the government’s power to gain access to data held by privately owned companies, with Beers suggesting that new legislation grant corporations liability protection for sharing sensitive information with federal agencies.
According to the Guardian, at least one senator, Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), expressed concern over the suggestion, saying that companies should have the chance to willingly cooperate with the government before being told to hand over data.
In 2008, the US passed legislation protecting telecommunications companies and internet providers helping the government conduct warrantless surveillance from privacy lawsuits.
USA Today reported that the officials noted how difficult it is to detect self-radicalized terrorists, and that Americans are urged to report something suspicious when they see it.
“The challenge of the home-grown violent extremist is that [the person] really doesn’t hit all the trip wires,” Olsen said. – RT
Microsoft said Thursday it has opened a new cybercrime center, using its resources to combat malware, intellectual property theft, child exploitation and other ills in cyberspace.
“The Microsoft Cybercrime Center is where our experts come together with customers and partners to focus on one thing: keeping people safe online,” said David Finn of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit.
“By combining sophisticated tools and technology with the right skills and new perspectives, we can make the Internet safer for everyone.”
The center on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, uses technology to visualize and identify online organized crime networks, child pornography, online fraud and other crimes.
It also has a secure location for third-party partners, including from academia and law enforcement. – AFP
Justin Bieber says he’s sorry and the hopes Argentines can forgive him. Now he may need to tell that to some judges.
The 19-year-old pop star faces two criminal complaints after his wild tour in Argentina, in addition to trouble with police for allegedly spraying graffiti in Brazil and Colombia.
One Argentine lawyer is accusing Bieber of sending bodyguards to attack a photographer outside a Buenos Aires nightclub.
Another accuses him of defiling the national symbol by dragging two Argentine flags off stage with his feet and a microphone stand. If tried and convicted in the flag incident, that could mean up to four years in prison.
Bieber tweeted Thursday that he’s sorry. He says he “would never do anything to disrespect Argentina.” – AP
While Sudan, Libya, and Saudi Arabia can been seen in the right spots on a map, Israel is fully covered by Jordan with the territories of both states evenly colored in red in a book by the world’s biggest publisher of children’s titles.
In another similar Israel-missing case, Apple and its much-anticipated operating system, iOS 7, presented the new world clock options on the iOS 7. It listed Jerusalem without a country.
A senior vice president for corporate communications at Scholastic, Kyle Good, is looking into this.
“The Geronimo Stilton series is published in Italy and Scholastic translates the books for the US audience,” Good said in an emailed comment. “I’m awaiting a response from the editorial team regarding the timing of reprints and whether this will be corrected. I will get back to you as soon as I have their response.”
Scholastic, founded in Pennsylvania in 1920, is the world’s largest publishing companies known for publishing educational materials for children, parents, schools and teachers. It distributes children’s books through its book clubs, teaching resources and popular book fairs held inside many North American schools as well as online.
The company has exclusive publishing rights for the Harry Potter series in the United States.
It is not the first time Israel has not been found on the world’s map.
According to a recent study, 96 percent of Palestinian school textbooks did not mention Israel by name in their maps. At the same time, 87 percent of Israeli school textbooks did not have lines between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, or did not name it at all.
A black TV show exposed a “white supremacist” behind an initiative to turn a North Dakota town into a “white enclave”.
Huffington Post reported that the white man received some “shocking news”: He’s not 100 percent white.
Craig Cobb, a 62-year-old man who has aimed to start a community for whites received some news that he wasn’t too happy about. It gave HuffPo readers quite a sense of satisfaction.
During an appearance on The Trisha Goddard Show, Cobb was given the results of a DNA Diagnostics test and found out he is 14 percent Sub-Saharan African, and it was all caught on camera.
A black janitor in Brooklyn almost shouted out the name when asked about his vote in the mayoral race. Bill de Blasio, he said, “knows my struggle.”
“He knows what the average person’s going through, because he’s been experiencing what they’re going through.” – Veronica Sibblies, a Jamaican immigrant.
In the Bronx, some African-American voters defaulted to a shorthand: “the man with the black wife.” Nobody thought it necessary to explain whom they meant.
And in a Brooklyn housing project, a lifelong resident said he was tired of mayors who, in his mind, had pitted blacks against whites. Mr. de Blasio, he declared, “is black and white.”
