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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 16, 2013 17:29:56 GMT -6
from the Guardian.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-allThe crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all'The actual story that matters is not hard to see: the NSA is attempting to collect, monitor and store all forms of human communication July 15, 2013 by Glenn Greenwald "The Washington Post this morning has a long profile of Gen. Keith Alexander, director the NSA, and it highlights the crux - the heart and soul - of the NSA stories, the reason Edward Snowden sacrificed his liberty to come forward, and the obvious focal point for any responsible or half-way serious journalists covering this story. It helpfully includes that crux right in the headline, in a single phrase: collect it all What does "collect it all" mean? Exactly what it says; the Post explains how Alexander took a "collect it all" surveillance approach originally directed at Iraqis in the middle of a war, and thereafter transferred it so that it is now directed at the US domestic population as well as the global one: "At the time, more than 100 teams of US analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency's powerful computers. "'Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, 'Let's collect the whole haystack,' said one former senior US intelligence official who tracked the plan's implementation. 'Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it. . . . . "It also encapsulated Alexander's controversial approach to safeguarding Americans from what he sees as a host of imminent threats, from terrorism to devastating cyberattacks. "In his eight years at the helm of the country's electronic surveillance agency, Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government's ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications." Aside from how obviously menacing and even creepy it is to have a state collect all forms of human communication - to have the explicit policy that literally no electronic communication can ever be free of US collection and monitoring - there's no legal authority for the NSA to do this. Therefore: [E]ven his defenders say Alexander's aggressiveness has sometimes taken him to the outer edge of his legal authority." "The outer edge of his legal authority": that's official-Washington-speak for "breaking the law", at least when it comes to talking about powerful DC officials (in Washington, only the powerless are said to have broken the law, which is why so many media figures so freely call Edward Snowden a criminal for having told his fellow citizens about all this, but would never dare use the same language for James Clapper for having lied to Congress about all of this, which is a felony). That the NSA's "collect it all" approach to surveillance has no legal authority is clear: "One Democrat who confronted Alexander at a congressional hearing last month accused the NSA of crossing a line by collecting the cellphone records of millions of Americans. 'What authorization gave you the grounds for acquiring my cellphone data?' demanded Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), waving his mobile phone at the four-star general." I know this is not as exciting to some media figures as Snowden's asylum drama or his speculated personality traits. But that the NSA is collecting all forms of electronic communications between Americans as well as people around the world - and, as I've said many times, thereby attempting by definition to destroy any remnants of privacy both in the US and globally - is as serious of a story as it gets, particularly given that it's all being done in secret. Here's another former NSA whistleblower, from the Post article, explaining why that is: "'He is absolutely obsessed and completely driven to take it all, whenever possible," said Thomas Drake, a former NSA official and whistleblower. The continuation of Alexander's policies, Drake said, would result in the 'complete evisceration of our civil liberties.'" Numerous NSA documents we've already published demonstrate that the NSA's goal is to collect, monitor and store every telephone and internet communication that takes place inside the US and on the earth. It already collects billions of calls and emails every single day. Still another former NSA whistleblower, the mathematician William Binney, has said that the NSA has "assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens" and that "estimate only was involving phone calls and emails." The NSA is constantly seeking to expand its capabilities without limits. They're currently storing so much, and preparing to store so much more, that they have to build a massive, sprawling new facility in Utah just to hold all the communications from inside the US and around the world that they are collecting - communications they then have the physical ability to invade any time they want ("Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it"). That is the definition of a ubiquitous surveillance state - and it's been built in the dark, without the knowledge of the American people or people around the world, even though it's aimed at them. How anyone could think this should have all remained concealed - that it would have been better had it just been left to fester and grow in the dark - is truly mystifying. Perhaps the coining of a punchy phrase by the Washington Post to describe all of this - "collect it all" - will help those DC media figures who keep lamenting their own refusal to cover the substance of the NSA stories begin to figure out why they should cover the substance and how they can. The rest of the world is having no trouble focusing on the substance of these revelations - rather than the trivial dramas surrounding the person who enabled us to know of all this - and discussing why those revelations are so disturbing. Perhaps US media figures can now follow that example."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 16, 2013 11:45:30 GMT -6
The June Consumer Price Index increased a whopping +0.5%. That's a +6.0% annualized increase. biz.yahoo.com/c/e.html
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 16, 2013 11:42:01 GMT -6
I'll have to watch the video when I get home.
I completely agree that something is going to happen, though I would not try to predict when.
We can't keep sending all of our wealth-producing, higher-wage jobs overseas--and then expect wage-starved American consumers to not only keep spending, but increase their spending.
There is nothing supporting consumer spending. Real wages are declining. Potential workers are increasing at a faster rate than the jobs for them (i.e, the demand for them). As such, real wages will continue to fall, reducing spending power, purchase of production, demand for production, and demand for workers needed to provide production.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 15, 2013 12:10:48 GMT -6
... domestic propaganda is a principal government activity JULY 2ND ================================================ U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News To Americans Lovely!
