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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 7, 2013 6:39:05 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 6, 2013 14:03:22 GMT -6
from the Guardian.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/28/us-army-blocks-guardian-website-accessUS army blocks access to Guardian website to preserve 'network hygiene'Military admits to filtering reports and content relating to government surveillance programs for thousands of personnel
June 28, 2013 by Spencer Ackerman and Dan Roberts "The US army has admitted to blocking access to parts of the Guardian website for thousands of defence personnel across the country. A spokesman said the military was filtering out reports and content relating to government surveillance programs to preserve "network hygiene" and prevent any classified material appearing on unclassified parts of its computer systems. The confirmation follows reports in the Monterey Herald that staff at the Presidio military base south of San Francisco had complained of not being able to access the Guardian's UK site at all, and had only partial access to the US site, following publication of leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Pentagon insisted the Department of Defense was not seeking to block the whole website, merely taking steps to restrict access to certain content. But a spokesman for the Army's Network Enterprise Technology Command (Netcom) in Arizona confirmed that this was a widespread policy, likely to be affecting hundreds of defence facilities. "In response to your question about access to the guardian.co.uk website, the army is filtering some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks," said Gordon Van Vleet, a Netcom public affairs officer. "The Department of Defense routinely takes preventative 'network hygiene' measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information onto DoD unclassified networks." The army stressed its actions were automatic and would not affect computers outside military facilities. "The department does not determine what sites its personnel can choose to visit while on a DoD system, but instead relies on automated filters that restrict access based on content concerns or malware threats," said Van Vleet. "The DoD is also not going to block websites from the American public in general, and to do so would violate our highest-held principle of upholding and defending the constitution and respecting civil liberties and privacy." Similar measures were taken by the army after the Guardian and other newspapers published leaked State Department cables obtained via WikiLeaks. "We make every effort to balance the need to preserve information access with operational security, however there are strict policies and directives in place regarding protecting and handling classified information," added the Netcom spokesman. "Until declassified by appropriate officials, classified information – including material released through an unauthorized disclosure – must be treated accordingly by DoD personnel. If a public website displays classified information, then filtering may be used to preserve 'network hygiene' for DoD unclassified networks." A Defense Department spokesman at the Pentagon added: "The Guardian website is NOT being blocked by DoD. The Department of Defense routinely takes preventative measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information onto DoD unclassified networks.""
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 6, 2013 13:38:41 GMT -6
from the Guardian.co.uk Venezuela, Nicaragua, & Bolivia offer Snowden asylumPresident Maduro (Venezuela) offers to protect NSA whistleblower 'from persecution by the empire' and rejects US extradition request Sat, July 6, 2013 by Johnathan Watts "Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who is believed to have spent the past 2 weeks at a Moscow airport evading US attempts to extradite him. The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daneil Ortega, made the asylum offers on Friday, shortly after they and other Latin American leaders met to denounce the diversion of a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, due to suspicions that Snowden might have been on board. Shortly after, Morales also said Bolivia would grant asylum to Snowden, if asked. On Saturday, Venezuela's offer was given a warm reception by an influential member of the Russian parliament. In a tweet, Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Duma foreign affairs committee, said: "Asylum for Snowden in Venezuela would be the best solution." The invitations from South America came as Snowden sent out new requests for asylum to 6 countries, in addition to the 20 he has already contacted, according to WikiLeaks, which claims to be in regular contact with the former National Security Agency contractor. Most of the countries have refused or given technical reasons why an application is not valid, but several Latin American leaders have rallied together with expressions of solidarity and welcome. "As head of state of the Bolivarian republic of Venezuela, I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young Snowden … to protect this young man from persecution by the empire," said Maduro who, along with his predecessor Hugo Chávez, often refers to the US as "the empire". The previous day, Maduro told the Telesur TV channel that Venezuela had received an extradition request from the US, which he had already rejected. A copy of the request, seen by the Guardian, notes that Snowden "unlawfully released classified information and documents to international media outlets" and names the Guardian and the Washington Post. Dated 3 July and sent in English and Spanish, it says: "The United States seeks Snowden's provisional arrest should Snowden seek to travel to or transit through Venezuela. Snowden is a flight risk because of the substantial charges he is facing and his current and active attempts to remain a fugitive." It adds that he is charged with unauthorised disclosure of national defence information, unauthorised disclosure of classified communication intelligence and theft of government property. Each of these three charges carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. Describing Snowden as "a fugitive who is currently in Russia", it urges Venezuela to keep him in custody if arrested and to seize all items in his possession for later delivery to the US. It provides a photograph and two alternative passport numbers – one revoked, and one reported lost or stolen. Maduro said he did not accept the grounds for the charges. "He has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the US spying on the whole world," Maduro said in his latest speech. "Who is the guilty one? A young man … who denounces war plans, or the US government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate president, Bashar al-Assad?" The Bolivian government, which has said it would listen sympathetically to an aslyum request from Snowden, said it too had turned down a pre-emptive US extradition