Of all the records shattered by Mr. de Blasio’s landslide victory, perhaps the most remarkable is that virtually every vote cast by black New Yorkers — 96 percent — went his way. He captured a bigger portion of the black vote than David N. Dinkins in 1989 when he was elected New York City’s first black mayor with 91 percent of the black vote, according to exit polls.
After the divisive tenor of the Giuliani years, and the deep grievances engendered by the stop-and-frisk police tactics of the Bloomberg era, black New Yorkers are now claiming Mr. de Blasio’s victory as their own. In postelection interviews, dozens of black New Yorkers said that Mr. de Blasio’s personal touch, his biracial family and his pledge to help the working-class and poor had affected them deeply. His victory, they said, was a chance to gain a voice in City Hall after two decades of leadership they viewed as inattentive, distant and, at times, even callous.
“There was a sense of not being included, not being cared about,” said Charlene Curry, as she walked along Marcy Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, last week. She said she had never met Mr. de Blasio, but felt as if he were a neighbor. The mayor-elect, she said, has “a more humane approach, a more inclusive approach.” She added, “That reaches home.”
The excitement about Mr. de Blasio — tinged, in some quarters, by a dose of wait-and-see skepticism — was diligently cultivated by the candidate. Mr. de Blasio, who is of Italian and German heritage, kept up a brisk schedule of visits to predominantly black churches, frequently spoke of the effect of stop-and-frisk tactics on young black men, and put his wife and children at the forefront of his campaign, making a celebrity of his son, Dante, who sports a large Afro.
But it was also a result of Mr. de Blasio’s comfort and fluency with black culture, borne of an interracial marriage and personal experience, that offered a credibility voters said could not be bought by consultants or simulated in sound bites.
A protégé of Bill Lynch, an African-American political operative, and a veteran of the Dinkins administration and the congressional campaign of Charles B. Rangel, Mr. de Blasio is steeped in the history of New York’s black politics.
“A woman would say, ‘Do you understand, young man?’ And Bill said, “Yes, ma’am,’ ” a black woman recalled. “Do you know what that little, tiny cultural thing meant?”
That adroitness was frequently apparent on this year’s campaign trail, where Mr. de Blasio received electric receptions when visiting traditionally black neighborhoods, like Harlem and Crown Heights.
With his self-assured mien and casual tendency to call people “brother,” Mr. de Blasio often seemed to play the political preacher, even at run-of-the-mill news conferences. At a rally in late October in Brooklyn, he opened his remarks by intoning, “Brothers and sisters, we are gathered again,” earning appreciative nods and murmurs from supporters. On the Sunday before the election, Mr. de Blasio delivered a 16-minute sermon at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, a mainstay of his campaign schedule. At one point, he launched into a seemingly earnest soliloquy about the responsibilities of public servants, before pivoting to a jest.
“It’s my obligation to stand up and act when there’s a problem, when there’s a danger,” Mr. de Blasio said. “And I realized in the earlier part of the service — I realized that the choir was on fire! And I needed to rush out and call the Fire Department!” He was drowned out for nearly 15 seconds as the congregation laughed and cheered.
In Brooklyn on Thursday, Bonita Anderson-Watson, 50, smiled as she recounted a recent visit from Mr. de Blasio and his family to her church. “When I spoke with him and shook his hand, it was something different,” she said, adding that in conversations with friends afterward, comparisons to Bill Clinton, who was enthusiastically embraced by African-Americans in his presidential campaigns, quickly came up.
With all that good will, of course, comes high expectations. “Ninety-six percent of the African-American vote went to him,” said the Rev. Johnnie M. Green Jr., senior pastor at Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem. “He should feel some sense of being beholden to the black community.”
Some of those interviewed said they would have voted for him even without his biracial family, citing his staunch Democratic politics and pledge to address economic inequality. Many said they never considered the Republican nominee, Joseph J. Lhota, and some said they did not know his name.
“His biracial family represents so many things and possibilities, too many to even get into,” said Leon Ellis, a Harlem restaurateur. “When people saw his family, they felt, ‘Here is someone who understands and relates to me on a level on which I can be comfortable.’ ”
“You have a black woman sitting there who can say, ‘My side of the family is hurting over here, now.’ He’s going to hear that direct,” said Walter Edwards, a real estate developer in Harlem. “He’s not going to get it from somebody off the street he has no relationship with.”