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 14, 2013 22:10:05 GMT -6
It IS worse. It's an upward transfer of wealth. As stated earlier, it's a huge transfer of wealth from the public sector (taxpayer-funded) to the private sector.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 13, 2013 15:44:34 GMT -6
from Paul Craig Roberts.org www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/06/11/what-is-the-governments-agenda-paul-craig-roberts/What is the Government's Agenda?June 11, 2013 Paul Craig Roberts "It has been public information for a decade that the US government secretly, illegally, and unconstitutionally spies on its citizens. Congress and the federal courts have done nothing about this extreme violation of the US Constitution and statutory law, and the insouciant US public seems unperturbed. In 2004 a whistleblower informed the New York Times that the National Security Agency (NSA) was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by ignoring the FISA court and spying on Americans without obtaining the necessary warrants. The corrupt New York Times put the interests of the US government ahead of those of the American public and sat on the story for 1 year until George W. Bush was safely reelected. By the time the New York Times published the story of the illegal spying one year later, the law-breaking government had had time to mitigate the offense with ex post facto law or executive orders and explain away its law-breaking as being in the country’s interest. Last year William Binney, who was in charge of NSA’s global digital data gathering program revealed that NSA had everyone in the US under total surveillance. Every email, Internet site visited and phone call is captured and stored. In 2012 Binney received the Callaway Award for Civic Courage, an annual award given to those who champion constitutional rights at risk to their professional and personal lives. There have been a number of whistleblowers. For example, in 2006 Mark Klein revealed that AT&T had a secret room in its San Francisco office that NSA used to collect Internet and phone-call data from US citizens who were under no suspicion. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.htmlThe presstitute media handled these stories in ways that protected the government’s lawlessness from scrutiny and public outrage. The usual spin was that the public needs to be safe from terrorists, and safety is what the government is providing. The latest whistle blower, Edward Snowden, has sought refuge in Hong Kong, which has a better record of protecting free speech than the US government. Snowden did not trust any US news source and took the story to the British newspaper, the Guardian. There is no longer any doubt whatsoever that the US government is lawless, that it regards the US Constitution as a scrap of paper, that it does not believe Americans have any rights other than those that the government tolerates at any point in time, and that the government has no fear of being held accountable by the weak and castrated US Congress, the sycophantic federal courts, a controlled media, and an insouciant public. Binney and Snowden have described in precisely accurate detail the extreme danger from the government’s surveillance of the population. No one is exempt, not the Director of the CIA, US Army Generals, Senators and Representatives, not even the president himself. Anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can find interviews with Binney and Snowden and become acquainted with why you do have very much indeed to fear whether or not you are doing anything wrong. James Clapper, the lying Director of National Intelligence, who would have been perfectly at home in the Hitler or Stalin regimes, condemned Snowden as “reprehensible” for insisting that in a democracy the public should know what the government is doing. Clapper insisted that secretly spying on every ordinary American was essential in order to “protect our nation.” news.antiwar.com/2013/06/07/us-spy-chief-slams-reprehensible-leak-of-nsa-surveillance-scheme/Clapper is “offended” that Americans now know that the NSA is spying on the ordinary life of every American. Clapper wants Snowden to be severely punished for his “reckless disclosure” that the US government is totally violating the privacy that the US Constitution guarantees to every US citizen. President Obama, allegedly educated in constitutional law, justified Clapper’s program of spying on every communication of every American citizen as a necessary violation of Americans’ civil liberties that “protects your civil liberties.” Contrast the lack of veracity of the President of the United States with the truthfulness of Snowden, who correctly stated that the NSA spying is an “existential threat to democracy.” The presstitutes are busy at work defending Clapper and Obama. On June 9, CNN rolled out former CIA case officer Bob Baer to implant into the public’s mind that Snowden, far from trying to preserve US civil liberties, might be a Chinese spy and that Snowden’s revelations might be indicative of a Chinese espionage case. Demonization is the US government’s technique for discrediting Bradley Manning for complying with the US Military Code and reporting war crimes and for persecuting Julian Assage of Wikileaks for reporting leaked information about the US government’s crimes. Demonization and false charges will be the government’s weapon against Snowden. If Washington and its presstitutes can convince Americans that courageous people, who are trying to inform Americans that their historic rights are disappearing into a police state, are espionage agents of foreign powers, America can continue to be subverted by its own government. This brings us to the crux of the matter. What is the purpose of the spying program? Even if an American believes the official stories of 9/11 and the Boston Marathon Bombing, these are the only 2 terrorist acts in the US that resulted in the loss of human life in 12 years. Far more people are killed in traffic accidents.... Why should the Constitution and civil liberty be deep-sixed because of 2 alleged terrorist acts in 12 years? What is astounding is the absence of terrorist attacks. Washington is in the 2nd decade of invading and destroying Muslim governments and countries. Civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are extremely high, and in those countries that Washington has not yet invaded, such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria, civilians are being murdered by Washington’s drones and proxies on the ground. It is extraordinary that Washington’s brutal 12 year assault on Muslim lives in 6 countries has not resulted in at least one dozen real, not fake FBI orchestrated, terrorist attacks in the US every day. How can something as rare as terrorism justify the destruction of the US Constitution and US civil liberty? How safe is any American when their government regards every citizen as a potential suspect who has no rights?Why is there no discussion of this in American public life? Watch the presstitutes turn Snowden’s revelations into an account of his disaffection and motives and away from the existential threat to democracy and civil liberty. What is the government’s real agenda? Clearly, “the war on terror” is a front for an undeclared agenda. In “freedom and democracy” America, citizens have no idea what their government’s motives are in fomenting endless wars and a gestapo police state. The only information Americans have comes from whistleblowers, who Obama ruthlessly prosecutes. The presstitutes quickly discredit the information and demonize the whistleblowers. Germans in the Third Reich and Soviet citizens in the Stalin era had a better idea of their government’s agendas than do “freedom and democracy” Americans today. The American people are the most uninformed people in modern history. In America there is no democracy that holds government accountable. There is only a brainwashed people who are chaff in the wind."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 13, 2013 14:45:25 GMT -6
from the Christian Science Monitor & Associated Press. Sat, July 13, 2013 by Mary Clare Jalonick "Food stamps fact check: For now, program will continue as is Food stamps have historically been linked to farm programs, but on Thursday the House passed the farm bill without addressing food stamps at all, saying the $80 billion program would be addressed in a separate bill. In 2012, 1 in 7 Americans used food stamps. One after another, angry Democrats took to the House floor to say Republicans would increase hunger in America by stripping food stamps from the farm bill. In reality, though, the bill passed by the House on Thursday didn't deal with food stamps at all. And the lack of congressional action on food stamps could keep the $80 billion-a-year program untouched by any cuts.... Money for food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has for decades been linked to farm programs in what is known as the farm bill. That union has brought urban Democratic support for the rural farm programs, which are renewed about every 5 years. But the longtime pairing ended abruptly amid battles over cuts in the food stamp program, which derailed the farm bill last month.... The program has still doubled in cost since 2008, to almost $80 billion a year. Although some benefits have gone up, the main growth comes from a big jump in the number of participants, a result of the economic recession. All told, almost 47 million people used SNAP last year, or one in seven Americans. That number has not gone down this year."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 13, 2013 13:05:04 GMT -6
Actually, I misread the chart. The +$4 trillion is the projected amount up to a certain date. In fact, the current ~$2.5 trillion expansion depicted is right in line with the Federal Reserve's published numbers. Below is a re-post of modified copy of the chart:
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 13, 2013 12:24:30 GMT -6
In case this gets lost in the shuffle, I just want to make sure I repost the Median Real Family Income chart from AdvisorsPerspectives:
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 13, 2013 11:18:54 GMT -6
I don't know much about Italy's problems, but unless there's a shortage of investment capital to put into new businesses (due to rising consumer demand), cutting property taxes makes no sense.
But if unemployment is as bad as reported, it's almost guaranteed that there's a lack of demand for goods & services (due to lack of aggregate income and buying power). Property tax cuts are going to help the rich more than the non-rich. Since the rich spend a smaller portion of their income on purchasing goods (and creating demand), increasing their after-tax income/wealth/buying power thru property tax cuts seems misguided.
