There was Snowden but NOW there is Greenwald

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Actually we should all be grateful to Edward Snowden for what he revealed about the NSA and the sweeping indiscriminate spying on U.S. citizens without a warrant or approval. This caused a real debate and formal discussion where the checks and balances should be a mission of all citizens.

Snowden has the proof for the sake of validation but should there be limits to what is published globally?

Glen Greenwald along with some partnerships that included the founder of eBay has exposed worldwide documents that exposed sources and methods that likely has crossed the Rubicon. The debate has caused alarm and decisions are underway to address the intrusion into the privacy of common citizens. What is surfacing is social modeling and behavior control, something that has little attention, yet should.

Greenwald is publishing more yet to what end? The other question should be what is the solution to protect privacy, maintain limits of Constitutional protections and use of information for the sake of national security

The United States works with a few other countries that include the UK, Canada and Australia under an agreement and organization called GCHQ. While we are familiar with the NSA we are not so familiar with the UK’s eavesdropping operation called Menwith Hall.

Use of the social networking not only profiles all users regardless of their methods of communications, it does the same with terrorists, and it should. A deeper look is required however.

 

NSA GCHQ

How The NSA Uses Social Network Analysis To Map Terrorist Networks

Ever since The Guardian reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting the phone record metadata of millions of Americans, the cable talk circuit has been ablaze with pundits demanding answers to what should be obvious questions.

Who knew about the program to collect data? (Apparently, all three branches of government). Who else has been supplying data?  (Just about everybody, according to the Washington Post). What is metadata?  (It’s data about data).

The question that nobody seems to be asking is probably the most important one:  What is the NSA doing with the data and why do they need so much of it?  The answer is a relatively new field called social network analysis and, while it may make people uneasy, the benefits far outweigh the risks, so it is probably something we will just have to accept.

The New Science of Networks

The story of networks starts in 1736, long before the United States became a country, when Leonhard Euler set out to conquer a famous math problem concerning the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. To solve it, he created a new form of mathematics called graph theory, which concerned itself with links and nodes in a network.

In the 1950’s, interest renewed in Euler’s networks.  First, Anatol Rapoport introduced the concept of triadic closure, which asserted that networks grow when people meet through a central friend that they both know.  Later, Erdős and Rényi showed that as networks got bigger, communication among the people in the network got much more efficient.

In the 1970’s a sociologist named Mark Granovetter argued that we get most of our information not through close friends, but through weak ties and in the 1990’s Watts and Strogatz built on Granovetter’s work by showing that small clusters of people naturally organize themselves into far flung networks.

So by the late 1990’s, the small field of network analysis had built into a full fledged science and it was about to be applied to an increasingly important problem:  Terrorist networks.

Mapping Terrorist Networks

Valdis Krebs of Orgnet is a network scientist who in 2002 published a widely praised paper on mapping terrorist networks and has since consulted with the Defense Department on methods and approaches of evaluating and dismantling terrorist organizations.

It used to be that law enforcement officers would simply watch the two men closely, but in the era of global jihad, that’s much too slow to save lives.  The two might be peripheral to the conspiracy and it could take years before you could connect them to the leadership of the network, if ever.

Here’s where the data from Verizon and other companies comes in.  If you can analyze communication records, you can move much more quickly.  However, you don’t want to look at everyone the suspects talk to because you’ll end up with mostly incidental contacts, like friendly neighbors and delivery men.

But if you kept Rapoport’s concept of triadic closure in mind and had full access to communication records, you could look for contacts the two suspects have in common and start to build out a map of the conspiracy.  Read more here and see the graphic illustrations.

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Now is the time to question boundaries, collateral damage and protection results with regard to offensive measures against terrorists.

 

Our Salute to Josh and those Fallen Beside Him

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On Memorial Day we bless the fallen and on Veteran’s Day we bless the surviving veterans. But below, we have both and this is a moving story of what a Band of Brothers really is.

How One Army Ranger’s Salute Brought 50 Soldiers To Tears

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One of the last things Army Ranger Josh Hargis did in Afghanistan on Oct. 6,  2013 was take a step toward a seemingly unarmed man.

 

Hargis’ Ranger unit “was conducting a mission to try to capture an HVT (High  Value Target), in the Panjwai district of Afghanistan,” according to the site Guardian of Valor.