Veronica Sibblies, 66, a Jamaican immigrant who came to New York more than 50 years ago, said she believed Mr. de Blasio’s interracial family could serve as a model for better relations between blacks and whites in the city.
“You know what I like? I like when he said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to move into Gracie Mansion,’ ” Ms. Sibblies said. “It doesn’t impress him. Material things don’t mean that much to him. He knows what the average person’s going through, because he’s been experiencing what they’re going through.”
“Some black people probably are breathing a sigh of relief, that finally we have someone that is going to at least represent our concerns, and try and make life better for us,” Mr. Worrell said. “But we all have to sit back and wait to see what happens.” – NYT
A white Republican unseated a 24-year African-American incumbent from office in a surprise election victory that some are saying was racially tinged and deceptive.
Still, he figured he’d have fun running, because he was fed up with what he called “all the shenanigans” at the Houston Community College System. As a conservative white Republican running in a district whose voters are overwhelmingly black Democrats, the odds seemed overwhelmingly against him.
Dave Wilson, who KHOU reports is an “anti-gay activist and former fringe candidate for mayor,” is being criticized by his opposition for his campaign that reportedly lead the overwhelmingly African-American, Democratic district to believe he was black.
Wilson said he came up with the strategy because he knew his chances of winning the election against 24-year Democratic incumbent Bruce Austin were quite thin.
“I’d always said it was a long shot,” Wilson told Houston’s KHOU. “No, I didn’t expect to win.”
Austin described Wilson’s campaign as “disgusting,” referring to Wilson’s use of fliers showing African-American faces and a caption of: “Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.”
Wilson admitted simply using images found on the Internet.
One of the mailers used said that Dave Wilson was “Endorsed by Ron Wilson – a longtime African-American, Democratic state legislator. However, the fine print below the slogan states, “Ron Wilson and Dave Wilson are cousins,” a reference to Wilson’s non-politically affiliated cousin who lives in Iowa.
“He’s a nice cousin,” Wilson told KHOU, suppressing a laugh. “We played baseball in high school together. And he’s endorsed me.”
In response to losing the election by 26 votes, Austin said he was seeking a recount.
“I don’t think it’s good,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for both democracy and the whole concept of fair play. But that was not his intent, apparently.” – CBS Local
Progressive Democrat Bill de Blasio has been elected mayor of New York City, replacing billionaire Michael Bloomberg, US media reported Tuesday.
“Thank you, New York City,” de Blasio’s campaign tweeted just after the close of polls, together with a photo showing the presumed winner together with his wife and two children.
The 52-year-old will succeed Bloomberg in January at the helm of the United States’ largest city.
De Blasio promises a new style in a city transformed by 12 years of tough love under Bloomberg, who is stepping down after a record three terms.
He is one of the most progressive politicians in the country and left Republican rival Joe Lhota trailing in the dust by tapping into the worries of the economically vulnerable middle class. – AFP
Concerns were raised tonight that Britain operates a top-secret listening post from its Berlin embassy to eavesdrop on the seat of German power.
Documents leaked by the US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden show that GCHQ is, together with the US and other key partners, operating a network of electronic spy posts from diplomatic buildings around the world, which intercept data in host nations.
An American intercept “nest” on top of its embassy in Berlin – less than 150 metres from Britain’s own diplomatic mission – is believed to have been shut down last week as the US scrambled to limit the damage from revelations that it listened to mobile phone calls made by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But the NSA documents, in conjunction with aerial photographs and information about past spying activities in Germany, suggest that Britain is operating its own covert listening station within a stone’s throw of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and Ms Merkel’s offices in the Chancellery, using hi-tech equipment housed on the embassy roof.
The potentially toxic allegation that Britain has a listening station in the capital of a close European Union ally will test relations between London and Berlin only days after the row between Germany and the US about its own clandestine activities. Jan Albrecht, an MEP for Germany’s Green Party and a leading campaigner on privacy and data protection, told The Independent: “If GCHQ runs a listening post on the top of the UK’s Berlin embassy, it is clearly targeting politicians and journalists. Do these people pose a threat?
