Article via Zero Hedge

Less than two weeks after a 69-year-old doctor, David Dao, was hospitalized after Chicago aviation police dragged him from a United Airlines plane sparking international outrage and a public relations nightmare for the carrier, it is now American Airlines’ turn to be in the spotlight after the airline suspended a male flight attendant when a video emerged showing him challenging a passenger to a fight after allegedly hitting a woman with a stroller during boarding.

The video filmed before Flight 591 departed from San Francisco on Friday afternoon, shows the airline staff member goading a passenger and saying, ‘hit me’.

Facebook user Surain Adyanthaya who recorded the incident, said he started filming after the flight attendant “violently took a stroller from a lady with her baby on my flight, hitting her and just missing the baby.” He added that “they just involuntarily escorted the mother and her kids off the flight and let the flight attendant back on, who tried to fight other passengers. The mom asked for an apology and the AA official declined.”

In his video, the woman with the child can be heard asking flight attendants for the stroller. A male passenger then walks towards the front of the plane and demands from the airline crew the name of the employee who took the stroller before he returns to his seat. Moments later, another American employee, who Scott said was a flight attendant, enters the plane and the male passenger confronts him.

“You do that to me and I’ll knock you flat,” the passenger can be heard saying to the flight attendant.

The staff member responds by pointing his finger at the man and telling him to ‘stay out of it.’ The male passenger then steps closer to the employee, who challenges him to a fight.

‘Try it,’ the employee tells the customer. ‘Hit me. You don’t know what the story is.’ ‘You almost hurt a baby!’ the man is heard replying. The passenger eventually returns to his seat and the flight attendant leaves the plane.

Adyanthaya posted another photo on his Facebook page showing the woman with two young children – believed to be twins – in her arms; she was reportedly removed from the plane and the AA employee was permitted back on the plane.

Reuters adds that American Airlines was investigating Friday’s incident, which happened on Flight 591 from San Francisco to Dallas before the plane took off, Leslie Scott, an airline spokeswoman said. The incident started over a dispute as to whether the woman could bring her stroller on the flight, Scott said. Witnesses said the male flight attendant told the woman she could not keep the stroller at her seat in the rear of the plane, Tribune Media reported. They said she was trying to find space for it when the initial incident occurred.

* * *

Understandably, American scrambled to intercept this latest PR fiasco before it got out of hand, although it may be too late.

“We are deeply sorry for the pain we have caused this passenger and her family and to any other customers affected by the incident,” the airline said in a statement late on Friday. The woman and her family were being upgraded to first class for the remainder of their international trip, it said. It is doubtful whether this attempt to mollify the general public, angrier by the day at being treated like cattle by US airlines (except for first class of course), will succeed.

This article first appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was authored by Tyler Durden.

The post American Airlines Employee Suspended After Hitting Mother, Challenging Passenger To A Fight appeared first on We Are Change.

Article via Antiwar

In a move that both violates Israeli law and likely amounts to Israel abrogating its commitment to limit the rate of settlement expansion, a group of settlers has built a new outpost in the occupied West Bank over the past two weeks, according to anti-settlement NGO Peace Now.

The new outpost was built near the existing Geva Binyamin settlement, on state-owned land, but outside of the settlement’s security fence. No permits were issued to authorize the construction, though likewise Israeli forces do not appear to have tried to prevent the construction.

Though most settlement expansion is based on ideology, either religious or nationalist, or both, Peace Now believes that in this case, the outpost is an economics issue, with the people who constructed it apparently drawn to the idea of getting free land to build housing on.

Though legally speaking such outposts are supposed to be demolished, the current far-right government is so deeply beholden to the settler movement that it is next to impossible for courts to compel the government to do anything about them, and retroactive legalization tends to follow int he long run.

This article first appeared on Antiwar.com and was authored by Jason Ditz.

The post Israeli Settlers Violate Law To Build New Illegal Outpost In West Bank appeared first on We Are Change.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson yesterday accused Iran of sending troops to fight in Syria and of destabilizing the region. He did not mention that Iranian troops were invited into the country while U.S. troops are in Syria illegally. Tillerson condemned Iran as a leading human rights abuser while praising Saudi Arabia — the kings of head-chopping — as a great U.S. ally.

The Secretary of State vowed that the U.S. would solve the Iran problem once and for all instead of leaving it to the next U.S. Administration.

Is Trump gunning for yet another major war in the Middle East?

Will U.S. allies follow Washington in new sanctions on Iran even as Trump has reluctantly admitted that Iran is living up to its end of the nuclear deal?

This and more in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

This article first appeared on RonPaulInstitute.org and was authored by Daniel McAdams.

The post Ron Paul On Tillerson Threatening Iran: ‘The Great Destabilizer’? appeared first on We Are Change.

The Trump administration recently launched a public survey on the White House’s website where participants can indicate which federal departments they believe should be eliminated.

While some survey options fall in line with the traditional Republican agenda, such as cutting the Department of Energy and the National Endowment for the Arts, others appear to flout the power of the Washington D.C., establishment. The CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Pentagon, and National Security Council are also options.
The survey allows users to select entire departments or bureaucracies within each department. It also features a question regarding which agencies survey participants would like to reform rather than eliminate.