Their post is based off multiple field reports of the  incident:

As several members of the Ranger unit  moved toward the man to begin questioning him, a woman wearing a suicide vest  emerged from the house and blew herself up, killing several members of the unit  instantly, along with [their] dog, and injuring others.

Hargis was flown to the nearest combat medical facility where he  was stabilized. Prior to his follow-on flight to Germany, the unit’s commander  organized a hasty bedside ceremony to award Hargis the Purple  Heart.

Later, Taylor Hargis, Josh’s wife, received a letter and an image from the commander,  describing what Josh did in response to the ceremony:

During the presentation the  Commander published the official orders verbally and leaned over Josh to thank  him for his sacrifice.

Josh, whom everybody in the room (over 50 people)  assumed to be unconscious, began to move his right arm under the blanket in a  diligent effort to salute the Commander as is customary during these ceremonies.  Despite his wounds, wrappings, tubes, and pain, Josh fought the doctor who was  trying to restrain his right arm and rendered the most beautiful salute any  person in that room had ever seen.

 

Josh

 

 

I cannot impart on you the level of emotion that  poured through the intensive care unit that day. Grown men began to weep and we  were speechless at a gesture that speaks volumes about Josh’s courage and  character.

Guardian of Valor dubbed it the “Salute heard round the world,”  and the officer wrote to Taylor that he thought the picture should be posted  “on every news channel and every news paper.”

“I have it hanging above my desk now,” he wrote, “and  will remember it as the single greatest event I have witnessed in my ten years  in the Army.”

Today, Hargis and his wife are expecting their first child. And this past March, Hargis participated in Warrior’s Walk, a 222-mile hike from Fort  Bennet, Georgia, to the National Infantry Museum in Columbus, Georgia.

 

 

No Place is Safe for Christians

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We have read that Iran jails Christians, we have read that in Egypt the Coptics are burned out of their churches, we have read that in Syria, Christians are either killed or have fled. But it gets worse as the worst place to be a Christian appears to be Pakistan.

Jihad America

The hardest place on earth to be a Christian

While there are many terrible places on earth to be a Christian (Sudan, North Korea, Afghanistan, Bhutan, etc.), Pakistan is arguably the worst. Other nations persecute believers, but in Pakistan the entire country has spent generations forming a world view that values the torturing of those that claim the name of Christ.

Pakistan used to have a noticeable Christian presence. Presbyterians had a sizeable school system, and those schools were largely responsible for the country’s relatively high literacy. But in 1973 Islam become the nation’s religion and the government seized those schools and replaced their teachers and curriculum. Now the Koran is required to be read and recited in all classes at all levels. When little kids learn science, they memorize passages about how Mohammad prophesied modern inventions. When they learn English, they learn it through the Koran. Meanwhile, it is illegal for Christians to touch or own the Koran.

Now, 40 years later, this plan was successful. Literacy in Pakistan is around 50%, but literacy for Christians is less than 10%. Universities require Koran memorization for entrance, so Christians are unable to hold any jobs which require an education. There are only a handful of believers who work for the government at any level. Christians are reduced to living in slums, where they are routinely robbed, and their houses frequently burned.

But that is not the worst of what happens to Christians there. The worst is that their children—particularly their young daughters—are the targets of violence. It is estimated by the few Christian organizations that track these things that around 3,000 Christian girls between the ages of 10-12 are kidnapped every year. Schools make Christians wear different uniforms than the other students, making them easy targets. They are forced to “convert” to Islam and marry Muslims (often becoming a man’s third or fourth wife), and their children are by law considered Muslim. Young kidnapped girls that refuse to convert and marry are beaten, physically tortured, and either killed or simply raped and left to die naked in the wilderness.

Christians do not have access to the legal system in Pakistan. By law, a Christian’s testimony carries only half credibility in court. Police must arrest Christians for any crime they are accused of, and they are really only accused of one crime: blasphemy, which carries an automatic death sentence. In perhaps the most perverse aspect of the legal system there, the government can say that they have never officially executed anyone for blasphemy because it is the lawyers who often carry out the execution before the trial.

Judges in Pakistan have been thoroughly intimidated by Al Qaeda.  They know that if they ever find a Christian innocent of blasphemy that the judge’s family will be murdered. A few years ago (when there were still lawyers who would defend Christians) a Christian was convicted of writing blasphemy against Mohamed, and her case was appealed to the Supreme Court. There it was shown that the accused was actually illiterate, and obviously incapable of writing. The judge acquitted her, and he was murdered the next day. Since then there have been no cases of Christians found “not guilty.” They usually don’t even survive to their trial.