request. Ortega said Nicaragua had received an asylum request from Snowden and the president gave a guarded acceptance. "We are an open country, respectful of the right of asylum, and it's clear that if circumstances permit, we would gladly receive Snowden and give him asylum in Nicaragua," Ortega told a gathering in Managua. So far, the countries that have been most vocal in offering support are close allies of Venezuela. Ecuador has also expressed support for Snowden, though the government there has yet to decide whether it would grant aslyum. It is already providing refuge for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for about a year. Many in Latin America were furious when the Bolivian president's flight from Russia was denied airspace by European countries, forcing it to land in Vienna, where Morales had to spend more than half a day waiting to get clearance to continue his journey. Morales said the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived at the airport with two embassy personnel and asked to search the plane. He said he refused. The Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, acknowledged on Friday that the decision to block Morales plane was based on a tip that Snowden was on board. "They told us that the information was clear, that he was inside," he told Spanish TV, without clarifying who the tip was from. It is assumed the US was behind the diversion, though US officials have said only that they were in contact with the countries on the plane's route. France has apologised to Bolivia. Morales said when he finally arrived in La Paz: "It is an open provocation to the continent, not only to the president; they use the agent of North American imperialism to scare us and intimidate us." At a hastily called meeting of the Unasur regional bloc, many governments condemned the action against Morales plane. "We are not colonies any more," Uruguay's president, José Mujica, said. "We deserve respect, and when one of our governments is insulted we feel the insult throughout Latin America." The Argentinean president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, was also present, along with a senior representative of President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. Regional support may make it easier for the country offering asylum to resist US pressure for extradition. But whether Snowden can make it to South America remains uncertain, as are his current circumstances. He has not been seen or heard in public since he flew to Russia from Hong Kong. WikiLeaks says it is in touch with him and that he has widened his search for aslyum by adding six new countries. In a tweet, the group said it would not reveal the names of the nations "due to attempted US interference"."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 6, 2013 13:24:16 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 6, 2013 13:15:12 GMT -6
from the Guardian.uk.co Snowden saw what I saw: surveillance criminally subverting the constitutionSo we refused to be part of the NSA's dark blanket. That is why whistleblowers pay the price for being the backstop of democracy June 12, 2013 by Thomas Drake "What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience. Like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution. The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA's lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said: "The White House has approved the program; it's all legal. NSA is the executive agent." It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. "You don't understand," I was told. "We just need the data." In the first week of October 2001, President Bush had signed an extraordinary order authorizing blanket dragnet electronic surveillance: Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies. It is technically true that the order applies only to meta-data. The problem is that in the digital space, metadata becomes the index for content. And content is gold for determining intent. This executive fiat of 2001 violated not just the fourth amendment, but also Fisa rules at the time, which made it a felony – carrying a penalty of $10,000 and five years in prison for each and every instance. The supposed oversight, combined with enabling legislation – the Fisa court, the congressional committees – is all a kabuki dance, predicated on the national security claim that we need to find a threat. The reality is, they just want it all, period. So I was there at the very nascent stages, when the government – wilfully and in deepest secrecy – subverted the constitution. All you need to know about so-called oversight is that the NSA was already in violation of the Patriot Act by the time it was signed into law. When I was in the US air force, flying an RC-135 in the latter years of the cold war, I was a German-Russian crypto-linguist. We called ourselves the "vacuum-cleaner of the sky" because our capability to gather information was enormous at the time. But it was always outward-facing; we could not collect on US targets because that was against the law. To the US government today, however, we are all foreigners. I became an expert on East Germany, which was then the ultimate surveillance state. Their secret police were monstrously efficient: they had a huge paper-based system that held information on virtually everyone in the country – a population of about 16-17 million. The Stasi's motto was "to know everything". So none of this is new to me. The difference between what the Bush administration was doing in 2001, right after 9/11, and what the Obama administration is doing today is that the system is now under the cover and color of law. Yet, what Snowden has revealed is still the tip of the iceberg. General Michael Hayden, who was head of the NSA when I worked there, and then director of the CIA, said, "We need to own the net." And that is what they're implementing here. They have this extraordinary system: in effect, a 24/7 panopticon on a vast scale that it is gazing at you with an all-seeing eye. I lived with that dirty knowledge for years. Before 9/11, the prime directive at the NSA was that you don't spy on Americans without a warrant; to do so was against the law – and, in particular, was a criminal violation of Fisa. My concern was that we were more than an accessory; this was a crime and we were subverting the constitution. I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he's been following this for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like me. By following protocol, you get flagged – just for raising issues. You're identified as someone they don't like, someone not to be trusted. I was exposed early on because I was a material witness for two 9/11 congressional investigations. In closed testimony, I told them everything I knew – about Stellar Wind, billions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse, and the critical intelligence, which the NSA had but did not disclose to other agencies, preventing vital action against known threats. If that intelligence had been shared, it may very well have prevented 