Month: April 2016

Of course he can. Have a look at the latest trailer for the upcoming Oliver Stone movie, SNOWDEN, due out in September.

The Edward Snowden story is many things, but at some level, well apart from politics, it is a helluva thriller. Think of it: a young programmer, at great personal risk, figures out a way to gain access to a vast trove of very highly classified documents from one of America’s most secret agencies. He then discovers a way to beat all of NSA’s security to smuggle that information out of secure facilities. With the Feds no doubt on his heals, he finds his way to a foreign country, meets up with journalists, and reveals to Americans (and the world) that their own government has been illegally spying on them — reading their emails, listening to their calls, looking in their very bedrooms via hijacked webcams — for years. He then successfully eludes the full resources of the U.S. government and settles into a new life in Russia.

Continue reading “SNOWDEN Movie Trailer: Can Oliver Stone Make Whistleblowing Suspenseful?”

It should hardly be surprising to anyone paying attention that the federal government lied about every aspect of its “need” to break into the iPhone of the San Bernardino mass-shooter. There was another way to access it than compelling Apple to write code to defeat its own encryption. Breaking in to the phone was indeed intended to set a legal precedent despite what the FBI director promised. And the legislation coming out of Congress to “fix” the problem of encryption will result in the total destruction of any digital privacy for almost literally anyone across the globe. The San Bernardino shootings were another “new Pearl Harbor” event for the US police state to grab more of our liberties and incinerate what is left of the Constitution. Today’s Liberty Report is joined by Ron Paul Institute Senior Fellow Adam Dick to look at the latest developments in the case and what to expect from the upcoming legislation:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

The total muddle that is US policy toward Syria continues to astonish. This week we saw the spectacle of a State Department Spokesman telling us that President Obama’s promise to not put US boots on the ground in Syria, was never a promise not to put boots on the ground in Syria. Yes, it was funny to see him squirm, but there is nothing funny about the past five years of disastrous policy in Syria. Particularly considering the thousands killed once the US decided that “Assad must go” and began sending in fighters to make that happen.

Now we see the extraordinary situation where the US government admits that the militia groups Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham are fighting alongside and are “intermingled with” al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, but resoundingly rejects the Russian request to therefore classify these two groups terrorist.

In fact, not only does fighting alongside and “intermingling with” al-Qaeda not get a group classified “terrorist,” the US government is actually asking Russia and the Syrian government to stop shooting at such groups!

Continue reading “In Syria, US Rejects Russia Call To Name al-Qaeda Allies ‘Terrorist’”

May 2 will mark the second anniversary of one of the most horrific, politically inspired tragedies in modern European history – the fire in the Odessa trade union building that killed 48 people and wounded another 200.

Numerous pleas by the United Nations and the European Union for an objective investigation into the causes of this tragedy have gone unanswered. Multiple government commissions, both local and national, have been unable to move the case forward, partly because some of the evidence has been marked secret.

Last November, the International Consulting Group, set up by the Council of Europe, issued a scathing report about this lack of progress, and the government’s apparent disinterest in bringing those responsible to trial.

Now, as we approach the second anniversary of these tragic deaths, and the commemoration of Soviet victory in the Second World War on May 9, some of the same groups involved in the first tragedy are openly preparing for a second round.

Continue reading “Ukraine’s Rightists Return to Odessa”

Sanctions on North Korea have failed.

North Korea has now been sanctioned five times by the United Nations Security Council for its nuclear and missile tests: resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), 2094 (2013) and 2270 (2016). UNSC Resolution 2270 is the strongest one yet, spelling out in great detail the proscribed goods and requiring that all parties neither import them from nor export them to North Korea. Each resolution obliges the members to carry out the terms of the sanctions and (as the April 15 press statement of the UNSC says) “facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue.” This is a case of mission impossible for two fundamental reasons: the sanctions will not work, and the fact of them impedes any chance for a “peaceful and comprehensive solution.”

Foremost among the obstacles to an effective North Korea sanctions regime is smuggling along the China-DPRK (North Korea) border. Military items disguised as ordinary goods seem easily able to evade detection thanks to inconsistent inspection by border guards, bribery, false declarations, and North Korean firms based in China that actually belong to military-run trading companies. Since these practices are surely well known to the Chinese authorities, it seems fair to assume they have no strong interest in preventing or at least substantially reducing it – something they could accomplish with a more intensive border inspection process. That China is not doing so no doubt reflects its oft-stated position that the North Korean nuclear issue is the result of other countries’ policies, not China’s, hence that resolving it is others’ responsibility, mainly the US.

Continue reading “Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea”

Did the CIA meet with some of the 9/11 hijackers ahead of the attacks on New York? Did the Saudi government help finance those hijackers? Someone knows the answers, and soon, you might know as well.

This Summer?

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the New York Times the so-called “28 pages,” a still-classified section from the official report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, may be released to the public as early as this summer. The full 838-page report, minus those pages, was published in December 2002.

The pages detail Saudi Arabia involvement in funding the 9/11 hijackers, and were classified by then-President George W. Bush.

Continue reading “Is This What’s in Those 28 Pages? And Does it Matter?”