US intel assessment based on ‘terrorist lies’ and ‘media hype’ – Syrian Foreign Ministry

The intelligence assessment the US administration presented as evidence that the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons on its own people is baseless and based on “terrorist lies” and “media exaggeration,” Syrian foreign ministry sources say.

A source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry told Sana, Syria’s state-owned news agency, that any American military action in Syria would only serve the political interests of the United States, despite pledges from US lawmakers that the action is meant to curb the use of chemical weapons against civilians.

In a statement released in tandem with remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday, the US government says they assess “with high confidence” that the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad in particular were responsible for killing hundreds of people in a chemical weapons attack last week.

The source at the Syrian ministry, in response to Kerry’s accusation said that the US intelligence assessment is based on fabrication and lies and unverified social media stories that were published by“terrorists” over a week ago.

“The Syrian government affirms that Kerry’s allegations that the Syrian Army knew about chemical weapons use three days prior to the incident are lies,” the source told Sana, “as proven by the fact that Syria requested the investigation committee to visit al-Bahaia area where Syrian Army soldiers were exposed to toxic gas, and the committee met the affected soldiers in the area.”

The ministry source accused the US of failure to provide “one piece of true and logical evidence” that the government was behind the attack, saying that instead Washington relies on “fabricated images from the internet, and the alleged call made by a Syrian officer after the alleged attack is too ridiculous to be discussed.”

Syria maintains that it never hindered the UN investigation committee from doing their work on the ground. The source emphasized that the Syrian government did not delay the expert’s access to the alleged attack site.

“The UN itself said time and again that the traces of using any form of toxic gas do not dissipate over time, and the proof of this is that the UN sent the investigation committee 5 months after the Syrian government requested an investigation of Khan al-Assal incident,” Sana reports. 

A United Nations (UN) arms expert collects samples as they inspect the site where rockets had fallen in Damascus' eastern Ghouta suburb during an investigation into a suspected chemical weapons strike near the capital (AFP Photo / Ammar Al-Arbini)

 

The Ministry also alleged that Washington pushed for a limited mandate of the UN investigating team to be able to interpret the results of the probe as they pleased.
 
“Regarding Kerry's hints which he made to bypass the Security Council under the pretext that the investigation committee isn't responsible for determining who used chemical weapons and that it's task is only to verify that such weapons were used or not, the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry would like to affirm that the committee's tasks were decided upon by the Security Council, and that the US had pressured the committee to make its authority this limited, something which Kerry, being State Secretary, certainly knows.” 
In the extracts of the classified US report released Friday, the American intelligence community had been aware of an impending chemical weapon attack three days before the August 21 crisis.

While US officials cannot determine for certain that Assad forces launched the assault, Kerry did say it claimed the lives of 1,429 Syrians, including no less than 426 children.  

“Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the US Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation,” a government report read in part. “We will continue to seek additional information to close gaps in our understanding of what took place.”

More than 100,000 people have been killed and over one million displaced since the Syrian civil war began over three years ago. United Nations investigators have spent the final days of August attempting to determine just what kind of weapons have been used on the streets of Damascus, where the Assad government has been trying to clear out opposition forces.

Legally blind man files first ‘stop-and-frisk’ lawsuit

A legally blind African-American man has filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department, claiming he was falsely arrested under the department’s controversial stop-and-frisk program.

Allen Moye, a 54-year-old man from Jamaica, Queens, is the first person to file a lawsuit against the NYPD since a federal court ruled against the stop-and-frisk program earlier this month. In the suit, Moye says that police illegally came after him and violated his civil rights.

He says he was arrested on false charges while he was waiting for a friend at a Harlem street corner in September 2010. Wearing glasses and using a cane to get around, he was approached by a half-dozen NYPD officers on W. 118thStreet. Police stopped and frisked him in a manner that Moye described as “rough.”

“And they didn’t tell me what I did or nothing,” he told the New York Post. “They just went through [my clothes] like I wasn’t even there, and told me, ‘What are you doing here?’ What do you mean, like I’m from another planet? I thought this was a free country and you can go anywhere.”

Moye says that after he complained about the search, he was taken into custody for making the complaint.

“It was racial profiling, what they did,” he told the New York Daily News. “…It’s a different Jim Crow. They try to put everybody behind bars to do their work.”

Moye says he is traumatized by the incident and has not returned to Harlem since the day he was arrested. He says the police there are “like Nazis.”

In the lawsuit, Moye cites the decision made by US District Court Judge Shira Sheindlin, who issued an opinion ruling that the NYPD violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments through the manner in which they conducted stop-and-frisks.

The Manhattan judge ordered the NYPD to end the policy, which is part of the city’s “Clean Halls” program of stopping ‘suspicious’ people outside of residential apartment blocks and subjecting them to random searches.

“While it may be difficult to say when precisely to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters, such a line exists, and the NYPD has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops outside buildings,” Scheindlin’s ruling reads.

Moye is seeking monetary damages for the alleged trauma he endured as a result of racial profiling.

