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Assad Continues to Bitch Slap Weak Obama

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Assad_SyriaSeeming to no longer fear a U.S. attack, an emboldened Bashar Assad is adding to his list of demands in exchange for handing over Syria’s chemical weapons, fueling concerns in Washington that — with Russia’s backing — he’s succeeding in turning the tables on Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiating effort in Geneva.

“They’re just kind of playing with us,” Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Fox News on Friday.

Kerry was meeting for a second day Friday with Russian and Syrian diplomats to try and work out the framework for a deal to have Syria hand over its chemical weapons to international control, and avert military action by the U.S. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he expects a soon-to-be-released report to show chemical weapons were used in Syria last month — though U.N. inspectors are not expected to say who used them.

Sensing perhaps that the threat of a U.S. military strike is no longer imminent, Assad is publicly trying to strengthen his hand. In an interview with Russian television, he not only demanded the U.S. drop the threat of military action — he also said the Obama administration must stop arming the opposition.

“When we see that the U.S. genuinely stands for stability in our region, stops threatening us with military intervention and stops supplying terrorists with weapons, then we will consider it possible to finalize all necessary procedures and they will become legitimate and acceptable for Syria,” Assad said, according to the translation by Russia’s RIA Novosti. “Terrorists” is the term Assad often applies to members of the Syrian opposition.

The Obama administration decided months ago to start arming the Syrian opposition, after prior evidence of chemical weapons use. Media reports this week said the CIA, after a significant delay, has started to deliver small arms to the rebels.

Assad made one other request that might be difficult to satisfy. He said that all countries in the area must honor anti-chemical weapons agreements, “and the first country to do so is Israel because it possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons — all types of weapons of mass destruction.”

Israel signed the Chemical Weapons Convention 20 years ago, but did not end up ratifying it.

The Assad government now claims effectively to be a party to that weapons agreement. But Syrian government officials say they need a month to submit data on their stockpiles.

Kerry objected to that time frame on Thursday, suggesting that was too long.

On Friday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, made a demand of his own, writing a letter to Kerry saying that bioweapons should also be included in the disarmament talks with Syria.

“I remain highly skeptical of Russia’s true intentions, but I believe omitting Assad’s bioweapons from any agreement would represent a gaping hole in the plan and would not adequately protect U.S. national security interests,” he said.

Kerry, on Thursday, stressed that the negotiations are not a “game,” and that the U.S. must keep the threat of military action on the table in order to keep the pressure on Assad. The military build-up continues, as Russia reportedly dispatched several ships to the eastern Mediterranean, while the U.S. keeps its ships in position in the region.

Kerry said Friday that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have had “constructive conversations.”

“I will say on behalf of the United States that President Obama is deeply committed to a negotiated solution with respect to Syria, and we know that Russia is likewise,” he said. “We are working hard to find the common ground to be able to make that happen and we discussed some of the homework that we both need to do.”

He said he and Lavrov agreed to meet again in New York later in the month.

FoxNews.com

Arctic Sea Ice Up 60 Percent in 2013

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seaIceMin_2013_v04_p30.jpgAbout a million more square miles of ocean are covered in ice in 2013 than in 2012, a whopping 60 percent increase — and a dramatic deviation from predictions of an “ice-free Arctic in 2013,” the Daily Mail noted.

Arctic sea ice averaged 2.35 million square miles in August 2013, as compared to the low point of 1.32 million square miles recorded on Sept. 16, 2012, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. A chart published Sept. 8 by NSIDC shows the dramatic rise this year, putting total ice cover within two standard deviations of the 30-year average.

Noting the year over year surge, one scientist even argued that “global cooling” was here.

“We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped,” Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin told London’s Mail on Sunday.

The surge in Arctic ice is a dramatic change from last year’s record-setting lows, which fueled dire predictions of an imminent ice-free summer. A 2007 BBC report said the Arctic could be ice free in 2013 — a theory NASA still echoes today.

“[An ice-free Arctic is] definitely coming, and coming sooner than we previously expected,“ Walt Meier, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md, told LiveScience last month. “We’re looking at when as opposed to if.”

Noting the growth in ice, the Snow and Ice Data Center said that coverage was still well below the 30-year average. And the year over year growth in ice is “largely irrelevant,” argued The Guardian, noting that more ice is to be expected after the record low a year ago.

