Heleen Mees, je weet wel, die de kredietcrisis/bankencrisis niet zag aankomen en daarna doodleuk stelde dat de spaardrift van consumenten en China de schuldigen waren, i.p.v. de inhalige banken die zeker in de VS werkelijk iedereen een hypotheek aansmeerden…….. De VS kredietverstrekkers begonnen de slechte leningen (zoals deze hypotheken) te bundelen en verkochten deze aan de hijgerige banken in de EU en andere landen waar men niet te nauw keek naar de enorme schulden onder de bevolking en de onmogelijkheid deze geleende gelden ooit terug te krijgen…….. (van een kale kip….)
Deze Mees, overigens ook bekend als stalker in de VS, vindt dat Trump gelijk heeft met zijn importheffing op Chinees staal en aluminium…. Ze heeft begrip voor deze actie daar China alle banen uit de VS inpikte met haar export naar de VS……. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Mees durft zich econoom (jurist en publicist van nare schrijfsels) te noemen en heeft niet begrepen dat een handelsoorlog heel goed de aanleiding kan zijn voor een echte oorlog…….
Hoe is het mogelijk dat een econoom niet heeft gezien hoe de grote bedrijven uit de VS langzaam maar zeker hun fabrieken verplaatsten richting China en andere lagelonenlanden, terwijl de eigenaren spuug hemel rijk zijn en minstens een deel van het jaar in de VS wonen, raakten miljoenen hun baan kwijt…. Dat noemt Mees ‘het inpikken van banen door China…….’
De miljonairs en miljardairs die verantwoordelijk waren voor de enorme ‘outsourcing’ (uitbesteding van werk naar lagelonenlanden) van fabrieken en/of enorme automatisering (die wel degelijk veel banen heeft gekost en zal kosten) worden voor al deze uitbuiterij hartelijk bedankt door Trump met een fikse belastingverlaging en uitsluiting van buitenlandse concurrentie………..
Econoom Mees heeft er blijkbaar geen probleem mee dat deze door Trump begonnen handelsoorlog, wel eens kan zorgen voor juist een vergroting van de werkloosheid en een nog grotere armoede in de VS…..
Intussen chanteert de Trump administratie de EU, als deze niet voldoet aan de eisen van de VS, zal dit middels een enorme genocide gestolen land, waarschijnlijk in mei importheffingen leggen op een fiks aantal producten uit de EU……..
WDR 5 meldt zojuist dat de gevluchte Catalaanse politicus Carles Puigdemont door de Duitse politie werd gearresteerd toen hij zich in een auto bevond in de buurt van Hamburg.
Je kan er donder op zeggen dat de Spaanse geheime dienst Puigdemont in de gaten heeft gehouden en de Duitse politie heeft gewaarschuwd….. Ofwel: de Spaanse staat is haar boekje te buitengegaan door geheimagenten in te zetten in het buitenland (België) om daar een onderdaan te bespieden (voor hetzelfde geld had men hem om laten leggen….)….. Ongelofelijk dat de politie in Duitsland blijkbaar gemene zaak hebben gemaakt met de Spaanse autocratische regering……
Hoe kan een ‘democratie’ als Duitsland een buitenlandse politicus arresteren, alleen op grond van een gehouden referendum over de onafhankelijkheid van Catalonië, waarna hij de onafhankelijkheid uitriep van Catalonië…….. De onafhankelijkheid van Catalonië, godbetert een wens die al een paar honderd jaar bestaat bij het Catalaanse volk….. Alleen het houden van het referendum, het ultieme democratische gereedschap, was al teveel voor Rajoy…….
Puigdemont had geen andere keus dan de onafhankelijkheid uitroepen, daar Rajoy van de fascistische Partido Popular, al in 2006 Catalonië een groot deel van de autonomie afnam…….
Daartegen werd geen woord van protest gegeven door de EU, of in dit geval door Duitsland…… Geen commentaar van de EU (of Duitsland) op Rajoy toen hij het referendum onmogelijk probeerde te maken, geen protest tegen het keiharde geweld van de politie tegen de Catalaanse bevolking, toen zij ter stembus gingen en in demonstraties daarna……Echter als Rajoy zich op Duits grondgebied bevindt, wordt hij wel gearresteerd……. Alleen dit feit is al genoeg om uit de EU te stappen, we hebben meer dan genoeg aan een organisatie als de EEG!!
Dagelijks worden miljoenen christenen in de VS gehersenspoeld door TV dominees met een uitgesproken mening over de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël en de vaststelling dat Iran moet worden vernietigd…. Deze ‘christenen’ keerden zich zelfs tegen de nucleaire deal met Iran………
Het publiek dat deze misdadige dominees bereiken, vertegenwoordigt een groot deel van de kiezers in de VS….. ‘Misdadigers’ daar dit geteisem voor het overgrote deel multimiljonair is en vooral goed voor zichzelf zorgt…….
Waarom worden dit soort figuren amper of niet aangepakt en krijgen ze zelfs belastingvoordelen? Simpel, daar ze o.a. het keiharde buitenlandbeleid van de VS verdedigen en uitdragen, beter gezegd propaganderen…… Ofwel deze predikers zijn oorlogshitsers, die lullig genoeg vele miljoenen burgers hersenspoelen met hun religieuze gif………….. Bovendien zaaien ze met deze hersenspoeling angst en haat tegen alles wat links of islamitisch is en/of zich tegen Israël keert, waar de TV dominees Israël steunen in alles wat deze moorddadige fascistische apartheidsstaat flikt en uitdraagt………
Over onrechtmatige beïnvloeding van verkiezingen gesproken: vergeleken met de leugens over deze beïnvloeding door de Russen, zelfs als deze waar zouden zijn (wat meer dan eens bewezen niet zo is..), is de invloed van de TV dominees gigantisch veel groter….. Sterker nog: daar kunnen de gevolgen van die leugens, (‘invloed uitoefenen op VS kiezers’ door Rusland) niet eens in de schaduw staan bij de directe beïnvloeding van de verkiezingen, door deze zogenaamde christelijke dominees……. (dominees die zich niet eens houden aan wat hun here jezus hen in de bijbel heeft voorgeschreven………)
Gezien het voorgaande, kan je de TV dominees medeverantwoordelijk houden voor de vele massamoorden door de VS gepleegd!! (sinds het einde van WOII heeft de VS meer dan 22 miljoen mensen vermoord…..)……… Het lullige bij dit alles is, dat de administraties van de opvolgende presidenten in de VS maar al te graag de ‘christelijke’ kaart spelen……..
Every day US televangelists are on TV telling their Christian viewers that they are “required” to support Israel and that countries like Iran merit total destruction.
The problem is tens of millions consume this garbage every day and people with these beliefs constitute the biggest voting block in America.
Why are these crooks (Bakker was jailed for a massive financial fraud) given a tax exemption for their broadcasting operations?