Although Moye’s lawsuit is the first filed in wake of the federal ruling on stop-and-frisk, it is unlikely to be the last. Earlier this week, New York City lawyers predicted that a slew of lawsuits would likely follow the decision made by Judge Scheindlin, with plaintiffs arguing that their civil rights were violated by the city. The Bloomberg administration is still trying to appeal the decision, and city lawyers have asked Scheindlin to hold off on court-ordered reforms for the time being.

“Individuals who believe they are aggrieved during the pendency of the requested stay will still have full opportunity to litigate any claims for money damages due to alleged unconstitutional  stop-and-frisk activity,” the lawyers wrote.

UK officials asked New York Times to destroy Snowden docs

The New York Times was asked by British authorities to destroy classified intelligence files leaked to the media by former national security contractor Edward Snowden, Reuters reports.

According to the report published Friday afternoon, the executive editor of the Times was approached by a senior official at the British Embassy earlier this month and was asked to purge any files her paper had received about UK intelligence from Mr. Snowden.

The editor, Jill Abramson, responded to the Britain’s request with silence, sources told Reuters journalist Mark Hosenball.

The Times has not verified the allegation, but UK officials reportedly made a similar request earlier this year to the Guardian newspaper.

The Guardian, which along with the Washington Post first published leaked intelligence attributed to Snowden, reported previously that they used power tools to break a collection of computer drives and other data devices at the paper’s London office on July 20 upon demand from the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency.

Two days after those machines were rendered useless, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said he alerted British authorities that the Times and the independent, investigative journalism outlet ProPublica had received copies as well. According to Rusbridger, it took officials more than a month to approach the Times about the files, and ProPublica was reportedly never contacted at all.

British authorities did not admit to the latest allegations regarding an incident at the Times, but a spokesperson at their embassy in DC said, “it should come as no surprise if we approach a person who is in possession of some or all of this material."

The spokesperson made sure to address to Reuters the latest incident in the Snowden saga, which has taken twist after turn since the Guardian and Washington Post first began publishing leaked files on June 5 of this year. Earlier Friday, it was revealed that the  partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald had in his possession a trove of encrypted British intelligence documents when he was apprehended last month at London’s Heathrow airport.

"We have presented a witness statement to the court in Britain which explains why we are trying to secure copies of over 58,000 stolen intelligence documents - to protect public safety and our national security,” the spokesperson said.

Those documents, a senior UK security advisor told London’s High Court, were accessed by intelligence officials because Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, carried with him a sheet of paper that on it contained the passcode necessary to decrypt the files.

The documents were taken from Miranda while he was en route to Brazil, where he lives with Greenwald.

“I can confirm that the disclosure of this information would cause harm to UK national security,” Oliver Robbins, the deputy national security adviser for intelligence, security and resilience in the Cabinet Office, said in court papers released Friday and obtained by the Guardian.

“The fact that ... the claimant was carrying on his person a handwritten piece of paper containing the password for one of the encrypted files ... is a sign of very poor information security practice,” he said.

According to Reuters, the Guardian’s Rusbridger said the latest claims from the British government with regards to the national security concerns surrounding leaked documents contrast with the lackadaisical approach to investigating the Times and ProPublica.

"This five week period in which nothing has happened tells a different story from the alarmist claims made" by the British government, he said in reference to the Miranda court documents.

Toledo hospital sued for throwing out donor kidney

An Ohio medical center admits that it accidentally discarded a kidney from a 17-year-old teenage donor before it could be transplanted into his sister, who was suffering from end-state renal failure and was already under anesthesia to receive the organ.

Now the University of Toledo Medical Center is asking a state court to dismiss the lawsuit that was filed by the patient’s family. The medical center denies it was negligent, even though it admits that a nurse accidentally threw the organ into the garbage.

“They are admitting they threw the kidney away, but they are not admitting substandard medical care,”lawyer James Arnold, who represents the family, told ABC News. “They must think that it is within standard care to throw a kidney away. It would be more decent to admit substandard care, and the family shouldn’t have to be going through litigation to prove it.”

Last August, Paul Fudacz donated one of his kidneys to his older sister, who was in desperate need of a new organ. After the kidney was removed from the live donor, a nurse threw the organ, which was stored in protective slush, into the garbage. When doctors noticed her mistake, they removed it from the trash and tried to resuscitate the kidney, but it was ultimately deemed unusable.

Sarah A. Fudacz, the 24-year-old sister of the donor, was already under anesthesia, waiting to receive her new organ. But she never received it, and subsequently “suffered through painful dialysis, four painful surgeries… and was forced to live through the uncertainty of whether she would ever find a kidney suitable for transplant before dying,” the Fudacz family wrote in a lawsuit filed against the medical center.

The renal failure patient received a suitable kidney about three months later. Judith K. Moore, the part-time nurse responsible for discarding the kidney, resigned shortly after making her mistake, and the center’s administrator of surgical services was placed on paid administrative leave. Melanie Lemay, a long-time nurse who was covering for Moore on her lunch break and failed to update her on the status of the operation, was fired by the medical center for “procedural infractions.”

