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Category: America

Israeli Firms in Middle of NSA Spy Scandal

Two Israeli companies, including one exposed by EIR in 2001-02 as under investigation in the U.S. for being part of a massive Israeli espionage network (see EIR, Feb. 1, 2002), have been identified as playing a central role in handling the NSA’s acquisition of call information from major telecommunications companies.

* VERINT Systems, formerly known as Comverse Systems, a U.S.-based subsidiary of the Israeli Comverse Technologies, was reported by author and NSA expert James Bamford to have been designated by the NSA to process all the call information (metadata) obtained from Verizon. By the time it got the NSA contract, Comverse was already well-known as a leading firm in wiretapping, or what it called the “lawful interception market” for law-enforcement agencies. In 2002, about the time NSA launched its Stellar Wind operation, tapping into the major telecoms, former NSA Director Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan joined the Board of Directors of Comverse-Verint.

* NARUS, another Israeli company, similarly processes all the information obtained from AT&T for the NSA. Narus was founded in Israel in 1997, and in 2010 was acquired by Boeing. Narus’s NarusInsight supercomputer system, which was installed in AT&T’s San Francisco Internet facility and identified by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, gave rise to a famous 2006 class action lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, Hepting v. AT&T.

Additionally, AMDOCS, another Israeli telecommunications firm profiled by EIR in 2001-02, specializes in analyzing (i.e. data-mining) customer billing records for major U.S. telecoms; this data is similar to the “metadata” collected by the NSA on all phone calls in the U.S. Some investigators believe Amdocs is also involved in the NSA Stellar Wind program; indeed, it would be surprising if they were not.

Ha’aretz reported on June 8 that both Verint and Narus have ties to both the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and the Israel Defense Forces intelligence-gathering unit 8200. Ha’aretz also raises the question of whether Mossad is a party to the intelligence-sharing arrangement between the U.S.’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ, Britain’s Cheltenham-based signals-intelligence agency.

larouchepac.com, June 12, 2013

July 2, 2013
TURKEY’S DEAD MAN TALKING

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

MACBETH, William Shakespeare

A month ago I wrote that Turkey’s relentless prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was either heading for a psychotic break or an incident or statement so damaging to the nation that he would be forced to resign. If incessant lying in the face of overwhelming, documented truth, if using incredibly inflammatory, divisive language in public discourse, if impugning the motives of all who disagree with his bestial domestic policy towards peaceful protesters including nations, international organizations, NATO, the European Union, and non-governmental organizations to name but a few, if repeated gassing and beating of unarmed, peaceful protesters, if sanctioning and encouraging police (and personal private thug) violence on the level of Pinochet’s Chile and Hitler’s Third Reich, if state-supported murder is glorified as self-defense, if he, the nominal leader of Turkey, stands shamed and defamed before the eyes of the world (except for America) then he (or even a relatively normal egomaniac) would have left long ago. But he’s still here. And for the right reasons, I was wrong. My excuse? This prime minister is not a normal egomaniac, nor is he a normal or even abnormal megalomaniac. He’s a dead man talking. And talking. And talking. And talking. Gibbering nonsense allegations and conspiracy rubbish. Sex and beer in the mosques. Foreign meddlers. Interest rate lobby. Drunks. Looters. Coup-plotters. Vandals. Plunderers. The Jews did it. His language, his thoughts, like a cancer consume him. His reality? Zero.

He and his stooges still target people in the government-controlled media; public defaming is a specialty of this government. Erdoğan’s strong-arm street goons, in the worst tradition of Adolph Hitler, now assist his uniformed cop-goons in attacking peaceful protesters. And he is still talking. But that is all. He has lost control of the nation. Even the Kurds have joined the resistance. The very thought of Tayyip is lustily booed everywhere, from graduation ceremonies to race tracks. Athletic teams celebrate victories with Atatürk flags. Actors act out. Singers sing out. There is a frenzy of resistance music, art and caricatures. Agitprop Turkish-style fills the air and it is wonderful to behold. The brilliance of these kids is blinding. Normally rabidly partisan football fans have united in one team. Call it RESISTANCE fired by their joint rabid disgust with Erdoğan. Slogans are everywhere: “Everywhere Taksim, everywhere resistance,” “We are Mustafa Kemal’s soldiers.” They carry Turkish flags emblazoned with his image. “Tayyip resign!” they shout. But Tayyip resists, too. But nothing works for Erdoğan anymore. He cannot move about in public. His appearance at a public arena requires the government to purchase all tickets to redistribute to staunch party members. No booing of Tayyip is allowed! Verboten! Yasak!