9/11. But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation. I reached a point in early 2006 when I decided I would contact a reporter. I had the same level of security clearance as Snowden. If you look at the indictment from 2010, you can see that I was accused of causing "exceptionally grave damage to US national security". Despite allegations that I had tippy-top-secret documents, In fact, I had no classified information in my possession, and I disclosed none to the Baltimore Sun journalist during 2006 and 2007. But I got hammered: in November 2007, I was raided by a dozen armed FBI agents, when I was served with a search warrant. The nightmare had only just begun, including extensive physical and electronic surveillance. In April 2008, in a secret meeting with the FBI, the chief prosecutor from the Department of Justice assigned to lead the prosecution said, "How would you like to spend the rest of your life in jail, Mr Drake?" – unless I co-operated with their multi-year, multimillion-dollar criminal leak investigation, launched in 2005 after the explosive New York Times article revealing for the first time the warrantless wiretapping operation. Two years later, they finally charged me with a ten felony count indictment, including five counts under the Espionage Act. I faced upwards of 35 years in prison. In July 2011, after the government's case had collapsed under the weight of truth, I plead to a minor misdemeanor for "exceeding authorized use of a computer" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – in exchange for the DOJ dropping all ten felony counts. I received as a sentence one year's probation and 240 hours of community service: I interviewed almost 50 veterans for the Library of Congress veterans history project. This was a rare, almost unprecedented, case of a government prosecution of a whistleblower ending in total defeat and failure. So, the stakes for whistleblowers are incredibly high. The government has got its knives out: there's a massive manhunt for Snowden. They will use all their resources to hunt him down and every detail of his life will be turned inside out. They'll do everything they can to "bring him to justice" – already there are calls for the "traitor" to be "put away for life". He can expect the worst; he knows that. He went preemptively overseas because that at least delays the prying hand of the US government. But he could be extracted by rendition, as he has said. Certainly, my life was shredded. Once they have determined that you are a "person of interest" and an "enemy of the state", they want to destroy you, period. I am now reliving the last 12 years from what's been disclosed in the past week. I feel a kinship with Snowden: he is essentially the equivalent of me. He saw the surveillance state from within and saw how far it's gone. The government has a pathological incentive to collect more and more and more; they just can't help themselves – they have an insatiable hoarding complex. Since the government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out. There's no room in a democracy for this kind of secrecy: it's anathema to our form of a constitutional republic, which was born out of the struggle to free ourselves from the abuse of such powers, which led to the American revolution. That is what's at stake here: to an NSA with these unwarranted powers, we're all potentially guilty; we're all potential suspects until we prove otherwise. That is what happens when the government has all the data. The NSA is wiring the world; they want to own internet. I didn't want to be part of the dark blanket that covers the world, and Edward Snowden didn't either. We are seeing an unprecedented campaign against whistleblowers and truth-tellers: it's now criminal to expose the crimes of the state. Under this relentless assault by the Obama administration, I am the only person who has held them off and preserved his freedom. All the other whistleblowers I know have served time in jail, are facing jail or are already incarcerated or in prison. That has been my burden. I've dedicated the rest of my life to defending life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. I didn't want surveillance to take away my soul, and I don't want anyone else to have to live it. For that, I paid a very high price. And Edward Snowden will, too. But I have my freedom, and what is the price for freedom? What future do we want to keep?"
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 6, 2013 12:48:36 GMT -6
The BLS chart on Median Real Weekly Wages is informative in more than 1 way. The most obvious is the -1.2% year-over-year quarterly decline from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013. Also of interest, however, is the classification of the workers used. This chart uses Full-Time workers only in its calculation. That number was only 103,972,000. Out of a population of over 310,000,000. That's less than 1/3rd of the total population. That's only 42% of the 245 million Americans age 16 & over. And this 103.9 million is a far cry from the 143.8 million total employment number from the Household Survey. And this Full-Time employment number is still -4.4 million less than the 108.178 million for the 4th quarter of 2007 (when we had 12 million less potential workers at 233 million). Little wonder that real median wages are down. The labor supply has increased by +12 million since 2007, while the demonstrable demand has decreased by -4.4 million.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 6, 2013 11:05:47 GMT -6
July 05, 2013 Employment Report: More Hiring, Wages Up, Still Weak Labor Market by Bill McBride on 7/05/2013 The good news:...Also hourly and weekly wages increased 0.4% in June, and hourly wages are now up 2.2% over the last year (weekly wages are up 2.5% year-over-year). This statement is a gross distortion. It uses non-inflation-adjusted current dollar wages, instead of real wages. In fact, real hourly wages are up only 0.5% when comparing May 2012 with May 2013. But they're down from the previous year's level for Feb, March, & April. And "real" hourly wages are adjusted for the official, understated inflation rate concocted by the Government. But May 2013 real hourly wages are less than those in May 2011. And May 2013 real hourly wages are -2.0% less than May 2010. Median real household income declined by every measure. Unlike real average hourly wages (which is distorted by the increasing incomes of the highest earners) median real household income declined -0.1% from April 2013 to May 2013, and by -0.3% from May 2012 to May 2013. Below is a chart from AdvisorsPerspectives.com showing the longer-term trend in declining real median household income: Median Real Household income is down -8.5% since 2008. Unless the number of households grew MORE than 8.5%, median household buying power is declining. It's impossible to have sustained GDP growth if median buying power is declining. Rich consumers cannot indefinitely offset the loss of buying power of the far more numerous non-affluent consumers.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 2, 2013 23:46:58 GMT -6