“We cannot fathom the disappointment that those impacted have experienced over the course of last week,” Dr. Jeffrey Gold, University of Toledo chancellor and dean of the College of Medicine, said in a statement after the incident. “The university cannot begin to express the sorrow that we feel that this unfortunate incident occurred. We apologize sincerely.”

But on July 29 of this year, the Fudacz family filed a lawsuit against UTMC, alleging medical negligence and loss of consortium. They are asking for damages of $25,000 for each of the eight family members, which comes out to $200,000 total.

“Paul Jr.’s kidney was considered a ‘perfect match’ for Sarah," the lawsuit reads. "Sarah seeks damages she has suffered and will continue to suffer due to the loss of Paul Jr.’s perfect kidney. Paul Jr. seeks damages he has suffered and will continue to suffer for having to undergo a painful and risky surgery, and for having to live the rest of his life with only one kidney, all in vain."

Arnold, the family’s attorney, told ABC that “it’s obvious to everyone but the university” that the medical center was negligent, but by asking the state to dismiss the suit, a legal battle is likely to ensue between the family and the University of Toledo.

In the US, coming across a kidney is no easy task, especially since they are the country's most sought-after organs. In 2010, about 93,000 patients were listed on the United Network for Organ Sharing's kidney transplant waiting list. As of Sept. 2012, that number had risen to more than 115,000. But between January and June of that year, there were only 6,931 kidney donors, making the University of Toledo's mistake a very costly one.

Obama considers 'limited' military action against Syria

Obama considers 'limited' military action against SyriaPresident Barack Obama said Friday that he has not yet decided what action, if any, will be taken by the United States military against the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Following a Friday afternoon press conference in which Secretary of State John Kerry said Pres. Assad’s regime used chemical gas last week to kill more than 1,000 Syrian civilians, Obama said he has yet to decide how the US will respond.

“The world has an obligation to make sure that we maintain the law against the use of chemical weapons,” Obama said from the White House’s oval office. “I have not made a final decision about the various actions that might be taken to help us enforce that goal. But, as I already said, I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options.”

The president added that his administration has consulted with US allies and Congress, and that conversations have occurred “with all of the interested parties.”

Obama also echoed Kerry’s statement from earlier in the day when he promised he wouldn’t put any “boots on the ground” should the US military be ordered to strike Assad’s army.

“In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long term campaign, but we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria but others around the world understand that the international community cares about this chemical weapons ban,” Obama said.

Earlier this week, the president said that the US intelligence community would release a report justifying any action taken by the US against Assad. The report, released Friday at the same time as Kerry’s address, concluded that the US government “assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.”

“Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the US intelligence community can take short of confirmation,” the report reads in part. “We will continue to seek additional information to close gaps in our understanding of what took place.”

The US currently has five warships deployed outside of Syria and has the largest military on the planet at its disposal.

On Thursday, Pres. Assad said “Syria will defend itself against any aggression."

Snowden files show Pentagon conducted DNA tests after bin-Laden's death

United States intelligence documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden now confirm that US authorities positively identified the body of Osama bin Laden with a DNA test shortly after his May 2011 execution.

According to the Washington Post, top-secret documents provided by the national security whistleblower revealed that a DNA sample was taken from bin Laden’s body around eight hours after he was killed inside his Abbottabad, Pakistan compound.

The sample, the Post reported, “provided a conclusive match” between the DNA taken from the corpse and other bin Laden intelligence.

When the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request after the May 2, 2011 killing, the Pentagon responded that it had no such testing documents in its possession. Post reporters Craig Whitlock and Barton Gellman wrote Thursday that information about the test was included within the secretive “black budget” document leaked by Mr. Snowden and published in part by the paper this week.

The Post has published only a portion of a lengthy budget summary detailing the funds requested by the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and others for fiscal year 2013 through a budget that has never before been publically disclosed.

As RT reported on Thursday, the budget summary reveals that the CIA, NSA and other agencies requested $52.6 billion in federal funding that would have likely remained unreported had the document not been leaked.

Snowden, 30, quit his job with contractor Booz Allen Hamilton earlier this year and fled to Hong Kong, then Russia, after releasing a trove of top-secret files to journalists at the Post and the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

According to the Post’s latest reporting, intelligence documents supplied by Snowden provide a number of details about the Navy SEAL raid in 2011 that has largely been shrouded in secrecy since the moment President Barack Obama confirmed the killing of the former al-Qaeda leader more than two years ago.

Excerpts of the black budget, the Post reported, reveal that the CIA was able to pinpoint the geographic location of bin Laden’s Pakistani compound by tracking mobile phone calls linked to al-Qaeda operatives along with other intelligence gathered over the course of several months.

Whitlock and Gellman wrote that the National Reconnaissance Office performed over 387 “collects” of intelligence ahead of the raid which provided details “critical to prepare for the mission and contributed to the decision to approve execution.” Additionally, the US relied on an advanced stealth drone to collected private conversations from the sky as well as a fleet of satellites.

After bin Laden was assassinated, intelligence agencies also reportedly invested $2.5 million in emergency funds to do forensics on computer files collected from evidence removed from bin Laden’s compound. According to the Post, the US purchased 36 computer workstations to assess that intelligence.