Dead Man Talking must deeply believe that he and the shameless American ambassador, one Francis Ricciardone, indeed share “democratic values.” That, and last week’s express air delivery from the ever-generous America of 43 tons of pepper gas put a little pep in his step. FORTY-THREE TONS! The more to gas and blind you with my dear Turkish children. And the American ambassador calls this “having a conversation within your Turkish family.” Yes, a conversation, like this perhaps…Would you like to catch a gas canister in your eye socket today, my dear? No? Well how about a little brain damage instead courtesy of that model of democratic values, the USA? No? Well then, how about some lunch? A few rubber bullets to chew on, perhaps? Or a friendly whack on the ear by a cop’s made-in-the-West club? Or a police boot in your mouth to aid digestion? Still no? Goodness, gracious, you protesters are sure hard to please.

Such is the twisted mind of the American ambassador, a man who lives by spewing honeyed words and putrid thoughts. He is America’s talking marionette. He is the source, the taproot of Dead Man Talking. He feeds him. An earlier not-so-nice American ambassador, Eric Edelman, blew the whistle on the prime minister and his eight Swiss bank accounts. Dead Man Walking brushed it off as nonsense saying he got his wealth from gifts at his son’s wedding. Nice son. Nice father. Isn’t love grand?

Dead Man Talking. His delusions consume him. They will not leave him. Nor can he leave us. Nor can he tell the truth, to himself, to anyone. His delusions and the darkness, the sneaky darkness are his best friends. For him, everything is at stake. He thought he had it made, this prime minister. His friends, toadies all, never told him bad news. But it is in them, these flatterers, that he will begin to see his end. He will see it in their eyes. One evening he will see the streets again crowded with Turkish youth. He knows them well. They’re the “drunks and plunders” who laughingly embrace his slanderous words. They are the future. And the prime minister’s toadies know it. And the prime minister should ask them this simple question: Am I still the future? And then watch their eyelids flutter and their eyeballs search for the door.

The prime minister’s private police force has too many targets in too many cities. Too many peacefully assembled targets that he can now attack only at great peril to his already vanishing prestige. Anyway, America and Brazil and Israel cannot manufacture enough gas to stay the flood of people willing to die for a new future. They, the people of Turkey, are disgusted by the hijacked, exploited Islam that suppresses human freedom and replaces true spirituality with money, money, and more money. The young people that the prime minister so recklessly defames, these kids that appear on the television screens, are saying that they want a real democracy. Not this Turkish one that ruthlessly plunders the environment and enriches an equally ruthless business-political oligarchy. They want a new system, one yet unknown. One that Dead Man Walking and his ilk all over the world have not one iota of awareness.

The kids want one that cedes REAL power to the REAL people, all of them. One that controls the overwhelming greed inherent in this dying capitalistic system. One that remedies the materialistic and intellectual corruption that propels nations to kill and plunder. One that destroys forever imperialism in all its formulations that has always ravaged the planet. One that truly emancipates the people from the yoke of the religious mongering tyrants and their effete, cunning western backers. One that enables all people to clearly distinguish (and separate) their spiritual beliefs from their politics. No more conniving CIA Factbooks disclosing country-by-country religious breakdowns. No more religious markers on identification cards or any official or governmental form. Spirituality is from the heart, not from a piece of paper.

It’s Hitler-time in the Berlin bunker. And the dimensions of the full horror visited upon long-suffering Turkey over the past ten years will soon be revealed. What will Dead Man Talking shout about then? Will anyone listen? His toadies? His media? His police? His army? His rich wedding guests? What kind of a tale will he tell? What is the sound of no hands clapping? What is the fury?