Unfortunately, it's the rich who control the government in every country, and thus it's the rich who always benefit most from changes in government policy.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 13, 2013 10:54:23 GMT -6
from Reuters www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/13/us-usa-newyork-buildingcollapse-idUSBRE96C09S20130713Bug bombs cause partial collapse of New York city buildingSat, July 13, 2013 By Jonathan Allen "A woman attempting to deploy nearly two dozen bug bombs inside her small New York City apartment caused a "partial collapse" of the 5-story building, injuring 14 people, the fire department said on Saturday. Fire marshals said the woman told them she set off 20 bug bombs, also known as foggers, without incident on Wednesday inside her Chinatown apartment. But as she set about repeating that exercise on Thursday, the highly flammable cloud of insecticide was ignited, likely by the pilot light in her oven or some other kitchen appliance, said Jim Long, a fire department spokesman. The fiery blast caused a partial collapse of some ceilings and walls on the first floor of the building, which contains businesses as well as other apartments, he said. The woman with the bug infestation was among the 14 people who suffered injuries such as burns, smoke inhalation and respiratory distress. Fire officials ruled the explosion an accident. Firefighters retrieved 21 discharged bug bomb canisters from the scene, Long said. With most brands, one bug bomb per room is believed to be sufficient. It is not clear what the woman saw in her apartment to prompt such extreme measures, he added."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 13, 2013 7:57:40 GMT -6
from the Guardian.co.uk How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messagesby Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras, Spencer Ackerman & Dominic Rushe • Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism • Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch • Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls • Company says it is legally compelled to comply " Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last 3 years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month. The documents show that: • Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal; • The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail; • The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide; • Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases; • In July last year, 9 months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism; • Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport". The latest NSA revelations further expose the tensions between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration. All the major tech firms are lobbying the government to allow them to disclose more fully the extent and nature of their co-operation with the NSA to meet their customers' privacy concerns. Privately, tech executives are at pains to distance themselves from claims of collaboration and teamwork given by the NSA documents, and insist the process is driven by legal compulsion. In a statement, Microsoft said: "When we upgrade or update products we aren't absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands." The company reiterated its argument that it provides customer data "only in response to government demands and we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers". In June, the Guardian revealed that the NSA claimed to have "direct access" through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies, including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time. Targeting US citizens does require an individual warrant, but the NSA is able to collect Americans' communications without a warrant if the target is a foreign national located overseas." Lets not forget the NSA & FBI's Verizon order, which DOES permit targeting of communications of US citizens' calls that are confined solely within the United States. Below is the exact language of the secret order:"Since Prism's existence became public, Microsoft and the other companies listed on the NSA documents as providers have denied all knowledge of the program and insisted that the intelligence agencies do not have back doors into their systems. Microsoft's latest marketing campaign, launched in April, emphasizes its commitment to privacy with the slogan: "Your privacy is our priority." Similarly, Skype's privacy policy states: "Skype is committed to respecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data, traffic data and communications content." But internal NSA newsletters, marked top secret, suggest the co-operation between the intelligence community and the companies is deep and ongoing. The latest documents come from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division, described by Snowden as the "crown jewel" of the agency. It is responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through corporate partnerships such as Prism. The files show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft's Outlook.com portal from the moment the company began testing the service in July last year. Within 5 months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chatsA newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012." Two months later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com portal. Another newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. " For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption." Microsoft's co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013 describes how the company worked "for many months" with the FBI – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate authorization to its cloud storage service SkyDrive. The document describes how this access "means that analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this – a process step that many analysts may not have known about". The NSA explained that "this new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response". It continued: "This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established." A separate entry identified another area for collaboration. "The FBI Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) team is working with Microsoft to understand an additional feature in Outlook.com which allows users to create email aliases, which may affect our tasking processes." The NSA has devoted substantial efforts in the last two years to work with Microsoft to ensure increased access to Skype, which has an estimated 663 million global users. One document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012. "The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete 'picture'," it says. 8 months before being bought by Microsoft, Skype joined the Prism program in February 2011. According to the NSA documents, work had begun on smoothly integrating Skype into Prism in November 2010, but it was not until 4 February 2011 that the company was served with a directive to comply signed by the attorney general. The NSA was able to start tasking Skype communications the following day, and collection began on 6 February (2011). "Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was very clear and the metadata looked complete," the document stated, praising the co-operation between NSA teams and the FBI. "Collaborative teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the Prism system." ACLU technology expert Chris Soghoian said the revelations would surprise many Skype users. "In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about their inability to perform wiretaps," he said. "It's hard to square Microsoft's secret collaboration with the NSA with its high-profile efforts to compete on privacy with Google." The information the NSA collects from Prism is routinely shared with both the FBI and CIA. A 3 August 2012 newsletter describes how the NSA has recently expanded sharing with the other two agencies.The NSA, the entry reveals, has even automated the sharing of aspects of Prism, using software that "enables our partners to see which selectors [search terms] the National Security Agency has tasked to Prism". The document continues: "The FBI and CIA then can request a copy of Prism collection of any selector…" As a result, the author notes: "these 2 activities underscore the point that Prism is a team sport!""
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 11, 2013 18:58:14 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 11, 2013 18:52:41 GMT -6
Below are some links to short clips on the Obama Deception Youtube Link
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 10, 2013 22:27:41 GMT -6
I was the victim of an NSL myself. It was fraudulently used in a case filed against me that had nothing to do with terrorism.
As a 10th generation American citizen of exclusively European descent, who has never been out of the country, there simply was no justification for use of an NSL for any reason, especially in a case confined to medical practice.
And yet, it was used and the evidence was presented in court at trial.
This is the real danger behind these secret, un-substantiated, un-approved National Security Letters.
They can be used for any reason whatsover. They essentially function as a complete repeal of the 4th Amendment.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 10, 2013 21:57:07 GMT -6
I should have mentioned that I can verify the Army's block on Guardian access, since I work for the Army and I have witnessed the access block 1st-hand.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 10, 2013 17:13:30 GMT -6
from the Guardian.co.uk Snowden: I never gave any information to Chinese or Russian governmentsAs a new poll shows widespread American approval for him, the NSA whistleblower vehemently denies media claims Wed, July 10, 2013 by Glenn Greenwald "NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, in an interview on Saturday and then again Tuesday afternoon, vehemently denied media claims that he gave classified information to the governments of China or Russia. He also denied assertions that one or both governments had succeeded in "draining the contents of his laptops". "I never gave any information to either government, and they never took anything from my laptops," he said. The extraordinary claim that China had drained the contents of Snowden's laptops first appeared in the New York Times in a June 24 article. The paper published the claim with no evidence and without any attribution to any identified sources. In lieu of any evidence, the NYT circulated this obviously significant assertion by quoting what it called "two Western intelligence experts" who "worked for major government spy agencies". Those "experts" were not identified. The article then stated that these experts "said they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong" (emphasis added). So that's how this "China-drained-his-laptops" claim was created: by the New York Times citing two anonymous sources saying they "believed" this happened. From there, it predictably spread everywhere as truth. Shortly thereafter, the New Yorker – under the headline "Why China Let Snowden Go" - told its readers: "His usefulness was almost exhausted. Intelligence experts cited by the Times believed that the Chinese government 'had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel.'" It was then repeatedly cited to demonize Snowden in venues such as DC gossip sheets, right-wing outlets, and diaries at Democratic Party sites. But there was never any evidence that this was true. The NYT decided to publish this incendiary claim in a news article based purely on rank speculation from two anonymous sources. Obviously, Snowden's denial is not dispositive and shouldn't be treated as such. But it is the only actual evidence on this question thus far. Americans, to a remarkable extent, seem able and willing to disregard these demonization campaigns. A new Quinnipiac poll released today show that Americans, by a large margin, have positive views of Snowden's actions despite all the demonization: "55% said Snowden was a whistle-blower in leaking details about top-secret US programs that collect telephone and Internet data . . . . 34% said he's a traitor." And: "the view of Snowden as a whistle-blower rather than traitor predominated among almost every group of respondents broken down by party, gender, income, education and age." Moreover, "the poll also showed that by 45% to 40%, respondents said the government goes too far in restricting civil liberties as part of the war on terrorism. That was a reversal from January 2010, when in a similar survey 63% said anti-terrorism activities didn't go far enough to protect the US from attacks, compared with 25% who disagreed." The polling firm's analyst, Peter Brown, provided some fascinating insight about these findings: "The massive swing in public opinion about civil liberties and governmental anti-terrorism efforts, and the public view that Edward Snowden is more whistle-blower than traitor, are the public reaction and apparent shock at the extent to which the government has gone in trying to prevent future terrorist incidents . . . .The verdict that Snowden is not a traitor goes against almost the unified view of the nation's political establishment " As usual, the US government, its establishment press, and both political parties have been almost completely united in its views and objectives in this episode. The American people, however, seem to have reached a much different conclusion than the one prepared for and fed to them. Latin America fallout As some US journalists assert that no new NSA stories have been published for some time, the controversy over the US spying apparatus in the actual world continues to intensify. Following the anger in Europe, revelations of NSA spying on millions of Brazilians have dominated the news cycle and political class of that country for days now, with formal criminal and Congressional investigations already under way. Meanwhile, along with O Globo journalists Roberto Kaz and Jose Casado, I published another article in that newspaper on Monday detailing that the NSA's bulk collection of millions of emails and telephone calls extends to most of Latin America. The reaction throughout that continent is the same as we've seen in Europe and Brazil specifically: see this Reuters article entitled "Latin American nations fuming over NSA spying allegations" for the details. I realize that some US journalists see the world as beginning and ending with American borders, but – as these events demonstrate – we have actually been continuing to publish extremely significant NSA stories that are prompting all sorts of debate, investigation and reform around the world."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 10, 2013 11:53:21 GMT -6
Pumping credit into an economy to promote capital investment in production is pointless when there is not enough demand for that production.