They’re political propagandists pure and simple
=======================================
Hier nog een video van Rob Muntz over TV dominees:
Dagelijks worden miljoenen christenen
in de VS gehersenspoeld door TV dominees met een uitgesproken mening
over de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël en de vaststelling dat Iran moet worden
vernietigd…. Deze ‘christenen’ keerden zich zelfs tegen de nucleaire deal met Iran………
Het publiek dat deze misdadige dominees bereiken, vertegenwoordigt een groot deel van de kiezers in de
VS….. ‘Misdadigers’ daar dit geteisem voor het overgrote deel
multimiljonair is en vooral goed voor zichzelf zorgt…….
Waarom worden dit soort figuren amper
of niet aangepakt en krijgen ze zelfs belastingvoordelen? Simpel,
daar ze o.a. het keiharde buitenlandbeleid van de VS verdedigen en
uitdragen, beter gezegd propaganderen…… Ofwel deze predikers zijn
oorlogshitsers, die lullig genoeg vele miljoenen burgers hersenspoelen met hun religieuze gif………….. Bovendien zaaien ze met deze hersenspoeling angst en haat tegen alles wat links of islamitisch is en/of zich tegen Israël keert, waar de TV dominees Israël steunen in alles wat deze moorddadige fascistische apartheidsstaat flikt en uitdraagt………
Over onrechtmatige beïnvloeding van verkiezingen gesproken: vergeleken met de leugens over deze beïnvloeding door de Russen, zelfs als deze waar zouden zijn (wat meer dan eens bewezen niet zo is..), is de invloed van de TV dominees gigantisch veel groter….. Sterker nog: daar kunnen de gevolgen van die leugens, (‘invloed uitoefenen op VS kiezers’ door Rusland) niet eens in de schaduw staan bij de directe beïnvloeding van de verkiezingen, door deze zogenaamde christelijke dominees……. (dominees die zich niet eens houden aan wat hun here jezus hen in de bijbel heeft voorgeschreven………)
Gezien het voorgaande, kan je de TV dominees medeverantwoordelijk houden voor de vele massamoorden door de VS gepleegd!! (sinds het einde van WOII heeft de VS meer dan 22 miljoen mensen vermoord…..)……… Het lullige bij dit alles is, dat de administraties van de opvolgende presidenten in de VS maar al te graag de ‘christelijke’ kaart spelen……..
Every
day US televangelists are on TV telling their Christian viewers that
they are “required” to support Israel and that countries like
Iran merit total destruction.
The
problem is tens of millions consume this garbage every day and people
with these beliefs constitute the biggest voting block in America.
Why
are these crooks (Bakker was jailed for a massive financial fraud)
given a tax exemption for their broadcasting operations?
They’re
political propagandists pure and simple
=======================================
Hier nog een video van Rob Muntz over TV dominees:
Professor Mark Skidmore van de Michigan State University ging uitzoeken waar 6,5 biljoen dollar was gebleven, 6,5 biljoen die niet waren goedgekeurd door het Congres en kwam er achter dat het werkelijke bedrag veel groter was dan eerder aangegeven en uiteindelijk uitkomt op 21 biljoen (in VS aangeduid als 21 triljoen dollar) niet goedgekeurde uitgaven….
Voor het ‘defensie’ budget bedroeg dit bedrag al meer dan 11 biljoen……. En dan wil Trump dat de andere NAVO partners hun budgetten verder opschroeven……. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Moet je nagaan: de VS het land dat graag woorden gebruikt als ‘corrupte regering’ en ‘democratie brengen’ als een regime niet in de smaak valt……
Ongelofelijk! Vergeet voorts niet dat de VS alleen deze eeuw al 4 illegale oorlogen is gestart, oorlogen die een enorm beslag leggen op het defensie uh oorlogsbudget…… De VS geeft alleen al 4 keer zoveel aan defensie uit dan Rusland en China samen! De NAVO lidstaten Groot-Brittannië, Frankrijk, Duitsland en Italië geven al meer dan 3 keer zoveel uit aan defensie dan Rusland……. En maar zeiken om meer geld en dat om de ongebreidelde terreur van de VS en het uitlokken van oorlogen elders te steunen……… Overigens heeft Trump het leger ‘carte blanche’ gegeven om naar eigen goeddunken extra personeel of wapens in te zetten, zodat controle op de uitgegeven gelden nog veel moeilijker zal worden…….
Professor Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University set out to prove Catherine Austin Fitts and her claims of “missing trillions” and “black budgets” was wrong.
Instead, he discovered the hole was even bigger than that.
The Army alone had $11.5 trillion missing.
Some individual unsupported journal adjustments are SIX TIMES the total annual budget of the Army.
A overall 1% error in government budgets is considered “normal.”
Theese numbers are astronomical.
How can you do a proper evaluation of numbers with figures like this? All spending needs to be a approved by Congress.
“It looks like there’s a whole lot of money flowing in and a whole lot of money flowing out”…completely outside the rule of law.
===========================
Hier nog een artikel van Forbes over deze zaak:
Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?
I am co-authoring this column with Mark Skidmore, a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University.
“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.” ~ Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, The US Constitution
On July 26, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”. The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015 the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion in journal voucher adjustments. According to the GAO’s Comptroller General, “Journal vouchers are summary-level accounting adjustments made when balances between systems cannot be reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack supporting documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to specific accounting transactions…. For an auditor, journal vouchers are a red flag for transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized correctly.”
(Note, after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported “accounting adjustments,” was mysteriously taken down. Fortunately, Mark copied the July 2016 report and all other relevant OIG-reports in advance and reposted them here. Mark has repeatedly tried to contact Lorin Venable, Assistant Inspector General at the Office of the Inspector General. He has emailed, phoned, and used LinkedIn to ask Ms. Venable about OIG’s disclosure of unsubstantiated adjustments, but she has not responded.)
Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress. The July 2016 report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department’s “failure to correct system deficiencies.” The result, according to the report, is that data used to prepare the year-end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. The report indicates that just 170 transactions accounted for $2.1 trillion in year—end unsupported adjustments. No information is given about these 170 transactions. In addition many thousands of transactions with unsubstantiated adjustments were, according to the report, removed by the Army.
There is no explanation concerning why they were removed nor their magnitude. The July 2016 report states, “In addition, DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) Indianapolis personnel did not document or support why DDRS (The Defense Department Reporting System) removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million feeder file records during the Third Quarter.”
An appendix to the July 2016 report shows $2 trillion in changes to the Army General Fund balance sheet due to unsupported adjustments. On the asset side, there is $794 billion increase in the Army’s Fund Balance with the U.S. Treasury. There is also an increase of $929 billion in the Army’s Accounts Payable. This information raises additional major questions. First, what is the source of the additional $794 billion in the Army’s Fund Balance? This adjustment represents more than six times appropriated spending.
Second, do these transfers represent a flow of funds to the Army beyond those authorized by Congress? Third, were these funds authorized and if so when and by whom? Fourth, what is the source of these funds? Finally, the $929 billion in Accounts Payable appears to represent an amount owed for items or services purchased on credit. What entities have received or will receive payment?
The July 2016 report is not the only such report of unsubstantiated adjustments. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate$21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.
While government budgets can be complex, our government, like any business, can track receipts and payments and share this information in ways that can be understood by the public. The ongoing occurrence and gargantuan nature of unsupported, i.e., undocumented, U.S. federal government expenditures as well as sources of funding for these expenditures should be a great concern to all tax payers.