from Common Dreams Who is Actually Bringing 'Injury to America'? On the Espionage Act Charges Against Edward Snowdenby Glenn Greenwald www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/22-2"The US government has charged Edward Snowden with 3 felonies, including 2 under the Espionage Act, the 1917 statute enacted to criminalize dissent against World War I. My priority at the moment is working on our next set of stories, so I just want to briefly note a few points about this. Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That's because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now 7 such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that? For a politician who tried to convince Americans to elect him based on repeated pledges of unprecedented transparency and specific vows to protect "noble" and "patriotic" whistleblowers, is this unparalleled assault on those who enable investigative journalism remotely defensible? Recall that the New Yorker's Jane Mayer said recently that this oppressive climate created by the Obama presidency has brought investigative journalism to a "standstill", while James Goodale, the General Counsel for the New York Times during its battles with the Nixon administration, wrote last month in that paper that "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom." Read what Mayer and Goodale wrote and ask yourself: is the Obama administration's threat to the news-gathering process not a serious crisis at this point? Few people - likely including Snowden himself - would contest that his actions constitute some sort of breach of the law. He made his choice based on basic theories of civil disobedience: that those who control the law have become corrupt, that the law in this case (by concealing the actions of government officials in building this massive spying apparatus in secret) is a tool of injustice, and that he felt compelled to act in violation of it in order to expose these official bad acts and enable debate and reform. But that's a far cry from charging Snowden, who just turned 30 yesterday, with multiple felonies under the Espionage Act that will send him to prison for decades if not life upon conviction. In what conceivable sense are Snowden's actions "espionage"? He could have - but chose not - sold the information he had to a foreign intelligence service for vast sums of money, or covertly passed it to one of America's enemies, or worked at the direction of a foreign government. That is espionage. He did none of those things. What he did instead was give up his life of career stability and economic prosperity, living with his long-time girlfriend in Hawaii, in order to inform his fellow citizens (both in America and around the world) of what the US government and its allies are doing to them and their privacy. He did that by very carefully selecting which documents he thought should be disclosed and concealed, then gave them to a newspaper with a team of editors and journalists and repeatedly insisted that journalistic judgments be exercised about which of those documents should be published in the public interest and which should be withheld. That's what every single whistleblower and source for investigative journalism, in every case, does - by definition. In what conceivable sense does that merit felony charges under the Espionage Act? The essence of that extremely broad, century-old law is that one is guilty if one discloses classified information "with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation". Please read this rather good summary in this morning's New York Times of the worldwide debate Snowden has enabled - how these disclosures have "set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance" and "opened an unprecedented window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype" - and ask yourself: has Snowden actually does anything to bring "injury to the United States", or has he performed an immense public service? The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of "espionage". It seems clear that the people who are actually bringing "injury to the United States" are those who are waging war on basic tenets of transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens - and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they're doing - rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done. The Obama administration leaks classified information continuously. They do it to glorify the President, or manipulate public opinion, or even to help produce a pre-election propaganda film about the Osama bin Laden raid. The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted. It's a completely one-sided and manipulative abuse of secrecy laws. It's all designed to ensure that the only information we as citizens can learn is what they want us to learn because it makes them look good. The only leaks they're interested in severely punishing are those that undermine them politically. The "enemy" they're seeking to keep ignorant with selective and excessive leak prosecutions are not The Terrorists or The Chinese Communists. It's the American people. The Terrorists already knew, and have long known, that the US government is doing everything possible to surveil their telephonic and internet communications. The Chinese have long known, and have repeatedly said, that the US is hacking into both their governmental and civilian systems (just as the Chinese are doing to the US). The Russians have long known that the US and UK try to intercept the conversations of their leaders just as the Russians do to the US and the UK. They haven't learned anything from these disclosures that they didn't already well know. The people who have learned things they didn't already know are American citizens who have no connection to terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of citizens around the world about whom the same is true. What they have learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them. And that is precisely why the US government is so furious and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures. What has been "harmed" is not the national security of the US but the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability. If anything is a crime, it's that secret, unaccountable and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 2, 2013 11:51:51 GMT -6
Excellent outcome.
But I wonder how much Jeff Olson had to pay out in attorney's fees.
Those costs should be refunded to Olson by B of A for filing such frivolous charges in the 1st place.
In the case I was involved in, defendants paid anywhere from $200-500K in attorneys' fees.
Defendants pay a heavy price, even when they are found not guilty.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 1, 2013 22:07:41 GMT -6
The decline in miles driven is a welcome trend overall.
Online shopping is probably one of the bigger reasons.
I almost never buy any type of non-food, non-houseware product in a store anymore.
I still play baseball, and I buy 100% of my equipment and supplies online.
