By Yaël Ossowski / Watchdog.org / February 19, 2015 A coalition of 26 states fought and won a battle to freeze President Barack Obama’s deferred action plan to give temporary work visas to illegal immigrants with children born in the United States. Judge Andrew Hanen’s injunction order, issued Monday, makes certain eligible illegal immigrants won’t get permission from the federal government to seek lawful employment,…
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Does the NSA have a spy in your hard drive?
A protestor holds up a sign at a rally against the NSA’s spying program. By Yaël Ossowski | Watchdog.org | February 18, 2015 A Russian security firm claims to have uncovered a major tool used to rewrite hard drives and collect all stored information in potentially millions of computers and hard drives around the world. In a very technical post on its website, the Moscow-based…
Anonymous is hitting ISIS harder than any government could
By Yaël Ossowski / February 11, 2015 / Watchdog.org The hacking collective Anonymous is on the offensive yet again, striking the Islamic State’s many proactive social media users who use sites such as Twitter and Facebook to recruit for jihad terrorism. In a series of posts on the website Pastebin over the weekend, purported members of Anonymous vow to continue “Operation Ice ISIS,” taking down…
FCC commissioner: If you like the IRS, you’ll love net neutrality
By Yaël Ossowski / February 9, 2015 / Watchdog.org After years of dithering, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has at last deposited the formal proposal to reclassify Internet as a public utility and subject it to federal regulation, championed by proponents as “net neutrality.” Wheeler outlined the plan in an article for Wired magazine last week and it will be considered for a vote…
#JeSuisProsecuted: U.S. government sentences journalist Barret Brown
JAILED: Journalist Barrett Brown will face 5 years jail time for charges relating to the hack of a private intelligence firm. By Yaël Ossowski | Watchdog.org His name is Barrett Brown. He is a journalist with active author archives on websites such as the Guardian, Vanity Fair magazine, Huffington Post and more, going back to 2009. But since 2012 he has been in jail, awaiting his…
Mercenary in Ukraine and the State of Permanent Contradiction
Is this American (or Anglo) mercenary in Marioupol, Ukraine fighting the Russian-backed separatists? Or protecting the Ukrainian state forces? Who hired him? Is he Blackwater? The Russians say one thing, the Ukrainians another, and so many people don’t know what to think. Whether it’s Putin, the EU, Cameron, or Obama, I agree with Adam Curtis: This “strategy of creating confusing and contradictory political and media…
“Media and Peace: Friends or Foes @ ESFL regional conference Munich”
The video embedded above is my speech entitled: “Media and Peace: Friends or Foes,” presented at the 2014 European Students For Liberty Munich Regional Conference in Munich, Germany on 29. November 2014. Thanks to Sons of Libertas for recording the video and the smash-up editing!
About-Face: Canada’s Shift from Peacekeeper to Bomb-Dropper
Maple Muscle at the Beck and Call of Military Allies Yaël Ossowski | PanAm Post January 22, 2015 Canada’s reputation as a peacekeeping nation has drastically changed in the last decade. (Gopixpic) “Canadians want to live in peace,” declared Prime Minister John Diefenbaker to the nation in 1960 in the midst of the ongoing Cold War. Those were difficult times. The United States and the Soviet…
Adam Curtis on Today’s Nonlinear World Which Confuses and Contradicts
Adam Curtis asserts that the strategy of creating confusing and contradictory political and media narratives, used to “undermine people’s perception of the world,” is the newest power structure emerging in our time. It’s a non-linear presentation of facts which make it so difficult for any ordinary person to even grasp the significance of anything. Unfortunately, the more people read mainstream news and the more information…
Supreme Court: Cops can pull you over even if you haven’t broken a law
By Yaël Ossowski | Watchdog.org In a ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation’s top court found that a police officer who mistakenly interprets a law and pulls someone over hasn’t violated their Fourth Amendment rights. The case pertained to a traffic stop initiated on Nicholas Heien in North Carolina, on account of a broken tail light. The stop and search of…