“We should not often expect to observe records in consecutive years. 2012 shattered the previous record low sea ice extent; hence ‘regression towards the mean’ told us that 2013 would likely have a higher minimum extent,” wrote Dana Nuccitelli.

Meanwhile, global surface temperatures have been relatively flat over the past decade and a half, according to data from the U.K.’s weather-watching Met Office.

A leaked draft of the next major climate report from the U.N. cites numerous causes to explain the slowdown in warming: greater-than-expected ash from volcanoes, a decline in heat from the sun, more heat being absorbed by the deep oceans, and so on.

Climate skeptics have spent months debating the weather pattern, some citing it as evidence that global warming itself has decelerated or even stopped.

“The absence of any significant change in the global annual average temperature over the past 16 years has become one of the most discussed topics in climate science,” wrote David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in June. “It has certainly focused the debate about the relative importance of greenhouse gas forcing of the climate versus natural variability.”

FoxNews.com

STUNNING DEFEAT: UK Votes Against Obama’s Syria Strike

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South Korean soldiers in protective gear take part in an NBC exercise at Proliferation Security Initiative Air Interdiction Exercise in Chitose, JapanBritish lawmakers on Thursday voted against military intervention in Syria, in a major setback for both British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Obama administration in their push to punish the Assad regime for an alleged chemical weapons strike.

Cameron, who has been aligned with President Obama in advocating a tough response, indicated after the vote that he would abide by the outcome. The measure was narrowly defeated, by 285 votes to 272 votes.

The outcome raises serious questions for Obama, who has not yet made a decision on the way forward in Syria but had indicated his administration would need international support for any strike. After failing to win support for an anti-Assad resolution before the U.N. Security Council, U.S. officials were looking to allies like Britain and France to build a coalition for action in Syria.

The White House said after the vote that it would continue to assess its options on Syria.

“The U.S. will continue to consult with the U.K. Government – one of our closest Allies and friends. As we’ve said, President Obama’s decision-making will be guided by what is in the best interests of the United States,” said National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden.

The U.K. vote was on a preliminary measure and not technically binding. Even if the measure was approved, Cameron would likely have had to seek another round of approval in a matter of days. But Cameron now risks a political backlash if he proceeds at all; he said Thursday that he understand the British people do not want to see the U.K. involved in Syria.

“It is very clear tonight that, while the House has not passed a motion, it is clear to me that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the government will act accordingly,” he said.

Polls in the United States have shown similar distaste among Americans for military action in Syria. But Obama and his top advisers, despite the vote in London, were trying to convince Congress on Thursday of the need to respond, holding a series of briefings as lawmakers increasingly voiced skepticism toward any military strike.

The president on Thursday afternoon personally briefed House Speaker John Boehner, who a day earlier wrote to the president urging him to provide a “clear, unambiguous explanation” on how military action would serve U.S. interests.

Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck reiterated those questions after the call. “Only the president can answer these questions, and it is clear that further dialogue and consultation with Congress, as well as communication with the American public, will be needed,” he said.

The White House planned a major briefing Thursday evening with key lawmakers. Many of those lawmakers are still in their districts and elsewhere for the summer recess, so most were dialing in for a conference call. One of the few lawmakers actually in the Capitol is Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Over the past 48 hours, dozens of lawmakers have spoken out on the potential for military action in Syria. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the policy “a big step in the wrong direction.”

Yet the White House is standing by its position that intervention in Syria, in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack last week, would serve U.S. interests. White House spokesman Josh Earnest also rejected the notion that the current situation was in any way similar to the run-up to the Iraq war under the George W. Bush administration.

“I think that there are some very important differences. What we saw in that circumstance was an administration that was searching high and low to produce evidence to justify a military invasion, an open-ended military invasion of another country, with the final goal being regime change,” he said.

“What we have seen here, tragically, is a preponderance of evidence available in the public domain that the Assad regime used chemical weapons against innocent civilians. And we don’t have to search high and low for that evidence.”

Meanwhile, the administration was continuing to face turbulence among its allies. Amid the vote in Britain, the five permanent members of the Security Council — including the U.S. and Britain — were meeting in New York. Russia has so far proved most resistant to any involvement in Syria.

