Eye in the Sky

"Dude, you know what I'm thinking?" my roommate asked me at about 12:30 this afternoon. We had just finished the second episode of Season 4 of Lost, which we have been binge watching on Netflix. After I got home from doing errands early this morning, we shot the shit a little bit, talked about how Christopher Lee, the world's best movie badguy, World War veteran who taught Peter Jackson what someone sounds like when you stab them and fucking metal musician, had died, and finished Season 3 of Lost. It was lunch time. "Let's go to Bosa for breakfast sandwiches!" My Monster was wearing off and I was getting hungry, so breakfast sammiches sounded pretty awesome. We took a few minutes finding our keys like we usually do, and walked out to our parking lot. It was bright, and kinda warm. I expected a bit hotter from Phoenix for this time of year, to be perfectly honest. Though it has been a few years since I lived in the desert, the summer doesn't feel as hot as it used to. And Flagstaff's last two winters definitely hasn't been as cold.

When we had our typical "Should we walk or should we drive?" discussion on our way to walking out the apartment complex, and we both took note of how it was hot, but not quite hot enough for this time of year. But we only walked for two minutes before I spotted a firetruck in my complex. The lights were flashing. Shit, did anything happen? we both seemed to wonder at the same time. We didn't stop for long, but we barely walked another 20 feet before I spotted 3 squad cars further up. Something was definitely wrong.We kept walking, only to find an uncomfortably higher amount of squad cars, and yellow tape cordoning off part of the parking lot. Something was going on, but we didn't see any ambulances. Just fire, and LOTS of police.

What the hell was going on? we wondered as we crossed the street on our way to Bosa. No amount of police activity was going to excite me enough to not want to get food. I'm American, god damn it, it's in my DNA. We're known and celebrated eaters. The the sausage-egg-bacon bagel was calling my name.

And more and more police cars were coming out way. From all angles, too. The entire walk consisted of my roommate and I speculating on what was going on. When two SUV's labelled for Immigration sped past us to go cut off a parking lot, we assumed it was an ICE raid in our apartment. The low whir of a helicopter overhead reminded me of my childhood, where every weekend featured a helicopter with a spotlight on a manhunt. Something was definitely up.

One time, they crashed and everyone died on live TV.

Despite the fact that my apartment complex was swarming with cops, a cordoned off crime scene, tons of emergency vehicles from multiple law enforcement agencies, it was just another day in the Phoenix metro area. Luck of the draw, I guessed, this time it happened close to me. No, nothing really disturbed me until the air traffic arrived. Now, everyone knows what their local news helicopters look like. They market the shit outta that. Local news is big business, with big audiences. They aggressively market their products, and they're gonna make damn sure if you look up in the sky while one of their flying machines is up there, you're gonna know which channel owns it. 

Squad cars, fire trucks, inmigración, concerned onlookers; everything was going to plan. Sure, something fucked up happened, but it was being corrected. Everything was right, until the helicopters came. They hovered in place over where we were, which means clearly they were looking for someone on foot. It's nothing new, nothing I haven't seen. 

But it wasn't a police helicopter. Nor was it a news helicopter.  

Black, red and orange, it was devoid of any sort of logo. It was clearly not meant to advertise a news agency, as I got a good look at it looking for a logo. It was not the typical colors of a police helicopter either, and was not identified as a police helicopter to the public. 

After a few minutes of watching the bird in the sky and deliberating our theories about the situation at hand, we decided to finally go in for our delicious breakfasty goodness that is Bosa. In the last 10 seconds we were outside, I witnessed yet another helicopter come swooping into the area. It was much smaller than the regular choppers you see associated with the news and police, and all white with some green writing I couldn't quite make out on the side. Again, no news logos, no police logos. 

Anyway, it wound up being some kind of stabbing involving people in a drug deal. 

Stab people all you want, you're still a manlet.

You can slice it any way you want, but when the government starts hiding the things that it does in plain sight, or doing it in a misleading way, there's reason to be worried or afraid. An open, honest, transparent government has no need of this kind of behavior. I wanted to take a picture of the choppers, but I left my phone at home. I think that might have been the right choice given some things the FBI has recently admitted to doing with civilian marked helicopters.

These are the types of flight patterns that people are noticing

on online flight trackers. This one was clearly scoping out a few

specific spots, and hilariously came out looking kinda like a 

giant dick. 

But I'm just some dude writing his observations. Draw you own conclusions.