This is an amazingly simple concept--that the elite either cannot comprehend, or more likely don't want to accept.
All that happens when investors have capital, in excess of demand for productive investment, is the investment in, and subsequent hypervaluation of non-productive fixed assets (think Housing).
All that the Bernanke monetary expansion has done is foster even more non-productive investment, while diminishing the necessary production demand by monetary expansion and reducing (or limiting) the buying power of consumers who are not recipients of the Fed's monetary largesse.
Claiming there's been no inflation is a false canard. If the buying power of American consumers were to increase via "deflation", with a resultant increase in the buying power of current dollars, it would INCREASE demand, and increase demand for investment of already overabundant capital.
The buying power of consumers needs to be increased, not the investment power of rich investors.
They already have more than enough capital to invest. But there simply isn't any demand for investment due to lack of demand for the products that would be produced.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 9, 2013 21:38:59 GMT -6
Homes need to removed from consideration as an acceptable investment.
Homes are fixed assets that create 0 additional wealth.
Our Government's policy here is simply to protect American home speculators from the financial losses they so richly deserve, by artificially boosting demand for US homes.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 9, 2013 21:32:48 GMT -6
The whole concept is an insurance scam--much like life insurance and health insurance
The insurance company gets all of its money up front, and then fights like hell not to pay any of it out.
They should throw the entire board of directors and management in jail for deliberately deceptive advertising.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 9, 2013 21:26:56 GMT -6
from the New York Times Nation Will Gain by Discussing Surveillance, Expert Tells Privacy Boardwww.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/us/nation-will-gain-by-discussing-surveillance-expert-tells-privacy-board.htmlJuly 9, 2013 by Charles Savage "A retired federal judge, who formerly served on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, on Tuesday praised the growing public discussion about government surveillance fostered by the leaks of classified information by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whom the Obama administration has charged with espionage and who remains a fugitive. “The brouhaha after the Snowden leaks and this meeting indeed establishes what I think is true — that we need to have a more wide-open debate about this in our society, and thankfully we’re beginning to have the debate and this meeting is part of it,” said James Robertson, formerly of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. He made his remarks during an all-day “workshop” by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent agency that is trying to scrutinize surveillance in light of Mr. Snowden’s revelations. The workshop doubled as something of a coming out for the full 5-member privacy board, whose creation was recommended by the Sept. 11 commission. Although some of its members held a public organizational meeting last year, the Senate did not confirm its full-time chairman, David Medine, until May, shortly before Mr. Snowden’s revelations began spilling out. The board has an annual budget of $800,000 and by law has access to classified information. It plans eventually to issue a report and recommendations about whether the surveillance programs properly balance security and privacy, along with recommendations. On Tuesday, its members questioned specialists about the legal, technological and policy implications of government surveillance. The discussions focused on two areas. The first was the revelation that the N.S.A. is keeping a huge database of domestic communications “metadata” — logs of all phone calls Americans have dialed or received. The other was the new details about how the N.S.A. is carrying out authority Congress granted it in 2008 to collect the contents of phone calls and e-mails without any individualized court orders so long as the target is believed to be a noncitizen abroad. In one panel, 2 former Bush administration Justice Department officials who helped develop the current legal basis for the activities — Steven G. Bradbury, who led the Office of Legal Counsel in President George W. Bush’s second term, and Kenneth L. Wainstein, who led its National Security Division — defended the programs as both lawful and appropriate. Their view was largely echoed on a later panel by James A. Baker, a former career Justice Department official who represented the government before the surveillance court.... Still, Mr. Baker also appeared to question the need for the 2008 law, saying that in his view the previous version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — which required individual court orders for all surveillance conducted on American soil, even if the target was overseas — was adequate for wartime. Other panelists, including Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union and Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology, criticized the programs. Mr. Nojeim said the domestic call log program in particular was “unlawful” and should be discontinued. The surveillance court has ruled that the domestic call log program is legally authorized by a provision of the Patriot Act that allows the government to obtain business records deemed “relevant” to an investigation. Several panelists portrayed the court’s theory as dubious, citing comments by lawmakers who said they did not intend to authorize such bulk collection in the Patriot Act.... At one point, Mr. Bradbury, who in the Bush administration signed secret legal memorandums declaring that the suffocation procedure known as waterboarding was a lawful interrogation technique, criticized as “not accurate” Mr. Jaffer’s description of the call log program as “surveillance,” saying that term means content collection, not metadata collection. But Mr. Jaffer, seated next to Mr. Bradbury, replied, “I think people can decide for themselves whether it’s surveillance or not, in the same way they can describe for themselves whether it’s torture or not.” Several panelists argued that the government should be more open about the legal interpretations it is developing about surveillance law so that there could be greater democratic accountability — and public trust — in the process. Mr. Baker, for example, suggested that Congress could change the rules so that in the future, when the national security court issues a lengthy ruling interpreting surveillance law, it would be required to produce an unclassified summary of the legal issues for public release. Judge Robertson, who served on the national security court that oversees government surveillance from 2002 until resigning in December 2005, also criticized the surveillance court system because only the government generally submits filings to it, so judges do not benefit from adversarial debate. He suggested creating an advocate with security clearance who would argue against government filings. And Michael Davidson, a former counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that the call log program must be reapproved by the surveillance court every 90 days and the overseas targeting program once a year. Now that their existence is known, he argued, the board should push to allow outside groups to submit briefs to the surveillance court the next time they come up for renewal."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 9, 2013 19:43:50 GMT -6
from the New York Times: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.Public completely unaware of new secret rulings. www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0July 6, 2013 by Eric Lichtblau "In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say. The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions. The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said. Last month, a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, leaked a classified order from the FISA court, which authorized the collection of all phone-tracing data from Verizon business customers. But the court’s still-secret decisions go far beyond any single surveillance order, the officials said. “We’ve seen a growing body of law from the court,” a former intelligence official said. “What you have is a common law that develops where the court is issuing orders involving particular types of surveillance, particular types of targets.” In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the “special needs” doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said. The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government’s need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.’s collection and examination of Americans’ communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said. That legal interpretation is significant, several outside legal experts said, because it uses a relatively narrow area of the law — used to justify airport screenings, for instance, or drunken-driving checkpoints — and applies it much more broadly, in secret, to the wholesale collection of communications in pursuit of terrorism suspects. “It seems like a legal stretch,” William C. Banks, a national security law expert at Syracuse University, said in response to a description of the decision. “It’s another way of tilting the scales toward the government in its access to all this data.” While President Obama and his intelligence