Most surprisingly, however, is the option to eliminate the “Executive Office of the President” altogether. Users can also select smaller branches of the executive office and other agencies. Even U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are options under the larger umbrella of Homeland Security.Users can select as many options as they like and are also provided write-in boxes where they can list their suggestions and ideas in more detail.

The survey is an apparent result of an executive order President Trump issued on March 13. According to the website:

“On March 13th, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order that will make the Federal government more efficient, effective, and accountable to you, the American people. This Executive Order directs the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to present the President with a plan that recommends ways to reorganize the executive branch and eliminate unnecessary agencies.”

It claims the president is seeking Americans’ input to achieve this goal. “President Trump wants to hear your ideas and suggestions on how the government can be better organized to work for the American people,” the website’s statement reads. The survey will remain online until June 12 of this year.

It is unclear whether or not the president, like any other politician, is actually eager to hear the ideas of his constituency and Americans in general. While that could be the case, the website appears to be a useful tool, at the very least, for creating the appearance of accountability and concern with what voters actually want.

As TIME pointed out, “As an online poll that can be easily gamed, the survey is hardly scientific, but it could be a useful tool for the White House to push its own ideas down the road.”

For now, the results of the survey are hidden, and the site does not specify whether the final results will be made public. Notably, however, a disclaimer at the bottom of the page warns users that the White House “may not respond to every comment that is submitted and submissions do not bind the Office of Management and Budget or the Administration to further action.”

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

The post White House Survey Asks Public: Should The Presidency Be Eliminated? appeared first on We Are Change.

Newly-declassified documents show that a senior CIA agent and Deputy Director of the Directorate of Intelligence worked closely with the owners and journalists of many of the largest media outlets.

The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities found in 1975 that the CIA submitted stories to the American press:

Wikipedia adds details:

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services.

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning off funds intended for the Marshall Plan [i.e. the rebuilding of Europe by the U.S. after WWII]. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.

In 2008, the New York Times wrote:

During the early years of the cold war, [prominent writers and artists, from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jackson Pollock] were supported, sometimes lavishly, always secretly, by the C.I.A. as part of its propaganda war against the Soviet Union. It was perhaps the most successful use of “soft power” in American history.

A CIA operative told Washington Post owner Philip Graham … in a conversation about the willingness of journalists to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories:

You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.

Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977:

More than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

***

In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

***

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were [the heads of CBS, Time, the New York Times, the Louisville Courier?Journal, and Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include [ABC, NBC, AP, UPI, Reuters], Hearst Newspapers, Scripps?Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald.

***

There is ample evidence that America’s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee’s investigators. “Let’s go to the managements.

***

The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management.

***

Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings.

***

Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.

***

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Time magazine’s foreign correspondents attended CIA “briefing” dinners similar to those the CIA held for CBS.

***

When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. “It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,” said a former deputy director of the Agency. “Frank Wisner dealt with him.” Wisner, deputy director of the CIA from 1950 until shortly before his suicide in 1965, was the Agency’s premier orchestrator of “black” operations, including many in which journalists were involved. Wisner liked to boast of his “mighty Wurlitzer,” a wondrous propaganda instrument he built, and played, with help from the press.)

***

In November 1973, after [the CIA claimed to have ended the program], Colby told reporters and editors from the New York Times and the Washington Star that the Agency had “some three dozen” American newsmen “on the CIA payroll,” including five who worked for “general?circulation news organizations.” Yet even while the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding its hearings in 1976, according to high?level CIA sources, the CIA continued to maintain ties with seventy?five to ninety journalists of every description—executives, reporters, stringers, photographers, columnists, bureau clerks and members of broadcast technical crews. More than half of these had been moved off CIA contracts and payrolls but they were still bound by other secret agreements with the Agency. According to an unpublished report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, at least fifteen news organizations were still providing cover for CIA operatives as of 1976.

***

Those officials most knowledgeable about the subject say that a figure of 400 American journalists is on the low side ….

“There were a lot of representations that if this stuff got out some of the biggest names in journalism would get smeared” ….

An expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA now employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations. Whether or not his estimate is accurate, it is clear that many prominent reporters still report to the CIA.

A 4-part BBC documentary called the “Century of the Self” shows that an American – Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays – created the modern field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his techniques.

John Pilger is a highly-regarded journalist (the BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson remarked, “A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed”). Pilger said in 2007:

We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake.

***

One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don’t have to do any of that. What is the secret?”

Nick Davies wrote in the Independent in 2008:

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I’ve spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

The “Zarqawi letter” which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of “strategic communications” which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

***

The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own “psyop” element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department’s campaign of “public diplomacy” which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two “black propaganda specialists” from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through “editors and writers who work with us from time to time.”

The government is still paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate media are acting like virtual “escort services” for the moneyed elites, selling access – for a price – to powerful government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.

One of the ways that the U.S. government spreads propaganda is by making sure that it gets its version out first. For example, the head of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division – Alvin A. Snyder – wrote in his book Warriors of Disinformation: How Lies, Videotape, and the USIA Won the Cold War:

All governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.