In an interview with PBS on Wednesday, Obama bluntly declared that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack last week. He suggested a “shot across the bow” for Syria could be in the interest of U.S. national security.

Meanwhile, battle lines are being drawing in the international community. After Russia refused to sign on to a Britain-drafted resolution before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, Reuters reports that Russia is sending two warships to the Mediterranean Sea, where the U.S. has also positioned ships. A fifth U.S. Navy Destroyer was sent into the eastern Mediterranean on Thursday.

The Navy has also boosted its presence in the Persian Gulf, adding one more aircraft carrier.

FoxNews.com

Israeli Intelligence Confirmed Assad Regime Behind Chemical Attack

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assad_chemicalThe initial confirmation that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for a suspected chemical weapons attack Aug. 21 came from a tip from the Israeli intelligence service, western intelligence sources tell Fox News.

A special unit of the Israeli Defense Force — an intelligence unit that goes by the number 8200, which is a military intelligence listening unit — has been cooperating with the NSA, sources tell Fox News.

This Israeli intelligence unit helped provide the intelligence intercepts that allowed the White House last weekend to conclude that the Assad regime was behind the attack.

Initially, according to well-placed U.S. intelligence sources, there was apparent confusion over whether chemical weapons were used and who gave the orders, but the U.S. now has access to intercepted conversations.

The administration also has satellite images that suggested the Assad regime was in the process of covering up the chemical attack by shelling the area where most of the deaths from the alleged chemical attack had occurred.

“We believe that it’s too late for the U.N. inspection to be credible given the mass shelling that the regime has done in the affected areas,” State Department spokesman Marie Harf told reporters. “And we’re going to make our own decisions on our own timeline about our response. Obviously we will continue consultations with our international partners around the world but we are making decisions based on our own timeline.”

The Obama administration has not yet released intelligence on last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria, in part because of concerns over what could be declassified.

The report is considered a key component in the administration’s public case for intervention – and a possible military strike – in Syria.

Officials originally suggested the report would be released as early as Tuesday, but now there are hints the release may not come until at least Thursday.

The intelligence community is working through concerns about which intelligence is de-classified, because it could reveal sources and methods.

The timing of the release is important, though, because the more the report is delayed, the longer it will be before the administration steps up its public case for military action — if they choose that route.

A senior administration official told Fox News on Wednesday that once the intelligence community finishes its formal assessment of the chemical attack, a larger and classified report will be sent to Congress that will have a lot more detail. Then the administration will publicly release a smaller declassified version.

“It is important to remember that the protection of sources and methods must be taken into account when the intelligence community determines what information can be declassified and released to the public,” the senior administration official said.

“While the Congress will receive a classified version of the assessment that includes the broad range of intelligence collected, the intelligence information we are able to provide publicly will be limited in scope.”

A senior U.S. official also confirmed a report that initially appeared in the Wall Street Journal that National Security Adviser Susan Rice wanted to get the U.N. inspectors out of Syria last weekend because the U.S. already believed it had the information it needed to confirm the Syrian government’s culpability.

A White House official would not comment on internal deliberations between Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.

The Wall Street Journal quoted from an email that Rice reportedly sent Sunday to Power and others within the administration.

“The investigation is. . .too late, and will actually tell us what we already know: CW was used,” Ms. Rice wrote, using the abbreviation for chemical weapons. “It won’t even tell us by whom, which we already know.”

U.N. inspectors have permission to be in Syria until Sunday.

Jennifer Griffin By , , FoxNews.com

Did Obama Administration Murder Journalist?

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Hastings_carJust hours before the fiery car crash that took his life, journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to friends and colleagues urging them to get legal counsel if they were approached by federal agents.

“Hey [redacted], the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates,’” he broadcast in a message dated June 17 at 12:56 p.m. to editors at the website BuzzFeed, where he worked. “Perhaps if the authorities arrive, ‘BuzzFeed GQ’, er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.”

Hastings added that he was on to a “big story” and that he would, “need to go off the radar for a bit.” He was a relentless critic of government abuses and was most famous for “The Runaway General,” the Rolling Stone piece that ended the career of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of the Afghanistan war.