Nuremberg to spend €70 million on re-building Nazi rally grounds

Nuremberg to spend €70 million on re-building Nazi rally groundsFormer Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, Germany. (AFP Photo / DPA / Daniel Karmann / Germany out)

Nuremberg plans to spend up to 70 million euro restoring the sprawling complex used by Adolf Hitler for his mass rallies, as debate continues in Germany over what to do with Nazi-era architecture.

“This is a job of national importance, we cannot take it on alone,” said Ulrich Maly, the Social Democrat mayor of the Bavarian city, who added he would ask for federal funds to complete the project.

A survey of the Nazi rally complex, which originally occupied 11 square kilometers (6 square miles), is set to be completed in the coming months, with a final estimate to be produced early next year.

The complex, whose grandeur and style were inspired by classical Roman architecture, served as the site for the ritualistic Nazi party rallies between 1933 and 1938. Constructed by ‘Hitler’s favorite architect’ and Nazi minister Albert Speer, it formed the backdrop to the synchronized marching and showmanship captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film 'Triumph of the Will'.

Large parts of Speer’s intended complex, such as the world’s biggest stadium, were never completed after the outbreak of World War II, however, and much of the architecture was defaced by advancing Allied soldiers at the end of the war. Nonetheless, the iconic Zeppelin grandstand – a 360 meter-wide construction, from which Hitler addressed hundreds of thousands of his followers during the climactic moments of the rallies as spotlights behind him shone into the night sky – survives intact.

Underneath the main tribune is the Golden Hall, a mosaic-covered, windowless chamber that the Fuhrer used for his private meetings. 

The Golden Hall. (Image from http://kootation.com)

The city of Nuremberg has been understandably apprehensive about what to do with the historically important and architecturally impressive grounds, due to their reviled Nazi legacy.

In the decades after the war, much of the complex was demolished (some to make room for housing). The Zeppelin field itself was used as a football field for an American school, a racetrack and an audience space for a rock festival.

But further demolition is not possible, as the complex has now been granted protected status.

Doing nothing is also not an option.

Rainwater has seeped through the Zeppelin building and damaged the interior. Any further deterioration will force the local government to seal off the huge area for safety reasons.

But spending tens of millions on rebuilding a now-purposeless Nazi-era arena and other buildings amid a prolonged economic crisis is politically controversial.

Maly has been careful to avoid the word “restoration,” and he said the city will not be looking to return the buildings to their former state.

"This is not about beautification. We will not be looking for original-style sandstone,” Maly was quoted as saying by Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Instead, the complex will likely become a preserved memorial, like the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.

200,000 people – most of them from abroad – already visit the site annually, and the number could rise further. Maly says that visitors will be able to spend more than 10 hours at the grounds, which include a historical museum containing archive materials from the Nazi era. 

GoodNight People! :)

Goodnight to all...its time 23:09 ....... sweet dreams .....  :* :* :* :* :*
tomorrow its a great  day! :D

NORAD and Russian fighter jets conduct military drills amid tensions surrounding Syria

NORAD and Russian fighter jets conduct military drills amid tensions surrounding SyriaAs US-Russian relations remain tense over Syria, NORAD and the Russian Federation Air Force jointly conducted military training exercises to teach pilots how to find, track and escort a hijacked plane over international borders.

To train pilots how to respond to a terrorist attack, a “hijacked” 757 passenger jet took off from Anchorage, which Canadian jets intercepted and escorted over the international border at the Bering Strait. The hijacked plane was then handed off to Russian fighter jets.

Canadian jets kept a distance while escorting the “hijacked” planes, while Russian jets were near the wings at all time, giving the aircraft little room to escape. Russian jets were so close that observers in the 757 could make out the pilots’ faces, the Associated Press reports.

The exercise, known as Vigilant Eagle, has been conducted five times over the past decade. But some consider the timing of this most recent exercise surprising, given the tense relations between the US and Russia over the crisis in Syria and National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum by Moscow this summer.

But officers and generals involved in the exercise claim that the tensions has been left out of conversation during the weeklong exercise, and that the politics will not affect the two countries’ cooperation to prevent any future terrorist attacks. 

“I can only say the issues you raised have never been raised [during the exercise],” Maj. Gen. Dmitry Gomenkov told the Colorado Springs Gazette, noting that military cooperation can accomplish things that diplomats are unable to. “This can fill the gap.”

Col. Patrick Carpentier, the deputy commander of NORAD’s Alaska Region, served as Gomenkov’s American counterpart in the exercise, largely mirroring the views expressed by the Russian general.

"All these other factors really don't play in this," said Carpentier, a member of the Canadian Air Force, according to the Associated Press. "This is a mission that we have to accomplish, so it really is beyond those types of frictions. We cooperate because we have to."

The US Northern Command, which is responsible for preventing US terrorist attacks and defending the country’s airspace, is located together with NORAD at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. 

Russian observers were sent to facilities in Colorado and Alaska, while NORAD observers were sent to Khabarovsk, Russia. Gomenkov said planning for next year’s exercise will begin this November, regardless of what happens between the US and Russia over the Snowden case.