advisers have spoken of the surveillance programs leaked by Mr. Snowden mainly in terms of combating terrorism, the court has also interpreted the law in ways that extend into other national security concerns. In one recent case, for instance, intelligence officials were able to get access to an e-mail attachment sent within the United States because they said they were worried that the e-mail contained a schematic drawing or a diagram possibly connected to Iran’s nuclear program. In the past, that probably would have required a court warrant because the suspicious e-mail involved American communications. In this case, however, a little-noticed provision in a 2008 law, expanding the definition of “foreign intelligence” to include “weapons of mass destruction,” was used to justify access to the message. The court’s use of that language has allowed intelligence officials to get wider access to data and communications that they believe may be linked to nuclear proliferation, the officials said. They added that other secret findings had eased access to data on espionage, cyberattacks and other possible threats connected to foreign intelligence. “The definition of ‘foreign intelligence’ is very broad,” another former intelligence official said in an interview. “An espionage target, a nuclear proliferation target, that all falls within FISA, and the court has signed off on that.” The official, like a half-dozen other current and former national security officials, discussed the court’s rulings and the general trends they have established on the condition of anonymity because they are classified. Judges on the FISA court refused to comment on the scope and volume of their decisions. Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court. Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure, nondescript room in the federal courthouse in Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Most hail from districts outside the capital and come in rotating shifts to hear surveillance applications; a single judge signs most surveillance orders, which totaled nearly 1,800 last year. None of the requests from the intelligence agencies was denied, according to the court. Beyond broader legal rulings, the judges have had to resolve questions about newer types of technology, like video conferencing, and how and when the government can get access to them, the officials said. The judges have also had to intervene repeatedly when private Internet and phone companies, which provide much of the data to the N.S.A., have raised concerns that the government is overreaching in its demands for records or when the government itself reports that it has inadvertently collected more data than was authorized, the officials said. In such cases, the court has repeatedly ordered the N.S.A. to destroy the Internet or phone data that was improperly collected, the officials said. The officials said one central concept connects a number of the court’s opinions. The judges have concluded that the mere collection of enormous volumes of “metadata” — facts like the time of phone calls and the numbers dialed, but not the content of conversations — does not violate the Fourth Amendment, as long as the government establishes a valid reason under national security regulations before taking the next step of actually examining the contents of an American’s communications. This concept is rooted partly in the “special needs” provision the court has embraced. “The basic idea is that it’s O.K. to create this huge pond of data,” a third official said, “but you have to establish a reason to stick your pole in the water and start fishing.” Under the new procedures passed by Congress in 2008 in the FISA Amendments Act, even the collection of metadata must be considered “relevant” to a terrorism investigation or other intelligence activities. The court has indicated that while individual pieces of data may not appear “relevant” to a terrorism investigation, the total picture that the bits of data create may in fact be relevant, according to the officials with knowledge of the decisions. Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, said he was troubled by the idea that the court is creating a significant body of law without hearing from anyone outside the government, forgoing the adversarial system that is a staple of the American justice system. “That whole notion is missing in this process,” he said. The FISA judges have bristled at criticism that they are a rubber stamp for the government, occasionally speaking out to say they apply rigor in their scrutiny of government requests. Most of the surveillance operations involve the N.S.A., an eavesdropping behemoth that has listening posts around the world. Its role in gathering intelligence within the United States has grown enormously since the Sept. 11 attacks. Soon after, President George W. Bush, under a secret wiretapping program that circumvented the FISA court, authorized the N.S.A. to collect metadata and in some cases listen in on foreign calls to or from the United States. After a heated debate, the essential elements of the Bush program were put into law by Congress in 2007, but with greater involvement by the FISA court. Even before the leaks by Mr. Snowden, members of Congress and civil liberties advocates had been pressing for declassifying and publicly releasing court decisions, perhaps in summary form. Reggie B. Walton, the FISA court’s presiding judge, wrote in March that he recognized the “potential benefit of better informing the public” about the court’s decisions. But, he said, there are “serious obstacles” to doing so because of the potential for misunderstanding caused by omitting classified details."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 9, 2013 19:32:26 GMT -6
from Guardian.co.uk US must fix secret Fisa courts, says top judge who granted surveillance ordersJames Robertson breaks ranks and says he was shocked to hear of changes to allow broader authorisation of NSA programs July 9, 2013 by Dan Roberts "A former federal judge who granted government surveillance requests has broken ranks to criticise the system of secret courts as unfit for purpose in the wake of recent revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. James Robertson, who retired from the District of Columbia circuit in 2010, was one of a select group of judges who presided over the so-called Fisa courts, set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are intended to provide legal oversight and protect against unnecessary privacy intrusions. But he says he was shocked to hear of recent changes to allow more sweeping authorisations of programmes such as the gathering of US phone records, and called for a reform of the system to allow counter-arguments to be heard. Speaking as a witness during the first public hearings into the Snowden revelations, Judge Robertson said that without an adversarial debate the courts should not be expected to create a secret body of law that authorised such broad surveillance programmes. "A judge has to hear both sides of a case before deciding," he told members of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) recently appointed by President Obama. "What Fisa does is not adjudication, but approval. This works just fine when it deals with individual applications for warrants, but the 2008 amendment has turned the Fisa court into administrative agency making rules for others to follow." "It is not the bailiwick of judges to make policy," he added. The comments, during the morning session of a PCLOB public workshop held in a Washington hotel, are the most serious criticism yet from a recently serving Fisa judge. Until now, Fisa judges have mainly spoken anonymously to defend the court process. Robertson says he was generally impressed with how "careful, fastidious and scrupulous" the court process had been, but felt the so-called ex parte system (where only the government is able to make its case to the judge) needed urgent reform. "This process needs an adversary. If it's not the ACLU or Amnesty, perhaps the PCLOB can be that adversary." Members of the oversight board, which has previously been criticised by Congress as an ineffective watchdog, shook their heads and rolled their eyes when this suggestion was made. Later on Tuesday afternoon, the workshop also heard from a number of other experts who called for the decisions of the Fisa courts to be made public. James Baker, a Department of Justice lawyer who has represented the government in surveillance requests before the Fisa court, said that an unclassified summary of its findings could be produced fairly easily in future cases, although it would be harder do this retrospectively. He said this was preferable to trying to redact existing orders. "Not everything that the Fisa court does is reflected in a [written] opinion," he said. "If the court writes the summary, it can write what it wants to say." A panel of technical experts also gave evidence that legal attempts to separate US citizens from foreign surveillance targets online were increasingly flawed, because of the difficulty of identifying geographic locations in an era of cloud computing and virtual private networks. Steven Bellovin, a computer expert at Columbia University, revealed that the NSA had even patented a system of locating addresses by triangulating round-trip times for data packets to travel between known internet nodes, but said such technology still often failed to separate foreign and domestic internet traffic. The quartet who gave evidence argued that technological solutions to protecting privacy were necessarily limited and less preferable than introducing better policy checks and balances.""