***

Another casualty, always war’s first, was the truth. The story of [the accidental Russian shoot-down of a Korean airliner] will be remembered pretty much the way we told it in 1983, not the way it really happened.

In 2013, the American Congress repealed the formal ban against the deployment of propaganda against U.S. citizens living on American soil. So there’s even less to constrain propaganda than before.

One of the most common uses of propaganda is to sell unnecessary and counter-productive wars. Given that the American media is always pro-war, mainstream publishers, producers, editors, and reporters are willing participants.

It’s not just lying about Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction … the corporate media is still selling lies to promote war.

Former Newsweek and Associated Press reporter Robert Parry notes that Ronald Reagan and the CIA unleashed a propaganda campaign in the 1980’s to sell the American public on supporting the Contra rebels, utilizing private players such as Rupert Murdoch to spread disinformation. Parry notes that many of the same people that led Reagan’s domestic propaganda effort in the 1980’s are in power today:

While the older generation that pioneered these domestic propaganda techniques has passed from the scene, many of their protégés are still around along with some of the same organizations. The National Endowment for Democracy, which was formed in 1983 at the urging of CIA Director Casey and under the supervision of Walter Raymond’s NSC operation, is still run by the same neocon, Carl Gershman, and has an even bigger budget, now exceeding $100 million a year.

Gershman and his NED played important behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Ukraine crisis by financing activists, journalists and other operatives who supported the coup against elected President Yanukovych. The NED-backed Freedom House also beat the propaganda drums. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Shadow Foreign Policy.”]

Two other Reagan-era veterans, Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, have both provided important intellectual support for continuing U.S. interventionism around the world. Earlier this year, Kagan’s article for The New Republic, entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” touched such a raw nerve with President Obama that he hosted Kagan at a White House lunch and crafted the presidential commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of Kagan’s criticism of Obama’s hesitancy to use military force.

***

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is bigger than ever …

Another key to American propaganda is the constant repetition of propaganda. As Business Insider reported in 2013:

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a highly-respected officer who released a critical report regarding the distortion of truth by senior military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan ….

From Lt. Col. Davis:

In context, Colonel Leap is implying we ought to change the law to enable Public Affairs officers to influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to “protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will.”

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 appears to serve this purpose by allowing for the American public to be a target audience of U.S. government-funded information campaigns.

Davis also quotes Brigadier General Ralph O. Baker — the Pentagon officer responsible for the Department of Defense’s Joint Force Development — who defines Information Operations (IO) as activities undertaken to “shape the essential narrative of a conflict or situation and thus affect the attitudes and behaviors of the targeted audience.”

Brig. Gen. Baker goes on to equate descriptions of combat operations with the standard marketing strategy of repeating something until it is accepted:

For years, commercial advertisers have based their advertisement strategies on the premise that there is a positive correlation between the number of times a consumer is exposed to product advertisement and that consumer’s inclination to sample the new product. The very same principle applies to how we influence our target audiences when we conduct COIN.

And those “thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs” appear to serve Baker’s strategy, which states: “Repetition is a key tenet of IO execution, and the failure to constantly drive home a consistent message dilutes the impact on the target audiences.”

Government Massively Manipulates the Web, Social Media and Other Forms of Communication

Of course, the Web and social media have become a huge media platform, and the Pentagon and other government agencies are massively manipulating both.

Documents released by Snowden show that spies manipulate polls, website popularity and pageview counts, censor videos they don’t like and amplify messages they do.

The CIA and other government agencies also put enormous energy into pushing propaganda through movies, television and video games.

Cross-Border Propaganda

Propaganda isn’t limited to our own borders …

Sometimes, the government plants disinformation in American media in order to mislead foreigners. For example, an official government summary of America’s overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950?s states, “In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq” (page x).

The CIA has also bribed leading foreign journalists.

And CNN accepted money from the brutal Bahrani dictatorship to run pro-monarchy propaganda.

Everyone Who Challenges the Status Quo Is Labeled As a Purveyor of “Fake News” … Or Worse

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of the press from censorship by government.

Indeed, the entire reason that it’s unlawful for the government to stop stories from being printed is because that would punish those who criticize those in power.

Why? Because the Founding Father knew that governments (like the British monarchy) will always crack down on those who point out that the emperor has no clothes.

But the freedom of the press is under massive attack in America today …

For example, the powers-that-be argue that only highly-paid corporate media shills who will act as stenographers for the fatcats should have the constitutional protections guaranteeing freedom of the press.

A Harvard law school professor argues that the First Amendment is outdated and should be abandoned.

When financially-savvy bloggers challenged the Federal Reserve’s policy, a Fed official called all bloggers stupid and unqualified to comment.