"The cooperation with the Russian Federation Air Force personnel has been ongoing for the past year for this particular serial, and at no time there was any discussion about canceling the event for this year,"Viens said Thursday at the conclusion of the two-day exercise, according to the Associated Press.

'You can't survive on that': Fast-food workers across US strike for better wages

Employees and supporters demonstrate outside of a Wendy's and Burger King fast-food restaurants to demand higher pay and the right to form a union on August 29, 2013 in New York City.(AFP Photo / Spencer Platt)

Fast-food industry workers across the United States staged a one-day nationwide strike demanding better wages and the right to form a union.

The Thursday event is so far the largest of its kind in a 10-month campaign that began in New York last November – starting with just 200 workers – and spread to other major cities by July 2013. The number of cities is now at 60, organizers say. 

McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Burger King all came under fire for holding their workers hostage to low wages. What the workers have in mind is a raise to $15 from the current minimum of $7.25, AP reports. 

Even celebrities and politicians took part, with New York mayoral candidate Christine Quinn joining a march of several hundred workers who walked toward a McDonald’s by the Empire State Building. Actor Stephen Baldwin was also spotted at an event in Seattle, Washington. 

Martin Rafanan, a community organizer in St. Louis, Missouri, said that if the situation doesn’t improve the corporations who employ low-paid workers will “pull all the blood, sweat, tears and money” out of local communities. 

"If you're paying $7.25 an hour and employing someone for 20, 25 hours a week, which is the average here, they're bringing home about $10,000 a year. You can't survive on that," Reuters reported Rafanan as saying. 

However, the organization responsible for the American fast-food industry, the National Restaurant Association, said the problem was an exaggeration, with a spokesman of theirs telling Reuters that"only 5 percent of restaurant employees earn the minimum wage, and those that do are predominantly working part-time and half are teenagers." 

The US labor secretary, Thomas Perez, agreed with the need to raise wages. He told the Associated Press that "the rungs on the ladder of opportunity are feeling further and further apart" for many people in the US. 

An open letter to McDonald’s and several other major names was sent by Fast Food Forward – a New York-based group, who pointed out the huge gap that exists between company profits and the wages they pay to their employees, calling the “poverty” wages “shameful and outrageous.” 

The group also underlined the fact that workers to this day are targeted for organizing and protesting, with tactics by employers ranging from reducing working hours to firing workers. 

Many workers in the crowds had to work two jobs just to make ends meet – often at competing fast-food chains. One such case, a father of three, Terrence Wise, 34, told The Guardian "we don't have a voice" and that the strike is as much a demand for “respect” as it is about better pay.

Striking McDonald's worker Bartolome Perez, 42, (L) protests outside McDonald's on Hollywood Boulevard as part of a nationwide strike by fast-food workers to call for wages of $15 an hour, in Los Angeles, California August 29, 2013.(Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)

President of the Service Employees International Union Mary Kay Henry told The Guardian that "the fast-food workers are fighting for all of us. SEIU members, like all service-sector workers, are worse off when large fast-food and retail companies are able to hold down wages and push down benefit standards for working people." 

There was no shortage of opponents to the strikes as well. The National Retail Federation (NRF) lashed out at the events calling them a “theater” performance staged by big labor and adding that retail and restaurant jobs are enjoyed by millions of Americans who are proud of what they do, and that the planned strike is a carefully planned action that was years in the making. 

McDonald’s shot back as well, saying that, firstly, the minimum wage rate does not stay at that level forever and that workers move up through the ranks and eventually receive higher pay. The company explained that if the wages were raised, it “would potentially have a negative impact on employment and business growth in our restaurants, as well as value for our customers." 

Wendy’s and Yum Brands, who own KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, could not be reached for comment by the AP. 

The protests coincide with US President Barack Obama’s plan to push the federal minimum wage up to $9 an hour, but that is still much less than the figure demanded by the workers. 

RT.com partially banned by Reddit

RT.com has been banned on Reddit’s /r/news section, with moderators accusing it of spamming. Puzzled with absurd allegations, RT views the sanctions as an act of censorship with many redditors expressing the same concern.

The announcement of the ban appeared on Reddit at around 12:30 GMT on Thursday, and was soon followed by another message, saying that “brigading the thread, downvoting, and crying aren't going to change it, sorry.”

When some of the users reacting to the message asked to be provided with a screenshot of the thread(s) where RT.com made the alleged violation, moderator Douglas MacArthur replied: “sorry, no, internal.” 

The ban provoked a heated debate on the website, with one user, datums, writing that it was“unacceptable to ban a major news source without presenting evidence against them.”

“It is particularly worrisome that this particular outlet offers a perspective that lacks the pro-American bias of major US outlets. RT employs many excellent journalists, and their credibility cannot be called into question any more than The New York Times or CNN,” datums said.

Meanwhile, user Alttoon said that the ban had nothing to do with freedom of information, but was instead “pure censorship at best.” 

The users pointed out that if RT.com was really caught spamming, then it would be banned from the whole website site by the Reddit’s admins, but not only from its /r/news section.