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 8, 2013 17:00:51 GMT -6
from pressthink.org pressthink.org/2013/07/the-snowden-effect-definition-and-examples/The Snowden Effect: definition and examplesJul 5, 2013 "It’s about what he set in motion by taking the action he did. The Snowden effect, a definition: Direct and indirect gains in public knowledge from the cascade of events and further reporting that followed Edward Snowden’s leaks of classified information about the surveillance state in the U.S. Meaning: there’s what Snowden himself revealed by releasing secrets and talking to the press. But beyond this, there is what he set in motion by taking that action. Congress and other governments begin talking in public about things they had previously kept hidden. Companies have to explain some of their dealings with the state. Journalists who were not a party to the transaction with Snowden start digging and adding background. Debates spring to life that had been necessary but missing before the leaks. The result is that we know much more about the surveillance state than we did before. Some of the opacity around it lifts. This is the Snowden effect. It is good for public knowledge. And public knowledge is supposed to be what a free press and open debate are all about. (First use of the term that I can find is by Esquire’s Charles Pierce here.) Notes, links and examples: (updated several times after July 5) 1. As reported on July 4: Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France. (Le Monde.) So the Snowden effect is international. Canada, for example. 2. On July 3, Reuters reported on the “long history of close cooperation between technology companies and the intelligence community.” Former U.S. officials and intelligence sources say the collaboration between the tech industry and spy agencies is both broader and deeper than most people realize, dating back to the formative years of Silicon Valley itself. A similar story ran in the New York Times on June 19. It told of “the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the [NSA] and the degree to which they are now in the same business.” 3. In a superb story by 4 reporters on June 15, the Associated Press expanded the frame: The revelation of Prism this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe. But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort. 4. Expanding the frame in a different way, the McClatchy Washington bureau reported on the Obama Administration’s extremely aggressive crackdown on leaks: (June 20) President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide. “This has gotten scant public attention; let’s remedy that.” So goes the Snowden effect. 5. On June 15 Bloomberg reported that “thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence.” These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden, a computer technician who did work for the National Security Agency. 6. Two days ago, a report in the New York Times explained how Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall are “trying to force intelligence officials to provide answers for the public record” about matters already familiar to them from secret briefings given to Congress. The key phrase is “answers for the public record.” That is the core of the Snowden effect. 7. On June 25, the National Security Agency had to take down two fact sheets it had posted online after Wyden and Udall complained that they contained misinformation. The documents were themselves an example of the Snowden effect, as Politico reported: The documents, still available here, were published in the wake of revelations about the extent of the NSA’s surveillance programs. They sought to highlight the safeguards the NSA uses to make sure American communications aren’t caught up in its surveillance — or if they are, what the NSA does to remove identifying information about U.S. citizens. In other words, the NSA – often called the most secretive agency in the government – felt it had to explain itself. This is good for public knowledge. Two U.S. Senators then fact checked the NSA, which is even better. 8. Jack Shafer of Reuters predicted the Snowden effect in his June 8 column. “This will now fuel new cycles of reporting, leaks and scoops — and another, and another — as new sources are cultivated and reportorial scraps gathering mold in journalists’ notebooks gain new relevance and help break stories.” He was right. 9. Did you know that the United States Postal Service “computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year?” I did not. The New York Times reported on it July 3rd. As Ethan Zuckerman notes, the Smoking Gun website had the story on June 7 but few saw it. The Snowden effect works like that. It widens the circle of people who know, even if the knowledge had been available before. 10. On the front page of the New York Times, Scott Shane reported on a kind a “parallel Supreme Court,” FISA, making new and consequential law in secret. This brought a discussion that had taken place on legal blogs to a much wider public. The Wall Street Journal followed up the next day with more details. A final note: The Snowden effect is far more important than the Snowdon saga, meaning: the story of what happens to him as the United States pursues his capture and arrest, plus what comes out about his background and motivations. But I would not call his personal story a “distraction” from the real story. That’s not right. Who he is, what kind of access he had, why he did what he did, and even the arguments about whether he’s a disloyal creep or a profile in courage are inescapably part of the larger story and the public debate it has triggered. (Read Matt Cooper of National Journal on this issue.) You can’t wish for more public attention to the surveillance state and then scoff at one of the means by which people come to the larger story, which is his story. But I repeat what I said: the Snowden effect is ultimately more important than the Snowdon saga. #
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 8, 2013 11:56:17 GMT -6
Great post and right on the money.
Far more jobs are temporary now than ever before.
Even my own job as a physician is temporary. The work contract I'm on will expire within a year. At that time, I'll be looking for another--probably temporary job.
Believe it or not, more and more physicians are being relegated to this role--essentially hired guns for organizations that can't keep, or don't want to keep permanent physicians.
As a corollary, more temporary workers means less housing demand, since moving to a new geographic location is now part of many workers' career path.