And the government is treating the real investigative reporters like criminals … or even terrorists:

• Obama has gone after top reporters. His Department of Justice labeled chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen a “criminal co-conspirator” in a leak case, and for many years threatened to prosecute Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times journalist James Risen

• The Obama administration also spied on Risen, Rosen, the Associated Press, CBS reporter Cheryl Atkinson and other media

• In fact, top NSA whistleblowers tell Washington’s Blog that the NSA has spied on reporters for well over a decade … to make sure they don’t reveal illegal government programs

• The Pentagon smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda

• Reporters covering the Occupy protests were targeted for arrest

• The government admits that journalists could be targeted with counter-terrorism laws (and here). For example, after Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge

• In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of the bank’s wrongdoing, the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)

• The NSA and its British counterpart treated Wikileaks like a terrorist organization, going so far as to target its employees politically, and to spy on visitors to its website

Postscript: See this and this.

This article first appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was authored by George Washington.

The post Declassified Documents Prove CIA Worked Closely With Many Of The Largest Media Outlets appeared first on We Are Change.

Back in December we wrote about the efforts of Facebook to combat the spread of “fake news” over social media with the introduction of a filter intended to flag ‘fake’ content so that users wouldn’t haven’t to go through the hassle of critically analyzing information on their own. As we noted at the time, it was a genius plan, except for one small issue: who determines what is considered “fake news” and how exactly do they draw those conclusions? From our prior post (see “Facebook Launches Campaign To Combat ‘Fake News’“):

The first problem, however, immediately emerges because as NBC notes, “legitimate news outlets won’t be able to be flagged”, which then begs the question who or what is considered “legitimate news outlets”, does it include the likes of NYTs and the WaPos, which during the runup to the election declared on a daily basis, that Trump has no chance of winning, which have since posted defamatory stories about so-called “Russian propaganda news sites”, admitting subsequently that their source data was incorrect, and which many consider to be the source of “fake news.”

Also, just who makes the determination what is considered “legitimate news outlets.”

Now, it seems as though the first confirmed victim of Facebook’s ‘fake news’ crusade may be none other than the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that undoubtedly considers itself a “legitimate news outlet.”

The discovery was highlighted in an article written by the Chicago Tribune’s own Deputy Editor for Digital News, Kurt Gessler, who noted that a curious thing happened back in December when Facebook first changed up its algorithms to target fake news, namely their traffic crashed.  Per the chart below, the typical Tribune post went from attracting the interest of 30-35k people down to 15-20k people in a matter of months.

Meanwhile, the number of Tribune articles shared over Facebook that reached less than 10,000 viewers (i.e. the “duds”) skyrocketed while the number of highly successful articles, those reaching 50,000+ people, simultaneously plunged.

So, either the Chicago Tribune suddenly started producing a lot of garbage that no one wanted to read, which just happened to coincide with the implementation of Facebook’s new “fake news” algo, or the media outlet was pumping out content that Facebook suddenly figured to fit the definition of ‘fake’.

Certainly, the issue couldn’t be attributed to a loss of followers…

…or less content creation.

Perhaps Facebook’s algos are better at identifying “fake news” than we thought.

This article first appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was authored by Tyler Durden.

The post Chicago Tribune Claims Facebook’s Fake News Filter Is Killing Its Traffic appeared first on We Are Change.

Article via The Anti-Media by Jake Anderson

On Tuesday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped a stunner when he announced to the attendees of F8, Facebook’s annual developers’ conference, that the tech giant is developing technology that will allow users to communicate using only their minds. The technology will come in the form of implantable chips that will create a brain-computer interface (BCI). It’s one of several secret projects being developed in the mysterious R&D division Building 8 labs.

“One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology,” Zuckerberg said during a Q&A. “You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you’d like.”

On Tuesday, Zuckerberg confirmed BCI as one of four technologies the tech giant is currently developing in B8 (in addition to augmented reality, drones, and cameras). This isn’t exactly news, as it’s been known for some time that Facebook was heading in this direction. A recent job post by the company called for “an experienced Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Engineer who will be responsible for working on a 2-year B8 project focused on developing advanced BCI technologies.”

Zuckerberg teased everyone by announcing more details would be released today, and indeed, they were.

On Wednesday, former DARPA executive Regina Dugan, who also worked for Google’s advanced projects division and currently heads the Building 8 division, told conference attendees that a research team of 60 engineers is currently developing technologies that will allow people to type at 100 words per minute using only their minds. BCI applications will also enable people to control augmented and virtual reality interfaces using only their thoughts.

It appears Dugan is making headway on her original job description, which was to develop “technologies that fluidly blend physical and digital worlds.”

More details about Facebook’s BCI technology will be released in the coming days.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

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Following U.S. military escalations with both Syria and North Korea and the United States’ decision to drop the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan, Google revealed last week that more people are searching for the term ‘World War 3’ than ever before.

Data provided by Google, which began keeping track in 2004, shows that terms like “war” and “nuclear war” are currently spiking, as well. And in addition to ‘World War 3’ hitting an all-time high, searches for the term “Trump war” have also reached a new level.

On April 6, the United States launched a barrage of missiles at Syria, purportedly in response to a chemical attack the U.S. claims was ordered by President Bashar al-Assad. The airstrikes killed scores of civilians and marked the first direct attack against Assad’s government.

Two days later, it was reported that the U.S. had ordered an aircraft carrier, complete with a traveling unit of warships and jets, to begin steaming toward the Korean peninsula. On Monday, news broke that the U.S. had just ordered two more aircraft carriers to do the same.