Even Reddit users who frequently disagree with RT’s stance on various issues spoke out against the ban, stressing that it was not the moderators but the audience who should decide what news articles to read.   

“Propaganda machine or not, a news organization should not be banned from a news subreddit,” user MisterGrieves wrote. “ESPECIALLY if one of the reasons is that they post a lot of their stories here. That is the purpose of this subreddit. Banning a news source is censorship and the mod behavior is appalling.”

“The reader will decide if they want to read them or not but removing that option from the reader is wrong,” he added.

Some users also found the timing of the sanctions against RT.com quite suspicious as it coincided with escalation of events around Syria, with the US being on the brink of invading the country.  

“It certainly seems shady, that exactly in the times when the US is pitted in an interests war with Russia, which may indeed turn into a very real war soon enough, they'd decide to act out against spam from RT,”user maraSara said.   

User Let_them_eat_slogans stressed that sanctions against RT, backed by “zero evidence of wrongdoing,”set “a fantastic precedent” and found support among the other redditors.

After two hours of heated discussion, Douglas MacArthur, the moderator, referred to “basic metrics that are used on reddit spammers all the time both by subreddit moderators and reddit staff.”

“One example is plain domain frequency. The rule-of-thumb is 10%. If you submit a lot, and the proportion coming from a certain domain is way higher than that, you're probably a spammer. If there's a lot of users doing that a lot for one domain, you should investigate further to see if it's people working for that domain,” MacArthur said.

He did not elaborate, however, whether any such investigation was carried out before putting the ban into effect.  

The moderator refused to provide proof of alleged violations by RT.com, saying it would disclose the means used by Reddit to detect and tackle spammers and therefore help future perpetrators. 

Some three hours after the initial announcement, as more comments of the kind were posted, the Reddit moderator wrote: "OK, we're going to have a vote on whether or not to ban RT. To vote, please click here." However, clicking on the link led to an empty website, Zombo.com.

But the joke wasn’t welcomed by the users, who blamed the moderator for being “unprofessional.”

“Why offer a vote on the subject just to direct to a dumb 90’s troll website? You're just fanning the flames,”user ActionFilmsFan1995 wrote. 

The sanctions against RT.com and the way the moderator responded to the complaints prompted some readers to quit the /r/news section subreddit.

While the other redditors demanded actions against Douglas MacArthur, like user MikeOracle, who suggested “we need a new moderator, stat.”

RT’s leading web analyst, Aleksey Naumov, denied there were any grounds for the moderator’s spamming accusations. 

“Over the last two years, RT’s traffic has increased by four or five times,” Naumov said. “Quite naturally that during this period the number of submissions of our materials to Reddit.com as well as the number of referrals from Reddit to our website has increased. It’s not difficult to check that it’s not the same, but different people, who submit our stories to Reddit.”

RT asked MacArthur and Reddit’s press service for details regarding the ban imposed on RT.com links.

Reddit’s press office replied that they were not consulted by subreddits about their decisions.

“To clarify, it is the prerogative of each individual subreddit's moderators to allow or ban domains from being submitted to their subreddits,” Victoria Taylor, of Reddit’s press service, said. “As we are not moderators of /r/news, we were not involved or consulted on this decision. You would need to appeal to the moderators of /r/news about their decision and address their concerns individually.”

RT has received no reply from MacArthur.

Reddit works by allowing users to submit links from around the Internet, which other users then vote on.

Ron Paul: Al-Qaeda would benefit most from Syria chemical attack

Former congressman Ron Paul says the United States should avoid escalating its involvement in the Syrian civil war any further because the US will be on the way to aiding Al-Qaeda if it continues to assist opposition fighters.

“We are not really positive who set off the gas,” Paul, a long-time Republican lawmaker for Texas in the US House of Representatives, said during a Fox News interview filmed Wednesday about the reported use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

“The group that is most likely to benefit from that is Al-Qaeda. They ignite some gas, some people die and blame it on Assad,” he said. 

In the conversion with Fox host Neil Cavuto, Paul said Americans should avoid buying into any propaganda about the escalating war in Syria and warned that the repercussions of using military force could be tremendous, especially without enough evidence to justify an attack. 

 

Instead of concentrating on the role of al-Assad and his reported use of chemical weapons on civilians, Paul said the US should investigate other factions in the Middle East. Of particular concern, he insisted, are the Al-Qaeda extremists who have aligned with rebel fighters to take on the Assad regime.

“The implication is that Assad committed 100,000 killings,” Paul told Fox News host Neil Cavuto during an interview filmed Wednesday. “There are a lot of factions out there, why don’t we ask about the Al-Qaeda? Why are we on the side of the Al-Qaeda right now? So I think they want the weapons. The rebels want the weapons. There’s a bunch of people in there and Al-Qaeda is part of it and this is the test for us to drop a couple of bombs and then send in weapons.”

“Assad, I don’t think, is an idiot,” Paul continued. “I don’t think he would do this on purpose in order for the whole world to come down on him.”