No reason to buy a home if you'll be living in another state within a year.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 7, 2013 22:42:01 GMT -6
from Yahoo News / Associated Press: Cuba's Raul Castro backs asylum offers for Snowdennews.yahoo.com/cubas-raul-castro-backs-asylum-offers-snowden-221244238.htmlSun, July 7, 2013 by Peter Orsi "Raul Castro stood shoulder-to-shoulder Sunday with Latin American countries willing to take in NSA leaker Edward Snowden, but made no reference to whether Cuba itself would offer him refuge or safe passage. Venezuela and Bolivia both made asylum offers to Snowden over the weekend, and Nicaragua has said it is also considering his request. "We support the sovereign right of .... Venezuela and all states in the region to grant asylum to those persecuted for their ideals or their struggles for democratic rights," Castro said in a speech to Cuba's national assembly. The foreign media was not given access to the session, but the speech was broadcast on state-run television several hours after it took place. Snowden has been out of sight in the transit area of Moscow's main airport since he suddenly appeared there on a plane from Hong Kong two weeks ago. .... His simplest route to Latin America would be on one of 5 direct flights that Russian carrier Aeroflot operates to Havana each week. However those flights normally pass through U.S. airspace, raising the possibility they could be intercepted. It is also not clear, despite Castro's speech, whether Cuba wants to risk torpedoing mildly improved relations with the United States by letting Snowden transit through the island. Snowden had been booked on an Aeroflot flight 2 weeks ago, but did not board the plane. Castro also voiced support for Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose presidential plane was diverted to Austria recently after taking off from Moscow. Morales has accused the United States of pressuring European governments to deny his plane permission to enter their airspace amid suspicions that Snowden might have been onboard. ." Castro said the case "shows that we live in a world in which the powerful think they can violate international law, endanger the sovereignty of states and trample the rights of citizens." In his speech, the 82-year-old Cuban leader said his country was aware of the kind of secretive NSA programs Snowden revealed. He said that as a longtime enemy of Washington, the Caribbean nation has been "one of the most harassed and spied-upon nations on the planet."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 7, 2013 22:11:38 GMT -6
from Paul Craig Roberts.org Lawlessness Is The New NormalJuly 5, 2013 by Paul Craig Roberts "In various articles and in my latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, I have pointed out that the European sovereign debt crisis is being used to terminate the sovereignty of the countries that are members of the EU. There is no doubt that this is true, but the sovereignty of the EU member states is only nominal. Although the individual countries still retain some sovereignty from the EU government, they are all under Washington’s thumb, as demonstrated by the recent illegal and hostile action taken on Washington’s orders by France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria against the airliner carrying Bolivia’s President Evo Morales. Flying back to Bolivia from Moscow, Morales’ plane was denied overflight and refueling permission by Washington’s French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese puppets and had to land in Austria, where the presidential plane was searched for Edward Snowden. It was a power play by Washington to kidnap Snowden from Bolivia’s presidential airliner in defiance of international law and to teach upstart reformers like Morales that independence from Washington’s orders is not permitted. The European puppet states went along with this extraordinary breach of diplomacy and international law despite the fact that each of the countries is incensed that Washington is spying on their governments, diplomats, and citizens. Their thanks to Snowden, whose revelations made them aware that Washington was recording their every communication, was to help Washington capture Snowden. This tells us how much morality, honor, integrity there is left in Western civilization: Zero. Snowden informed the countries of the world that their communications have no independence or privacy from Washington’s eyes and ears. Washington’s hubris and arrogance are shocking. Yet, no country has been willing to stand up to Washington and to give Snowden asylum. Ecuador’s Correa was intimidated and slapped down by Washington and withdrew his offer to Snowden. For China and Russia, Washington’s favorite targets for human rights demonization, giving Snowden asylum would have been a propaganda triumph, but neither country wanted the confrontations that Washington’s reprisals would have caused. In short, the governments of the countries on earth want Washington’s money and good graces more than they want truth and integrity or even their independence. Washington’s sordid interventions against Snowden and Morales give the world another chance to hold Washington accountable before Washington’s hubris and arrogance force the world into a choice between accepting Washington’s hegemony and World War III. The countries, split among themselves and grasping for money and favor, are, instead, permitting Washington to establish that whatever it does is legitimate. Washington’s lawlessness is being established as the new normal. The South American governments are unlikely to stand together against Washington’s affront. A few of the countries are led by reformers who represent the people instead of the rich elites allied with Washington, but most prefer calm relations with Washington and domestic elites. South Americans assume that Washington will succeed in overthrowing the reformers as it has in the past. In Europe headlines are that “NSA surveillance threatens the EU free trade deal” and “Merkel demands explanations.” The protests are the necessary public posturing of puppets and will be regarded as such by Washington. The French government says the trade talks should be temporarily suspended “for a couple of weeks to avoid any controversy.” However, the German government says, “We want this free trade agreement and we want to start the talks now.” In other words, what Merkel describes as “unacceptable Cold War-style behavior” is acceptable as long as Germany gets the free trade agreement. The lust for Washington’s money blinds Europe to the real consequences of the free trade deal. What the deal will do is to fold Europe’s economies into Washington’s economic hegemony. The deal is designed to draw Europe away from trade with Russia, just as the Trans-Pacific Partnership is designed to draw Asian countries away from China and fold them into US-structured relationships. These deals have little to do with free trade and everything to do with US hegemony. These “free trade” deals will commit the European and Asian “partners” to support the dollar. Indeed, it is possible that the dollar will supplant the euro and Asian currencies and become the monetary unit of the “partners.” In this way Washington can institutionalize the dollar and protect it from the consequences of the printing press that is being used to boost the solvency of banks too big to fail and to finance never-ending federal budget deficits."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 7, 2013 17:35:14 GMT -6
from the Charlotte Business Journal: www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/morning-edition/2013/07/bank-of-america-routing-property.html?ana=lnkBank of America Outsourcing Property Appraisal Jobs to Indiaby Jen Wilson "Bank of America Corp. has opened a unit in India to handle the work of reviewing home-valuation reports as the Charlotte-based bank tries to rebuild its share of the U.S. mortgage market at a lower cost, Bloomberg reports. Workers in BofA’s new Bangalore, India, unit follow checklists to determine whether the appraisal paperwork — one of the biggest problems in the mortgage business, according to one independent banking consult — has been completed properly, according to the report. The move comes as BofA eliminated U.S. positions in its appraisal division, according to Bloomberg. The bank also is working its way through a lengthy and expensive legal process to settle claims tied to bad mortgages and foreclosure practices."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 7, 2013 16:23:15 GMT -6
from the Guardian.co.uk Edward Snowden tells Der Spiegel NSA is 'in bed with the Germans'Interview carried out before NSA whistleblower fled to Hong Kong appears to contradict Merkel's public surprise at snooping. Sun, July 7, 2013 "America's National Security Agency works closely with Germany and other Western states on a "no questions asked"-basis, former NSA employee Edward Snowden said in comments that undermine Chancellor Angela Merkel's indignant talk of "Cold War" tactics. "They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states," German magazine Der Spiegel quotes him as saying in an interview published on Sunday that was said to be carried out before he fled to Hong Kong in May and divulged details of extensive secret US surveillance. "Other agencies don't ask us where we got the information from and we don't ask them. That way they can protect their top politicians from the backlash in case it emerges how massively people's privacy is abused worldwide," he said. His comments about cooperation with governments overseas, which he said were led by the NSA's foreign affairs directorate, appear to contradict the German government's show of surprise at the scale of the US electronic snooping. Germany has demanded explanations for Snowden's allegations of large-scale spying by the NSA, and by Britain via a programme codenamed 'Tempora', on their allies including Germany and other European Union states, as well as EU institutions and embassies. Chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out during President Barack Obama's recent visit that Germany had avoided