Taken together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic Constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and disclosure. We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to initiate immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as well as the source of their payment.
PS, On December 11, 2017 we learned that the key documents had been reposted on the OIG website, but with different URLs. On October 5, 2017 we discovered that the link to the report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported” had been disabled. Within a several days, the links to other OIG documents we identified in our search were also disabled. The sequential non-random nature of this disabling process suggests a purposeful decision on the part of OIG to make key documents unavailable to the public via the website, as opposed to website reorganization, etc. We also revisited the website intermittently to see whether the documents had been reposted under different URLs—until very recently they had not been reposted. The OIG link to the most report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”, which indicates $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments, can now be found here: We are currently searching the OIG website for the other reports and will share the links here once we have completed the search.
Professor
Mark Skidmore van de Michigan State University ging uitzoeken waar
6,5 biljoen dollar was gebleven, 6,5 biljoen die niet waren goedgekeurd door
het Congres en kwam er achter dat het werkelijke bedrag veel groter
was dan eerder aangegeven en uiteindelijk uitkomt op 21 biljoen (in VS aangeduid als 21 triljoen dollar) niet goedgekeurde uitgaven….
Voor het ‘defensie’ budget bedroeg dit bedrag al meer dan 11 biljoen……. En
dan wil Trump dat de andere NAVO partners hun budgetten verder
opschroeven……. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Moet je nagaan: de VS het land dat
graag woorden gebruikt als ‘corrupte regering’ en ‘democratie brengen’ als een regime niet
in de smaak valt……
Ongelofelijk!
Vergeet voorts niet dat de VS alleen deze eeuw al 4 illegale oorlogen is gestart, oorlogen die een enorm beslag leggen op het defensie uh oorlogsbudget…… De VS geeft alleen al 4 keer zoveel aan defensie uit dan Rusland en China samen! De NAVO lidstaten Groot-Brittannië, Frankrijk, Duitsland en Italië geven al meer dan 3 keer zoveel uit aan defensie dan Rusland……. En maar zeiken om meer geld en dat om de ongebreidelde terreur van de VS en het uitlokken van oorlogen elders te steunen………
Overigens heeft Trump het leger ‘carte blanche’ gegeven om naar eigen goeddunken extra personeel of wapens in te zetten, zodat controle op de uitgegeven gelden nog veel moeilijker zal worden…….
Professor
Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University set out to prove Catherine
Austin Fitts and her claims of “missing trillions” and “black
budgets” was wrong.
Instead,
he discovered the hole was even bigger than that.
The
Army alone had $11.5 trillion missing.
Some
individual unsupported journal adjustments are SIX TIMES the total
annual budget of the Army.
A
overall 1% error in government budgets is considered “normal.”
Theese
numbers are astronomical.
How
can you do a proper evaluation of numbers with figures like this? All
spending needs to be a approved by Congress.
“It
looks like there’s a whole lot of money flowing in and a whole lot
of money flowing out”…completely outside the rule of law.
===========================
Hier nog een artikel van Forbes over deze zaak:
Has
Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?
I
am co-authoring this column with Mark Skidmore, a Professor of
Economics at Michigan State University.
“No
Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of
the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published
from time to time.” ~
Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, The US Constitution
On
July 26, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a
report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or
Supported”. The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015
the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion in
journal voucher adjustments. According to
the GAO’s Comptroller General, “Journal vouchers are
summary-level accounting adjustments made when balances between
systems cannot be reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are
unsupported, meaning they lack supporting documentation to justify
the adjustment or are not tied to specific accounting
transactions…. For an auditor, journal
vouchers are a red flag for
transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized correctly.”
(Note,
after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported
unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which
documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported
“accounting adjustments,” was mysteriously taken
down. Fortunately, Mark copied the July 2016 report and all other
relevant OIG-reports in advance and reposted them here.
Mark has repeatedly tried to contact Lorin Venable, Assistant
Inspector General at the Office of the Inspector General. He
has emailed, phoned, and used LinkedIn to ask Ms. Venable about OIG’s
disclosure of unsubstantiated adjustments, but she has not
responded.)
Given
that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion,
unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending
authorized by Congress. The July 2016 report indicates that
unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department’s
“failure to correct system deficiencies.” The result,
according to the report, is that data used to prepare the year-end
financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit
trail. The report indicates that just 170 transactions accounted for
$2.1 trillion in year—end unsupported adjustments. No
information is given about these 170 transactions. In addition
many thousands of transactions with unsubstantiated adjustments
were, according to the report, removed by the Army.
There
is no explanation concerning why they were removed nor their
magnitude. The July 2016 report states, “In addition, DFAS
(Defense Finance and Accounting Service) Indianapolis personnel did
not document or support why DDRS (The Defense Department Reporting
System) removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million feeder file records
during the Third Quarter.”
An
appendix to the July 2016 report shows $2 trillion in changes to the
Army General Fund balance sheet due to unsupported adjustments. On
the asset side, there is $794 billion increase in the Army’s Fund
Balance with the U.S. Treasury. There is also an increase of
$929 billion in the Army’s Accounts Payable. This information raises
additional major questions. First, what is the source of the
additional $794 billion in the Army’s Fund Balance? This adjustment
represents more than six times appropriated spending.
Second,
do these transfers represent a flow of funds to the Army beyond those
authorized by Congress? Third, were these funds authorized and if so
when and by whom? Fourth, what is the source of these funds? Finally,
the $929 billion in Accounts Payable appears to represent an amount
owed for items or services purchased on credit. What entities have
received or will receive payment?
The
July 2016 report is not the only such report of unsubstantiated
adjustments. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts, former
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, conducted
a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back
to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original
government sources indicate$21
trillion in
unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of
Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the
years 1998-2015.
While
government budgets can be complex, our government, like any business,
can track receipts and payments and share this information in ways
that can be understood by the public. The ongoing occurrence
and gargantuan nature of unsupported, i.e., undocumented, U.S.
federal government expenditures as well as sources of funding for
these expenditures should be a great concern to all tax payers.
Taken
together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic
Constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and
disclosure. We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to initiate
immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as well
as the source of their payment.
PS,
On December 11, 2017 we learned that the key documents had been
reposted on the OIG website, but with different URLs. On October 5,
2017 we discovered that the link to the report “Army General Fund
Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported” had been
disabled. Within a several days, the links to other OIG documents we
identified in our search were also disabled. The sequential
non-random nature of this disabling process suggests a purposeful
decision on the part of OIG to make key documents unavailable to the
public via the website, as opposed to website reorganization, etc. We
also revisited the website intermittently to see whether the
documents had been reposted under different URLs—until very
recently they had not been reposted. The OIG link to the most report
“Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or
Supported”, which indicates $6.5 trillion in unsupported
adjustments, can now be found here:
We are currently searching the OIG website for the other reports and
will share the links here once
we have completed the search.