A journalist critical of the way the administration was conducting the war and wielding abusive power in Washington, Hastings was intensely focused on government surveillance of journalists. When the story broke in May about the Department of Justice collecting the phone records of Associated Press reporters, Hastings became concerned that they might be tracking his activities. Shortly thereafter the NSA surveillance abuses were revealed by Edward Snowden and Hastings became very concerned about the administration targeting him for his stories.

Hastings’ neighbor and confidant, Jordanna Thigpen, said that he showed up at her house late that night concerned about government surveillance, begging to use her car, convinced that his own Mercedes had been tampered with by government officials. She explained that her car needed repairs, and Hastings reluctantly took his own car to find a location where he could formulate a plan. “He was scared, and he wanted to leave town. Nothing I could say could console him,” Thigpen told reporters.

Mere hours later Hastings’ Mercedes indeed left the road at 75 mph and crashed in an explosive fireball.

Forensic reports now claim that Hastings had drugs in his system at the time of his death, providing authorities an opportunity to discredit his forewarnings as paranoid delusions.

Despite Administration denials of foul play, a clear pattern of shutting up critics and opponents is developing, and average citizens must ask themselves just how ‘Chicago’ this Administration would go (or has gone) to silence those who dare speak out against them.

PUBLIUS

 

Obama Faces Dem Backlash Over New NSA Revelations

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obama_scandalsThe Obama administration faced a backlash from congressional Democrats on Friday following revelations that the National Security Agency broke privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times since 2008.

The details were reported late Thursday in The Washington Post, based on an audit and other secret documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. The report challenged claims by President Obama just last week that the NSA was not abusing its authority, and complicated his effort to reassure Americans and Congress that — with a little more oversight and transparency — the surveillance programs are nothing to be worried about.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called the latest reports “extremely disturbing.”

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said: “Reports that the NSA repeatedly overstepped its legal boundaries, broke privacy regulations and attempted to shield required disclosure of violations are outrageous, inappropriate and must be addressed.”

Senior lawmakers said they had been unaware of the audit until they read the news on Friday.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he planned to hold another hearing in the wake of the report.

“The American people rely on the intelligence community to provide forthright and complete information so that Congress and the courts can properly conduct oversight. I remain concerned that we are still not getting straightforward answers from the NSA,” Leahy said in a statement. “I plan to hold another hearing on these matters in the Judiciary Committee and will continue to demand honest and forthright answers from the intelligence community.”

Obama has repeatedly said that Congress was thoroughly briefed on the programs revealed by Snowden in June. The two that were described vacuum up vast amounts of metadata — such as telephone numbers called and called from, the time and duration of calls — from most Americans’ phone records, and scoop up global Internet usage data.

Proposed legislation to dismantle the programs was narrowly defeated last month in the House, and at least 19 other pending bills are aimed at restraining NSA’s powers or changing how the agency is regulated, according to a count kept by the ACLU. The July legislative effort brought together Libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberal Democrats who pressed for change against congressional leaders and lawmakers focused on security.

A week ago, Obama sought to soothe concerns by promising to consider reforms to NSA surveillance.

“It’s not enough for me to have confidence in these programs,” he said at a White House news conference. “The American people have to have confidence in them as well.”

He announced changes such as convening an outside advisory panel to review U.S. surveillance powers, although it is unclear how that would differ from the existing U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, mandated by Congress to monitor surveillance and constitutional concerns.

Obama also said the NSA would hire a privacy officer — though the NSA already has a compliance office. None of those measures would seem likely to stop the kind of inadvertent collection of information that was described in the NSA audit.

Most of the infractions revealed late Thursday involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order, according to the May 3, 2012 audit, and other top-secret documents.

The May audit counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were reported to be unintended, and many involved failures to take sufficient care or violations of standard operating procedure. They ranged from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interceptions of U.S. emails and telephone calls.

The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, backed up the administration on its claims, releasing a lengthy statement on Friday afternoon claiming that most the compliance problems at the NSA happen when the agency inadvertently collects records on a non-American who enters the U.S., a point when the NSA is supposed to follow different procedures.

“The majority of these ‘compliance incidents’ are, therefore, unintentional and do not involve any inappropriate surveillance of Americans,” she said. “As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.”

Late Friday, the White House issued a statement saying, “the majority of the compliance incidents are unintentional. The documents demonstrate that the NSA is monitoring, detecting, addressing and reporting compliance incidents.”