terrorist attacks thanks to information from allies. But she says there must be limits to the intrusion on privacy and wants this discussed next week in parallel with the start of EU-US free trade talks. Berlin has alluded repeatedly to "Cold War" tactics – Merkel used the term again on Saturday at a political rally – and has said spying on friends is unacceptable. Her spokesman has said a transatlantic trade deal requires a level of "mutual trust". The domestic intelligence chief has said he knew nothing of such widespread surveillance by the NSA. But German opposition parties – with an eye on September's federal election – insist that somebody in Merkel's office, where the German intelligence agencies are coordinated, must have known what was going on. The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Der Spiegel report, which follows a report last week in French daily Le Monde saying France also had an extensive surveillance programme. Der Spiegel has reported that on an average day, the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million internet data sets, rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days. Germans are particularly sensitive about eavesdropping because of the intrusive surveillance in the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and during the Nazi era. Snowden, a US citizen, fled in May a few weeks before the details he provided about the NSA were published and is believed to have been holed up in Moscow airport since June 23. Bolivia offered asylum on Saturday to Snowden, joining leftist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of the secret US spy programs. Der Spiegel said the interview was conducted while Snowden was living in Hawaii, via encrypted emails with US documentary maker Laura Poitras and hacker Jacob Appelbaum. Snowden told them that America's closest allies sometimes went even further than the NSA in their zeal for gathering data. The Tempora programme of Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency is known in the intelligence world as a "full take". "It sucks up all information, no matter where it comes from and which laws are broken," Snowden said. "If you send a data packet and goes through Britain, we'll get it. If you download anything, and the server is in Britain, we'll get it." If the NSA is ordered to target an individual, it virtually take over that person's data "so the target's computer no longer belongs to him, it more or less belongs to the U.S. government"."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 7, 2013 15:58:29 GMT -6
from firedoglake.com: dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/07/02/cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakous-open-letter-to-edward-snowden/Whistleblower John Kiriakou’s Open Letter to Edward SnowdenJuly 2, 2013 By Kevin Gosztola "Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is serving a 30-month sentence in prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has written another letter. It expresses support for former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who has exposed secret US government surveillance programs and policies, and provided a glimpse of the ever-expanding massive surveillance apparatus the government has built. Kiriakou was the 1st member of the CIA to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under the administration of President George W. Bush. He was convicted in October of last year of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) when he provided the name of an officer involved in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program to a reporter and sentenced in January of this year. He reported to prison on February 28 (which was also the day that Pfc. Bradley Manning pled guilty to some offenses and read a statement in military court at Fort Meade). This is the 2nd letter to be published by Firedoglake since Kiriakou went to prison. He sent it to his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, of the Government Accountability Project. In the letter, Kiriakou offers advice to Snowden from his experience, suggesting that he “find the best national security attorneys money can buy.” He suggests establishing a website for supporters to follow his case, get his side of the story and make donations to support his defense. Also, he declares, “You’re going to need the support of prominent Americans and groups who can explain to the public why what you did is so important.” He recommends reaching out to the American Civil Liberties Union, Government Accountability Project and other organizations like them who value individual freedoms and can advise him. His “most important advice,” as he writes, is to “not, under any circumstances, cooperate with the FBI.” Based off experience, he adds, “FBI agents will lie, trick and deceive you. They will twist your words and play on your patriotism to entrap you.” Kiriakou had spent his adult life working with the FBI. They asked him to come in for questioning in January 2012. He was willing to do anything to help. An hour into the interview, he realized he was the one under investigation. In fact, a search warrant was being executed on his house and, from that point forward right up until sentencing, the FBI followed him wherever he went tracking his every move, even when he was with his family. According to Kiriakou, the FBI also tried to set him up. As he told Firedoglake before he was sentenced to prison: In the summer of 2010, a foreign intelligence officer offered me cash in exchange for classified information. I turned down the pitch and I immediately reported it to the FBI. So, the FBI asked me to take the guy out to lunch and to ask him what information he wanted and how much information he was willing to give me for it. They were going to put two agents at a nearby table. They ended up canceling the two agents but they asked me to go ahead with the lunch so I did. After the lunch, I wrote a long memo to the FBI — and I did this 4 or 5 times. It turns out – and we only learned this 3 or 4 weeks ago – there never was a foreign intelligence officer. It was an FBI agent pretending to be an intelligence officer and they were trying to set me up on an Espionage Act charge but I repeatedly reported the contact so I foiled them in their effort to set me up. Snowden has mentioned Kiriakou. He considers him an example of “how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures.” He was aware of his case before he blew the whistle and it was a preview of what he needed to prepare for after his act of conscience. In a previous letter, Kiriakou detailed his life in prison, including an incident in which prison officials attempted setup a confrontation between Kiriakou and a Muslim prisoner, telling Kiriakou he was the uncle of the Times Square bomber, when in reality the imam was in prison for refusing to testify in the Lackawanna Six case. Prison officials also lied to the Muslim prisoner, telling him that Kiriakou had called Washington after they met and had been ordered to kill him. Firedoglake supports the right of prisoners like Kiriakou to exercise their First Amendment rights from within the walls of prison. It is unknown what retaliation, if any, Kiriakou has experienced as a result of his decision to begin writing “Letters from Loretto.” But, as an organization, we stand ready to support him if the Bureau of Prisons is subjecting him to mistreatment because he has chosen to be public about what he is experiencing in prison. Below is the second “Letter from Loretto” from Kiriakou: Transcript: “Letter From Loretto” An Open Letter to Edward Snowden Dear Ed: Thank you for your revelations of government wrong-doing over the past week. You have done the country a great public service. I know that it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders right now, but as Americans begin to realize that we are devolving into a police state, with the loss of civil liberties that entails, they will see your actions for what they are: heroic. Remember the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” That is what’s happening to our country now. Your whistleblowing will help to save us. I wanted to offer you the benefit of my own whistleblowing experience and aftermath so that you don’t make the same mistakes that I made. 1st, find the best national security attorneys money can buy. I was blessed to be represented by legal titans and, although I was forced to take a plea in the end, the shortness of my sentence is a testament to their expertise. 2nd, establish a website so that your supporters can follow your case, get your side of the story, and most importantly, make donations to support your defense. 3rd, you’re going to need the support of prominent Americans and groups who can explain to the public why what you did is so important. Although most members of Congress are mindless lemmings following our national security leadership over a cliff, there are several clear thinkers on The Hill who could be important sources of support. Cultivate them. Reach out to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Government Accountability Project and others like them who value our individual freedoms and who can advise you. Finally, and this is the most important advice that I can offer, DO NOT, under any circumstances, cooperate with the FBI. FBI agents will lie, trick, and deceive you. They will twist your words and play on your patriotism to entrap you. They will pretend to be people they are not – supporters, well-wishers, and friends – all the while wearing wires to record your out-of-context statements to use against you. The FBI is the enemy; it’s a part of the problem, not the solution. I wish you the very best of luck. I hope you can get to Iceland quickly and safely. There you will find a people and a government who care about the freedoms that we hold dear and for which our forefathers and veterans fought and died. Sincerely, John Kiriakou" – John loves receiving your letters and responds to each one he gets. You may write to him at: John Kiriakou, 79637-083 PO Box 1000 FCI Loretto Loretto, PA 15940
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