About 40 countries to take part in US anti-ISIS campaign

The US is keeping quiet about which countries are taking part in the fight against ISIS.

Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS that nearly 40 nations have agreed to contribute to the fight, but “it’s not appropriate to start announcing” what roles each will play.

However, an international conference on the ISIS situation took place in Paris on Monday, with world leaders set to debate the anti-ISIS coalition. The meeting includes representatives of some 30 countries, but excludes Iraq’s neighbors Syria and Iran.

Turkey and Jordan, key US allies in the region, are thought to be reluctant to intervene directly.

Turkey is a NATO member, and borders both Syria and Iraq from the north. Despite this, it won’t let the US use its facilities in the mission against the IS, a government official in Ankara told AFP.

Turkey was also absent during the signing of a joint communiqué on the situation in Iraq on Thursday.

The US State Department meanwhile praised The Netherlands for “leading an effort” to stop the foreign fighters supporting terrorism from arriving in the country.

Britain became the first country to officially join the military operation. UK Prime Minister David Cameron called IS “the embodiment of evil” on Sunday, following the group’s beheading of its third Western hostage, this time British citizen David Haines. Earlier, IS killed two US journalists in the same manner.

Germany, Australia, France and Canada are also part of the campaign.

Europe created the Afrikaner problem in South Africa

A recent statement by the FW de Klerk Foundation in Cape Town after the Constitutional Court’s finding in the Renate Barnard affirmative-action case, said that “[the judgement] is, in effect, a prescription for, and validation of, harmful discrimination against millions of South African citizens for an indefinite period, on no basis other than their race – and with no reference to their individual merits, circumstances or concerns”.

[followbutton username=’danroodt’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

roodt_fbfotoLegalised “positive discrimination” against South African whites is now a fact of life, as is the growing racial nationalism of the country’s blacks. “Africa for the Africans” is the underlying slogan in South Africa, by which we must understand “African” in a racial sense. Many of South Africa’s radicalised black intellectuals and celebrities affirm that every African has the right to cross the border and settle in South Africa, but that whites “belong to Europe”.

Raidersblad2
Buy Dan Roodt’s new ebook essay for only $3 or R30.

In essence, what black racial nationalists assert is that Afrikaners have not naturalised after 360 years in the country. This might have been dismissed as simple talk by blacks, if it were not supported by the courts and the political system in South Africa which effectively exclude the Afrikaner minority of all political power and influence. Outside the Western Cape, there is not even a single municipality where Afrikaners have any say in how their taxes are spent, let alone a province or the central government.

Objectively speaking, Afrikaners have been disarmed, disenfranchised, culturally marginalised and now find themselves in the position summed up by the Canadian political scientist, Heribert Adam, as an “internal diaspora” in South Africa. Being an internal diaspora is but a few nuances removed from having the status of internal refugees.

Since 1994, criminal, political and social violence has been constantly rising in South Africa and Afrikaners have been victims of so-called “farm murders” and attacks during which they are tortured and executed in dehumanising ways reminiscent of ethnic war and ethnic cleansing. In the cities too, house robberies and interracial attacks are rising. Together with legislation all but prohibiting them from holding state and corporate jobs, it is clear that the only rational choice for Afrikaners is to leave as many have already done, emigrating to Australia, New Zealand and other countries in the British Commonwealth.

With the benefit of hindsight, both South Africa and the ex-Rhodesia were deliberately brought under the control of radical black-nationalist movements that saw no long-term future for whites in Southern Africa, notwithstanding the posturing of Nelson Mandela before the world media, which was simply meant to ensure a smooth transfer of military and police power to the ANC and the South African Communist Party.

Over the past decade or two we have seen many countries destabilised by the Western drive for “democracy”, which is usually an ill-concealed strategy to strip the target countries of their mineral wealth and other assets. In that respect, South Africa is no different to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen where the USA is currently fighting wars. America also has military personnel deployed in other states, including Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

While Europe normally pays obeisance to the USA in its global strategy and foreign adventures, lately also seen in Ukraine where Russian commentators have accused the EU of being a “lapdog” of the USA, the Old Continent carries a heavy responsibility for the destabilisation of Southern Africa. Instead of finding a compromise between the various peoples and interest groups in this part of the world, European states have consistently supported the most radical, anti-white, quasi-Marxist revolutionary groups. The rise of Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa portend exactly the same future for South Africa as the present Zimbabwe, with the confiscation of white-owned farms, urban property and other assets.

As in Gabriel García Márquez’s famous novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, we know exactly what the outcome is going to be: the ethnic cleansing of Afrikaners from South Africa, with or without even more violence than we are experiencing at present from the marauding, anomic killers that prosper under the ANC government’s policy of laissez-faire and a gradual descent into general lawlessness.