There are too many products that are no longer available in stores, but ARE available online.
And even some of the items still available in stores--like a 24' baseball batting cage--I'll buy online because it will be delivered to my house for the same price. That beats a 30-mile round trip to the sporting goods store, where I'll have to load it and unload it out of my car.
Buying online is a huge timesaver for anyone who is working full-time--and even moreso if you live in a remote area where the nearest store is half an hour away.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 1, 2013 12:03:11 GMT -6
The $100K/year family could easily increase their amount left over to $16K, by reducing their insane rent/mortgage payment down to $20K from $25K, and by reducing their car payment down to $2K/year from $6K/year.
That's $9K they could easily trim off their budget.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 1, 2013 11:38:08 GMT -6
from the New York Times The Criminal NSAwww.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/the-criminal-nsa.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0June 28, 2013 By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN "The twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.” It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius. This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught. The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn. Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on. The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that a person or company produce “tangible things,” upon showing reasonable grounds that the things sought are “relevant” to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to terrorism. Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations.” The N.S.A.’s demand for information about every American’s phone calls isn’t “targeted” at all — it’s a dragnet. “How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: It’s not. The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be “relevant” to an investigation eventually, if by “eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is “relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance. Let’s turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of communications from Internet companies. In combination with what we have already learned about the N.S.A.’s access to telecommunications and Internet infrastructure, Prism is further proof that the agency is collecting vast amounts of e-mails and other messages — including communications to, from and between Americans. The government justifies Prism under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Section 1881a of the act gave the president broad authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. If the attorney general and the director of national intelligence certify that the purpose of the monitoring is to collect foreign intelligence information about any nonAmerican individual or entity not known to be in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can require companies to provide access to Americans’ international communications. The court does not approve the target or the facilities to be monitored, nor does it assess whether the government is doing enough to minimize the intrusion, correct for collection mistakes and protect privacy. Once the court issues a surveillance order, the government can issue top-secret directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook to turn over calls, e-mails, video and voice chats, photos, voiceover IP calls (like Skype) and social networking information. Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to outstrip that authority. In particular, the government “may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.” The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act. How could vacuuming up Americans’ communications conform with this legal limitation? Well, as James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the N.S.A. uses the word “acquire” only when it pulls information out of its gigantic database of communications and not when it first intercepts and stores the information. If there’s a law against torturing the English language, James Clapper is in real trouble. The administration hides the extent of its “incidental” surveillance of Americans behind fuzzy language. When Congress reauthorized the law at the end of 2012, legislators said Americans had nothing to worry about because the surveillance could not “target” American citizens or permanent residents. Mr. Clapper offered the same assurances. Based on these statements, an ordinary citizen might think the N.S.A. cannot read Americans’ e-mails or online chats under the F.A.A. But that is a government fed misunderstanding. A “target” under the act is a person or entity the government wants information on — not the people the government is trying to listen to. It’s actually O.K. under the act to grab Americans’ messages so long as they are communicating with the target, or anyone who is not in the United States. Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government’s seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications. The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties. This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity. We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans’ privacy. It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal." Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 30, 2013 22:01:21 GMT -6
Hooray for the Supreme Court.
It's not any of their business anyway, though some of their rulings may have helped create so many homeless persons.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 30, 2013 21:54:42 GMT -6
The DAs and ADAs involved in this case are complete scumbags.
Convicted murderers don't get 13 years in most cases.
Only people that offend banks face these kind of penalties. (Along with Doctors who've made mistakes on their billing codes.)
The Government certainly has its sacred cows.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 30, 2013 21:45:38 GMT -6
from Yahoo News / Reuters EU Confronts US over Spy Programnews.yahoo.com/eu-confronts-u-over-surveillance-reports-013124266.htmlBy Ben Deighton and Annika Breidthardt "BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union has demanded that the United States explain a report in a German magazine that Washington is spying on the group, using strong language to confront its closest trading partner over its alleged surveillance activities. EU High Representative Catherine Ashton said on Sunday that U.S. authorities were immediately contacted about a report in Der Spiegel magazine that the U.S. spy agency had tapped EU offices in Washington, Brussels and at the United Nations. "As soon as we saw these reports, the European External Action Service made contact with the U.S. authorities in both Washington D.C. and Brussels to seek urgent clarification of the veracity of, and facts surrounding, these allegations," Ashton said in a statement. "The U.S. authorities have told us they are checking on the accuracy of the information released yesterday and will come back to us as soon as possible," she said. France also asked for an explanation. "These acts, if confirmed, would be completely unacceptable," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. The U.S. government said it would respond through diplomatic channels. "We will also discuss these issues bilaterally with EU member