A series of reports from Russia Today (rt.com) and other sites have explained how activists reading through last year's hack by Anonymous of the Strategic Forecasting Intelligence agency (Stratfor) have revealed a little known system already in place and run by the Abraxas corporation although hints of the system were known years earlier. The email have since been released on WikiLeaks. Global Intelligence Files

Related Feature on TrapWire: FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America When you read this other story, it is evident that the capability has rapidly come together in the last few years for computer systems to now store billions of photographs and run continual analysis on them and other related data such as location info (GPS from your phone), phone call history, credit card & bank transactions, vehicle registration recognition and tracking by motorway + street overhead cameras etc

Related Links: Abraxas and Trapwire: the technology and personnel revealed | Trapwire Article on Cryptogon | (Guradian) Trapwire surveillance system exposed in document leak | (ACLU) What to make of the Trapwire Story | Leaked Microsoft intelligence document: Here's what Microsoft will reveal to police about you

Abstract: For most progressive activists, it is a given that the military-industrial complex is a clear and highly visible barrier to progressive social change. So it is particularly interesting to note that a number of groups involved in progressive activist education – which are held in high regard by activists – maintain strong links to military and political elites. One of the best known of these organisations is the US-based Albert Einstein Institution. This paper will provide a systematic analysis of the history of this Institution, and the key people associated with it, and demonstrate how their work is intimately linked to the international democracy-manipulating community – whose work is exemplified by the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, a group which is well-known for its support of the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela. This analysis will expose the crucial role such activist educators play in catalysing revolutions in countries deemed appropriative for regime change by transnational elites. In the light of the dubious nature of these educational activities, this paper will conclude by offering a number of suggestions for how concerned citizens and educators may counter the cynical (ab)use of activist education by political elites as a new and powerful tool of imperialism.

Related Links: 'How To Start A Revolution'
Thierry Meyssan on AEI / Gene Sharp | Sharp attack unwarranted - defence of Gene Sharp in FPIF by Stephen Zunes | Sharp reflection warranted - a robust response by Michael Barker | How to start a wall street backed revolution | How to start a revolution (propaganda film teaser) | Sourcewatch AEI page | NED website | Gene Sharp (wikipedia) | Tony Cartalucci's "landdestroyer" blog

"Is there a safe way to frack? Probably: but not profitably; and
certainly not within the geology of a little emerald isle. "
- Greg Palast, investigative Journalist

Related Links: Poland and Fracking - Lessons to be Learned - Ban Fracking In EU | Counties and Townlands in the Fracking Zones - Are You Living in a Facking Zone? Find Out Here. | Response to the article 'Frank Convery, Yvonne Scannell, Fracking and Local Credibility in Ireland' | Fracking Ireland - Business Group Accept €20,000 From Tamboran | Local Fracking Talk Brings Revelations | Open letter to the members of the 31st Dáil Éireann. Hydraulic Shale Gas Fracturing - Tamborans claims - Chemicals involved in the fracking procedure

On the 20th of April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oilrig blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven men instantly, then destroying 600 miles of coastline.On 9 September 2010, a natural gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, California, burning eight to death, one of several recent pipeline explosions in the USA. In 1992, in Chicago, a gas pipe leaked and 18 houses exploded, incinerating three people. What do these deaths have to do with plans for “fracking” for natural gas in Ireland? Everything. It was my job to investigate these three explosions, the Deepwater Horizon and California explosions as a reporter for the UK news show Dispatches, the earliest as a US government investigator. In all three cases, the deaths were preceded by the same reassurances about the safety of drilling and piping that I read now in the debate about fracking in Ireland. First, the Deepwater Horizon. Eleven men died when the 'mud' – drilling cement meant to cap the wellhead – failed and methane gas blew out the top of the pipes and exploded. The Shannon Basin is not the Gulf of Mexico, but your safety will be just as dependent on Halliburton’s mud.

Charles Taylor’s sentencing to 50 years’ imprisonment on 11 counts of war crimes is undeniably momentous. However, with Sierra Leoneans still suffering abject poverty and remaining in dire need of aid, it must be questioned for whose benefit the costly War Crimes Court really is, writes EMMA PURDY

Related Links: Charles Taylor (wiki) | Blood diamond (wiki) | The other end of blood diamond trade | Information on Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone will conclude this year on a triumphant note, with former Liberian president Charles Taylor now the first ex-head of state convicted by international justice since the 1946 Nuremburg trials.

The 64-year-old was found guilty this April of arming and supporting Revolutionary United Front rebels in exchange for illegally mined blood diamonds and thus “aiding and abetting” the country’s brutal civil war. He was sentenced on 30 May to 50 years’ imprisonment, having been held “criminally responsible” by judges after a protracted four-and-a-half-year trial.

From the outset in January 2008, after Taylor boycotted the initial 2007 proceedings, the trial was lauded as the first ever of a former African head of state in an international court. Taylor was the Court’s 11th defendant from a total of 21 indictments since its establishment in January 2002, its remit being to try “those who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law” during the 11-year conflict.

Embedded Video Description: Video Id: abEdrPYqtkA Type: Youtube Video
Agricultural investment or land-grab in Sierra Leone?

A political struggle in a European nation of less than three million, largely ignored by other socialists in Europe, has nevertheless come to the fore in the capitalist media repeatedly since the late 1960s. This has been largely as a result of the the Basque people’s struggle for socialism and independence from the Spanish and French states, a struggle led for decades by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the marxist armed organisation better known by its acronym, ETA. The organisation reawakened Basque national consciousness, has worked with others for the restoration of Euskara, the Basque language, organised Basque workers and faced the repression of the General Franco dictatorship in the Spanish state. Famously, in 1973 it assassinated the Prime Minister of the state, Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s right-hand man, which hastened the fragmentation of the dictatorship and its passage to partial democracy.

Related Links: The Abertzale Left makes big electoral gains in the basque Country – but is it being steered towards social democracy? | Basque Trade Unions Square Up To The Spanish State | Report on the largest demo ever in the Basque Country, estimated 100,000, Bilbao January this year -- in solidarity with political prisoners