This is an important point because in the last few years blasphemy charges against Christians have become more common. Two particular cases are well known by most Pakistanis, and they served as the model for the current wave of persecution. In 2009 two neighbors were having a property dispute—it essentially boiled down to who was responsible for a hole in the fence. One neighbor was Muslim, and the other was a Christian. The Muslim fabricated a charge of blasphemy, the police incited a crowd, and the Christian family was beaten. Eventually the police arrested the Christian woman (Asia Bibi), who was convicted of blasphemy. The mob seized her house and turned it over to her Muslim neighbors.

In 2011 a wedding was being hosted in the house of a Christian family. A group of Muslims wadded up pages of the Koran and threw them over the fence into the yard, and then summoned the authorities who arrested the bride. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Those two cases have made a pattern for the rest of the nation to follow. Christians are frequently falsely accused of blasphemy, arrested, and their houses are seized. If they lived in the slums (where most Christians live) it is likely that their entire neighborhood will be burned and turned into a mosque.

Because judges don’t want to hear these cases, and lawyers are afraid for their lives that they will not be seen as sufficiently hard against blasphemy, the most common outcome of these cases is that the accused are murdered by their lawyers.

In one of the most infamous cases, in 2012 a group of Muslims handed an 11-year-old Christian girl a bag with burned pages from a school book. The girl would have simply been kidnapped and forced to convert, but because she had Down’s Syndrome, they did not want to marry her to a Muslim. Instead, she was asked her to bring the bag home with her, and a mob then surrounded her house. She was arrested and charged with blasphemy, because the school book contained passages from the Koran. Because this story was picked up by international news, she was not immediately killed. Eventually she was given asylum in Canada.

This kind of extremism has essentially succeeded. Today in Pakistan, Christians cannot read. Their daughters are kidnapped. It is nearly impossible for Christians to get an education, and there are no jobs for them. Their houses are attacked, they have no access to the police, and parents are afraid to teach their children the basics of the gospel—out of fear that their children may say something that will get them killed.

I spoke with a Pakistani pastor this week, and asked him how its possible that so much of the population in Pakistan goes along with something that is so barbarically evil. He pointed out that Christians grow up talking about love, singing about love, and esteeming love. Thus their world view is formed by love. Pakistanis grow up in a school system that talks about Jihad, hates Christians, and from an early age everyone is taught that Christians are deserving of death. It forms their world view.

That observation has been backed by outsiders. In 2011 the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom completed a study of the educational structure in Pakistan. They reported that “all” of the public school teachers they interviewed taught their students that Jihad was the violent struggle against infidels and that it is “compulsory” for Muslims to be violent toward Christians (see pg. 16 of that report). Pakistan is a nation where nearly all—if not all—of the teachers, at every level of education, teach their children to kill Christians.

If you ever meet a Pakistani Christian, ask for his story. Ask how persecution affected his family. Strive to encourage them in anyway possible. There is really no way to give to the church there. They need audio Bibles (because of illiteracy), but other than that, this is not really a problem that money can fix. Instead, please be faithful to pray for the few believers that remain in that dark country.

Pre-9/11 Attack Chatter Again

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Ladies and gentlemen, we are finding ourselves in a deja vu condition again and sadly no one is warning America. It seems that Iran has openly issued a renewed fatwa against the West. There are open forums on the internet where plans of action on waging new attacks are being discussed including Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

While some Democrats are calling Barack Obama ‘flat-footed, detached and incompetent’, this for sure is the case when it comes to many issues least of which is the Veteran’s Administration scandal, but it could be more fatal as we exit Afghanistan for good at the end of this year, leaving yet another country even more vulnerable to the full take-over by al Qaeda factions and the renewed growth of the Taliban.

So, at the core of the chatter is Iran, but who is being offensive in any mission against Iran? Not the White House and not John Kerry. So what is Iran doing exactly?

 

Jihad America

 

Iran’s ayatollah: Jihad will last until America is wiped out

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah  Ali Khamenei, said the era of negotiation of Tehran’s nuclear program has  ended and that those who wanted to deal with America — which he said must be  destroyed — are guilty of treason.

“Those [Iranians] who want to promote negotiations and surrender to the  oppressors and blame the Islamic Republic as a warmonger in reality commit  treason,” he said Sunday during a public address to members of parliament, Fars  News Agency reported.