De algehele hysterie over ‘fake news’ (of: ‘nepnieuws’) is compleet en al dik meer dan een jaar gaande, waarbij de sociale media werden aangewezen als de verspreiders, terwijl de echte makers en verspreiders van nepnieuws juist de reguliere media zijn, zie de berichtgeving voorafgaand aan de illegale oorlogen tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië, plus de berichtgeving over Oekraïne (en ga nog maar een tijd door…….)
Nu is er nieuws opgedoken over de VS overheid (en het leger) die al actief negatief nieuws over de overheid en bijvoorbeeld het leger te lijf gaan met een fiks aantal verzonnen personen, die meerdere identiteiten hebben op het internet, personages die het echte nieuws onderuit moeten halen. Het leger van de VS heeft al een klein legertje aan personen samengesteld om hun werk te doen. Overigens heeft Israël al eerder aangekondigd kritiek en negatief nieuws op/over deze fascistische apartheidsstaat aan te zullen vallen met een ‘snelle reactiemacht…..’* Overigens dient opgemerkt te worden dat de VS en Israël nog iets verder gaan dan alleen kritiek aan te vallen, daar ze actief nepnieuws zullen verspreiden die bijvoorbeeld de uitgeoefende staatsterreur (in binnen en buitenland) moeten rechtvaardigen……
Topmilitairen van de VS zien in deze vorm van volksverlakkerij een belangrijk wapen om de bevolking te beïnvloeden, bijvoorbeeld (weer) met het schoonpraten van de grootschalige terreur die dit leger op meerdere plaatsen in de wereld uitoefent…….
Lees de volgende stap in het vervolmaken van de Big Brother staat zoals door George Orwell beschreven, alleen gaat de werkelijkheid straks nog veel verder dan hij ooit had kunnen dromen……. (door de immense technologische vooruitgang nadat zijn boek 1984 in 1949 werd gepubliceerd)
What the Media Isn’t Telling You About Social Media
(CORBETT) — Now openly admitted, governments and militaries around the world employ armies of keyboard warriors to spread propaganda and disrupt their online opposition. Their goal? To shape public discourse around global events in a way favourable to their standing military and geopolitical objectives. Their method? The weaponization of social media.
TRANSCRIPT:
It didn’t take long from the birth of the world wide web for the public to start using this new medium to transmit, collect and analyze information in ways never before imagined. The first message boards and clunky “Web 1.0” websites soon gave way to “the blogosphere.” The arrival of social media was the next step in this evolution, allowing for the formation of communities of interest to share information in real time about events happening anywhere on the globe.
But as quickly as communities began to form around these new platforms, governments and militaries were even quicker in recognizing the potential to use this new medium to more effectively spread their own propaganda.
Their goal? To shape public discourse around global events in a way favourable to their standing military and geopolitical objectives.
Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. Snapchat. Instagram. Reddit. “Social media” as we know it today barely existed fifteen years ago. Although it provides new ways to interact with people and information from all across the planet virtually instantaneously and virtually for free, we are only now beginning to understand the depths of the problems associated with these new platforms. More and more of the original developers of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter admit they no longer use social media themselves and actively keep it away from their children, and now they are finally admitting the reason why: social media was designed specifically to take advantage of your psychological weaknesses and keep you addicted to your screen.
SEAN PARKER: If the thought process that went into building these applications—Facebook being the first of them to really understand it—that thought process was all about “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and that’s gonna get you to contribute more content and that’s gonna get you more likes and comments. So it’s a social validation feedback loop. I mean it’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. And I think that we—the inventors/creators, you know, it’s me, it’s Mark, it’s Kevin Systrom at Instagram, it’s all of these people—understood this consciously and we did it anyway.
It should be no surprise, then, that in this world of social media addicts and smartphone zombies, the 24/7 newsfeed is taking up a greater and greater share of people’s lives. Our thoughts, our opinions, our knowledge of the world, even our mood are increasingly being influenced or even determined by what we see being posted, tweeted or vlogged. And the process by which these media shape our opinions is being carefully monitored and analyzed, not by the social media companies themselves, but by the US military.
MARINA PORTNAYA: When the world’s largest social media platform betrays its users, there’s going to be outrage.
ABC HOST: The study to see whether Facebook could influence the emotional state of its users on that news feed.
CNN ANCHOR: It allowed researchers to manipulate almost 700,000 users’ news feeds. Some saw more positive news about their friends, others saw more negative.
CNN GUEST: Well I’m not surprised. I mean we’re all kind of lab rat than the big Facebook experiment.
PORTNAYA: But it wasn’t only Facebook’s experiment. It turns out the psychological study was connected to the US government’s research on social unrest.
MORNING JOE GUEST: This is really kind of creepy.
PORTNAYA: And it gets worse. What you may not know is that the US Department of Defense has reportedly spent roughly $20 million conducting studies aimed at learning how to manipulate online behavior in order to influence opinion. The initiative was launched in 2011 by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, otherwise known as DARPA. The program is best described as the US media’s effort to become better at detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns via social media. Translation: When anti-government messages gain ground virally, Washington wants to find a way to spread counter opinion.
The DARPA document that details the Pentagon’s plans for influencing opinions in the social media space is called “Social Media in Strategic Communication.” DARPA’s goal, according to their own website, is “to develop tools to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information.”
Exactly what tools were developed for this purpose and how they are currently being deployed is unclear.
But Rand Walzman, the program’s creator, admitted last year that the project lasted four years, cost $50 million and led to the publication of over 200 papers. The papers, including “Incorporating Human Cognitive Biases in a Probabilistic Model of Retweeting,” “Structural Properties of Ego Networks,” and “Sentiment Prediction using Collaborative Filtering,” make the thrust of the program perfectly clear. Social media users are lab rats being carefully scrutinized by government-supported researchers, their tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram pictures being analyzed to determine how information spreads online, and, by implication, how the government and the military can use these social media networks to make their own propaganda “go viral.”
As worrying as this research is, it pales in comparison to the knowledge that governments, militaries and political lobby groups are already employing squadrons of foot soldiers to wage information warfare in the social media battlespace.
AL-JAZEERA ANCHOR: The Pentagon’s got a new plan to counter anti-American messages in cyberspace. It involves buying software that will enable the American military to create and control fake online personas—fake people, essentially—who will appear to have originated from all over the world. The plan is being undertaken by CENTCOM (US Central Command), and the objective of the online persona management service is to combat enemy propaganda by influencing foreign social media websites. CENTCOM has hired a software development company called “Ntrepid,” and, according to the contract, the California-based company will initially provide 50 user licenses, each of which would be capable of controlling up to 10 fake personas. US law forbids the use of this type of technology, called “sockpuppets,” against Americans, so all the personas will reportedly be communicating in languages like Arabic, Persian and Urdu.
CTV ANCHOR: So is it okay to have the government monitor social media conversations and then to wade in and correct some of those conversations? With more on this, let’s go to technology expert Carmi Levy. He’s on the line from Montreal. Carmi, do you think the government’s monitoring what you and I are saying right now? Is this whole thing getting out of line, or what?