states," a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence said. "While we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations." The Guardian newspaper said in an article late on Sunday that the United States had also targeted non-European allies for spying. Citing a September 2010 NSA document, the British newspaper said that "Along with traditional ideological adversaries and sensitive Middle Eastern countries, the list of targets includes the EU missions and the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as a number of other American allies, including Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey." Der Spiegel reported on Saturday that the National Security Agency bugged EU offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks, the latest revelation of alleged U.S. spying that has prompted outrage from EU politicians. The magazine followed up on Sunday with a report that the U.S. agency taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month, much more than any other European peer and similar to the data tapped in China or Iraq. It also uses data from Internet hubs in south and west Germany that organize data traffic to Syria and Mali. Revelations about the U.S. surveillance program, which was made public by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have raised a furor in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security. The extent to which Washington's EU allies are being monitored emerged is a particular concern in Europe. "If the media reports are correct, this brings to memory actions among enemies during the Cold War. It goes beyond any imagination that our friends in the United States view the Europeans as enemies," German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said. "If it is true that EU representations in Brussels and Washington were indeed tapped by the American Secret Service, it can hardly be explained with the argument of fighting terrorism," she said in a statement." EXACTLY!! The same is true of all of the innocent Americans the NSA has tapped."TAPPED GERMANS Germany's federal prosecutor's office, which has authority in matters of national security, said it was looking into whether or not it should start an investigation. Criminal charges are expected to be filed, spokeswoman Frauke Koehler told Reuters. Germans are particularly sensitive about government monitoring, having lived through the Stasi secret police in the former communist East Germany and with lingering memories of the Gestapo of Hitler's Nazi regime. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has not commented on the latest report. Before a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this month, Merkel defended governments' monitoring of Internet communications, however, and said that the U.S. cyber-snooping had helped prevent attacks on German soil. She stressed during Obama's visit that there were limits to monitoring, but stopped short of pressing the issue hard. Martin Schulz, president of the EU Parliament and also a German, said if the report was correct, it would have a "severe impact" on relations between the EU and the United States. He told French radio the United States had crossed a line. "I was always sure that dictatorships, some authoritarian systems, tried to listen ... but that measures like that are now practiced by an ally, by a friend, that is shocking, in the case that it is true," Schulz said in an interview with France 2. Some EU policymakers said talks for a free trade agreement between Washington and the EU should be put on ice until further clarification from the United States. "Partners do not spy on each other," the European commissioner for justice and fundamental rights, Viviane Reding, said at a public event in Luxembourg on Sunday. "We cannot negotiate over a big transatlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators," Reding said in comments passed on to reporters by her spokeswoman. The European Parliament's foreign affairs committee head Elmar Brok, from Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, echoed those views. "The spying has taken on dimensions that I would never have thought possible from a democratic state," he told Der Spiegel. "How should we still negotiate if we must fear that our negotiating position is being listened to beforehand?" "
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 29, 2013 11:16:53 GMT -6
The authors of the survey understated the major point of their findings.
Our current high Unemployment is NOT due to lack of education.
It's due to lack of demand for workers, both highly educated and not highly educated.
There is NO skills shortage.
There is only a shortage of DEMAND for those skills.
The fairy tale that more education & training will solve our unemployment and wage stagnation has been exposed for what it is: A Fairy Tale--a Plutocratic, Corporatocratic, Globalist fairy tale.
As long as American capital can flow out to the lowest wage labor markets on earth, while still allowing those low-wage produced goods to be sold in this country without Tariffs, we'll continue to have an unemployment and underemployment problem.
The solutions to our employment problem revolve around labor demand and supply--the former by keeping jobs in this country, and the latter by not allowing unlimited immigration of workers into this country.
Education is not the solution. It is simply a convenient, false panacea--designed to delude the American public, implying that it's American workers' own fault that they're not doing better.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 28, 2013 11:54:22 GMT -6
A California man has had 13 yeas afte having 13 charges filed against him by the San Diego DA for scrawling anti-bank messages outside the Bank of America. rt.com/usa/california-man-13-prison-banks-237/?source=Patrick.netCalifornia man faces 13 years in jail for scribbling anti-bank messages in chalk"Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence. A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial. According to the San Diego Reader, which reported on Tuesday that a judge had opted to prevent Olson’s attorney from "mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial,” Olson must now stand trial for on 13 counts of vandalism. In addition to possibly spending years in jail, Olson will also be held liable for fines of up to $13,000 over the anti-big-bank slogans that were left using washable children's chalk on a sidewalk outside of three San Diego, California branches of Bank of America, the massive conglomerate that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008-2009 in a bid to keep it solvent after bad bets went south. The Reader reports that Olson’s hearing had gone as poorly as his attorney might have expected, with Judge Howard Shore, who is presiding over the case, granting Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard's motion to prohibit attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the United States' fundamental First Amendment rights. "The State's Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights," ruled Judge Shore on Tuesday. Upon exiting the courtroom Olson seemed to be in disbelief. "Oh my gosh," he said. "I can't believe this is happening." Tosdal, who exited the courtroom shortly after his client, seemed equally bewildered. "I've never heard that before, that a court can prohibit an argument of First Amendment rights," said Tosdal. Olson, who worked as a former staffer for a US Senator from Washington state, was