Mr. Khamenei also said a combative-type  mindset was necessary for Iran to achieve its higher  goals and win over the “oppressors’ front,” The Daily Caller reported.

“The reason for continuation of this battle is not the warmongering of the  Islamic Republic,” he said. “Logic and reason command that Iran,  in order to pass through a region full of pirates, needs to arm itself and must  have the capability to defend itself. Today’s world is full of thieves and  plunderers of human honor … [who] commit crimes and betray human ideals and  start wars in different parts of the world.”

One lawmaker asked how long the battle would wage, The Daily Caller  reported.

His reply: “Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue  to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the  oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws  on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy  struggle and need for great strides.”

Then we have some unsuspecting adversaries now standing hip to hip in discussions as the U.S. policy needs its own Amber alert. Remember Jews are not allowed to fly into Saudi Arabia on commercial airlines but…..

Former Israeli, Saudi Intel Chiefs Debate Hot-Button Mideast Issues

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Former Israeli and Saudi spy chiefs debated a spectrum of hot-button Mideast issues — including the Iranian nuclear threat, Islamic terror, Syrian civil war and, of course, prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace — in an unprecedented public event Monday in Brussels.

The May 26 debate — discussion, really — brought Prince Turki bin Faisal, youngest son of the late Saudi King who headed Riyadh’s General Intelligence for 22 years, side-by-side with retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel’s military intelligence chief from 2006-2010.

Hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the US and moderated by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, the two agreed on the need to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad for what Turki called “blood crimes” against his people.

They also shared a professed desire and hope to see in their lifetime peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

On Iran, they concurred on the imperative of denying Tehran’s nuclear weapon ambitions, yet differed on matters of substance and strategy.

Yadlin — a former fighter pilot who participated in Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor and managed, as military intelligence chief, Israel’s 2007 attack on a Syrian nuclear complex — made subtle, but clear reference to the so-called military option. “The goal of my government is to do everything so that Iran will not hold a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Turki, in contrast, highlighted Israel’s own nuclear weapon arsenal and the desire of all Mideast countries to rid their region of weapons of mass destruction. The Saudi royal urged Israel to break decades of resistance and agree to enter denuclearization negotiations; a step, he insisted, which would greatly affect the outcome of ongoing talks with Tehran.

“This issue is not one-sided. I’d urge Israel to take that seriously … To have a zone free of weapons of mass destruction,” Turki said.

On Syria, the Saudi prince warned that world powers must not repeat the mistakes of Afghanistan, where “neglect” and the precipitous withdrawal of forces resulted in a breakdown of central authority and stability.

Acknowledging Saudi’s role in arming opposition forces, Turki insisted neither his government nor the forces it supports seeks to dismantle the Syrian state or sovereign control of its territory.

“Should the opposition succeed in Syria, the world community must come together and sustain the viability of the Syrian state. The opposition is not offering to break down the present Syrian state as the Americans did in Afghanistan,” Turki said.

“We want to maintain the state of Syria and its institutions, whether it is the armed forces, police, or government structure … We just want to clear the from blood crimes,” he added.

On prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Saudi royal urged Israel to negotiate on the basis of the so-called Saudi Peace Initiative, a plan adopted in March 2002 by the Arab League.

“Israel has atomic weapons, it has means to deliver those weapons” by air and under the sea, Turki said. “So the Arabs are not crazy. Instead of waging war, the Arabs are waging peace … This is what we want to do; just sit down and talk,” he said.

Yadlin noted that at the time the Saudi plan was first proposed, Israel had been struggling with waves of terror that prevented the plan from gaining traction by a public preoccupied by the threat. “Today, 74 percent of [the Israeli public] have no idea what the Arab Peace Initiative is,” he said.

Yadlin then turned dramatically to his Saudi counterpart and invited him to come to Israel to explain the plan. “I suggest that his Highness come to Jerusalem, pray in the mosques … then we’ll drive to the Knesset.”

When asked whether the Saudi would consider the Israeli invitation, Turki replied, “Absolutely not.”

While it was a dying wish of his father to pray in Jerusalem, Turki insisted that such a step would be a diversion based on emotion. “You need genuine commitments to achieving peace. Not to use emotions as a means of influencing or attempting to divert attention on the important issue,” Turki said.

“And the important issue is that the Arabs have put forward what the rest of the world views as a reasonable first step … [You can’t] put me as a stumbling block, or as a key for opening the door. Who am I?”