At least five European states may be held accountable for Afrikaners’ becoming a stateless people: Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, (East) Germany and our former colonial power, the United Kingdom. They financed and supported, also through propaganda and diplomatic means, the African National Congress and South African Communist Party, knowing full well that these were radical, revolutionary movements that would ultimately “chase the whites into the sea” as had occurred in several other African states, notably the Belgian Congo (currently the DRC), Algeria, and the Portuguese colonies such as Mozambique and Angola.

It is telling that, after finally seeing the writing on the wall, albeit 20 years too late, the FW de Klerk Foundation has just launched an appeal to the “international community” in trying to stem the devastating effects of permanent affirmative action upon a politically powerless minority. According to the FW de Klerk Foundation, “We must make it clear that we are not prepared to accept a status as second-­‐class citizens.”

Clearly, De Klerk merely followed European and particularly British dictates twenty years ago, in the optimistic belief that there would be some kind of Western or European “veto” in the future if things had to go wrong. However, with so many countries being destabilised by American wars, the international community would simply regard South Africa as yet another casualty of internal divisions without acknowleding the key role played by Europe in setting what used to be an organised Western-style industrial state on the road to radicalism, revolution and ethnic cleansing.

There is an expression in Afrikaans, gedane sake het geen keer, which is more or less equivalent to the English “no use in crying over spilt milk”. Afrikaners will never rule South Africa again and the country is living through a miniature “decline of the West”, with long-forgotten African beliefs and superstitions displacing Christianity and even the secular, scientific thought of the European Enlightenment. Mbeki’s so-called AIDS denialism was but one, highly publicised challenge to science which is also taking place in many other fields.

South Africa, like Zimbabwe, has been broken and it will never be fixed, unless there takes place such a vast conceptual revolution in the world which makes possible another basis for political power besides sheer numbers and demography, but there are very few signs of such a development. In truth, no-one cares about the fact that Zimbabwe has gone from bread basket to basket case, and neither does anyone care that South Africa is slouching towards the same fate.

VOC_shipThe only question that remains is: What is to become of the Afrikaner people? We started life out here in this colony almost four centuries ago as either refugees from Catholic France or as indentured employees of the Dutch East India Company. Today and once more, we have become at best a stateless people or “minority at risk”, holding South African passports but without any say in government, in our schools, universities, municipalities or other institutions from which we are being increasingly displaced. Everywyhere, we are subjected to a rapidly intensifying racial quota system and our children hardly have the right to study, let alone to find work within the state or corporate sector. At worst, we are already internal refugees and unlike the Portuguese of Angola or Mozambique, or even the white Rhodesians, we do not have the luxury of holding European passports. In a certain sense, having destroyed or at least destabilised our heimat, Europe does not want us back.

The behaviour of Europe could perhaps be compared to that of a man burning down his brother’s house and then refusing him shelter afterwards. Being the victims of European and American geopolitical scheming and social engineering, we do not have any form of recourse as to the consequences of their destructive designs. It was also cleverly done by means of indigenous proxies or “exiled” ones, so it is going to be difficult to prove European mischief in destabilising South Africa.

Even though we speak a variant of seventeenth-century Dutch and Low German, that former lingua franca of Northern Europe from 1300 to 1600 when the Hanseatic League held sway, we have long since ceased to think of ourselves as Europeans. We named the standardised form of our language “Afrikaans” in honour of our adopted continent, that same continent which is now rejecting us in the name of the slogan, “Africa for the Africans”, understood in a racial and cultural sense. The paradox is that the anglicised or americanised African speaking English, but racially African, is able to stigmatise the white Afrikaner as a foreigner, an interloper, despite the fact that our cultural roots in this place are deeper and more ancient than his.

However, Europe too, although it does not seem to accept the principle of “Europe for the Europans”, also enthusiastically supports the notion of “Africa for the Africans”. Most European companies apply discrimination against indigenous whites with alacrity, as it is the law of the land.

Given the continuing African population explosion, with the continent’s population set to rise to 2,5 billion in the next 30 years, the demographic pressure on us is going to be relentless, added to all the other pressures such as the violence and institutionalised discrimination. What kind of racial quota do you get by the time that you constitute only one or two percent of the population? A percent or nothing?

During the call for sanctions against South Africa during the 1980s, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher opposed it on the basis that up to a million whites from here had British passports and could therefore swell the ranks of British unemployed. Presumably the same million whites of British descent could still return to the United Kingdom, like the Portuguese from Africa did or the French pieds noirs from Algeria. But what about us, descendants of the French Huguenots, the Dutch, the Flemish and the Northern Germans whose forgotten trading language from centuries gone by we still speak, write and school our children in?