[…]
CARMI LEVY: It opens up a bit of a question. I’d like to call it a Pandora’s box about, you know, what exactly is the government’s aim here, and what do they hope to accomplish with what they find out? And as they accumulate this information online—this data on us—where does that data go? And so I think as much as we should applaud the government for getting into this area, the optics of it are potentially very Big Brother-ish. And the government really does need to be a little bit more concrete on what its intentions are and how it intends to achieve them.
4WWL REPORTER: New evidence that government-owned computers at the Army Corps of Engineers office here in New Orleans are being used to verbally attack critics of the Corps comes in an affidavit from the former editor-in-chief of nola.com. Jon Donley, who was laid off this past February, tells us via satellite from Texas, in late 2006 he started noticing people presenting themselves as ordinary citizens defending the Corps very energetically.
JON DONLEY: What stuck out, though, was the wording of the comments was in many ways mirroring news releases from the Corps of Engineers.
[…]
SANDY ROSENTHAL: These commenters tried to discredit these people . . .
4WWL REPORTER: And when Rosenthal investigated, she discovered the comments were coming from users at the internet provider address of the Army Corps of Engineers offices here in New Orleans. She blamed the Corps for a strategy of going after critics.
ROSENTHAL: In the process of trying to obscure the facts of the New Orleans floodings, one of their tactics was just verbal abuse.
NAFTALI BENNETT: Mo’etzet Yesha, in conjunction with My Israel, has arranged an instruction day for Wiki editors. The goal of the day is to teach people how to edit in Wikipedia, which is the number one source of information today in the world. As a way of example, if someone searches the Gaza flotilla, we want to be there. We want to be the guys who influence what is written there, how it’s written, and to ensure that it’s balanced and Zionist in the nature.
These operations are only the visible and publicly-admitted front of a vast array of military and intelligence programs that are attempting to influence online behaviour, spread government propaganda, and disrupt online communities that arise in opposition to their agenda.
That such programs exist is not a matter of conjecture; it is mundane, established, documented fact.
In 2014, an internal document was leaked from GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA. The document, never intended for public release, was entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations” and bluntly stated that “We want to build Cyber Magicians.” It then goes on to outline the “magic” techniques that must be employed in influence and information operations online, including deception and manipulation techniques like “anchoring,” “priming” and “branding” propaganda narratives. After presenting a map of social networking technologies that are targeted by these operations, the document then instructs the “magicians” how to deceive the public through “attention management” and behavioural manipulation.
That governments would turn to these strategies is hardly a shocking development. In fact, the use of government shills to propagate government talking points and disrupt online dissent has been openly advocated on the record by high-ranking government officials for the past decade.
In 2008, Cass Sunstein, a law professor who would go on to become Obama’s information “czar,” co-authored a paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” in which he wrote that the “best response” to online “conspiracy theories” is what he calls “cognitive infiltration” of groups spreading these ideas.
“Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action. In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. […] In another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false identities.”
It is perhaps particularly ironic that the idea that government agents are actually and admittedly spreading propaganda online under false identities is, to the less-informed members of the population, itself a “conspiracy theory” rather than an established conspiracy fact.
Unsurprisingly, when confronted about his proposal, Sunstein pretended to not remember having written it and then pointedly refused to answer any questions about it.
LUKE RUDKOWSKI: My name is Bill de Burgh from Brooklyn College, and I know you’ve written many articles. But I think the most telling one about you is the 2008 one called “Conspiracy Theories,” where you openly advocated government agents infiltrate activist groups of 9/11 Truth and also stifle dissent online. I was wondering why do you think it’s the government’s job, or why do you think the government should go after family members who have questions and 9/11 responders who are lied to about the air, survivors whose testimony conflicts, and also government whistleblowers that were gagged because they released information that contradicts the official story.
CASS SUNSTEIN: I think it was Ricky who said I’d written hundreds of articles and I remember some and not others. That one I don’t remember very well. I hope I didn’t say that. But whatever was said in that article, my role in government is to oversee federal rule-making in a way that is wholly disconnected from the vast majority of my academic writing, including that.
[…]
RUDKOWSKI: I just want to know is it safe to say that you retract saying that conspiracy theories should be banned or taxed for having an opinion online. Is it safe to say that?
SUNSTEIN: I don’t remember the article very well. So I hope I didn’t say either those things.
RUDKOWSKI: But you did and it’s written. Do you retract them?
Now, a decade on from Sunstein’s proposal, we know that military psyops agents, political lobbyists, corporate shills and government propagandists are spending vast sums of money and employing entire armies of keyboard warriors, leaving comments and shaping conversations to change the public’s opinions, influence their behaviour, and even alter their mood. And they are helped along in this quest by the very same technology that allows the public to connect on a scale never before possible.
Technology is always a double-edged sword, and sometimes it can be dangerous to wield that sword at all. There are ways to identify and neutralize the threat of online trolls and shills, but the phenomenon is not likely to go away any time soon.
Each of us must find our own answer to the question of how best to incorporate these technologies into our life. But the next time you find yourself caught up in an argument with an online persona that may or may not be a genuine human being, it might be better to ask yourself if your efforts are better spent engaging in the argument or just turning off the computer.
De
algehele hysterie over ‘fake news’ (of: ‘nepnieuws’) is compleet en al dik meer dan een jaar gaande, waarbij de
sociale media werden aangewezen als de verspreiders, terwijl de echte
makers en verspreiders van nepnieuws juist de reguliere media zijn, zie de berichtgeving voorafgaand aan
de illegale oorlogen tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië, plus de
berichtgeving over Oekraïne (en ga nog maar een tijd door…….)
Nu
is er nieuws opgedoken over de VS overheid (en het leger) die al
actief negatief nieuws over de overheid en bijvoorbeeld het leger te
lijf gaan met een fiks aantal verzonnen personen, die meerdere
identiteiten hebben op het internet, personages die het echte nieuws
onderuit moeten halen. Het leger van de VS heeft al een klein
legertje aan personen samengesteld om hun werk te doen. Overigens heeft Israël al eerder aangekondigd kritiek en negatief nieuws op/over deze fascistische apartheidsstaat aan te zullen vallen met een ‘snelle reactiemacht…..’*
Overigens dient opgemerkt te worden dat de VS en Israël nog iets verder gaan dan alleen kritiek aan te vallen, daar ze actief nepnieuws zullen verspreiden die bijvoorbeeld de uitgeoefende staatsterreur (in binnen en buitenland) moeten rechtvaardigen……
Topmilitairen van de VS zien in deze vorm van volksverlakkerij een belangrijk wapen om de
bevolking te beïnvloeden, bijvoorbeeld (weer) met het schoonpraten van de
grootschalige terreur die dit leger op meerdere plaatsen in de wereld
uitoefent…….
Lees
de volgende stap in het vervolmaken van de Big Brother staat zoals
door George Orwell beschreven, alleen gaat de werkelijkheid straks
nog veel verder dan hij ooit had kunnen dromen…….
(door de immense technologische vooruitgang nadat zijn boek 1984 in 1949 werd gepubliceerd)
What
the Media Isn’t Telling You About Social Media
(CORBETT) — Now
openly admitted, governments and militaries around the world employ
armies of keyboard warriors to spread propaganda and disrupt their
online opposition. Their goal? To shape public discourse around
global events in a way favourable to their standing military and
geopolitical objectives. Their method? The weaponization of social
media.