Cem Ryan, Ph.D.
Istanbul
1 July 2013

July 2, 2013
NSA spied on EU diplomats in Washington, NY and Brussels – report

Not only European citizens, but also employees of the EU diplomatic missions in Washington and the UN were under electronic surveillance from the NSA, Der Spiegel magazine reports citing a document obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The German magazine claims to have taken a glance at parts of a “top secret” document, which reveals that US National Security Agency has placed bugs in EU offices in Washington and at the New York‘s United Nations headquarters in order to listen to conversations and phone calls.

The internal computer networks in the buildings were also under surveillance, which granted NSA access to documents and emails of the European officials.

The document, which categorically labels the European Union as a “target”, was dated September 2010, Der Spiegel says.

The magazine reports that the NSA also targeted communications at the European Council headquarters at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, Belgium by calling a remote maintenance unit.

According to Der Spiegel, more than five years ago EU security officers had noticed and traced several missed calls to an area of the NATO facility in Brussels, which was used by NSA experts.

The US previously acknowledged that they were collecting data on European citizens under the PRISM program, but not on large scale, only in cases of strong suspicion of individual or group being involved in terrorism, cybercrime or nuclear proliferation.

Former NSA contractor and CIA employee, Snowden, is believed to be currently staying in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport where he arrived from Hong Kong on June 23.

The 30-year-old, who leaked details of top-secret American government mass surveillance programs to the media, is waiting for Ecuador to decide on giving him political asylum as he’s being charged with espionage in the US.

RT.com

June 29, 2013
ERDOĞAN ON THE HORNS

They threw their caps
As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon,
Shouting their emulation.
Coriolanus, William Shakespeare

The ferocious antics of the prime minister over the past three weeks—or has it been three years or eleven?—made me think about hamburgers. And then bulls. Ever dangerous, always charging blindly ahead, the same instinctive tactic wired into their incomplete animal brains, always completely predictable, always ending up on the table….. chopped meat.

With boring redundancy Erdoğan has shouted the blame to everyone and everything but his own splendid self. Now angry all the time, he yelled his strange, twisted, deceit-filled story to the world. Like Coriolanus, another tragic hero not properly educated to power, Erdoğan followed down the same doomed path: “What his breast forged, that his tongue must vent.” And he did, and the world exploded in outrage as his country had before. The prime minister’s outrageous claims and preposterous intrigues, his and his advisors lies and subterfuges, it was all too, too much.

The world is appalled. And what does the prime minister and his lackeys do next? Why they attack the world. What else? For no one understands democracy like the prime minister of Turkey. New York City police killed seventeen people in the Occupy Wall Street battle, Tayyip asserts
in full or feigned ignorance of the facts. (None were killed.) And so it continues to this moment. What can you do with people like this? Such a bunch that gives even criminality a bad name.

Now the beleaguered one claims that the police were correct in gassing most of central Istanbul. The lapdog Istanbul police chief earlier asserted that the police had won a victory greater than Gallipoli. Not only did the police gas unarmed, peaceful protesters but according to Erdoğan they had a “natural right” to do so. Why? Because they were fighting against “systematic violence.” One wonders what books Erdoğan has been
reading to present such a bizarre argument. Perhaps he skimmed through his wife’s new book, The Psychology of Dictatorship? In this day, in this world with the sordid legacy of using gas as a weapon, what leader in his or her right mind would launch such an offensive attack against the citizenry? Wanton, widespread violence occupies his mind and he threatens more and harsher attacks, excuse me, defensive measures.

Who talks to this man? Who recommended this horrific retaliation policy based on a ludicrous label of terrorism. This trick has been done already with the fantasy conspiracies that destroyed the Turkish military. It’s a nonsense. Everyone knows it. Who says to him, Look Tayyip, you are destroying yourself with all these garbage lies and threats. Don’t be a bull!

Instead, these low-level operators shout their emulation and clap their hands, thrilled with the sounds of their own magnificence. “Don’t worry beloved leader,” they coo, “your people will believe only you and certainly not their lying eyes?” And just to be sure, they arrest doctors, lawyers, journalists, and threaten and fine television channels and draft legislation to control the social media, the great “menace” according to their beloved leader. And all of it in front of the world’s eyes-wide-open. Ah, it’s so tiresome writing about these people.

