Made in the USA: Report Shows ISIS Using US Arms from ‘Syria Rebels’
From the moment the US began sending lethal
arms to Syrian rebel factions, there were a chorus of people expressing
fears that those arms would end up in the “wrong hands,” and US
officials insisted they were going to carefully vet everyone who got
those weapons.You know who got a lot of those weapons? ISIS. Just as
everyone predicted would happen, once the arms were smuggled into Syria,
they quickly ended up spread out among rebel factions, both pro-US and
not, and a new report shows massive amounts of ISIS armament was
actually stamped “Property of US Govt.” Read more
The U.S. government’s secret plans to spy for American corporations
Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has
repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial
espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China’s
infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So
critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA
spokesperson emailed The Washington Post to say(emphasis in original): “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.” Read more
The Insidious Power of Propaganda
To study the effects of political propaganda in what
used to be called the ‘free world’ there could hardly be a better time
than now. We are living through an in stance of insidious propaganda
that has clean contours. It fills a common need. In a period of
large-scale slaughter and other man-made disaster the morally conscious
person can do with some clear categories of good and bad, desirable and
despicable. Political certainty, in other words. You can even sell wars
using ‘moral clarity’ as a sales pitch, as happened with Iraq and
Afghanistan. Read more
How to Spot – and Defeat – Disruption on the Internet
1. Start a partisan divide-and-conquer fight or otherwise
push emotional buttons to sow discord and ensure that cooperation is
thwarted. Get people fighting against each other instead of the
corrupt powers-that-be. Use baseless caricatures to rile everyone up.
For example, start a religious war whenever possible using stereotypes
like “all Jews are selfish”, “all Christians are crazy” or “all Muslims
are terrorists”. Accuse the author of being a gay, pro-abortion
limp-wristed wimp or being a fundamentalist pro-war hick when the
discussion has nothing to do with abortion, sexuality, religion, war or
region. Appeal to people’s basest prejudices and biases. And – as
Sweeney explains – push the author into a defensive posture: Read more
Agriculture: Steps to sustainable livestock
The need for efficient food production has never been greater.
One in seven humans is undernourished. Urbanization and biofuel
production are reducing land availability, and climate change, lack of
water and soil degradation are decreasing harvests. Over the past
decade, cereal yields per hectare have fallen in one-quarter of
countries. Meanwhile, developing nations and the growing world
population are demanding more animal protein. Read more