Paul said he opposed plans to strike Syria to reprimand Assad if intelligence proves he gassed innocent civilians, and that aligning the US military with anyone involved in the civil war was a big risk that could escalate quickly in terms of seriousness.

“What if there is an accident and 100 Russians get killed by our bombs? Who knows? Some type of unintended consequences. Wars always expand because of unintended consequences. They always provide short term war. Just think of all the promises over in Iraq: Short term; not much money; it’s over; we’ll get that oil. And don’t believe it,” he said.

“We should look at what’s best for America. And not trying to pick sides in an impossible war like this won’t be on the side of the American people. And the American people, by a very large majority, are opposed to this war. The Constitution can’t support this war and morally we can’t support this war, getting involved in a civil war and a strife that’s been going on in that region for thousands of years,” he said.

The congressman, a medical doctor who previously ran unsuccessfully for the office of US president, added that he thought the information about Assad being response for the chemical weapons is a “false flag.”

The US Department of State is expected to announce later on Friday the results of an intelligence report which may link Assad to a gassing outside of Damascus, Syria last week that killed hundreds of civilians. If the government can prove Assad responsible for the attack, the White House said a military strike was not out of the question. Meanwhile, the US has mobilized no fewer than five warships to the Mediterranean and is considering a number of military options that the White House said won’t involve putting any American boots on the ground.

Russia prepares budget for oil drop

Russia prepares budget for oil dropWith increasingly oil markets volatile, Russia’s Ministry of Finance has come out with a game plan. The Ministry sees oil,the backbone of Russia’s economy, falling to $80/bbl from 2016 to 2030, down from two–year peak of $115/bbl.

The overall strategy is based on the assumption oil prices will fall, and the budget will not return to pre-crisis levels, but will meet all state needs, Vedomosti reported after receiving the document pre-publication. 

Russia’s economy hasn’t expanded since the fourth quarter of 2011, and the Kremlin, which has tried its best to deny a forthcoming recession, has amended its budget to get ready for slowed economic activity. 

Russia recently lowered its 2013 economic-growth forecast from 2.4 percent down to 1.8 percent, the second amendment this year. In Q2, the economy expanded 1.2 percent. 

The most optimistic trajectory assumes a short – term drop in oil to $60 per barrel from 2016, with quick price recovery to follow. 

Less favorably, oil will steadily plateau at $80 per barrel.

All of the three scenarios, however, involve a cut in budget spending, as well as lower revenues. If the oil price falls sharply, Russia plans to dip into its Reserve Fund – mainly to finance infrastructure developments. 

Russia’s Reserve Fund is one part of its Sovereign Wealth Fund, with the National Welfare Fund being the other.  Established in 2004, after oil plummeted below $30 a barrel, it now serves as a safety buffer for falls in crude prices. The Reserve Fund is now estimated at about $85 billion, and the Welfare Fund, which invests internationally, at  $86 billion. 

Russia's budget revenues are expected to go down 18 percent - from 37 percent of GDP to a 30 percent share, according to calculations by the Ministry of Finance. The oil and gas revenues are expected to fall to 3.3 percent of GDP from a 8.8 percent share.

Oily budget

Presently, an adequately funded budget is dependent on oil prices above $100.

The country's reliance on oil prices in world markets makes it vulnerable to any price fluctuation, as the 2008 bust/boom dramatic rise and fall demonstrated. 

Crude oil prices in the summer of 2008 hit a record high of $147 per barrel, and then by December 2008, the bubble had burst and Brent was trading near $40 a barrel. 

Russia receives about half of its budget revenue from oil and natural-gas sales, but the increase of shale gas technology and the rise of the LNG market threatens Russia’s dominance in the energy market. 

Gazprom, the state-owned gas producer, currently supplies Europe with 25 percent of its gas needs, but this could shift as Poland, England, and other EU countries develop shale extraction at home. Supply from North America also poses a direct threat to Russia’s oil monopoly, and subsequently, its budget. 

A face in a billion: Facebook to include profile pix in facial recognition database

Facebook says it will expand its facial recognition database to include over 1 billion extra faces as it incorporates users’ profile pictures into its database, thereby increasing the scope of its existing, highly controversial technology.

The world’s largest social network made the announcement Thursday in an update to its data use policy. Facebook’s “Tag Suggest” feature already automatically recognizes “friend” faces in photo uploads to speed up the process of tagging friends, but the new adaptation will also use the facial recognition technology to identify its own users’ profile pictures.

“Our goal is to facilitate tagging so that people know when there are photos of them on our service,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, told Reuters, adding that the change would give users better control over their information.

Facebook’s existing technology identifies faces automatically by comparing them to previous tagged photographs.

Egan added that there would be an “opt out” feature, meaning that somebody’s photograph could be excluded from the facial recognition database.

The practice has already raised regulatory concerns in Europe, meaning Facebook users there will not be affected by the change – it is only for US users. Facebook was persuaded to disable its facial recognition technology across Europe earlier this year, after an investigation by privacy authorities in Germany and Ireland.

“Can I say that we will never use facial recognition technology for any other purposes? Absolutely not,”Egan said. “If we decided to use it in different ways we will continue to provide people [with] transparency about that and we will continue to provide control.”