TRANSCRIPT:
It
didn’t take long from the birth of the world wide web for the
public to start using this new medium to transmit, collect and
analyze information in ways never before imagined. The first message
boards and clunky “Web 1.0” websites soon gave way to “the
blogosphere.” The arrival of social media was the next step in this
evolution, allowing for the formation of communities of interest to
share information in real time about events happening anywhere on the
globe.
But
as quickly as communities began to form around these new platforms,
governments and militaries were even quicker in recognizing the
potential to use this new medium to more effectively spread their own
propaganda.
Their
goal? To shape public discourse around global events in a way
favourable to their standing military and geopolitical objectives.
Facebook.
Twitter. YouTube. Snapchat. Instagram. Reddit. “Social media” as
we know it today barely existed fifteen years ago. Although it
provides new ways to interact with people and information from all
across the planet virtually instantaneously and virtually for free,
we are only now beginning to understand the depths of the problems
associated with these new platforms. More and more of the original
developers of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter admit
they no
longer use social media themselves
and actively keep it away from their children, and now they are
finally admitting the reason why: social media was designed
specifically to take advantage of your psychological weaknesses and
keep you addicted to your screen.
SEAN
PARKER:
If the thought process that went into building these
applications—Facebook being the first of them to really understand
it—that thought process was all about “How do we consume as much
of your time and conscious attention as possible?” And that means
that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in
a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or
whatever, and that’s gonna get you to contribute more content and
that’s gonna get you more likes and comments. So it’s a social
validation feedback loop. I mean it’s exactly the kind of thing
that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re
exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. And I think that
we—the inventors/creators, you know, it’s me, it’s Mark, it’s
Kevin Systrom at Instagram, it’s all of these people—understood
this consciously and we did it anyway.
It
should be no surprise, then, that in this world of social media
addicts and smartphone zombies, the 24/7 newsfeed is taking up a
greater and greater share of people’s lives. Our thoughts, our
opinions, our knowledge of the world, even our mood are increasingly
being influenced or even determined by what we see being posted,
tweeted or vlogged. And the process by which these media shape our
opinions is being carefully monitored and analyzed, not by the social
media companies themselves, but by the US military.
MARINA
PORTNAYA:
When the world’s largest social media platform betrays its users,
there’s going to be outrage.
ABC
HOST: The
study to see whether Facebook could influence the emotional state of
its users on that news feed.
CNN
ANCHOR:
It allowed researchers to manipulate almost 700,000 users’ news
feeds. Some saw more positive news about their friends, others saw
more negative.
CNN
GUEST:
Well I’m not surprised. I mean we’re all kind of lab rat than the
big Facebook experiment.
PORTNAYA: But
it wasn’t only Facebook’s experiment. It turns out the
psychological study was connected to the US government’s research
on social unrest.
MORNING
JOE GUEST:
This is really kind of creepy.
PORTNAYA:
And it gets worse. What you may not know is that the US Department of
Defense has reportedly spent roughly $20 million conducting studies
aimed at learning how to manipulate online behavior in order to
influence opinion. The initiative was launched in 2011 by the
Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, otherwise
known as DARPA. The program is best described as the US media’s
effort to become better at detecting and conducting propaganda
campaigns via social media. Translation: When anti-government
messages gain ground virally, Washington wants to find a way to
spread counter opinion.
The
DARPA document that details the Pentagon’s plans for influencing
opinions in the social media space is called “Social
Media in Strategic Communication.”
DARPA’s goal, according to their
own website,
is “to develop tools to help identify misinformation or deception
campaigns and counter them with truthful information.”
Exactly
what tools were developed for this purpose and how they are currently
being deployed is unclear.
But Rand Walzman, the program’s creator,
admitted last year that the project lasted four years, cost $50
million and led to the publication of over 200 papers. The papers,
including “Incorporating
Human Cognitive Biases in a Probabilistic Model of Retweeting,”
“Structural
Properties of Ego Networks,”
and “Sentiment
Prediction using Collaborative Filtering,”
make the thrust of the program perfectly clear. Social media users
are lab rats being carefully scrutinized by government-supported
researchers, their tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram pictures
being analyzed to determine how information spreads online, and, by
implication, how the government and the military can use these social
media networks to make their own propaganda “go viral.”
As
worrying as this research is, it pales in comparison to the knowledge
that governments, militaries and political lobby groups are already
employing squadrons of foot soldiers to wage information warfare in
the social media battlespace.
AL-JAZEERA
ANCHOR:
The Pentagon’s got a new plan to counter anti-American messages in
cyberspace. It involves buying software that will enable the American
military to create and control fake online personas—fake people,
essentially—who will appear to have originated from all over the
world. The plan is being undertaken by CENTCOM (US Central Command),
and the objective of the online persona management service is to
combat enemy propaganda by influencing foreign social media websites.
CENTCOM has hired a software development company called “Ntrepid,”
and, according to the contract, the California-based company will
initially provide 50 user licenses, each of which would be capable of
controlling up to 10 fake personas. US law forbids the use of this
type of technology, called “sockpuppets,” against Americans, so
all the personas will reportedly be communicating in languages like
Arabic, Persian and Urdu.
CTV
ANCHOR:
So is it okay to have the government monitor social media
conversations and then to wade in and correct some of those
conversations? With more on this, let’s go to technology expert
Carmi Levy. He’s on the line from Montreal. Carmi, do you think the
government’s monitoring what you and I are saying right now? Is
this whole thing getting out of line, or what?
[…]
CARMI
LEVY: It opens up a bit of a question. I’d like to call it a
Pandora’s box about, you know, what exactly is the government’s
aim here, and what do they hope to accomplish with what they find
out? And as they accumulate this information online—this data on
us—where does that data go? And so I think as much as we should
applaud the government for getting into this area, the optics of it
are potentially very Big Brother-ish. And the government really does
need to be a little bit more concrete on what its intentions are and
how it intends to achieve them.
4WWL
REPORTER:
New evidence that government-owned computers at the Army Corps of
Engineers office here in New Orleans are being used to verbally
attack critics of the Corps comes in an affidavit from the former
editor-in-chief of nola.com. Jon Donley, who was laid off this past
February, tells us via satellite from Texas, in late 2006 he started
noticing people presenting themselves as ordinary citizens defending
the Corps very energetically.
JON
DONLEY:
What stuck out, though, was the wording of the comments was in many
ways mirroring news releases from the Corps of Engineers.
[…]
SANDY
ROSENTHAL:
These commenters tried to discredit these people . . .
4WWL
REPORTER:
And when Rosenthal investigated, she discovered the comments were
coming from users at the internet provider address of the Army Corps
of Engineers offices here in New Orleans. She blamed the Corps for a
strategy of going after critics.
ROSENTHAL:
In the process of trying to obscure the facts of the New Orleans
floodings, one of their tactics was just verbal abuse.