If all else goes wrong, as increasingly seems likely, do we not have the same right of return as the British, the Portuguese, the pieds noirs or the Belgians, even though we are technically “non-Europeans”?

Will Europe, as it welcomes the Syrian, Iraqui, Afghan and other refugees from destabilised countries where the Anglo-Saxon oil wars have played themselves out, reject us, despite being its own flesh and blood? Not only that, but we are truly the victims of the European political junkyard dumped on South Africa, with its Swedish theory of the melting pot, of multiculturalism, of communism, of white guilt and the rest.

In more senses than one, Afrikaners are a problem of Europe’s making.

[followbutton username=’danroodt’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

British man called John beheaded American journalist Foley

The jihadist who beheaded the American journalist James Foley is believed to be British born militant from London who calls himself John, it can be revealed.

John spoke English with an accent identified as southern British by a linguistic expert, interviewed by The Guardian.

Intelligence agents in the UK and United States are urgently looking into reports that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighter, whose brutal actions shocked the world, is the ringleader of group of British jihadists who have specialised in hostage taking.

Based in the Isil stronghold of Raqqa in Syria, ‘John’, is described as a well-educated, intelligent, but highly committed member of the extremist terror group.

Operating closely with two other British born militants, the group have been dubbed ‘The Beatles’, by fellow jihadists because of their nationality.

Some have boasted on Twitter and Facebook about their involvement, and the security services were last night examining pictures of known fighters as part of the process of identifying Mr Foley’s killer. They include boys and girls as young as 16, a medical student and a Primark shop assistant.

Source: The Telegraph

No law or policy for ‘mastering the Internet’

Britain’s GCHQ is scanning servers in multiple foreign countries for vulnerable ports, according to German newspaper Heise. Using a tool called Hacienda, the intelligence agency seeks to ‘master the internet’ for sources of espionage.

Spanish for estate, Hacienda can port scan all of the servers in a country to provide information on user endpoints and scan for potential vulnerabilities. The ability to port scan is not new, but the scale of its use by government spies, with 27 countries scanned by 2009, has shocked many familiar with the software.

“In 2009, the British spy agency GCHQ made port scans a ‘standard tool’ to be applied against entire nations,” Heise reports. “Twenty-seven countries are listed as targets of the Hacienda [program].”

The process of scanning entire countries and looking for vulnerable network infrastructure to exploit is consistent with the meta-goal of “Mastering the Internet”, which is also the name of a GCHQ cable-tapping program. Targeted protocols include SSH, HTTP and FTP, among others.

Systems may be attacked simply because they might eventually create a path towards a valuable espionage target, even without indications this will ever be the case. Based on this logic, every device is a target.

The database resulting from the scans is shared with other spy agencies in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. MAILORDER is described in the documents as a secure transport protocol used between the ‘Five Eyes’ spy agencies to exchange collected data.

System and network administrators face the threat of industrial espionage, sabotage and human rights violations created by nation states indiscriminately attacking network infrastructure and breaking into services.

GCHQ says it will not comment on “intelligence matters” but reiterates that everything that it does is done within a strict legal framework. “It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters,” a GCHQ spokesperson told The Inquirer.

“All of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception of Communications and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.

“All our operational processes rigorously support this position,” they added.

British intelligence is permitted to go further in surveillance than similar agencies in other Western countries, according to Edward Snowden. The former NSA contractor believes the powers of the British intelligence establishment are not restricted effectively enough by “law or policy”. The lack of legal restrictions allows UK intelligence services to target more people than is necessary.

Source: RT

Independent Scotland would ditch the Queen

Some 63 per cent of voters called for a ballot on Scotland’s next head of state in the event of separation, with only 22 per cent saying the royals should be retained without question.

Scottish independence could lead to Scotland ditching the royal family and becoming a republic, according to constitutional experts.

Although the SNP has said that it wants the Queen as head of state, independence could lead to divided loyalties for the sovereign, experts said.

Stephen Haseler, director of the Global Policy Institute in London, said: “Alex Salmond has overcome the issue of the monarchy initially by saying ‘Look, we will keep the Queen’, but of course the Queen won’t be around for very long, and my absolute conviction is that once the Queen goes the Scots won’t wear Prince Charles, and they will go for a republican system within the European Union.”

The movement contains many republicans, particularly in the Scottish Green party and among the Scottish Socialists.

This majority view is shared by people who are intending to vote against independence, as well as by supporters of all political parties.