“The EU has asked David Cameron’s Government to explain the activities of GCHQ in Europe but it has declined to do so, saying it does not comment on activities in the interest of national security. This is hardly in the spirit of European co-operation. We are not enemies.”
Asked to respond to the concerns last night, Mr Cameron’s official spokesman said: “We don’t comment on intelligence questions.”
Infrared images taken by a German television station, ARD, appear to show that the US embassy spying facility, housed in an anonymous rooftop building, has now been shut down after an incendiary clash in which Mrs Merkel told President Barack Obama it was “just not done” for friendly nations to spy on each other.
The heat signature from the structure dropped dramatically last week in the immediate aftermath of the conversation, and equipment inside has not been detected as having been turned on since.
The eavesdropping base, concealed in a box-like structure with special windows made of fibreglass which are opaque to light but allow radio signals to pass unhindered, was run jointly by CIA and NSA agents in a top-secret unit called the Special Collection Service (SCS). Despite the row the German authorities appear not to have noticed – or protested about – a potential parallel and linked surveillance unit on top of the British embassy.
According to one NSA document, Washington recently closed some of the 100 SCS locations it operates in embassies around the world and transferred some of the work to GCHQ, which is based in Cheltenham. In 2010, the SCS was known to operate 19 facilities in Europe, including stations in both Berlin and Frankfurt.
Documents shown to The Independent state that the operation uses equipment hidden within the fabric of diplomatic buildings and only a small number of personnel operating under diplomatic cover whose “true mission” is unknown even to the majority of their colleagues.
Aerial photographs of the British embassy in Berlin show a potential eavesdropping base enclosed inside a white, cylindrical tent-like structure which cannot be easily seen from the streets. The structure has been in place since the embassy, which was built following the reunification of Germany, opened in 2000.
The structure bears a striking resemblance to spying equipment used in GCHQ’s Cold War listening post in West Berlin at the now-abandoned Teufelsberg or “Devil’s Mountain” site, which was used to intercept East German and Soviet communications.
Equipment within the embassy unit would be capable of intercepting mobile phone calls, wi-fi data and long-distance communications across the German capital, including the adjacent government buildings such as the Reichstag and the Chancellery clustered around the Brandenburg Gate.
Last night GCHQ officials refused to discuss ongoing security matters.
Such is the critical importance of the network of embassy spying bases – the US version of which the NSA has codenamed “Stateroom” – that the NSA and the CIA have built a mock embassy-style site in woodland outside Washington DC to test their technology and train operatives.
Satellite images of the site in Maryland also show a white cylindrical structure in the grounds of the facility similar to the one on the roof of Britain’s Berlin embassy.
The NSA documents provided by Mr Snowden state that Stateroom-type operations are run by the US, Britain, Canada and Australia. Together with New Zealand, the countries form the “Five Eyes” at the core of an international eavesdropping coalition.The NSA document outlining Stateroom describes it as “covert SIGINT [signals intelligence] collection sites located in diplomatic facilities abroad… [including] SCS (at US diplomatic facilities) and government communications headquarters (at British diplomatic facilities)”.
The briefing underlines the clandestine nature of the operation, adding: “These sites are small in size and in the number of personnel staffing them. They are covert, and their true mission is not known by the majority of the diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned.”
The “concealed collection system” within the embassies utilises “sheds” or structures with fake windows. The document said: “Collection equipment on a building is concealed so as not to reveal SIGINT activity… antennas are sometimes hidden in false architectural features or roof maintenance sheds.”
German and US diplomatic relations have fallen to an unprecedented low since evidence emerged that the personal mobile of Mrs Merkel, who is known to conduct sensitive government business by phone and text message, was targeted by SCS. Intelligence officials from Germany are now in Washington negotiating an end to mass surveillance on German territory as well as a formal pact not to conduct spying operations on friendly nations. But any suggestion that Britain could also have intercepted the calls of German politicians or officials – even if only as part of a much wider sweep of the German capital – would prove damaging.
A separate leaked SCS document states that Stateroom and other facilities target mobile phones or wi-fi networks. The location of any equipment within the British embassy would make it unlikely that data from Mrs Merkel’s residence and offices would not have been collected.
Secret bugging operations similar to the British and American Berlin embassy operations have been making the news for more than 40 years.