NAFTALI
BENNETT: Mo’etzet
Yesha,
in conjunction with My Israel, has arranged an instruction day for
Wiki editors. The goal of the day is to teach people how to edit in
Wikipedia, which is the number one source of information today in the
world. As a way of example, if someone searches the Gaza flotilla, we
want to be there. We want to be the guys who influence what is
written there, how it’s written, and to ensure that it’s balanced
and Zionist in the nature.
These
operations are only the visible and publicly-admitted front of a vast
array of military and intelligence programs that are attempting to
influence online behaviour, spread government propaganda, and disrupt
online communities that arise in opposition to their agenda.
That
such programs exist is not a matter of conjecture; it is mundane,
established, documented fact.
In
2014, an internal document was leaked from GCHQ, the British
equivalent of the NSA. The document, never intended for public
release, was entitled “The
Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert
Operations”
and bluntly stated that “We want to build Cyber Magicians.”
It then goes on to outline the “magic” techniques that must be
employed in influence and information operations online, including
deception and manipulation techniques like “anchoring,” “priming”
and “branding” propaganda narratives. After presenting a map of
social networking technologies that are targeted by these operations,
the document then instructs the “magicians” how to deceive the
public through “attention management” and behavioural
manipulation.
That
governments would turn to these strategies is hardly a shocking
development. In fact, the use of government shills to propagate
government talking points and disrupt online dissent has been openly
advocated on the record by high-ranking government officials for the
past decade.
In
2008, Cass Sunstein, a law professor who would go on to become
Obama’s information “czar,” co-authored a paper entitled
“Conspiracy
Theories,”
in which he wrote that the “best response” to online “conspiracy
theories” is what he calls “cognitive infiltration” of groups
spreading these ideas.
“Government
agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social
networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine
percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual
premises, causal logic or implications for political action. In one
variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no
effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. […] In another
variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even
with false identities.”
It
is perhaps particularly ironic that the idea that government agents
are actually and admittedly spreading propaganda online under false
identities is, to the less-informed members of the population, itself
a “conspiracy theory” rather than an established conspiracy fact.
Unsurprisingly,
when confronted about his proposal, Sunstein pretended to not
remember having written it and then pointedly refused to answer any
questions about it.
LUKE
RUDKOWSKI:
My name is Bill de Burgh from Brooklyn College, and I know you’ve
written many articles. But I think the most telling one about you is
the 2008 one called “Conspiracy Theories,” where you openly
advocated government agents infiltrate activist groups of 9/11 Truth
and also stifle dissent online. I was wondering why do you think it’s
the government’s job, or why do you think the government should go
after family members who have questions and 9/11 responders who are
lied to about the air, survivors whose testimony conflicts, and also
government whistleblowers that were gagged because they released
information that contradicts the official story.
CASS
SUNSTEIN:
I think it was Ricky who said I’d written hundreds of articles and
I remember some and not others. That one I don’t remember very
well. I hope I didn’t say that.
But whatever was said in that article, my role in government is to
oversee federal rule-making in a way that is wholly disconnected from
the vast majority of my academic writing, including that.
[…]
RUDKOWSKI:
I just want to know is it safe to say that you retract saying that
conspiracy theories should be banned or taxed for having an opinion
online. Is it safe to say that?
SUNSTEIN:
I don’t remember the article very well. So I hope I didn’t say
either those things.
RUDKOWSKI:
But you did and it’s written. Do you retract them?
Now,
a decade on from Sunstein’s proposal, we know that military psyops
agents, political lobbyists, corporate shills and government
propagandists are spending vast sums of money and employing entire
armies of keyboard warriors, leaving comments and shaping
conversations to change the public’s opinions, influence their
behaviour, and even alter their mood. And they are helped along in
this quest by the very same technology that allows the public to
connect on a scale never before possible.
Technology
is always a double-edged sword, and sometimes it can be dangerous to
wield that sword at all. There are ways to identify and neutralize
the threat of online trolls and shills, but the phenomenon is not
likely to go away any time soon.
Each
of us must find our own answer to the question of how best to
incorporate these technologies into our life. But the next time you
find yourself caught up in an argument with an online persona that
may or may not be a genuine human being, it might be better to ask
yourself if your efforts are better spent engaging in the argument or
just turning off the computer.
Afgelopen woensdag besloot een meerderheid van het congres de steun aan de genocide die
Saoedi-Arabië en de VS in Jemen uitvoeren, voort te zetten…… Eén
lichtpunt: voor het eerst worden er grote vraagtekens geplaatst bij
de enorme terreur die de VS uitoefent en heeft uitgeoefend in het
Midden-Oosten en Afrika…..
Lullig
genoeg werd er niet gesproken over de VS militairen die in Jemen op
de grond meevechten, alsof die militairen niet bestaan…….
De
schrijver van het volgende artikel, Jon Queally, noemt de gaande
zijnde genocide een burgeroorlog, echter zonder Saoedi-Arabië was er
al lang geen sprake meer geweest van een burgeroorlog en zeker niet
van een genocide…. Bovendien is Saoedi-Arabië allesbehalve een binnenlandse Jemenitische partij…… Zelfs als de VS en Groot-Brittannië hun steun voor de Saoedische agressie een paar jaar geleden hadden ingetrokken, was het voor Saoedi-Arabië al een heel
stuk moeilijker, of zelfs onmogelijk geweest deze genocide uit te voeren……
Steun voor de Saoedische agressie die bestaat uit: munitie leveringen (waaronder clusterbommen), wapenleveringen, (inclusief vliegtuigen, raketten, pantservoertuigen en tanks), militair advies, training, het door de VS aftanken van Saoedische straaljagers tijdens bombardement missies op Jemen (het in de lucht aftanken van deze jagers, zodat ze zo effectief mogelijk de sjiieten kunnen bombarderen en beschieten…..) en tot slot het helpen door de VS met de blokkade op zee voor de door de Houthi’s beheerste gebieden (deze blokkades en die op land zorgen ervoor dat de leveringen van hulpgoederen aan de noodlijdende bevolking van Jemen uiterst moeizaam verlopen, hulpgoederen voor de sjiitische bevolking die lijdt aan honger, dorst, cholera en difterie…..)…….
Tja, de winsten voor het militair-industrieel complex en de zucht naar wereldoverheersing door de VS, gaan ver voor op mensenrechten en vooral op het leven van mensen…….
Hoe
lang blijft de wereld toekijken, voordat het actie onderneemt tegen
Saoedi-Arabië, toekijkt hoe de sjiieten in Jemen worden afgeslacht
door de reil-fascistische dictatuur Saoedi-Arabië en de grootste
terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS……… Dezelfde aarde die
hysterisch de leugens herhaalt over Oost-Ghouta, terwijl het doodstil
blijft over een gaande zijnde genocide, waar 22 miljoen mensen in ernstig gevaar verkeren , wat een hypocrisie!!
Sleep Saoedi-Arabië (plus haar arabisch-soennitische coalitiegenoten), de VS en GB eindelijk voor het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC)!!