Although many voters would support the monarchy in any such referendum, the very fact that Scots clearly want a say on the issue will be deeply worrying for Buckingham Palace.

The Royal Family has been enjoying a surge in popularity recently, thanks to the public affection for the baby, George.

However, our poll shows that repeated demands for an independent Scotland to become a republic have obviously shaken confidence in the Windsors north of the Border.

First Minister Alex Salmond has insisted the Queen and her successors would automatically remain as heads of state if Scots vote for independence next year.

However, influential figures within both the SNP and the Yes Scotland campaign are in favour of holding another referendum on retaining the monarchy.

Yes Scotland chairman Dennis Canavan welcomed our shock poll results, which support his personal view.

He said: “I am pleased to see such widespread support for the sovereignty of the people. This poll shows that the majority of people agree with my earlier suggestion that the people should decide whether the monarchy should be retained.

“It is also very significant that my proposal has cross-party support, with a clear majority amongst Labour, SNP, Tory and Lib Dem voters.

“Some of the party politicians seem to be out of touch with their own voters on this issue and trivialise the debate by mouthing sycophantic platitudes about the Queen.

“The present monarch may be popular but any would-be successor should not simply inherit the job of head of state without some form of democratic vote.

“The sovereignty of the people is far more important than the sovereignty of any monarch and a hereditary head of state should have no place in a modern society based on democratic principles such as equal opportunities.”

The strongest support for a referendum on the monarchy comes from Labour voters – 72 per cent – and those who did not vote in the last Holyrood elections – 88 per cent.

The party’s spokesman for constitutional affairs, Drew Smith MSP, said: “Talk of further referendums should come after the Scottish people have had their say on independence.”

Source: The Express

Protesters shut down Israeli arms factory in Britain

A group of pro-Palestine activists have allegedly shut down operations in a Staffordshire factory that they say supplies arms to Israel.

Around 10 activists from the London Palestine Action Group have taken to the roof of Elbit systems, an Israeli company with a subsidiary based in Shenstone, near Birmingham.

According to the LPAG, Elbit systems is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of unmanned aerial drones, which many suspect the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have used in their ongoing offensive in Gaza.

According to the group’s Tumblr blog, the activists chained the doors of the factory shut, and are demanding the closure of the factory, along with‘all forms of military trade and cooperation with Israel.’

The blog goes on to say: “The factory that we are occupying produces engines for drones and is owned by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military company and the world’s largest drones producer. Drone engines manufactured at this factory have been [sic] exported to Israel in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and Elbit Systems drones are being used in Israel’s ongoing massacre. Any claims that components manufactured at this factory are not being used in Israel’s current attack on Gaza are not credible.”

The group also says that the factory is part of the ‘Watchkeeper program’ which “is leading the manufacture of a new generation of drones for the UK military.”

The protest began in the early hours of Tuesday morning, with protesters hanging a banner across the factory roof saying “UK: Stop arming Israel”.

Source: RT

British minister resigns over Gaza

A Foreign Office minister has resigned from the Conservative government in Britain, saying its policy on the crisis in Gaza is “morally indefensible”.

Baroness Warsi wrote on her Twitter feed that she was leaving with “deep regret”.

Lady Warsi, who was previously chairman of the Conservative Party, became the first female Muslim cabinet minister when David Cameron took office in 2010.

The prime minister thanked her for her “excellent work”, adding that he wanted an “unconditional ceasefire” in Gaza.

Labour backed Lady Warsi’s comments, but Chancellor George Osborne called her resignation “disappointing and frankly unnecessary”.

Lady Warsi grew up in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and worked as a solicitor before entering politics. She was demoted from the cabinet to a middle-ranking Foreign Office post in 2012, being made minister for faith and communities at the same time.

She wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: “With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister & tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza.”

Several backbench Conservative MPs have called on Mr Cameron to take a more robust line with Israel amid concerns its actions in Gaza are “disproportionate”.

Source: BBC

The awesome (and chilling) genius of the Germans

By Max Hastings.

The British knew the feeling. One minute there you are, like Brazil’s football team on Tuesday, settling down to start a long campaign. The next minute, bewilderingly, it is all over: Germany is master of the field, counting prisoners or — in this case — an unprecedented 7-1 triumph in the World Cup semi-final, executed with chilling discipline and precision.

What is it about the Germans? Yes, yes, I know we are not meant to mention the war, or rather wars. But how can we not do so, when for centuries the world paid tribute to Germany’s prowess on the battlefield? The Roman writer Tacitus and the French revolutionary Mirabeau alike marvelled at the Germans as a society of supremely disciplined warriors.

Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander wrote ruefully from Italy in 1944, lamenting the difficulties of the Allied armies, struggling to make headway in mountainous terrain. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘we are fighting the best soldiers in the world. What men!’

Today, even if the warriors are gone, the national genius for disciplined pursuit of purpose persists. In the seven decades since Germany abandoned militarism and espoused democracy, it has brilliantly translated the skills that made its armies so often supreme on the battlefield into economic, industrial and indeed social success on an equally awesome scale.

Germany is today the most effective society in Europe, even extending its achievement to the football pitch, in an era when, if there was a World XI, it is unlikely any England player would be picked for it.

I have been studying the Germans and their history for most of my life. For centuries, foreign admiration focused on just one state — Prussia. Frederick the Great in the mid-18th century made its army the most formidable in Europe, and its Field-Marshal, Blucher, famously fought alongside Wellington at Waterloo.

But until the late 19th century, the British condescended to Prussia: it might be formidable, but it was scarcely a country in the same league as Britain, France and Russia. When Princess Victoria, the Queen and Prince Albert’s daughter, became engaged to the heir to the Prussian throne, The Times complained bitterly that the most eligible royal bride in Europe was attaching herself to ‘a paltry German dynasty’.

Such a patronising spirit did not survive for long. In 1871, Otto von Bismarck swept up Prussia’s neighbouring princely states into a new German empire. In the decades that followed, Germany became the most formidable industrial nation in Europe, overtaking Britain by the most important yardsticks, above all in the production of machine tools.

The magazine John Bull grudgingly praised its expatriate workers in Britain: ‘These Germans have earned for themselves a good character. They are steady, regular, not so much given to drink as their English fellow-workers . . . often very much superior to the Englishmen who may apply for the same post. They are much better educated, more respectful, and, in a word “do not give themselves airs”.’

In 1896, the ex-prime minister Lord Rosebery said in a speech: ‘I am afraid of Germany. Why am I afraid of the Germans? Because I admire and esteem them so much. They are an industrious nation; they are, above all, a systematic nation, they are a scientific nation, and whatever they take up, whether it be the arts of peace or the arts of war, they push them forward to the utmost possible perfection with that industry, that system, that science which is part of their character.’

To me, the supreme irony of 1914 is that if Germany had not gone to war, almost nothing could have prevented it from dominating Europe within a generation by entirely peaceful means — primacy in industry, science, technology.
It was the most advanced society on the Continent, save in one critical respect: it was cursed by an archaic system of government in which a half-mad emperor, together with generals and ministers whom he personally appointed, held power over peace and war, and used it with disastrous consequences for mankind.

What is extraordinary about both world wars is not that Germany lost them, but that this one nation — with marginal assistance from a few feeble allies — held most of the world at bay for four years between 1914 and 1918, then again for six between 1939 and 1945. I have scarcely met a man who fought against the Germans who did not emerge with a profound respect for their gifts as soldiers, sailors, airmen.

We can admire what German servicemen achieved on the battlefield, especially in 1944-45, when they were hopelessly outgunned.

‘How could one not admire them?’, said a British officer whom I interviewed about the 1944 campaign in Normandy. ‘They were very, very good. They almost never gave up until the bitter end.’

And what of relations today? David Cameron thinks he has forged a close relationship and understanding with Chancellor Angela Merkel — then painfully discovers that this is not the case.

German politicians tell us they passionately want us to stay in Europe; that they share many of our hopes for reform of the EU.

But then we find, to our frustration and anger, that matters are not so simple; that for all their professions of enthusiasm for a partnership with Britain, they are pursuing a vision for the EU’s future totally at odds with that of most British people. They seem irredeemably committed to ‘ever-closer union’.

I am often asked if I see any parallels between 1914 and today. Not quite, I answer; there is mercifully no prospect of another Great War.

But Europe has faced the same problem since 1871, and still does today: how to co-exist with one state mightier and more effective than any other, without becoming effectively subjects of a German empire.

It is not that Germany in 2014 is doing anything malevolent: it simply manages its affairs, and especially its commercial affairs, vastly better than the rest of us. Mercedes, VW and BMW (which now owns Mini and Rolls-Royce) make the finest cars money can buy, outside niche markets.

The German pharmaceutical industry is among the most dynamic in the world. The German cut-price supermarkets Aldi and Lidl threaten to undo our own traditional High Street giants with a combination of low costs and shrewd offers of surprisingly good produce. The world queues to buy Germany’s industrial output.

German regional banks set an example to our own through their identification with local businesses and support for industrial investment. Angela Merkel effortlessly dominates the EU, appearing a giant among the pygmies who lead partner states.