Critics said that there has also been little attempt in the new update to provide greater clarity as to policies. “The company is also deliberately deleting information about specific privacy controls,” noted the New York Times, pointing out that a direct path to the possibility of opting out of endorsing adverts on friends’ pages  would no longer be on the privacy page.

The old privacy policy informed users:  “You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us.” However, the changed wording assumes permission for name, profile picture and content to be used in connection with commercial content. 

"We are proposing this update as part of a settlement in a court case relating to advertising," Egan said in a statement in regards to changes in commercial use. 

While not specifying which court case, it was revealed on Wednesday that Facebook will pay out $20 million in compensation to users who had their personal information shared on the website. Details of users appeared in the “sponsored stories” advertisements without their permission. 

Facebook and Google (Google Plus uses similar technology) both insist that they are not participants in any program that allows the US government direct access to their computer servers, and only supply personal information upon specific request and following a review.

The update to Facebook’s technology comes as public scrutiny grows of corporate use of private data, and its sharing with governments, following NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass US electronic surveillance in June. For seven years, the National Security Agency has been using a warrantless web surveillance system, PRISM, with a near-limitless ability to spy on anyone’s phone calls, e-mails, video chats, search history and more.

According to the documents leaked by Snowden, Internet giants such as Google, Apple and Facebook have been complicit in the scheme, providing the NSA with access to users' data. 

US intelligence report stops short of confirming Assad is responsible for chemical attack

United States Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the US intelligence community has concluded that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for killing more than 1,000 people with chemical gas last week near Damascus.

In a statement released in tandem with Kerry’s remarks from the State Department headquarters in Washington, DC Friday afternoon, the US government says they assess “with high confidence” that the government of Pres. Assad carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.

According to the remarks made by Sec. Kerry, the assault last week caused the deaths of at least 1,429 Syrians, including no fewer than 426 children.

But despite days of research and an international investigation, the US says they cannot declare with 100 percent certainty at this time that Assad’s regime was responsible.

“Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the US Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation,” the report reads in part. “We will continue to seek additional information to close gaps in our understanding of what took place.”

Nevertheless, Kerry all but confirmed on Friday that Assad ordered the use of nerve gas against civilians last week. 

“[W]e know that the Syrian regime’s elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks and taking precautions associated with chemical weapons. We know that these were specific instructions. We know where the rockets were launched from and at what time. We know where they landed and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and went only to opposition controlled or contested neighborhoods,” he said.

“We have a body of information, including past Syrian practice, that leads us to conclude that regime officials were witting of and directed the attack on August 21,” the accompanying document claims.

“To conclude, there is a substantial body of information that implicates the Syrian government’s responsibility in the chemical weapons attack that took place on August 21.As indicated, there is additional intelligence that remains classified because of sources and methods concerns that is being provided to Congress and international partners,” it says.

During the Friday press conference, Kerry urged Americans and those in the international community to read the declassified report that has been published by the US government. One day earlier, he said US President Barack Obama went over the intelligence with his national security team, who then met with leaders of Congress and the lawmakers on the congressional national security committees.

“Its findings are as clear as they are compelling,” he said of the report. “I'm not asking you to take my word for it. Read for yourself, everyone, those listening, all of you, read for yourselves the evidence from thousands of sources, evidence that is already publicly available.”

Among that evidence, Kerry said, is proof collected from thousands of sources suggesting the Syrian government launched a gas attack last week.

“With our own eyes we have seen the thousands of reports from 11 separate sites in the Damascus suburbs. All of them show and report victims with breathing difficulties, people twitching with spasms, coughing, rapid heartbeats, foaming at the mouth, unconsciousness and death. And we know it was ordinary Syrian citizens who reported all of these horrors,” Kerry said.

“And just as important,” he added, “we know what the doctors and the nurses who treated them didn't report -- not a scratch, not a shrapnel wound, not a cut, not a gunshot sound. We saw rows of dead lined up in burial shrouds, the white linen unstained by a single drop of blood.

“Instead of being tucked safely in their beds at home, we saw rows of children lying side by side, sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad's gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate,” the secretary continued

In addition to social media posts, videos taken after the attacks and first-hand reports, Kerry said the US relied on signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence to conclude Assad’s regime ordered the attack.

Intelligence offering a glimpse into Assad’s army, said Kerry, proved that chemical weapons officials in charge of the nation’s arsenal of warheads were making preparations days ahead of the attack.

According to the report, US intelligence sources could not detect any indication in the days before the assault that opposition affiliates, as reported by some, were planning to use chemical weapons.

Some signals intelligence intercepted, the report added, showed a senior Assad regime official “intimately familiar with the offensive” confirming the army used chemical weapons on Aug. 21, “and was concerned with the UN inspectors obtaining evidence.”

According to the report, the Syrian chemical weapons personnel were directed to cease operations on the 21 and begin shelling the surrounding area for five days,

The document also rejects the allegation that video footage showing the Aug. 21 assault was fabricated, and concludes that the Syrian opposition lacks the capability to fake the assault, or the effects of nerve gas.

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