‘Blood
of Thousands on Their Hands’: Congress Votes to Continue US-Backed
Yemen War
(CD) — While
44 U.S. Senators on Tuesday were applauded by peace groups for voting
in favor of a resolution that would have allowed Congress to begin
reclaiming its war-making authority and ended the U.S. military’s
backing of Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen, it was ultimately not
enough to overcome entrenched opposition from the 45 Republicans and
10 Democrats who voted against it.
Introduced
by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Mike Lee
(R-Utah), the resolution (SJ
Res. 54)
would have ended the tacit military support—including targeting
assistance, refueling, and intelligence sharing—of the Saudi’s
campaign to wage war on Yemen, a nation currently embroiled in a
civil war and experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises on
the planet.
The
final tally was 55-44 against the resolution, with only Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.) not casting a vote.
While
five Republicans voted for the measure, the 10 Democrats senators who
joined with the Republican majority to block it were: Coons (D-DE);
Cortez Masto (D-NV); Donnelly (D-IN); Heitkamp (D-ND); Jones (D-AL);
Manchin (D-WV); Menendez (D-NJ); Nelson (D-FL); Reed (D-RI); and
Whitehouse (D-RI).
Iona
Craig, the foreign correspondent who this year won a prestigious
George Polk Award for her coverage in Yemen, said that those who
voted against the effort will now have the “blood of thousands”
of Yemenis on their hands as the war continues and the crises
worsens.
The US Senate held the fate of millions of Yemenis in its hands. By voting to table #SJRes54 they’ve not just killed a resolution. Those 55 senators will have the blood of thousands, who will die as a result of US support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, on their hands.
Anti-war
groups, while disappointed with the outcome, celebrated the vote and
heralded it as an important step in terms of getting congressional
lawmakers to final assert themselves against an executive branch that
has been allowed to wage war with nearly no restraint over the last
17 years.
“Because
of the leadership put forth by Sens. Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, and
Chris Murphy — and the tireless advocacy of hundreds of thousands
of Americans — the U.S. Senate was today finally forced to confront
America’s unauthorized role in Yemen’s deadly civil war,” Kate
Kizer, policy director for Win Without War, in a statement.
“We
commend the 44 Senators who agreed that U.S. military support for the
Saudi-led coalition is unconstitutional, counterproductive, and
doesn’t serve U.S. national security interests,” she added.
“Today’s vote should serve as a sober reminder to Saudi Arabia
that it must immediately move to resolve this conflict
diplomatically, and that American support for its war in Yemen is not
unlimited.”
Kate
Gould, legislative director on Middle East policy for the Friends
Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), said that
despite the resolution’s failure, the “groundswell of grassroots
activism to end this war is not going to let up until this illegal
war ends, and U.S. pilots stop fueling U.S.-made bombers to rein down
U.S.-made bombs on schools, hospitals and neighborhoods. The U.S.
must stop literally fueling the deliberate killing and starvation of
countless civilians in Yemen, and support a peaceful solution to end
this crisis.”
Het
zat er al een tijd aan te komen,het overlijden van Sudan, de laatst
levende noordelijke witte neushoorn. Sudan leefde de laatste jaren
van zijn leven in het Keniase wildpark Ol Pejeta Conservancy en werd
24/7 bewaakt door gewapende beveiligers…….
De
hoorn van een neushoorn brengt in landen als Vietnam en China wel tot
€ 40.000,– op….. China begint eindelijk met stappen tegen deze
barbarij en het suffe geloof in krachten van deze hoorn.
De
hoogste tijd dat er in alle landen waar deze hoorns en andere onderdelen
van dieren worden gebruikt als geneeskrachtige of kracht schenkende
voorwerpen, aan de kinderen op school wordt onderwezen dat dit je reinste kul
is, zoals al lang geleden wetenschappelijk werd aangetoond……..
Een mooie taak voor de VN, doen ze eens echt iets wat er toe
doet……
Wat betreft de westerse miljonairs die denken recht te hebben deze dieren te vermoorden en onderdelen van deze dieren mee naar huis te nemen, zoals de zoons van het beest Trump, ‘zou je bijna wensen’ dat er een prijs op hun hoofd wordt gezet, zodat ze zelf afgeslacht worden…..
Het vogende artikel ontving ik gisteren van het Care2 team:
What
We Can Learn From the Death of Sudan, the Last Male Northern White
Rhino
While
extremely sad, Sudan’s death was not unexpected. The 45-year-old
rhino had suffered a series of age-related
complications,
and after taking a sudden turn for the worse, he
was euthanized on March 19.
Sudan’s
death leaves just two remaining individuals of this majestic
species: his daughter Najin and his granddaughter Fatu, both of
whom live in the Conservancy.
The
near threatened white
rhino has
two sub-species — northern and southern. As noted above, just two
northern rhinos remain, and there are roughly 20,000 southern
rhinos.
The
critically endangered black
rhino has
four sub-species: One of them went extinct in 2011, and just over
5,000 individuals remain.
So
sad because we end up losing such kinds of species because of human
failure. People used to kill rhinos because of their horns, and many
people have been believing that they’re used as medicine, but it
doesn’t cure anyone at all.
Mutai
is referring to the belief that rhino horns have medicinal value. But
they’re actually made of keratin,
the same material in human hair and fingernails, as well as turtle
beaks and horse hooves.
Rhino
horn is most often ground up for use in traditional Asian
medicine, especially in China and Vietnam. According to
the International
Rhino Foundation,
the powder is added to food or brewed in a tea, which is “guaranteed”
to be a powerful aphrodisiac, a hangover cure or a treatment for
cancer, fever, rheumatism and gout.
One
rhinoceros horn has an estimated value of between $30,000 and $40,000
— and that’s precisely why poachers love them.
The
organization Save
The Rhino believes
that more than 7,245 African rhinos have been lost to poaching in
just a decade. In South Africa, 1,028 rhinos were killed in
2017, which equals just about three rhino deaths every single day.
POACHING
PREVENTION
So
what can we do to prevent this unnecessary slaughter?
Writing
for CNN, Jill
Filipovic notes that
“The response to poaching has to be holistic and global –
addressing, among other things, economic need and lack of
opportunity.” She’s referring to the fact that
some people rely on poaching as a matter of survival.
Living in poverty — perhaps with a starving family — they will do
anything to get money.
But Filipovic
goes on to suggest a bigger approach: The Kenya Wildlife Service
needs to be controlled and refocused. The group has been accused by
Human Rights Watch and others of deaths
and disappearances;
KWS has consistently denied
the accusations.
A
global approach also means looking to China, which has provided the
demand for rhino horns for decades. The country banned
ivory last year,
but government officials must do more to protect this
incredible creature.
And
in the U.S., photos of Donald Trump’s sons with their African game
kills aren’t improving the situation. Legislators need to ensure
that these wild animals are more than trophies for the rich.
Discouragingly,
a new advisory board created to reshape U.S. law on the importation
of the body parts of African elephants, lions and rhinos is loaded
with trophy
hunters.
A
LASTING LEGACY
So
what does the death of Sudan tell us?
It
is not enough to simply blame the poachers. The countries involved
need to band together in what Filipovic calls a “holistic and
global approach.”
Although
scientists around the world are working to develop in
vitro fertilization** techniques,
it’s probably too late for the northern white rhino. Sudan’s
death means that this majestic sub-species may follow the northern
black rhino into extinction, if the international community fails to
act.