Germany is so rich that it can afford — in effect — to pay the Greeks and Spanish to buy its motor cars.

Finally, look again at that football squad: no ludicrously ecstatic celebrations when its players score, even time and again in a World Cup semi-final; no visible tattoos; a supreme understanding of what teamwork means, rather than rampant egotism.

This is a footballing nation now flourishing in a league where ticket prices are low because club members must hold a majority stake in each team.

They are worthy champions, exemplars of the qualities that have made their country great in peace, the terror of the world in war.

Could anybody in modern times say the same about an England national team?

It is some consolation that we, as a nation, have more fun and, indeed, are more fun than the Germans. Because when it comes to the serious stuff, they leave us gaping.

Source: Daily Mail

Seeding the net with false info

The British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call.

The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.

But as the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an “emergency” to “help keep us safe,” a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called “JTRIG Tools and Techniques” provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit’s operations are. The document—available in full here—is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG’s “weaponised capability” when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker’s buffet for wreaking online havoc.

Source: First Look

Get ‘diverse’ or else, British govt tells filmmakers

On screen, at least one lead character must be ‘positively reflecting diversity’

Movie companies have been told they must meet new targets for ethnic minority, gay and female characters on screen to be eligible for future funding from the British Film Institute.

The BFI, Britain’s largest public film fund, announced a “Three Ticks” scheme to ensure diversity in films and behind the scenes as it set out new rules for funding.

Under the system, to be implemented in September, films must “tick” at least two of three criteria: on-screen diversity; off-screen diversity and “creating opportunities and social mobility”.

The BFI, which allocates lottery funding and invests more than £27 million in film production, sales and distribution, supports about 30 new projects a year. It backed The King’s Speech and Philomena.

The new rules will compel filmmakers to place “diverse” actors and subjects at the forefront of their projects, as well as ensuring minority workers are represented on set and in the crew.

On screen, at least one lead character must be “positively reflecting diversity”, with the story more likely to receive funding if it “explicitly and predominantly explores issues of identity relating to ethnicity or national origins, a specific focus on women, people with disabilities, sexual identity, age and people from a socially disadvantaged background”.

Among the films the BFI has praised for content include Suffragette, the story of the battle for women to gain the vote, and Pride, about gay activists supporting the miners’ strike. It will ask filmmakers to ensure that at least 30 per cent of supporting and non-speaking characters are also “diverse”.

Off-screen, at least two heads of department must be from diverse backgrounds, as well as a range of “key creatives” including the director, screenwriter, composer and cinematographer.

The third category requires companies to offer paid internships and jobs to “new entrants from diverse backgrounds” and to help them progress.

“Three Ticks” is likely to raise fears about compromising scripts’ authenticity, with period dramas less likely to naturally represent “diverse backgrounds”.

A spokesman for the BFI insisted all films would have the opportunity to meet the criteria, with even those not fulfilling them onscreen able to “tick” the other two sections.

Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, praised the initiative as helping to “raise the bar”, adding that he would like to see all television, film and performing arts companies following the BFI’s example.

Amanda Nevill, the CEO of the BFI, said it was “vital” to reflect British society in order to stay relevant and said the announcement “is just the beginning”.

Last month, the BBC announced it would ensure one in seven actors and presenters will be either black, Asian or ethnic minority in the next three years.

At the time, critics including Philip Davies, the Conservative MP, called it “absolutely ridiculous” political correctness, saying that all recruitment “should be done on ability”. – Daily Telegraph

Assassination by drone: US relies on laws from countries without a constitution

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:

No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ….

So how did the legal memorandum “justifying” assassination of U.S. citizens by drone try to sidestep the Fifth Amendment?

It relied on reasoning from two countries that don’t have any constitution.

The New York Times reports:

One might have expected a thoughtful memo that carefully weighed the pros and cons and discussed how such a strike accords with international and Constitutional law.

Instead, the memo turns out to be a slapdash pastiche of legal theories — some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law — that was clearly tailored to the desired result. Perhaps the administration held out so long to avoid exposing the thin foundation on which it based such a momentous decision.

Neither England nor Israel have a constitution.

Indeed, as the BBC notes, they are in a very small group of three:

In all but a handful of democracies in the world, the nation’s constitution can be found in a single document. The exceptions are Israel, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Nothing in the memo says that it only applies to U.S. citizens living abroad. Indeed, the government has claimed the right to assassinate or indefinitely detain any American citizen without any due process.

Actually, the U.S. has never said that it won’t assassinate Americans living on U.S. soil.

Sadly, even though Americans have a constitution, we have lost virtually all of the rights contained in that document.