They had planned to reach 2023, the centennial year anniversary of the establishment of Atatürk’s republic. Of course, all memory of Atatürk would have disappeared by then. And surely they would have reveled in its destruction. The journey had begun with Erdoğan’s first election victory in 2003. He gave a balcony acceptance speech and wore a tie of green, Islamic green. I have never forgotten that moment. Nor have I forgotten the flood of rich and famous flocking to his favor. But that was then.

And this is now. I will never forget these stirring days and the heroism of the youth of Turkey in their struggle for the future promised to them by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He also prophesied that they would have to fight for it. And so they now fight. And they know his fighting words by heart. And like good soldiers of Mustafa Kemal, they know the enemy. I will never forget the beautiful women in smart dresses getting gassed by the fascist police, not flinching, and emerging even more lovely. The polite, embattled young men, resolute and courageous in the face of brutal
police attacks. Young people of all ages participating in this war of liberation from a religious fascist government. All of this will surely serve as a model for youth around the world who also suffer from the policies of arrogant men and women wearing thousand dollar suits. These young Turkish people are bringing a renaissance to their country, a flourishing spirit of gentility and grace the while being falsely accused of the vilest acts by a desperate regime. But the truth has been revealed through the overwhelming power of technology and the amazing facility of youth. And the government can only resort to a policy of unabashed lying. I will not forget any of these astonishing things. Certainly not the complete inability of the Turkish government and its supporters to understand this spontaneous combustion of youthful energy which is nonnegotiable. It is obvious these young people will continue for as long as it takes. And surely the process will continue to confound all the “experts,” so don’t bother watching the talking TV heads. Ah, the brilliant, unifying generality of it all. It resides outside the bounds of politics, religion, wealth, business, national borders, and surely government itself. It’s in the realm of hopes, expectations, peace, youth, friendship and, I’ll say it, love.
What revolutionary group has ever established hot lines for injured animals? None. Except this one. And such attention to detail characterizes this movement and is why its success is inevitable. Lastly, how wonderful is the incredible resilience of the spirit and principles of Mustaf Kemal Atatürk, an unstoppable, singular man for the ages who remains both the stuff of dreams and the driving spiritual force to forge this better, this much better future. For all these people, the young, the older, the departed, I shout out loud my emulation and admiration. Your dreams are hanging on the horns of the moon. Seize them. No more words needed.

Cem Ryan, Ph.D
Istanbul
19 June 2013

June 19, 2013
WE FIGHT!

YA İSTİKLAL YA ÖLÜM!

Good morning America! Sorry to disturb your sleep but….the Nazi Istanbul police (which you supply with weaponry) is again attacking the demonstrators with gas and water cannons. Again by a sneak attack early this morning. Another provocation. The same tired lies. The government mouthpieces are all over the compliant TV channels with their BS about “marginal groups.” Know this, America! I and millions of others are one “marginal group.” We are fighting against the dark-minded fascist forces, once heavily backed by a now not-so-sure America, that is the Islamic fascist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He, like your other ex-puppet dictators, is now gassing and in some cases killing his own people. The air is full of his rancid invective, more appropriate for the Third Reich than the peace-loving Turkish people. As throughout history, the great lies being told by the fascists are laughable in their blatant stupidity. But that doesn’t matter because your ex-tough guy has the armaments. And you, America, allowed him to destroy the Turkish army. So we the people now face against the overwhelming strength of the fascists that you, America, armed to the
teeth. And we will continue our struggle to regain a secular, democratic Turkey. We will fight on secure in the justice of our cause, ever encouraged by the stirring words of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk…“INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH!” YA İSTİKLAL YA ÖLÜM! These are fighting words, indeed. And so we “marginal groups” FIGHT!

Cem Ryan

Istanbul

11 June 2013

June 11, 2013
ERDOĞAN: TURKEY’S “MARGINAL” MAN

Erdoğan is desperate and finished as a political leader. He has that inappropriate smirk-sneer on his increasingly sullen face. His credibility is finished. His judgment has been horrific and criminal. His tragic flaw has been fully revealed during his weeklong death spiral. From his beginning ten years ago, he has been surrounded by flatterers and outright nincompoops. I heard his “key advisor” on Aljazeera Saturday. He constantly argued with the interviewer then lied about not using pepper gas when the live feed from Istanbul clearly showed the canisters bombarding Taksim Square during the police retreat. There are many more examples. Erdoğan has attracted lamentably low quality people. Deliberately of course, to feed his capaciously overwhelming ego. In Turkish, such a yes-man or yes-woman is called a “dal kavuk” literally a diving turban. It was coined to describe the palace toadies of the sultan who scraped and bowed to him while securing their wavering turbans on their heads.