It directed questions to the National Security Council, and NSC spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden directed questions to the NSA.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said the number of incidents in the first quarter of 2012 was higher than normal, and that the number has ranged from 372 to 1,162 in the past three years, due to factors such as “implementation of new procedures or guidance with respect to our authorities that prompt a spike that requires `fine tuning,’ changes to the technology or software in the targeted environment for which we had no prior knowledge, unforeseen shortcomings in our systems, new or expanded access, and `roaming’ by foreign targets into the U.S., some of which NSA cannot anticipate in advance but each instance of which is reported as an incident.”

“When NSA makes a mistake in carrying out its foreign intelligence mission, the agency reports the issue internally and to federal overseers — and aggressively gets to the bottom of it,” Vines said.

FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Obama Throws Tantrum, Sows Seeds of Discontent

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obama_lenoIt is a sign of the twisted times that we have the misfortune of living in. It is a symptom of the advanced state of moral and social decay that in America today that celebrities are afforded the reverent status that they are. Take for instance our clowns, specifically the liberal clowns.  Silly comedians the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher provide a mixture of jokes, shtick, political mockery and real news mixed with interviews and enjoy an astounding degree of popularity. That these court jesters are taken with any degree of seriousness is a clear example of not only how poorly that the mainstream media has served its purpose but also of the depravity of the American soul during this ongoing downtrend. Now there is El Presidente Barack H. Obama showing up on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this week. So much for the dignity of the office.

Obama took to the air to schmooze with Leno and to dispense his political lies and disinformation on a number of topics. One of course being of Russia’s refusal to turn over NSA contractor Booz Allen leaker Edward Snowden for torture and a show trial. Obama and dirty Eric Holder, still pissy over Friday’s embarrassing smackdown by the bear accused Russia of having a “Cold War mentality” for not immediately rolling over and conceding to his majesty’s requests. In the new American century it is intolerable for any country to not acquiesce to the wishes of the U.S. empire, for the smaller ones there are threats of withholding of economic support, non- inclusion in global trade agreements, support of that regime’s political opponents and when all else fails, send in the drones. With Russia, still an extremely powerful nation with a military and nukes of it’s own it is a special type of retaliation that is merited. The U.S. President debases the office he holds, shows up on a celebrity clown show, mocks Putin and the next day in a proclamation that is promulgated by state media Obama throws a tantrum and cancels his September Summit with the Russian leader. Now there’s some stellar leadership, the type that is befitting of a kindergarten sandbox.

Someone get that man a pacifier.

Obama’s snit over Russia only further cements the image of the U.S. of A as the global spoiled brat that it has become after years of abysmal leadership. The pope of hope can stamp his feet all that he wants and here in Der Homeland it will be eaten up by most lemmings as well as his legions of adoring, low-information zombies but once again the country is exposed on the world stage as exactly what it has become which is a petulant, immature, self-absorbed, hypocritical bully led by a pathological narcissist. We are no longer held in high esteem by those outside of our borders where the electronic narcosis of television used to keep the population distracted, placid and stupid. There was a time when our democratic form of government, civilized and moral society and advanced sciences were the envy of the world but that era recedes into the past quicker than revisionist history is able to keep its image alive through lies, trickery and propaganda. Thanks to a succession of amoral cheats and cheap hustlers, of which Obama is only the latest we have become the new evil empire and continue to expand our global footprint of degeneracy and blight.

While on Leno, in addition to talking about his “bromance” with John McCain (retch) Obama also used the opportunity to blatantly lie about his NSA surveillance machine.

“We don’t have a domestic spying program…What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.”

While I seriously doubt that the man has more than an inkling of the true nature of this growing menace that will soon consume all privacy except as Orwell put it his prophetic 1984 “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull” he is a useful idiot. Most of it is above Obama’s paygrade, he will be gone long before the final phase of the eradication of the Constitution will occur. He is a malleable fool, a dunce and an amiable, smiling front man for the empire. He serves his purpose for the time and by showing up on Leno’s show he is selling the sizzle while obscuring that the steak is made of horsemeat.