Source: George Washington’s blog

British MPs too white says David Cameron

‘MPs do not represent the people of Britain properly because they are too white’

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said there is ‘much more to be done’ to encourage more people from ethnic minority backgrounds to enter Parliament.

The Prime Minister said there is “much more to be done” to encourage more people from ethnic minority backgrounds to enter Parliament.

Mr Cameron made the comments in a preface to a book, “Rainbow over Westminster”, which charts the increasing number of MPs who are black or from ethnic minority backgrounds.

In the preface, Mr Cameron said that the book “serves as a reminder – that there is much more to be done.

“Our Parliament is still nowhere near representative enough of the country we live in today.

“We should not presume that this will simply correct itself over time. History isn’t written for us: it is written by us.”

Mr Cameron said that he hoped the book – which is edited by the Labour MP Keith Vaz, who became the first British Indian to sit in the Commons for over 60 years when he was elected in 1987 – would help “to open up politics further”.

Since the first MP was elected 172 years ago, there have been 38 ethnic minority MPs in the Commons. Today 26 out of 650 MPs are from BME backgrounds.

In the 2010 election 16 men and women from black and ethnic minority backgrounds were elected – a quintupling on the three who were elected in 1987.

In an introduction, John Bercow, the Commons’ Speaker, said: “We need to ensure that we continue to benefit from the greater diversity of elected representatives.”

Mark Hammond, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “Parliament should be drawing from the widest talent pool so that people from a range of backgrounds have the opportunity to take part in political life and help make fair and well-informed decisions.”

Mr Cameron’s remarks come after research published last month from the Policy Exchange thinktank, which said that non-white people will make up between 20 and 30 per cent of the population by 2050. The current share is around 14 per cent.

The think-tank, which has close links to the Conservative Party leadership, also highlighted the differing political leanings of different ethnic groups, advising politicians not to treat non-white voters as a uniform group.

The coming growth in Britain’s non-white population is largely explained by a higher birth-rate among ethnic minority Britons.

A quarter of all children under 10 in the UK are from ethnic minorities.

By contrast, 95 per cent of people aged over 60 are white.

The Conservative Party is doing more to reach out to black and ethnic minority groups, although it refuses to make such moves public.

In April, Michael Gove, the Education secretary and a Tory moderniser, issued the said the Tories should reclaim the term “multi-culturalism”.

He told an audience at the Asian Business Awards told the 500-strong black tie dinner at a hotel in central London earlier this month that Britain was a “stronger country” because of its history of immigration.

He said: “The answer to how we make our country strong in the future is that we welcome talent from whenever it comes and we celebrate the fact that we are stronger together as a United Kingdom, as a multi-cultural nation than we could ever be if we looked back to the past.”

Source: The Telegraph

Mass surveillance destroys the economy

Privacy is a prerequisite for a prosperous economy. Four ways that mass surveillance hurts the US economy.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada – Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D. – noted last month:

Privacy is Essential to … Prosperity and Well-Being

• Innovation, creativity and the resultant prosperity of a society requires freedom;

• Privacy is the essence of freedom: Without privacy, individual human rights, property rights and civil liberties – the conceptual engines of innovation and creativity, could not exist in a meaningful manner;

• Surveillance is the antithesis of privacy: A negative consequence of surveillance is the usurpation of a person’s limited cognitive bandwidth, away from innovation and creativity.

The Financial Post reported in February: “Big Brother culture will have adverse effect on creativity, productivity“.

Christopher Lingle – visiting professor of economics at ESEADE, Universidad Francisco Marroquín – agrees that creativity is a key to economic prosperity.

Edward Snowden said last year:

The success of economies in developed nations relies increasingly on their creative output, and if that success is to continue we must remember that creativity is the product of curiosity, which in turn is the product of privacy.

Silicon Valley is currently one of the largest drivers of the U.S. economy. Do you think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs could have tinkered so creatively in their garages if the government had been watching everything they do?

Everyone who has every done anything creative knows that you need a little privacy to try different things before you’re ready to go public with it. If your bench model, rough sketch or initial melody is being dissected in real time by an intrusive audience … you’re not going to be very creative.

Moreover, surveillance hampers the free flow of information as many people begin to watch what they say. The free flow of information is a core requisite for a fast-moving economy … especially an information economy, as opposed to economies focused on resource-extraction or manufacturing.

As quoted above, the White House states:

Assuring the free flow of information [is] essential to American and global economic prosperity, security, and the promotion of universal rights.

Mass surveillance makes people more reluctant to share information … and thus hurts the economy.