Ukrainian Patrol Boat explodes, sinks; 1 dead, 1 missing, 5 injured

[Source]

Okay, so we got a "mystery explosion" against the Ukrainian coast guard, in the strategic city of Mariupol, as it was leaving port. The toll has been updated from 6 injured and 1 missing to 5 injured, 1 dead, 1 missing. It's not immediately clear if this is an attack, nobody has claimed responsibility and nobody has started pointing fingers...yet.

Was it a mine? Was it a Russian torpedo? Sabotage?

Whatever it was, I don't believe this was an accident.

Fox News does it again

Notice anyone missing from the republican party? Oh, I don't know, MAYBE THE GUY WHO FILIBUSTERED THE RENEWAL OF THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOT ACT!?

"Fair and Balanced" my ass.

Russian Aggression and European Gas Basins

I was bored at work, so I decided to start looking for whatever maps I could find of Eurasia that had anything to do with natural gas, oil, and the pipelines (both real and proposed) to transport all of these resources. Then I came across a couple of maps that made a TON of pieces fall into place.

First, a quick map showing where in Ukraine the conflicts are taking place

Ga

And an ethnic breakdown of the country

Click for Source

So what did I find?

A report titled World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States, by Advanced Resources International, Inc, published in April of 2011. The map let a realization wash over me, chilling me to the bone when I realized what I was looking at (page 149 of the pdf)

It all makes a lot more sense now. Absolutely everyone who has been shitting themselves over recent Russian aggression is sitting on an assessed basin of shale gas. 

I mean, Russia simulating nuclear attacks against Sweden, Sweden deciding to permanently station troops on Gotland, Russian submarines in Swedish waters (and Sweden's hilarious "This way if you are gay" response), Russian troops amassing in Belgorod, despite it not being nearly as Russian as Donetsk or Luhansk nor being part of the land bridge to Crimea or helping to control the entire border of the Sea of Azov, why the Baltic states are collectively building a joint air defense system and reintroducing the draft, it all just falls into place.

"Wow. TON of stuff just started to make sense to me."

Fighting Resumes in Ukraine, Siege of Mariupol Feared

End of a Cease-Fire

©  Tass / EPA / ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO

Less than a week ago I published a post, my first post, regarding the situation in the ground on Ukraine. Troop morale is at an all time low and Russia is posturing for another offensive. And that's exactly what we've got.

Facts are not always clear in the fog war, but the Kiev Post is reporting that fighting along the front lines have broken out earlier today along the western border of Donetsk (Scroll Down for maps). Ukraine Today is reporting the casualties at 38 injured and 3 dead from the Ukrainian side, while the Kiev Post maintains at least 19 separatist fighters have been killed so far. 

RT, the mouthpiece of the Kremlin, is significantly downplaying a resurgence in the fighting, preferring to focus on the recent airstrikes in Gaza by Israel following to rockets being lobbed over the border, another Wikileaks release, more developments on MH-17 and last week's anthrax fuck-up. What they do mention about it here is that there are at least 14 separatists killed and 86 injured, some critically, with at least 6 civilian deaths. 

Ukrainian media has portrayed it as fighting simply resuming, with no clarity to who started fighting first. Russian media is reporting that the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) was provoked by shelling from Ukrainian artillery throughout the contact line. The fact that fighting has widely broken out along the line is not contested, but I haven't seen anything solid to back up the Russian claims. 

Donetsk Burns

As fighting continues both RT and Tass are focusing on the state of emergency unfolding within the Donetsk Oblast. The resumption of shelling has left the city of Donetsk largely devoid of power- and with it, a flurry of problems.

The wounded of the fighters are being taken to the main hospital in Donetsk, while power to the facility has been shut off. After 2 hours without power and a growing number of wounded being rushed in, the decision was made to evacuate the hospital, in order to avoid a repeat of the incident earlier this year in which indiscriminate shelling managed to hit a hospital, killing and injuring several.

The hospital wasn't the only place affected by the loss of power. Three mines lost power as a result of the artillery fire as well, trapping nearly a thousand people underground as carnage on the surfaces unfolds.

Maryinka Captured

The timeline posted on gazeta.ru lists Maryinka as captured by the Vostok brigade of the DNR as of 1345 local time.

Facebook Photo Op

Although the situation on the ground has now begun to stabilize, Maryinka remains in flames. Ukrainian forces have regrouped to defend Krasnogorovka and Kurakhovo, where their artillery is currently stationed, to fend off the coming offensive. 

click here for full size

And a full sized map of the Novorossiya region

Source | Full Size Image

What's in Mariupol Worth Fighting For?