As for the terrifying Al Qaeda, risen like a phoenix from the ashes to which Obama himself not so long ago relegated it the propaganda just gets more ridiculous by the day. I heard some yutz on the Chris Matthews show the other night (it may have been Washington adjunct Richard Engle spreading the absurd tale that devious Al-Qaeda was planning to attack targets by carrying surgically implanted bombs that are able to evade detection. Hey, I saw the Dark Knight too where the Joker was able to sucessfully pull this off and blow up the Gotham City Police Department but come on now, when does this stuff just become so over the top that it is rejected outright as the horseshit that it is?  Now with the wonderful idea that this is actually a threat it will allow an already run amok TSA to unleash the government goon squad on those who appear to have medical issues, humiliating them in public and seizing them for strip searches. A massive big government agency already comprised of thugs, miscreants, wanna-be-cops, perverts and control freaks is about to get even more aggressive. Nice country isn’t it.

And all of this recent hullabaloo is because one man was able to break free from the systems of control and reveal top secret rogue government information about widespread unconstitutional spying. The subsequent self- immolation of the Obama administration’s competence and the tearing down of their star spangled facade of lies that covered their tyranny was just too much to take.

So the vainglorious ass that is the sitting U.S. Emperor is now taking his case directly to the sheeple, first there was Leno, what’s next Obama? Jersey Shore? A sit down with Honey Boo Boo? There is no level to which he won’t descend when it comes to selling out his country for chump change.

By Donn Marten

Switzerland Warning Against Obama Regime Stuns Russia

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switzerland_obamaThe Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is reporting today that Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) is proposing that the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA) issue an immediate “Situation: Grave, Do Not Travel” warning for the United States upgrading that North American nation from its current status as “Stable” and on par with a similar warning issued for the war torn Middle Eastern country of Syria.

According to this report, millions of data files on counter-terrorism operations from both MI6 and the CIA were stolen this past December (2012) by a senior computer technician of Swiss citizenship who planned to release them to Wikileaks.

These highly classified documents stored on NDB servers, this report continues, were stolen by what was described as a “very talented” still unnamed NDB technician senior enough to have “administrator rights,” giving him unrestricted access to most or all of the NDB’s networks.

The December, 2012 theft of these top secret British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, GRU intelligence analysts in this report say, came on the heels of a similar theft barely two years prior when MI6 spy Daniel Houghton, also a highly trained computer technician with “administrator rights,” was arrested while attempting to, also, release to Wikileaks thousands of top-secret MI6, MI5 and CIA electronic files.

Raising the fears of the NDB, however, this report says, were US National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) documents obtained from Edward Snowden by the GRU which show a “conclusive and provable link” between the man now known as the United States most wanted person, the still unnamed NDB spy, MI6 spy Houghton and US Army Private Bradley Manning, all of whom constitute what Swiss intelligence analysts say are the “iceberg tip” behind the largest theft of Western top-secret documents in modern history.

To whom the power behind these Western computer spies with unlimited “administration rights” and top security clearances, who have been releasing and/or attempting to release to the world these most secretive of documents, this GRU report quotes from NDB documents, Swiss intelligence analysts point to what they describe as a “cabal” of US military officers “fully intent” upon destroying the Obama regime, even if it means war.

Important to note is that this past February (2013) the Federal Security Services (FSB) had warned of the US military plan to assassinate Obama in what Russian intelligence analysts say will be a takeover of the United States similar to the coup currently being undertaken in Egypt; and the GRU had further warned this past November (2012) that the Obama regime’s war against its own generals was, also, likely to end in a military coup after the Washington D.C. gun battle toppled the top US military leader, former Four-Star Army General and CIA director David Petraeus, of this planed takeover.

The “main tactic” being used by the Obama regime against its top military leaders, according to the NDB, has been the leaking of their private emails by the NSA/CSS as revealed by Snowden whose leaked documents prove that US intelligence operatives loyal to the Obama regime have been tapping everything done online by all Americans.

Of the greatest concern to the NDB, however, this GRU report says, was the Obama regimes targeting this past week of the renowned American statesman, retired four-star general in the United States Army, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the 65th United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, whom the NSA/CSS has threatened with the release of his private emails alleging an affair with a Romanian diplomat, which is the same tactic used to destroy the reputation and career of General Petraeus.

