Espionage/"Intelligence"

Behind Israel’s Campaign to Vilify Peace Groups

Israeli government funds have been secretly transferred to far-right organisations leading a smear campaign against groups opposed to the occupation, a series of investigations show.
The right wing groups have received tens of millions of dollars in state funding, either directly from the government or via Israeli local authorities representing the settlements in the West Bank.
In three known cases, publicly funded far-right organisations launched spying operations on human rights groups.

Media, Migration, and Methods of Militarization in Germany

The Paris Attacks, the current flood of migration, and the incidents in Cologne on New Year’s Eve: it is hard to tell fact from fiction these days; the lines separating these incidents become increasingly blurred. What they have in common: they illustrate the supposed threat under which we all live. The German media does not get tired of stressing and discussing the ungraspable foreign threat.

Nonpartisan Media Power

Alternative media site or account A endorses politician X’s campaign. Is this really a productive thing to do under any circumstances, for those wishing to challenge the “mainstream” narratives in the media?
Much of the alternative media on the web today consists of independent bloggers who are tired of the “mainstream” and want to fight back against it all. A particular nuisance to many people is the tendency of some papers and broadcasters to demonize.

Coercive Engineered Migration: Zionism’s War on Europe

If aggression against another foreign country means that it strains its social structure, that it ruins its finances, that is has to give up its territory for sheltering refugees, what is the difference between that kind of aggression and the other type, the more classical type, when someone declares war, or something of that sort.
— Sawer Sen, India’s Ambassador to the UN

Shorty and the Magic Show

Step right up folks and see the greatest show on the planet. El Chapo is his name, and magic is his game. Is he saint or is he sinner? Watch in awe as this vertically challenged boy from Sinaloa transforms himself from lowly peasant to powerful prince before your very eyes. Gaze in amazement as El Chapo escapes daringly from not one, but two maximum security prisons, only to be captured and imprisoned once again.

Surveillance and Surveys in Kabul

In Kabul, where the Afghan Peace Volunteers have hosted me in their community, the U.S. military maintains a huge blimp equipped with cameras and computers to supply 24 hour surveillance of the city. Remotely piloted drones, operated by Air Force and Air National Guard personnel in U.S. bases, also fly over Afghanistan, feeding U.S. military analysts miles of camera footage every day. Billions of dollars have been invested in a variety of blimps which various vendors, such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Aeros have shipped to Afghanistan.

Human Rights Defenders

Snowden as Samson, bringing the puzzle palace down around his head; Manning as Prometheus, tortured for her gift to mankind by ceaseless humiliation at the hands of dim jarhead martinets; the men who exposed the drone-massacre sweatshops, beggared by government decree; the helpless black witnesses of Ferguson and Baltimore, always photographed silhouetted by leaping flames like victims of auto-da-fé instead of killer cops.

The Enemy Within

Snowden as Samson, bringing the puzzle palace down around his head; Manning as Prometheus, tortured for her gift to mankind by ceaseless humiliation at the hands of dim jarhead martinets; the men who exposed the drone-massacre sweatshops, beggared by government decree; the helpless black witnesses of Ferguson and Baltimore, always photographed silhouetted by leaping flames like victims of auto-da-fé instead of killer cops.

Extraditing Kim Dotcom

However much of a prat he might seem to some, Kim Dotcom’s relevance goes far beyond his self generating hyperbole and excessive enthusiasm. In the legal battles of extradition and how services on the Internet matter, Dotcom, resident in New Zealand, remains a person of importance.  So important, in fact, that the US Department of Justice has been on to him and three associates since 2012.