Then, last week, CNN hit the world with a report that opened with the following:

“The US military dropped America’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb on ISIS targets in Afghanistan Thursday, the first time this type of weapon has been used in battle, according to US officials.”

Given the current situation, it isn’t exactly difficult to understand why people are suddenly asking about ‘World War 3’ on the outbreak of global war.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

The post ‘OK Google, Is World War 3 About To Happen?’ The Answer May Surprise You appeared first on We Are Change.

US president Donald Trump sounded sincere when he described how he felt after seeing pictures of “beautiful little babies” allegedly killed by a Syrian government chemical weapons attack on April 4.

“These heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated,” said Trump, and hours later, the US launched nearly 60 tomahawk missiles in response to the allegations.

But what about the beautiful little babies killed by US bombs since Trump became president? Is Trump not concerned about those children because they were killed by his missiles, and not Assad’s chemical weapons?

In the first three months of his presidency, Trump has dropped bombs – and killed children – in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Here are a few of the instances:

• An eight-year-old girl was killed during a US raid in Yemen in January. The girl, Nora al-Awlaki, was a US citizen and the daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born Muslim who was killed by the Obama administration in 2011 for his purported ties to al-Qaeda. In 2015, Nora’s older brother, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also an American citizen, was killed by a US airstrike in Yemen. Nora al-Awlaki was shot in the neck by members of US SEAL Team 6 as they raided houses of suspected al-Qaeda members. Several Yemeni women were also killed in the raid.

• At least 18 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in February by US airstrikes aimed at the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to the United Nations. “How could women and children be Taliban?” asked a resident of Sangin, who said 11 people were killed in his brother’s house in an airstrike.

• More than 200 civilians, including 34 women and 32 children were killed in US airstrikes around Raqqa, Syria since March, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. In one incident, at least 33 civilians were killed when a US airstrike hit a school that was used as a shelter by Syrian families who were fleeing ISIS in Raqqa.

• US airstrikes in Mosul, Iraq killed up to 240 civilians, including scores of children last month when US forces dropped bombs on civilian homes in response to a handful of ISIS fighters who were using the local residents’ roofs. Munatha Jasim, who lost her four-year-old daughter, seven-year-old son, and seven other relatives when her home was destroyed, said a sniper had set up across the street from her house. “Just because one ISIS [fighter] was on our house, the [US] aircraft bombed us.” Another resident, Ali Abdulghani told the New York Times, “not all of the houses had [ISIS] on the roof … why, just because of one [ISIS], kill everyone?”

More and more people are asking for proof that Assad gassed his own people

The fact that Trump’s bombs are killing innocent people in four countries is bad enough, but his most recent rationale for bombing Syria is based on unproven claims that the Syrian government used sarin against civilians.

The only ‘evidence’ presented to the public thus far by the White House is an unclassified report in which “open-source material” and “pro-opposition social media reporting” are part of a package of information that led the Trump administration to believe with a “very high degree of confidence” that the Syrian regime carried out the sarin attacks.

So, “open-source material” and “pro-opposition social media reporting” count as intelligence? And a “very high degree of confidence” is the bar set by Trump to determine whether or not to bomb another country?

As astonishing as that seems, it hasn’t stopped the media from believing the unproven narrative, as FAIR pointed out last week: of the top 100 US newspapers, only 1 paper, the Houston Chronicle, said the attack shouldn’t have happened.

But a growing number of journalists including Stephen Cohen, Robert Parry, Gareth Porter, Justin Raimondo, Rick Sterling and former members of congress Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have been expressing serious doubts about the White House claims. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is demanding evidence that Assad was responsible for the attack (Gabbard was skewered by establishment Democrats for her remarks – Howard Dean said Gabbard is a “disgrace” and that she should “not be in congress.”)

Even conservative columnist Ann Coulter is questioning Assad’s culpability and the ensuing US military response:

“Assad is one of the least bad leaders in the entire Middle East. He’s not a murderous thug like Saddam, has no rape rooms, isn’t into jihad, protects Christians, and is fighting ISIS. He provided us with intelligence on al-Qaida after 9/11. He does not have crazy Islamic police slapping women around or throwing gays off buildings. (That would be our beloved ally, Saudi Arabia.)

“Now we hear [Trump] saw the sad picture, which, let’s be honest, is probably faked. It makes no sense that Assad would do this … this is the rise of the military industrial complex, the neocons, permanent war.”

Additionally, Theodore A. Postol, a former scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, and an MIT professor of Science, Technology and National Security, said that the National Security Council generated a “fraudulent intelligence report” as part of “a dedicated attempt to manufacture a false claim that the intelligence actually supported the president’s decision to attack Syria.”

And Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, said that military and intelligence personnel intimately familiar with the Syrian chemical gas intelligence believe Trump’s claims are a “sham.” Giraldi said his intelligence sources are “astonished” by the establishment’s narrative, and that they are considering going public due to their concerns of an escalation of violence in Syria.

If this is true, it would be nice for those people to seek ways to disseminate their information as soon as possible. The longer the “Assad gassed his own people” claims stick around, the more likely people will be to accept Syrian regime change as palatable. This concept was studied by researchers from the University of Michigan who say there is a phenomenon known as “backfire” where misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts – and often become even more attached to their beliefs.