said to involve himself in political activism in tandem with the growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement. On October 3, 2011, Olson first appeared outside of a Bank of America branch in San Diego, along with a homemade sign. Eight days later Olson and his partner, Stephen Daniels, during preparations for National Bank Transfer Day, the two were confronted by Darell Freeman, the Vice President of Bank of America’s Global Corporate Security. A former police officer, Freeman accused Olson and Daniels of “running a business outside of the bank,” evidently in reference to the National Bank Transfer Day activities, which was a consumer activism initiative that sought to promote Americans to switch from commercial banks, like Bank of America, to not-for-profit credit unions. At the time, Bank of America’s debit card fees were among one of the triggers that led Occupy Wall Street members to promote the transfer day. "It was just an empty threat," says Olson of Freeman’s accusations. "He was trying to scare me away. To be honest, it did at first. I even called my bank and they said he couldn't do anything like that." Olson continued to protest outside of Bank of America. In February 2012, he came across a box of chalk at a local pharmacy and decided to begin leaving his mark with written statements. "I thought it was a perfect way to get my message out there. Much better than handing out leaflets or holding a sign," says Olson. Over the course of the next six months Olson visited the Bank of America branch a few days per week, leaving behind scribbled slogans such as "Stop big banks" and "Stop Bank Blight.com." According to Olson, who spoke with local broadcaster KGTV, one Bank of America branch claimed it had cost $6,000 to clean up the chalk writing. Public records obtained by the Reader show that Freeman continued to pressure members of San Diego’s Gang Unit on behalf of Bank of America until the matter was forwarded to the City Attorney’s office. On April 15, Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard contacted Freeman with a response on his persistent queries. "I wanted to let you know that we will be filing 13 counts of vandalism as a result of the incidents you reported," said Hazard. Arguments for Olson’s case are set to be heard Wednesday morning, following jury selection. "
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 27, 2013 22:22:40 GMT -6
Holy mackerel!
So her testimony is completely worthless.
She's lying about everything.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 27, 2013 18:46:06 GMT -6
from Yahoo News / Associated Press Spy Program Gathered Americans Internet Recordsnews.yahoo.com/spy-program-gathered-americans-internet-records-194829481.htmlby KIMBERLY DOZIER and LOLITA C. BALDOR InternetNational Security AgencyComputer surveillance "WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration gathered U.S. citizens' Internet data until 2011, continuing a spying program started under President George W. Bush that revealed whom Americans exchanged emails with and the Internet Protocol address of their computer, documents disclosed Thursday show. The National Security Agency ended the program that collected email logs and timing, but not content, in 2011 because it decided it didn't effectively stop terrorist plots, according to the NSA's director, Gen. Keith Alexander, who also heads the U.S. Cyber Command. He said all data was purged in 2011. Britain's Guardian newspaper on Thursday released documents detailing the collection, though the program was also described earlier this month by The Washington Post. The latest revelation follows previous leaks from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is presumed hiding at a Moscow airport transit area, waiting to hear whether Ecuador, Iceland or another country might grant him asylum. He fled Hong Kong over the weekend and flew to Russia after being charged with violating American espionage laws. The collection appears similar to the gathering of U.S. phone records, and seems to overlap with the Prism surveillance program of foreigners on U.S. Internet servers, both revealed by Snowden. U.S. officials have said the phone records can only be checked for numbers dialed by a terrorist suspect overseas. According to the documents published by The Guardian on Thursday, the Internet records show whom they exchanged emails with and the specific numeric address assigned to a computer connected to the Internet, known as the IP, or Internet Protocol, address. The program, described in a top secret draft report from the NSA inspector general, described the efforts of then-NSA Director Gen. Mike Hayden to fill gaps in intelligence gathering after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One NSA officer quoted in the report described "NSA standing at the U.S. border looking outward for foreign threats" and "the FBI looking within the United States for domestic threats. But no one was looking at the foreign threats coming into the United States. That was the huge gap that NSA wanted to cover." The draft added that the sweeping phone and Internet data-gathering programs were meant to speed up the process of surveillance of a terrorist suspect overseas, because "the average wait time was between four and six weeks" to get a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. "Terrorists could have changed their telephone numbers or Internet addresses" before the NSA received permission to spy on them on U.S.-based phone or Internet systems. Alexander said at a Baltimore conference on cybersecurity that the NSA decided to kill the Internet data gathering program because "it wasn't meeting what we needed and we thought we could better protect civil liberties and privacy by doing away with it." He said the program was conducted under provisions of the Patriot Act, and that NSA leaders went to the Obama administration and Congress with the recommendation to shut it down. Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said the program has not resumed. The Washington Post had described the Internet surveillance in an earlier report, without publishing the documents or releasing as many details. The Post described it as part of four secret surveillance programs — two aimed at phone and Internet metadata, while two more target contents of phone and Internet communications. Alexander, who has been up on Capitol Hill frequently for hearings and meetings since the NSA phone and email surveillance was made public, laid out a broad defense of the programs. He said he worries that more leaks are coming, adding that "every time a capability is revealed we lose our ability to track those targets." While never mentioning Snowden by name, Alexander said his irresponsible releases of classified information "will have a long term detrimental impact on the intelligence community's ability to detect future attacks." He declined to provide more details on what the NSA is doing to prevent such leaks in the future. He has said that the agency is changing passwords and improving its ability to track what system administrators are doing. On Thursday, he said he was looking at how the leak happened and the people involved. He said the NSA can't do its job without contractors because it doesn't have all the talent or access it needs to do the job." ___
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 22:55:57 GMT -6
I'm working on another version of the Sounds of Silence, with new words to describe our current Police State.