Open and public calls for jihad against the West. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/syria-islamic-jihadist-threatens-jihad-attacks-against-obama-canada-and-the-u-s

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/10687163/Al-Qaeda-unveils-new-magazine-aimed-at-Western-jihadis.html

http://www.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Zelin_Global%20Jihad%20Online_NAF.pdf

 

 

 

 

Maps for History and Truth

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For those that think they understand the Middle East, a lesson in historical maps is required. For those that think they understand the Palestinian Authority, for those that think they understand Islam, for those that think they understand treaties, a lesson in historical maps is required.

The lesson begins here.

Davids Temple

Rashid Khalidi, a history professor at Columbia University and who has deep connections within the Barack Obama circles and the State Department is quoted here:

“Palestine” did not exist in the Arab imagination before World War I. Local Arabs neither perceived “Palestine” as a distinct country nor themselves as “Palestinians.” Shortly before the birth of the State of Israel Arab historian Philip Hitti acknowledged: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history.”

Real Refugees

Palestinian nationalism is deeply embedded in, and derived from, Jewish history in the Land of Israel. Without Zionism as their primary source of inspiration Palestinians would lack a historical narrative of their own. According to Columbia history professor Rashid Khalidi, an expert on Palestinian identity, “Palestine” did not exist in the Arab imagination before World War I. Local Arabs neither perceived “Palestine” as a distinct country nor themselves as “Palestinians.” Shortly before the birth of the State of Israel Arab historian Philip Hitti acknowledged: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history.”

To compensate for their missing past, Palestinians plunder Jewish texts and history, and Zionist nation-building, to frame their own national identity. They claim the Canaanites as their ancestral people. They demand recognition of the burial sites of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people as their own holy sites. They frame their naqba as the real “holocaust” that Israel inflicted on them. Copying Israel’s Law of Return (1950), which granted to all Jews the right to settle in their ancient homeland, they insist upon the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.

According to Palestinian sources, between 800,000-900,000 Arabs were forced to abandon their homes during the fighting in 1946-48. Many left of their own volition to escape the turmoil; others because their leaders urged them to do so, assuring their return once the Zionist enemy was defeated. Israeli historians claim that the number was closer to 600,000-700,000, while Efraim Karsh concludes, based on his extensive research in Palestinian and Israeli sources, that between 583,000-609,000 Palestinians became refugees.

But who is a “refugee”? As originally defined by the United Nations, refugees were “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Fair enough. But according to best current estimates, only 30,000-40,000 of those displaced persons are alive to legitimately claim “refugee” status. They could easily be permitted to return to their homeland without undue demographic disruption for Israel. The Palestinian refugee problem would be instantly solved.

Not so fast. To stoke Palestinian claims against Israel the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA), established in 1949, expanded its definition of “refugees” to include “descendants” of refugees. Only Palestinian refugees are so defined. With that alteration, five million children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees now claim refugee status even if they never spent a day in Palestine. It is estimated that by 2050 there will be 15 million Palestinian “refugees.” Only Palestinians embrace perpetual refugee status. If this sounds like a formula designed for the demographic destruction of Israel, it is.

The Palestinian Authority seems to care little about its own “refugees.” Thousands are still confined to camps in Jericho, under Palestinian Authority rule since 1994. According to former Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, they live in “miserable conditions.” The Palestinian Authority needs suffering refugees to nourish its narrative of Israeli oppression.

But Palestinian “refugees,” few in actual number if many in anti-Israel rhetoric, now confront a serious challenge to their victimization supremacy: they are vastly outnumbered by actual refugees from Syria. According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), more than 2.6 million Syrians, whose primary places of refuge are the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, now qualify for refugee assistance. Collectively, they comprise the world’s largest refugee population.

More people have already been killed in the Syrian civil war than in all the Arab-Israeli wars and Palestinian intifadas combined. Even if they were still alive, the estimated one million Palestinian refugees from Israel’s Independence and Six-Day wars would not reach even half the number of current Syrian refugees. What that says about the vile double standard that Israel confronts in the international community, where it is relentlessly castigated, boycotted and sanctioned for causing and ignoring the plight of Palestinian refugees while Syrian refugees are ignored, is self-evident.

Jerold S. Auerbach is author of the recently published Jewish State Pariah Nation: Israel and the Dilemmas of Legitimacy (Quid Pro Books)