This article first appeared on Antiwar.com and was authored by Chris Ernesto.

The post President Trump Has Killed Beautiful Babies In Four Countries appeared first on We Are Change.

According to police, Stephens killed 74-year-old Robert Godwin Sr. in Cleveland Sunday and posted a video of the killing on Facebook.

Stephens was considered armed and dangerous, having been on the run since Sunday. The manhunt was nationwide.

For the full story check out the following articles published by We Are Change:

(RELATED: Bloody Sunday: Active Shooters in Massachusetts, Ohio)

(RELATED: National Manhunt On For Cleveland Easter Day Massacre Suspect)

This is a breaking story and will be updated as more information arrives to our news room.

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Article via Activist Post by Derrick Broze

On Thursday April 13, the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked an appeals court to review a decision that will allow foreign governments to monitor the activities of Americans in America. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)  is calling on the court to reverse the decision made in a case involving an American living in Maryland and the Ethiopian government. The case, Kidane v. Ethiopia, relates to the Ethiopian government attaching a malware program known as FinSpy to Mr. Kidane’s computer. FinSpy is capable of copying every keystroke made by the user, as well as Skype calls, and sending all of the data back to Ethiopia.

In March, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against Mr. Kidane and stated that foreign governments could not be held accountable for surveillance in American courts if they did not send a human agent to perform the spying. “In essence, this would mean governments around the world have immunity for spying, attacking, and even murdering Americans on American soil, as long as the activity is performed with software, robots, drones, or other digital tools,” the EFF writes.

“We already know about technology that will let attackers drive your car off the road, turn off your pacemaker, or watch every communication from your computer or your phone. As our lives become even more digital, the risks will only grow,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo. More than likely, her comments regarding driving cars off road is a reference to recent revelations from WikiLeaks’ Vault7, CIA leaks which show that, among other things, the agency can remotely control vehicles. Cardozo said the courts need to make it clear to governments around the world that “any illegal attack in the United States will be answered in court in the United States.”

The result of the court’s decision is that foreign governments are not expected to follow the same requirements for surveillance that the U.S. government is expected to. Of course, the reality is that the U.S. does not even follow its own rules on domestic surveillance or foreign surveillance.

“American citizens deserve to feel safe and secure in their own homes using their own computers,” EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said. “The appeals court should vacate this decision, and ensure that the use of robots or remote controlled tools doesn’t prevent people who have been harmed by foreign government attacks from seeking justice.”

Whether or not this particular court reverses this particular decision, it should serve as a reminder of the ever growing, interconnecting nexus of surveillance programs, tools, and compliant courts. The only freedom and privacy left in America is what you are willing to stand up and fight for. We must organize on the local level to oppose and  counter the State’s surveillance.

Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the Lead Investigative Reporter for ActivistPost.com and the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him on Twitter. Derrick is the author of three books: The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 1 and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 2

Derrick is available for interviews. Please contact Derrick@activistpost.com

This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

Image Credit: Pixabay.com

The post Lawsuit Attempts To Hold Foreign Governments Accountable For Spying On Americans appeared first on We Are Change.

In response to the US vice president, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that Mike Pence’s statement on the US running out of “strategic patience” towards Pyongyang does not contribute to resolving the crisis. The top Russian diplomat also voiced hope there will be no repeat of the US strike on Syria in North Korea.

On Monday, speaking from the DMZ, Mike Pence said the world has witnessed the “strength and resolve of Trump in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan,” and threatened North Korea “not to test” this resolve or “or the strength of the armed forces of the United States.”

Lavrov responded by saying “I hope that there won’t be any unilateral actions like we recently saw in Syria and that the US will follow the policies Trump repeatedly declared during his election campaign.”

He also warned the US not to take any military actions, stressing that the “risky nuclear and missile endeavors of Pyongyang” violating UNSC resolutions could not be used as an excuse for violating international law and the UN Charter “in the same fashion” as in Syria.

The period of US policy before the current escalation could be hardly described as an “era of strategic patience,” Lavrov added.

“I cannot call the Obama administration’s period an ‘era of strategic patience,’ as the US has been quite harshly limiting North Korea’s capabilities to develop economy sectors related to nuclear or energy areas,” Lavrov said, referring to past US initiatives, many of them backed by the UN Security Council.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNVkWrbfC0Y

Also addressing the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that harsh statements do not contribute to peace and stability in the region, while commenting on South Korean President Hwang Kyo-ahn’s promise to “implement intensive punitive measures” on Pyongyang in case of any “provocations.”

“Our position is well known and consistent. We call on all sides to avoid any actions which might be perceived as a provocation. And we stand for the continuation of coordinated international efforts in existing formats to resolve the North Korean problem,” Peskov said.

Meanwhile tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high: after Pyongyang conducted a missile test amid joint US-South Korea drills in March, and with at least one and as many as 3 US aircraft carrier groups headed toward the Peninsula, today North Korea’s UN ambassador said the US has “created a dangerous situation in which the thermonuclear war may break out at any moment on the peninsula and pose a serious threat to the world’s peace and security, to say nothing of those of northeast Asia.”