Mariupol is situated on the coast of the sea of Azov, and is the country's second-largest sea port. It's also part of the land bridge Russia wants to make a push for to give them easier access to Crimea. Mariupol is also famous for its metallurgic industry, hosting the Illich Steel and Iron Works. There's also a power plant, which would be of obvious strategic value to possess in any conflict. 

Mariupol will come under siege later this summer. There will be a lot of shelling, heavy casualties on both sides, and a lot of dead civilians. The separatists/Russian military is going to try and surround the city. To prepare, the Ukrainians have already dug trenches, laid tank barriers, built fortifications and laid mines in the sea. 

The fighting in the city to the east of Mariupol that is holding the front line against the separatists has already seen fighting so fierce that separatists are challenging the Ukrainian military to hand-to-hand combat from right outside their own trenches. And if that's going on during the cease-fire, well...

...the fight over control of the Donetsk Airport has already shown how destructive this war can be.

The Fire Rises

Das feuer liebt mich nicht

(Das feuer leibt mich)

How the Propagandists Are Dealing With the Death of the Patriot Act

[PREFACE: My apologies, I'm still working out some of the page styling. Images might load kinda wonky for my first few posts]

Before I say anything else, I have to say this: GOOD RIDDANCE.

But will anything actually change? 

I have yet to go over the USA Freedom Act, the proposed legislation to act as "reform" to an expiring Patriot Act, but from what I've read thus far it may simply be a rebranding of extensive spying programs.

But that's not what I'm here to focus on. What I'm mostly interested in is how the media, acting as various arms of propaganda for multiple states, are handling this. I'm going to analyze this alongside some foreign news sources known for disseminating anti-American propaganda.

eBiz MBA ranks American news sites based upon Alexa, and has ranked the top 5 most popular American news sites as Yahoo! News (175M monthly viewers, or just over half the country), Google News (150M), HuffingtonPost (110M), CNN (95M) and The New York Times (70M) as the top 5. Following this we have Fox News, NBC News, Mail Online, Washington Post, The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal.

I won't bother too much with Google News, as it isn't an actual news site, but a hub of stories from elsewhere.

Last October Business Insider put together a nifty little report on the political leanings of various news sites based upon this Pew Research study. And it is no surprise that most arms of the American media are left leaning.

Yahoo! News

Seeing as Yahoo! News is fairly centrist and the number one source of news online for Americans (which is significant, because television as a medium is dying, and it isn't limited to TV shows, even television broadcasts of news are dying), let's see how that's handling this first. We'll just take a stroll to their front page, because the expiration of the USA PATRIOT Act is of pretty big fucking significance.

This ought to be front-page news everywhere, as a victory for civil liberties and everything America stands for, so clearly -

Or, you know, not. But SURELY big news like this has to be trending right now-

Okay, bullshit celebrity "news" and consumerism. Maybe if we just scroll down a bit-

Okay, MAYBE if we hit CTRL+F and search the page we'll surely find SOMETHING, right?

Really, Yahoo?

Come on!

Searching for it actually brings us to the goddamn CNN article instead. The biggest source of "news" in America, is a sham, peddling irreverent bullshit, ignoring anything of actual significance in this country, all while being too busy freaking out that some former Olympic athlete has some kind of severe mental disorder that leftists have decided to rebrand and market as an "alternative lifestyle choice", but that's a post for another day. So let's look at that next.

CNN

CNN at least has a handful of stories on the subject, with one being published today about how the Patriot Act has actually, finally expired. But the subject matter itself is fear mongering bullshit. The word "terror", on its own or as a root of a word, is used 14 times, and the Patriot Act is framed as a collection of "tools" for "fighting terror", despite the fact that this is completely false (I'll have a follow-up post on this matter in the next few days). The opening two paragraphs of the article frame the entire ordeal as a hindrance to national security, which means imminent danger. In fact, the entire article is 50% "here's what's happening" and 50% "We aren't as safe anymore!". One of their headings is actually "So could America be less safe?"

And that's just on this article. Keep reading, there's more!

