Month: February 2016

So, those American airstrikes recently in Libya, the ones for freedom and to defeat ISIS and banish Ant Man to hell?

Yeah, darn it, they also killed two Serbian diplomats. But don’t worry, America’s own secretary of state John Kerry personally called the Serbian prime minister to say “Sorry, our bad, dude.”

So that’s OK now. The U.S. may resume bombing nations of its choosing around the globe.

Even as the Pentagon said it had “no information” indicating that the American attack had led to the deaths of two Serbians and that the circumstances of their deaths “remained unclear,” Kerry offered his condolences to Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic over the Serbian diplomats killed in the U.S. airstrike.

Continue reading “Kerry Phones Serbian PM Over Diplomats Killed in US Libya Strike”

They lie like a rug.

In an attempt to convince Americans that having encryption and password-beating backdoors installed on their electronics so the government can snoop, the FBI first claimed the evil ISIS terrorists who shot up San Bernardino found a way to “beat” all of the resources of the NSA and lock down their iPhone to prevent further plots from being discovered. Lives were at risk, so the Fourth Amendment be damned!

That wasn’t really true.

It turns out, as the Justice Department acknowledged in its court filing, that the passcode of shooter Syed Farook’s iCloud account had been reset by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, “in an attempt to gain access to some information in the hours after the attack… but that had the effect of eliminating the possibility of an auto-backup.” A federal official familiar with the investigation confirmed that investigators were indeed in possession of the phone when the reset occurred.

Continue reading “San Bernardino Shooter’s Apple Password Changed While in Government Possession”

Why is the Justice Department trying to keep the Senate report on CIA torture under wraps? The same reason the CIA officer in charge of the torture program gave when he ordered the torture tapes destroyed: “the heat from destroying [the torture videos] is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into the public domain.” As it stands, not even government officials with the required security clearances are allowed to read the report. So much for oversight! More on this travesty on today’s Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

The US Justice Department escalated its standoff with Apple today, filing a motion to compel Apple to create software that would facilitate the Federal Government’s breaking the encryption of an iPhone in the possession of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple has argued that no one could depend on being secure from the prying eyes of government should it comply with the Federal government’s orders. Wrote Apple CEO Tim Cook, in a letter to customers this week, “in the wrong hands, this software – which does not exist today – would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.”

The Justice Department’s counterargument appears to be that this is a special case and they can be trusted to never use this “key” to our iPhones again. But ironically, this heightened encryption feature was incorporated into iPhones in response to revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the federal government had been illegally spying on American citizens. Apparently we are supposed to trust them this time.

In its filing today, the Justice Department (DoJ) ridiculed Apple’s concerns that being compelled by the government to create software to hack its own products would set a horrible precedent in a United States that still has a Fourth Amendment. Apple’s objections were not at all based on principle, the DoJ sneered, but rather “Apple’s current refusal to comply with the court’s order, despite the technical feasibility of doing so, instead appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy.”

Continue reading “Showdown: Justice Department Escalates Against Apple”

The FBI wants Apple to create software that will allow the Feds to break into the latest iPhones. Ironically, Apple upgraded its iPhone encryption as a result of the Snowden revelations about government spying on innocent Americans. The pretext for the government’s demand is that the San Bernardino attackers used iPhones and the FBI needs to see their data. The mainstream media, as usual, takes the side of government and along with officials like Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) is demonizing Apple for resisting what amounts to forced conscription of Apple engineers for the US government. What is really at stake? Another government grab at our Constitutional liberties under the guise of “keeping us safe.” How many terrorist plots has the FBI foiled through the use of surveillance on the rest of us? Zero. More today on the Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Last month, as US border patrol agents began rounding up Central American women and children denied asylum, a small group of international peace activists from Voices for Creative Nonviolence boarded a plane for Helsinki, Finland, to visit two longtime Iraqi friends who fled Baghdad last summer and somehow completed a perilous seven-week journey over land and sea to reach this northern seaport. Negotiating our way from the airport in Helsinki to Laajasalo, a small island and suburb where we were to stay with a Finnish journalist, we crossed a frozen and snow-covered Baltic Sea, as white flakes swirled in the streetlights and the temperature dropped to minus-25 degrees Celsius, a long, long way from Baghdad.

Our friends Mohammad and his teenage son, Omar, come from a small farming village where they grow okra. Last autumn, like hundreds of thousands of others, they were part of the swollen river of refugees whose headwaters sprang from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where endless war has devastated society and local violence has left so many people at grave risk. The journey to Europe is not merely a long, exhausting trip. It is treacherous from the start.

To begin with, while leaving their country of origin, people risk their lives traveling through contested parts of their country or over roads controlled by militias or warlords known to capture and kill people of their ethnicity or religious sect. Risks, we can be sure, they wouldn’t undertake except out of desperation. All of this merely to enter Turkey. In Istanbul, where refugees must try to find a trustworthy smuggler, make a deal with one of his agents, and pay a hefty fee – held in a sort of escrow until a specific, agreed-upon part of the trip is completed – Turkish police patrol the streets and coffee houses looking for migrants. Iraqis are particularly at risk. If captured in Turkey and identified, they are imprisoned and eventually turned over to Iraqi authorities. And in the charged, sectarian atmosphere in Iraq, refugees shudder to think what might follow.

Continue reading “A Swollen River of Refugees”