Separately, North Korea told the BBC that the country would be “conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” in effect assuring a provocation.

Judging by the market’s response on Monday, a global thermonuclear war would be just the catalyst to pust the S&P back over its all time high of 2,400.

This article first appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was authored by Tyler Durden.

The post Russia Warns U.S. Not To Act Unilaterally Against North Korea appeared first on We Are Change.

As Vice President Mike Pence warns that the “era of strategic patience” with North Korea is over, the country’s U.N. ambassador is comparing the U.S.’s behavior in Asia to that of gangsters.

At a news conference on Monday, Ambassador Kim In-ryong said the United States was “disturbing global peace and stability and insisting on the gangster-like logic that its invasion of a sovereign state is decisive and just and proportionate and contributes to defending the international order.”

Also on Monday, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister told BBC that despite escalating tensions with the U.S., his country would continue with its missile testing indefinitely.

Speaking at a conference in Seoul with South Korea’s acting president, Vice President Pence boasted about the “strength and resolve” of Donald Trump regarding his recent military actions in Afghanistan and Syria. Pence warned North Korea against challenging the military might of the United States.

“North Korea would do well not to test his resolve,” Pence said of his president, “or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region.”

But even as the situation continues to deteriorate, Business Insider has reminded readers that not every military authority believes — as the mainstream narrative would like audiences to believe — that North Korea would ever strike first.

“North Korea, while they’re evil, are not crazy,” former Defense Secretary William Perry told CNN last November.

Perry, who was Pentagon chief under Bill Clinton, said the idea that North Korea would ever strike first against the United States or its allies in the region makes absolutely no sense because it would mean the country’s utter destruction.

“I do not believe the North Korean regime is suicidal,” he said. “Therefore I don’t believe they’re going to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack on anyone.”

Incidentally, North Korea conducted a failed missile launch over the weekend.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

The post Ex-Pentagon Chief: North Korea Not ‘Suicidal’ — So Won’t Attack U.S. First appeared first on We Are Change.

The suicide bomber has been identified as Samer Hassan Yousef.

Exclusive article written by Sarah Abed for We Are Change.

Syrians took pride in the fact that their country was nonsectarian, secular and united. That is… until March 15th, 2011, when a carefully planned and calculated imposed war invaded their jasmine scented country. Since then, sectarian hate has surfaced and been empowered by terrorist groups that now boldly commit crimes against humanity in broad daylight without fear of condemnation.

New information has surfaced from multiple sources and confirmed by my exclusive contact in Syria that the NATO/US-backed Nour Al Din Al Zinki movement was behind the massive suicide bombing explosion that took place in the Al-Rashideen area of west Aleppo.

During a negotiated population transfer deal, a suicide car bombing targeted the Shi’a civilians being evacuated from Kafraya and Foua; two cities with a population of roughly 40,000 people that have been besieged by “moderate rebels” since March 2015.

Previously this same group was responsible for beheading a Palestinian child named Abdallah Issa on the back of a pickup truck. I wrote about him more in a previous article.

Samer Hassan Yousef

The suicide bomber has been identified as Samer Hassan Yousef.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmkK0jXSJQs

These terrorists are anything but moderate, they have traumatized, killed, and starved the civilians of these two cities on an almost daily basis for the past 2 years. Car bombs, rockets, gas cylinders, and shells have torn these two cities apart and rendered them almost uninhabitable.

By December 2015, entire families were homeless and thousands killed, mostly women and children. A true genocide of a religious minority. The one remaining hospital that was attending to all of the injured, performing sometimes five major surgeries a day, was bombed last year as well. Schools have been obliterated. Terrorist groups cut the citizens water off forcing them to carry water from wells which they empty into their tanks. They are eating grass and chard.

The Syrian government’s only way to send aid to the residents is through parachutes. Gaysh el Fatha, among other terrorist groups in the area, have been seen on video saying they will run over their bodies if these Shi’a traitors and refer to them as pigs and dogs. They are heard saying that they will slaughter and behead them. Even young children are singing along and are being indoctrinated to believe that Shi’a are not worthy of living.

On April 15th, 2017 some 5,000 inhabitants of the northern cities, mainly women and children, were brought by bus convoy to the government held city of Aleppo but were stopped while still in the “rebel” controlled area. Inhabitants from the southern city had been brought up to Aleppo and were kept under government guard.

This latest evacuation was made possible under a deal struck between Damascus and militant groups in late March that envisaged the transfer of 16,000 people from Foua and Kefraya in exchange for the evacuation of militants and their families from the government-held towns of al-Zabadani and Madaya in Rif Dimashq Province. 

Iran, speaking for the Syrian government, and Qatar, a financer of the radical “rebels”, negotiated the deal. There are many other issues involved in the deal including Qatari hostages held by Shia groups in Iraq, very large payment from Qatar to “rebel” groups (Al-Qaeda) and some non-disclosed items.

In December an agreement had allowed for the exchange of wounded civilians. When buses were on their way to evacuate elderly and wounded civilians from the two northern cities they were torched by some rebel group. New buses had to be sent in order to facilitate the exchange.