Top computer and internet experts say that NSA spying breaks the functionality of our computers and of the Internet. It reduces functionality and reduces security by – for example – creating backdoors that malicious hackers can get through.

Remember, American and British spy agencies have intentionally weakened security for many decades. And it’s getting worse and worse. For example, they plan to use automated programs to infect millions of computers.

How much time and productivity have we lost in battling viruses let in because of the spies tinkering? How much have we lost because “their” computer programs conflict with “our” programs?

Microsoft’s general counsel labels government snooping an “advanced persistent threat,” a term generally used to describe teams of hackers that coordinate cyberattacks for foreign governments. It is well-known among IT and security professionals that hacking decreases employee productivity. While they’re usually referring to hacking by private parties, the same is likely true for hacking by government agencies, as well.

And the spy agencies are already collecting millions of webcam images from our computers. THAT’S got to tie up our system resources … so we can’t get our work done as fast.

Moreover, the Snowden documents show that the American and British spy agencies launched attacks to disrupt the computer networks of “hacktivists” and others they don’t like, and tracked supporters of groups such as Wikileaks.

Given that the spy agencies are spying on everyone, capturing millions of screenshots, intercepting laptop shipments, creating fake versions of popular websites to inject malware on people’s computers, launching offensive cyber-warfare operations against folks they don’t like, and that they may view journalism, government criticism or even thinking for one’s self as terrorism – and tend to re-label “dissidents” as “terrorists” – it’s not unreasonable to assume that all of us are being adversely effected to one degree or another by spy agency operations.

Bill Binney – the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, a 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, the senior technical director within the agency, who managed thousands of NSA employees – tells Washington’s Blog:

The other costs involve weakening systems (operating systems/firewalls/encryption). When they do that, this weakens the systems for all to find. Hackers around the world as well as governments too.

These costs are hard to count. For example, we hear of hackers getting customer data over and over again. Is that because of what our government has done?

Or, how about all the attacks on systems in government? Are these because of weakened systems?

Trust is KEY for a prosperous economy. It’s hard to trust when your government, your internet service provider and your favorite websites are all spying on you.

The destruction of privacy by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and the entire U.S. economy (Facebook lost 11 millions users as of April mainly due to privacy concerns … and that was before the Snowden revelations). If people don’t trust the companies to keep their data private, they’ll use foreign companies.

American tech companies – including Verizon, Cisco, IBM and others – are getting hammered for their cooperating with the NSA and lack of privacy protection. The costs to the U.S. economy have been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And see this and this.

And destruction of trust in government and other institutions is destroying our economy.

A top cyber security consultant notes:

If privacy is not protected while performing mass surveillance for national security purposes, then the people’s level of trust in the government decreases.

And as we noted in 2002:

Personal freedom and liberty – and freedom from the arbitrary exercise of government power – are strongly correlated with a healthy economy, but America is descending into tyranny.

Authoritarian actions by the government interfere with the free market, and thus harm prosperity.

U.S. News and World Report notes:

The Fraser Institute’s latest Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report is out, and the news is not good for the United States. Ranked among the five freest countries in the world from 1975 through 2002, the United States has since dropped to 18th place.

The Cato institute notes:

The United States has plummeted to 18th place in the ranked list, trailing such countries as Estonia, Taiwan, and Qatar.

So lawlessness infringement of our liberty is destroying our prosperity.

Put another way, lack of privacy kills the ability to creatively criticize bad government policy … and to demand enforcement of the rule of law. Indeed, 5,000 years of history shows that mass surveillance is always carried out to crush dissent. In other words, mass surveillance is the opposite of the principle of the rule of law (in distinction to the rule of men) upon which America was founded.

Free speech and checks and balances on the power of government officials are two of the main elements of justice in any society. And a strong rule of law is – in turn – the main determinant of GDP growth.

Source: Washington’s blog

British police work round the clock to patrol social media

Complaints arising from behaviour on Facebook, Twitter or other social media make up “at least half” of calls passed on to police officers in Britain.

Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, said the number of calls relating to social media represented “a real problem for people working on the frontline of policing”.

“Police officers can’t deal with every bit of nonsense or disagreement that occurs on social media,” he told BBC Radio.

Antisocial behaviour and threats of assault are among the most common allegations, said Marshall.

He claimed police training and enforcement by social media companies was needed to combat the problem. About 6000 officers are being trained to deal with online offences and identify when a pattern of behaviour requires further investigation.

“It won’t be long before pretty much every investigation that the police conduct will have an online element to it,” he said.

The director of public prosecutions has issued guidance to prosecutors to determine which cases should be treated as potentially criminal.

They are also advised to look out for messages that constitute a “credible threat of violence “. – Daily Telegraph