And the People were betrayed, By unjust laws Congress made, And the sign flashed out its warning, the Constitution now undermining, And the sign says the words of the profits are written on prison walls, By Detainees all, And none dare use the term, of Police State.
Now the People wondered why, The Justice system went awry, Charges filed with-out offense, Bankrupting innocents for defense, DAs filing charges, that no one comprehends, but need defense, but none dare use the term of Police State.
And the innocents detained, Down at Gitmo they remained, And the sign flashed out its warning, the Constitution and its undermining, And the words of detainees are ignored in prison halls, and torture stalls "I did nothing wrong" "I'm innocent."
Interrogators not dismayed, by new enemies they just made, ----------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- -----------------------
The naked people that I saw, Detainees chained down to the floor, ----------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- -----------------------
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 22:41:53 GMT -6
In reporting on the NSA spying program, from the leaks provided by Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald anticipated the personal attacks and smears that would be leveled against him--in an attempt to discredit him. Below is his response to those smears that are now forthcoming: from the Guardian.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/26/nsa-revelations-response-to-smearsThe personal side of taking on the NSA: emerging smearsWed, June 26, 2013 by Glenn Greenwald "When I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably be the target of all sorts of personal attacks and smears. You don't challenge the most powerful state on earth and expect to do so without being attacked. As a superb Guardian editorial noted today: "Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. The more serious the leak, the fiercer the pursuit and the greater the punishment." One of the greatest honors I've had in my years of writing about politics is the opportunity to work with and befriend my long-time political hero, Daniel Ellsberg. I never quite understood why the Nixon administration, in response to his release of the Pentagon Papers, would want to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychoanalyst and steal his files. That always seemed like a non sequitur to me: how would disclosing Ellsberg's most private thoughts and psychosexual assessments discredit the revelations of the Pentagon Papers? When I asked Ellsberg about that several years ago, he explained that the state uses those tactics against anyone who dissents from or challenges it simply to distract from the revelations and personally smear the person with whatever they can find to make people uncomfortable with the disclosures. So I've been fully expecting those kinds of attacks since I began my work on these NSA leaks. The recent journalist-led "debate" about whether I should be prosecuted for my reporting on these stories was precisely the sort of thing I knew was coming. As a result, I was not particularly surprised when I received an email last night from a reporter at the New York Daily News informing me that he had been "reviewing some old lawsuits" in which I was involved – "old" as in: more than a decade ago – and that "the paper wants to do a story on this for tomorrow". He asked that I call him right away to discuss this, apologizing for the very small window he gave me to comment. Upon calling him, I learned that he had somehow discovered two events from my past. The first was my 2002-04 participation in a multi-member LLC that had an interest in numerous businesses, including the distribution of adult videos. I was bought out of that company by my partners roughly nine years ago. The lawsuit he referenced was one where the LLC had sued a video producer in (I believe) 2002 after the producer reneged on a profit-sharing contract. In response, that producer fabricated abusive and ugly emails he claimed were from me – they were not – in order to support his allegation that I had bullied him into entering into that contract and he should therefore be relieved from adhering to it. Once our company threatened to retain a forensic expert to prove that the emails were forgeries, the producer quickly settled the case by paying some substantial portion of what was owed, and granting the LLC the rights to use whatever it had obtained when consulting with him to start its own competing business. The second item the reporter had somehow obtained was one showing an unpaid liability to the IRS stemming, it appears, from some of the last years of my law practice. I've always filed all of my tax returns and there's no issue of tax evasion or fraud. It's just back taxes for which my lawyers have been working to reach a payment agreement with the IRS. Just today, a New York Times reporter emailed me to ask about the IRS back payments. And the reporter from the Daily News sent another email asking about a student loan judgment which was in default over a decade ago and is now covered by a payment plan agreement. So that's the big discovery: a corporate interest in adult videos (something the LLC shared with almost every hotel chain), fabricated emails, and some back taxes and other debt. I'm 46 years old and, like most people, have lived a complicated and varied adult life. I didn't manage my life from the age of 18 onward with the intention of being a Family Values US senator. My personal life, like pretty much everyone's, is complex and sometimes messy. If journalists really believe that, in response to the reporting I'm doing, these distractions about my past and personal life are a productive way to spend their time, then so be it. None of that – or anything else – will detain me even for an instant in continuing to report on what the NSA is doing in the dark."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:53:03 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:53:03 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:53:03 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:53:03 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:51:56 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:51:56 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:51:56 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:51:56 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 26, 2013 19:51:56 GMT -6
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