It is now confirmed that Nour al Din al Zinki movement prepared the VBEID in Darat Izza and sent to al Rashadeen in advance of the bus convoy from Kafraya and Foua and waited for the right time to explode and cause maximum fatalities. It is widely known and accepted that the Nour al Din al Zenki group is financed, armed and promoted by NATO, as moderates.

The civilians in their buses, mostly elderly, women and children, were guarded by “rebels” of Ahrar al Sham. They were hungry. Someone appeared on the scene and distributed potato chips/crisps. When children flocked around the food distribution a blue car drove up and a very large explosion occurred.

Four buses full of people and a number of ambulances were totally destroyed. 126 of the civilians, only a mile or two from the safe government area, were killed in the suicide attack including 95 children. Many more were wounded. An unknown number of Ahrar al Sham “rebel” guards were also killed.

“Rebel” groups in the Idilb government are either aligned with al-Qaeda in Syria or with the Qatari sponsored Ahrar al Sham. Ahrar al-Sahm is the group responsible for the execution of the negotiated population exchange. Parts of al-Qaeda have publicly disagreed with the deal.
This intentional act of sectarian hate took the lives of 126 people mostly women, children and elderly that were finally being transported to a government held area outside of Aleppo.

Nour al Din Al Zinki is no stranger to committing crimes targeted at pro-government civilians and specifically Shi’a. The group along with other Wahhabi practicing House of Saud backed terrorists consider Shi’a to be prostates, infidels, and have repeatedly referred to them as dogs and pigs in many videos that have surfaced over the past few years.

Previously, The Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, along with the 16th Division, the Levant Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and the al-Nusra Front, were involved in abduction and torture of journalists and humanitarian workers in
Nour al-Din al-Zenki, along with the Abu Amara Brigades, has been accused of executing people by throwing them down buildings when they still controlled Aleppo.

In May 2014 al-Zenki received increased financial support from Saudi Arabia after it withdrew from the Army of Mujahideen. The group also received financial aid from the United States, in a CIA run program to support US-approved rebel groups, reportedly via the Turkey-based Military Operation Centre (MOC).

The US had stopped sending them TOW missiles when there is a conflict between Ahrar Al Sham and Hayat Tahrir Al Sham in Idlib in March, 2017

When the Red Crescent arrived at the bombing the “moderate rebels” turned them away. They did not allow ambulances and rescuers to take the remains and help the wounded victims until the White Helmets had taken their pictures and footage. Sources state that they were aware that the bombing would take place and were prepared to come in and shoot footage and act as if they were there to help the citizens. Additionally it seems now like the rebels took advantage of the chaos and abducted hundreds of the victims into rebel area.

Up until September, Nour al-Din al-Zinki was a recipient of financial and arms support from the U.S. as part of a group of so-called moderate opposition factions working with a logistics hub partly run by the CIA. The group has also received support from Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The government aligned forces have not committed any suicide attacks while al-Qaeda as well as Ahrar al Sham have committed hundreds. This was a “rebel” suicide attack, likely by al-Qaeda, against government aligned civilian refugees.

The Syrian army has resumed the evacuation of residents from militant-besieged areas outside Aleppo after buses carrying them were hit by terrorists on Saturday, killing at least 126 people. The monitor group added that at least 68 children were among victims of the bomb attack. The death toll may rise further as “hundreds” more were injured in the blast, it added.

Damascus decided that the deal and the evacuation should continue despite the massacre. The two towns in Idlib are too exposed and indefensible against a large scale attack. No bigger government operation towards Idlib could take place while they are held hostage. 55 buses from Zabadani and Madaya did reach Idlib city while 73 buses from Fuah and Kafraya reached Aleppo on Sunday evening as thousands of civilians exited enclaves to enter rebel and government heartland.

To make matters even worse, Over 200 civilians from Foua and Kafraya have been kidnapped in the Rashideen area after they were supposed to enter government-held Aleppo on April 16th. The majority of those kidnapped are young girls.

“According to an Al-Masdar News source, the Shi’ite residents from Fuah and Kafraya are believed to have been kidnapped by Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), an Al-Qaeda affiliated rebel faction which stands accused of killing 126 civilians in a car bomb attack yesterday.”

This video is dedicated to the souls of over 126 civilians from Kafraya and al-Fu’ah, who were massacred in cold blood by U.S. backed “moderate rebels”.  At least 68 children were among the victims. The bomber targeted buses full of evacuees from government-held towns as they waited in an Islamist-militants-held area on the outskirts of Aleppo. He drove his explosives up to their vehicles in a van meant to carry aid supplies.

This article is exclusive to WeAreChange.org and was written by Sarah Abed (Facebook, Twitter).

The post Foua And Kafraya: Two Syrian Towns Massacred By U.S.-Backed Terrorists appeared first on We Are Change.

Sargon of Akkad, Lauren Southern and Jeff Berwick talked about the bitcoin, coinbase, Berkeley and a lot more. Going over everything that we find important in one video download that will tell you everything you need to know for the week.

Here’s the video even the mainstream media was trying to buy off us yesterday:

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