In 1971, American news columnist Jack Anderson reported that NSA and GCHQ were successfully monitoring Soviet leaders’ radio links from Russian-made Zil limousines, producing streams of information about foreign policy and military intentions – but also revealing that the Soviet leaders “banter and bicker … and gossip”. “The leaders … complain about their ailments like old maids,” he wrote.
As with the Snowden leaks, at the time the NSA claimed that the Anderson leak caused the Russians to shut down their use of limo phones.
This was not true – the Soviets just went on chattering. On 26 May 1972, according to released US documents, the embassy suites produced information that was vital to securing the East-West agreement not to use anti-missile missiles.
The Russians’ real response to the revelation was to blast both embassies with high intensity radio signals, in a failed attempt to jam the receiving equipment. The radio onslaught provoked concerns for the health and safety of both diplomats and spies. – The Independent
A controversial 600-plus page manual used by the Pentagon to train its Equal Opportunity officers teaches that “healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian” men hold an unfair advantage over other races, and warns in great detail about a so-called “White Male Club.”
“Simply put, a healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian male receives many unearned advantages of social privilege, whereas a black, homosexual, atheist female in poor health receives many unearned disadvantages of social privilege,” reads a statement in the manual created by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI).
The manual, which was obtained by Fox News, also instructs troops to “support the leadership of people of color. Do this consistently, but not uncritically,” the manual states.
The Equal Opportunity Advisor Student Guide is the textbook used during a three month DEOMI course taught at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. Individuals who attend the training lead Equal Opportunity briefings on military installations around the nation.
The 637-page manual covers a wide range of issues from racism and religious diversity to cultural awareness, extremism and white privilege.
I obtained a copy of the manual from an Equal Opportunity officer who was disturbed by the course content and furious over the DEOMI’s reliance on the Southern Poverty Law Center for information on “extremist” groups.
DEOMI instructors were also responsible for briefings at bases around the country that falsely labeled evangelical Christians, Catholics and a number of high-profile Christian ministries as domestic hate groups.
DEOMI opened in 1971 in response to the civil rights movement. It’s responsible for Equal Opportunity/Equal Employment Opportunity education and training for military active duty and reservists, according to its website.
The subject of white privilege emerged in a 20-page section titled, “Power and Privilege.”
“Whites are the empowered group,” the manual declares. “White males represent the haves as compared to the have-nots.”
The military document advises personnel to “assume racism is everywhere, every day” and “notice code words for race.” They are also instructed to “understand and learn from the history of whiteness and racism.”
“Assume racism is everywhere, everyday,” read a statement in a section titled, ‘How to be a strong ‘white ally.’”
“One of the privileges of being white is not having to see or deal with racism all the time,” the manual states. “We have to learn to see the effect that racism has.”
The guide also points out that whites are over-represented and blacks are underrepresented in positive news stories, that middle class blacks live in poorer neighborhoods than middle class whites and that even though there are more white criminals than any other race, the news coverage of black criminals is about equal to the news coverage of white criminals.
The military manual goes into great detail about a so-called “White Male Club.”
“In spite of slave insurrections, civil war, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, the women’s suffrage movement leading to the 19th amendment, the civil rights movement, urban rebellions and the contemporary feminist movement, the club persists,” the document states.
The military also implies that white Americans may be in denial about racism.
In a section titled, “Rationalizations for Retaining Privilege and Avoiding Responsibilities,” the military lays out excuses white people use.
“Today some white people may use the tactic of denial when they say, ‘It’s a level playing field; this is a land of equal opportunity,’” the manual reads. “Some white people may be counterattacking today by saying political correctness rules the universities or they want special status.”
DEOMI points out that if “white people are unable to maintain that the atrocities are all in the past, they may switch to tactics to make a current situation seem isolated.”
They said some of the ways whites may claim to be victims include saying things like, “I have it just as bad as anyone else,” “They’re taking away our jobs,” or “White people are under attack.”
The military concludes the section by urging students to “understand and learn from the history of whiteness and racism” and “support the leadership of people of color.” – Fox news
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
A US drone killed six people in northwest Pakistan Thursday in only the second such strike outside the country’s lawless tribal districts, threatening to inflame tensions between Washington and Islamabad.
