Blowback

Brazil hackers accidentally attack NASA as payback for NSA surveillance

"Hackers have hit back in retaliation for US cyber-spying on Brazil but mistook the US space agency NASA for the National Security Agency (NSA), a news website reported here Tuesday. 'Some activists decided to protest this US practice but it seems that they picked the wrong target,' a specialized blog of the Brazilian news portal Uol said. 'They hacked NASA’s web page and left the message: Stop spying on us,' it said. The hackers’ message also called on the United States not to attack Syria. A NASA spokesman confirmed that a Brazilian hacker group last week posted a political message on a number of NASA websites." Continue reading →

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How the US government inadvertently created Wikileaks

"So here you have a non-US citizen at a foreign university doing graduate work studies, and the United States government came barreling in and not only snuffed out the funding and killed his studies, it also barred him from knowing what it was he had been funded to research. It was at that moment, Julian told me, that he decided he would devote himself to exposing organizations that attempted to keep secrets and withhold information in an effort keep the masses ignorant and disadvantaged. So you see, depending on who you ask, the US government actually helped create of Wikileaks. And the rest, as they say, is history." Continue reading →

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Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri calls for U.S. attacks and economic boycott

"'We should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure,' Zawahiri said according to the SITE translation. 'And keeping America in tension and anticipation only costs a few disparate attacks here and there, meaning as we defeated it in the gang warfare in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, so we should follow it with that war on its own land,' he added." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAl-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri calls for U.S. attacks and economic boycott

9/11 Commission leaders push for changes in US terrorism fight

"Today, Al Qaeda and its affiliates maintain a presence in 'some 16 different theaters of operation – compared with half as many as recently as five years ago,' according to the report. In Syria in particular, the civil war may be providing Al Qaeda 'with a chance to regroup, train, and plan operations, much as the US invasion of Iraq revitalized the network and gave it new relevance,' notes the report. While these Al Qaeda groups have been busy expanding in other parts of the globe, within the confines of the United States, the threat of attacks 'has shifted away from plots directly connected to foreign groups,' in the report’s estimation, 'to plots by individuals who are merely inspired by them.'" Continue reading →

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Protesters gather in DC to demand no strike against Syria

"As Congress prepares to consider a proposal for airstrikes in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, public sentiment is tilted against the idea. Protesters gathered to make their objections felt in the nation's capital this weekend, calling into question President Barack Obama's case that action is necessary to maintain international law, deter other 'bad actors' and protect American credibility." Continue reading →

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The “Blowback” That Neocons Do Understand

"Neocons still don't utter peep about blowback from U.S. foreign entanglements. They will never write or speak one word about it. However, with the current smackdown that the American public is delivering to Obama on his drive to war in Syria, at least one Neocon fears 'blowback' of a domestic sort. Wehner isn't speaking about 'blowback' from foreigners (He wouldn't dare.) He's referring to the non-interventionist voices in the U.S. that have grown by leaps and bounds since Ron Paul's campaign. The American public waking up, and not remaining in a woozy stupor as the war machine tramples on, is the type of 'blowback' that Neocons do understand." Continue reading →

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What Do Americans Know That Their Government Doesn’t Know?

"Since morality and social order cannot be imposed by foreign attacks and aggressive wars to alter governments and entire societies, what these American intrusions have caused is death and destruction in one country after another, plus hatred and revenge visited upon the invaders. What Americans now recognize, if only by gut instinct, is that the war policy has backfired. The global war on terror has backfired. Interventionism has backfired. America has done wrong, morally and pragmatically. Americans are coming to recognize this while their leaders are still caught up in their false notions that power and their power in particular can remake the world for the better." Continue reading →

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A few questions about Syria

"The government of the United States, the one elected to that office by a majority of the electorate, used weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, poisons, against it 'own people' in Waco, Texas. It murdered dozens of helpless, defenseless women and children. And innocent men too. How would the average American feel if the government of Syria (or China, or Russia, or Monaco, or Lichtenstein or Uruguay or Australia or Nigeria) drew a red line in the sand against such U.S. barbarism, and said that a penalty must be imposed somewhere between the Rio Grande and the Canadian border by use of tomahawk missiles. It would only be a limited surgical strike." Continue reading →

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Video Shows Rocket Attack on Suez Canal Ship, Group Says

"The attack was hailed as a success by the al-Furqan Brigades, the group that went online to take responsibility for the assault, saying it targeted the Suez Canal because of its importance as a trade route and because it 'has become the safe way for the Crusader aircraft carriers to cross in to assault Muslims.' In mid-August the Navy announced the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group – which includes the aircraft carrier the USS Harry S. Truman – 'executed a safe and professional transit through the Suez Canal' on its way from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea." Continue reading →

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We Must Not Be the World’s Policeman

"No one appointed the United States the world’s policeman. The government’s founding document, the Constitution, does not and could not do so. Obama and Kerry have tried hard to invoke 'national security' as grounds for bombing Syria, but no one believes Assad threatens Americans. He has made no such statements and taken no threatening actions. He is engulfed in a sectarian civil war. Inexcusably, Obama has taken sides in that civil war — the same side as the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate — but still Assad poses no danger to Americans. Bombing would make him more — not less — of a threat." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWe Must Not Be the World’s Policeman