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Morning news dump and music by The Eagles.

Hacking Team and Boeing Subsidiary Envisioned Drones Deploying Spyware

There are lots of ways that government spies can attack your computer, but a U.S. drone company is scheming to offer them one more. Boeing subsidiary Insitu would like to be able to deliver spyware via drone.

The plan is described in internal emails from the Italian company Hacking Team, which makes off-the-shelf software that can remotely infect a suspect’s computer or smartphone, accessing files and recording calls, chats, emails and more. A hacker attacked the Milan-based firm earlier this month and released hundreds of gigabytes of company information online.

Among the emails is a recap of a meeting in June of this year, which gives a “roadmap” of projects that Hacking Team’s engineers have underway.

On the list: Develop a way to infect computers via drone. One engineer is assigned the task of developing a “mini” infection device, which could be “ruggedized” and “transportable by drone (!)” the write-up notes enthusiastically in Italian.

O'Malley and Sanders interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters in Phoenix

Netroots Nation session derailed as crowd chants over speeches

Activist invited onstage before O’Malley is forced to leave it

The Democratic presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders were heckled and constantly interrupted during an appearance at the Netroots Nation conference on Saturday, as protesters over police brutality towards African Americans took the stage in Phoenix.

O’Malley was eventually forced offstage, after the protest and his attempts to respond delayed the appearance of Sanders.

O’Malley, who stood patiently throughout the interruption, which was led by Tia Oso, national coordinator for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration in Phoenix, attempted to answer questions from activists. He eventually left the stage clapping and saying rhythmically: “Black lives matter, black lives matter, black lives matter.”

Arriving on stage shortly afterwards for what turned out to be an abbreviated, 20-minute appearance, Sanders shook moderator Jose Antonio Vargas by the hand and said: “Earning your pay today?”

The Agenda Behind ISIS' Cultural Genocide
The Romans would sow the earth with salt, America sends its terrorist proxies in with chisels and jackhammers.

In what UNESCO is calling ‘Cultural Cleansing’, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have begun destroying 2000 year old Syrian statues in the ancient city of Palmyra and are claiming to have rigged the ancient ruins with explosives. This follows the systematic destruction of historical sites across the Middle East. So far ISIS has destroyed several sites across Iraq, which includes the destruction and looting of Mosul Museum, the destruction of the 3000 year old Assyrian city of Nimrud and the bulldozing of the 2000 year old fortress city of Hatra. Recently ISIS militants threatened to destroy Egypt’s Sphinx and pyramids.

While the world watches ISIS terrorists destroy the relics of the very birth place of civilization, we must reflect upon the reason why this is happening and how we have reached this point. These crimes against history are portrayed in the mainstream media as nothing more than the result of mindless destruction by ISIS barbarians. However it is in fact part of a US Government plan to balkanise the Syrian and Iraqi nation-states, and by attacking the heart of their nationalist identity, their history.

Systematic destruction of both Islamic and Non-Islamic sites.

ISIS’s take over of historical sites are not incidental, they expend military resources to target these sites. ISIS attacked Palmyra in spite of the fact it would have been more militarily strategic to focus on attacking the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor.

The purpose of the focus on destroying historical sites partly stems from ISIS’s adherence to Wahhabi doctrine which is a Puritan interpretation of Islam. Islam forbids idolatry and in the mind set of Wahhabi extremism this translates to ‘all statues are forbidden’. This is how ISIS justifies the destruction of ancient statues, in spite of the fact no one worshiped those statues. The destruction of ancient tombs can also be explained by Wahhabi doctrine which is hostile to burial sites for fear they may become a site for veneration or worship.

MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?

By Robert Parry

One year ago, the world experienced what could become the Tonkin Gulf incident of World War III, the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. As with the dubious naval clash off the coast of North Vietnam in 1964, which helped launch the Vietnam War, U.S. officials quickly seized on the MH-17 crash for its emotional and propaganda appeal – and used it to ratchet up tensions against Russia.

Shocked at the thought of 298 innocent people plunging to their deaths from 33,000 feet last July 17, the world recoiled in horror, a fury that was then focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin. With Putin’s face emblazoned on magazine covers, the European Union got in line behind the U.S.-backed coup regime in Ukraine and endorsed economic sanctions to punish Russia.

In the year that has followed, the U.S. government has continued to escalate tensions with Russia, supporting the Ukrainian regime in its brutal “anti-terrorism operation” that has slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. The authorities in Kiev have even dispatched neo-Nazi and ultranationalist militias, supported by jihadists called “brothers” of the Islamic State, to act as the tip of the spear. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists.”]

Raising world tensions even further, the Russians have made clear that they will not allow the ethnic Russian resistance to be annihilated, setting the stage for a potential escalation of hostilities and even a possible nuclear showdown between the United States and Russia.

Drought Is Just the Beginning of Our Frightening Water Emergency
For years, Americans dismissed dire water shortages as a problem of the Global South. Now the crisis is coming home.

The United Nations reports that we have 15 years to avert a full-blown water crisis and that, by 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent. Five hundred renowned scientists brought together by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that our collective abuse of water has caused the earth to enter a “new geologic age,” a “planetary transformation” akin to the retreat of the glaciers more than 11,000 years ago. Already, they reported, a majority of the world’s population lives within a 30-mile radius of water sources that are badly stressed or running out.

For a long time, we in the Global North, especially North America and Europe, have seen the growing water crisis as an issue of the Global South. Certainly, the grim UN statistics on those without access to water and sanitation have referred mostly to poor countries in Africa, Latin America, and large parts of Asia. Heartbreaking images of children dying of waterborne disease have always seemed to come from the slums of Nairobi, Kolkata, or La Paz. Similarly, the worst stories of water pollution and shortages have originated in the densely populated areas of the South.

But the global water crisis is just that—global—in every sense of the word. A deadly combination of growing inequality, climate change, rising water prices, and mismanagement of water sources in the North has suddenly put the world on a more even footing.

There is now a Third World in the First World. Growing poverty in rich countries has created an underclass that cannot pay rising water rates. As reported by Circle of Blue, the price of water in 30 major US cities is rising faster than most other household staples—41 percent since 2010, with no end in sight. As a result, increasing numbers cannot pay their water bills, and cutoffs are growing across the country. Inner-city Detroit reminds me more of the slums of Bogotá than the North American cities of my childhood.