Huffington Post

This is the first website I wouldn't describe as centrist in any way, but a very far left-leaning website (according to my earlier posted sources, HuffPo is further left than Fox News is right). The front page doesn't mention much, but makes a bit more of an effort than Yahoo! did, leaving this article on how Edward Snowden is finally receiving the recognition he deserves for what he did, only to turn around and run another article called "Huge Pieces Of The Patriot Act Just Expired. Here's What That Actually Means.", where they proceed to in the first fucking sentence denounce Edward Snowden and instead give all the credit to "congressional dysfunction." Of course, they steadfastly refused to mention Rand Paul's epic 10 and a half hour filibuster, most likely 100%, definitely, entirely because he himself is a Republican, even though the move itself has pissed off a lot of other Republicans. 

Don't believe me?

You'd have to be fucking stupid to write for these people and say anything good about Hillary's opponent

The article itself is actually fairly informative, and lacking in the "OH SHIT WE'RE GONNA GET 9/11'D AGAIN!" undertones present in the CNN article.

So, let's switch gears and see what Fox News has to say.

Fox News

Expiration of the Patriot Act isn't one of the huge stories on the front page. If we decide to CTRL+F to search for what they're saying about NSA reform, we can type in "NSA", and we see it is mentioned 4 times on the front page, linking  to 3 articles:

Paul battles critics as NSA collection program expires

Video: Paul: Expiration of NSA bulk data collection a 'big victory'

Gen. McChrystal: 'Never saw abuse' of NSA surveillance tools. This one was mentioned twice.

 [I am at my day job and currently unable to watch these videos, I will watch it when I get home and update the post accordingly].

Searching for the phrase "Patriot Act" actually comes up with a plethora of articles penned and videos shot in the last 24 hours, much more so than our previously analyzed sites. They ranged from being fairly laid back, saying "It's not a big deal, we should review legislation from time to time" to Sean Hannity and Jim Sensenbrenner (the Patriot Act's author) discussing how the secret FISA courts have bastardized his original plan, so it's good that it's gone, and also good that the USA Freedom Act is being passed (again, I intend to read it and give you all my take on it).

I don't know if I'm even going to bother watching Gen. McChrystal's lies and drivel, because we know damn well that the NSA was abusing the hell out of it's powers that it never used to combat terrorism anyway, even going so far as to make a LOVEINT tag, where NSA employees would regularly spy on their love interests (LOVEINT meaning "Love Intelligence", using standard intelligence format where things like SIGINT [Signals Intelligence] and HUMINT [Human Intelligence] during investigations).

So, some truth and some lies on Fox News. What else is new?

Impending Terror: A recurring theme

There is, however, something else I noticed. 

There's another big story competing with this one, and it's being run on all the news publications, even advertised on all of their front pages when this was being buried. 

Full Story Here

CNN too, full story here

And Fox News as well

Even google got in on the fun

While the media is fawning over Bruce Jenner and his "transition" to become a "woman", this isn't the only 'huge' story hogging the headlines. For those of us who really couldn't care less what a former Olympian and somehow the most irrelevant member of the Kardashian clan are doing for attention now, there's another actual 'big' story right now: that the TSA is absolutely awful at their jobs. 

The story is that the Department of Homeland Security decided to run undercover audits of the effectiveness of the TSA screening, only to find that just 3 out of 70 tests successfully detected high explosives and weapons being smuggled through airport security. 

This story is being run today for a reason, the reason being that they can't openly advocate for the Patriot Act to make a comeback. Most people in this country, at this point, thanks to Edward Snowden, are aware of gross government overreach and civil liberties being trampled upon. We all know that it's happening, so it would be career suicide to openly advocate it or pretend it isn't happening. Instead, what they're doing is downplaying the fact that the Patriot Act has expired, and key parts of it that have been ruled unconstitutional have come to an end. They discuss how this means we have less tools to fight terrorism (again, utter bullshit to be covered in a later post), while actively promoting a different story intended to stir up fear of a possible 9/11 repeat in the future due to an ineffective TSA. 

What about foreign news?

Russia Today, ever the "alternative" news source, ran a big story on the expiration of the Patriot Act, which you can read here. Well known for being anti-American propagandists loyal to Putin, they ran a comprehensive, informative story on the subject matter, focusing a bit more on the actual battle between Senators who wanted to force it to expire and those who wanted to extend it. They painted our politicians (not entirely incorrectly) as hyperbole-happy and lying through their teeth, desperate to keep their powers which have already been ruled as illegal by our court system, and immediately ran another story about how Obama still wants to prosecute Snowden despite all of that. 

But that's all just my take on how the highly-refined, super efficient propaganda machines of today are handling the loss of the great American spying program.