Erdoğan’s stumble-tongued advisers protected him from ever confronting the real impact of his behavior, actions and words. Instead of polishing him, they allowed him to cultivate his tough –guy image. But in the real world he came across as just another street thug. a made-in-America puppet with no capacity to moderate his behavior. He was always unable to act appropriately in public, scowling, sneering, spewing his stoop-shouldered, pugnacious vitriol. Every day he grew more distorted and weird and last week he became just another jerk with lots of power and not a trace of humanity. And now even the dead have wised up to him.

And so he has crashed, still in full arrogant-mode, unaware of himself as a disaster. His now famous rant-week was tantamount to a political psychotic break, and maybe more. What he does now is what he knows: to threaten and name-call. The enormous throngs opposed to his fascist rule are “marginal groups.” They are “looters” and “plunderers.” Actually, he and his henchmen and henchwomen are exactly that, looters and plunderers, and are well on their way to being marginalized. Erdoğan is what he has been all along, a one-trick pony, an undereducated ruffian who betrayed his nation for favor, fame and fortune. He sits in the middle of his own demise like the Turkish youth sit in the gas-drenched, blood-soaked streets gasping from pepper gas, bloody, bruised, beaten by his nazi robo-cops. But the kids get up. But Erdoğan, like an idiot yelling at the moon, rants about building more mosques, bridges, canals, all irrelevant monuments to his own deluded magnificence. He is deaf and blind to reality.

The man has nothing except money. And that will kill him. His divisiveness and abysmally poor judgment have destroyed any notion of gaining a presidency of anything. His Middle East ambitions, bizarre from the outset are finished. The USA effectively dumped him and his manically dangerous foreign minister Davutoğlu three weeks ago when Kerry announced intentions for a Syrian peace conference. So for Erdoğan, no more White House smiley-face visits. No more USA boondoggles with his hundred businessmen friends in tow all working their deals. No more Syria invective. Assad has prevailed, kicking his butt in the world arena, making him and Turkey look like buffoons and criminals both. And the monstrously ludicrous Ergenekon fiasco will soon collapse.

He’s a beaten man, this Erdoğan. He exhibits the eccentric end-game behavior of Mubarak with the vicious police violence, gang attacks and claims of foreign influences. Strange isn’t it that the man imposed and supported by foreign powers on the Turkish nation now fingers as enemies his former staunch allies? But then remember what he did to former friends Gaddafi and Asad? Physically he looks beaten, ashen-faced with the out of sync gestures of Richard Nixon during his own last, dark days. And his rage is at its peak at the worst, most visible times. Witness his awful press conference yesterday with the Reuters journalist.

Now, with the entire world focused on Turkey, he stumbles, fumbles and stares down his audience like a street corner bully. He continues on his own obstinate journey and that’s why the violence from his gangster police worsens by the hour. The cops are his alter ego. And violence is what he knows hence they know. It’s the last hope of a desperate man to retain power and relevancy. He is worry-wracked man, this prime minister. He knows the jig is up with all the not so secret deals, bank accounts and CIA involvement. It’s a lot to handle even for a normal egomaniac. Erdoğan is either heading for a genuine psychotic break or a public statement or incident so humiliating to the Turkish Republic that he has no alternative but to give it up. Of course, I could be wrong. And if so, that’s when the real “fun” will begin. For what if the remnants of the so-called Turkish Army (the real army is in jail courtesy of Erdoğan) ) is called to reestablish order? Maybe it will take a lesson from the valorous resistance movement, screw up its courage and arrest Erdoğan for treason. It would certainly be an appropriate charge and the force used would surely be proportional. Both of these adjectives would have to be explained to the former prime minister and his former advisors. But I am sure they know what treason means. All will be revealed shortly.

Cem Ryan, Ph.D.

Istanbul, 4 June 2013

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias

June 4, 2013