Unlike General Petraeus, however, this report continues, the NDB in their report note that General Powell has secretly notified the Obama regime of his intention “not to go down without a fight” and which led to forces loyal to the Obama regime opening fire on and destroying two F-16 fighter jets nearing Washington D.C. airspace Thursday evening (23:00 hrs EDT 1 August) believed to be headed towards the White House.

As to if these F-16 fighter jets were indeed targeting Obama, this report says, it is not certain, but the reaction by the Obama regime to this event has been unprecedented in that within hours of them being shot down the US issued a world-wide travel alert to last until 31 August and ordered the closing of at least 17 of its overseas embassies.

The shock announcement yesterday that the US would be closing these embassies, this GRU report says the NDB has discovered, is due to the Obama regimes fears that more computer thefts of top-secret documents relating to the Obama regimes collusion with extreme Islamic terrorists groups are going to be released and will allow them time to purge all of their embassy servers of incriminating information, especially those files relating to the true events of the 2012 Benghazi Attack led by rogue CIA operatives whom US Congressman Trey Gowdy warned yesterday were being kept from testifying, being relocated and given new identities.

Unbeknownst to the American people about the Obama regime, this report says, has been its tens of millions of dollars in funding of al-Qaeda terrorists to create an Islamic Emirate in Syria and its over $8 billion in secret funding to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood radicals, both forces who are currently being defeated on the battlefield and in the streets.

Equally unknown to the American people is that Snowden, a “high-level member,” according to the NDB, of the US military cabal threatening the Obama regime, had offered to return to America to face the charges leveled against him knowing that if were able to survive the citizens of his country would learn the full horrors of the monsters ruling over them, an offer that was rejected by the US.

Snowden’s fears for his safety have, indeed proved valid since the Obama regimes assassinations of Michael Hastings, Aaron Swartz and Barnaby Jack and as we reported on in our 29 July report revealing how the Russian military is currently preparing for all-out war.

And in one of the most shameful acts against the American people by their own mainstream press, their refusal to publish, let alone mention, Edward Snowden’s fathers open letter to Obama will stand forever as an indictment against those elites seeking to enslave these once great people forever, and as we can all read in its entirety:

July 26, 2013

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20500

Re: Civil Disobedience, Edward J. Snowden, and the Constitution

Dear Mr. President:

You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders.

A dark chapter in America’s World War II history would not have been written if the then United States Attorney General had resigned rather than participate in racist concentration camps imprisoning 120,000 Japanese American citizens and resident aliens.

Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution.

We submit that Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures of dragnet surveillance of Americans under § 215 of the Patriot Act, § 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments, or otherwise were sanctioned by Thoreau’s time-honored moral philosophy and justifications for civil disobedience. Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community. He found himself complicit in secret, indiscriminate spying on millions of innocent citizens contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the First and Fourth Amendments and the transparency indispensable to self-government. Members of Congress entrusted with oversight remained silent or Delphic. Mr. Snowden confronted a choice between civic duty and passivity. He may have recalled the injunction of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Mr. Snowden chose duty. Your administration vindictively responded with a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Espionage Act.

From the commencement of your administration, your secrecy of the National Security Agency’s Orwellian surveillance programs had frustrated a national conversation over their legality, necessity, or morality. That secrecy (combined with congressional nonfeasance) provoked Edward’s disclosures, which sparked a national conversation which you have belatedly and cynically embraced. Legislation has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and Senate to curtail or terminate the NSA’s programs, and the American people are being educated to the public policy choices at hand. A commanding majority now voice concerns over the dragnet surveillance of Americans that Edward exposed and you concealed. It seems mystifying to us that you are prosecuting Edward for accomplishing what you have said urgently needed to be done!

The right to be left alone from government snooping–the most cherished right among civilized people—is the cornerstone of liberty. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson served as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremburg. He came to learn of the dynamics of the Third Reich that crushed a free society, and which have lessons for the United States today.

Writing in Brinegar v. United States, Justice Jackson elaborated:

The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. And one need only briefly to have dwelt and worked among a people possessed of many admirable qualities but deprived of these rights to know that the human personality deteriorates and dignity and self-reliance disappear where homes, persons and possessions are subject at any hour to unheralded search and seizure by the police.

We thus find your administration’s zeal to punish Mr. Snowden’s discharge of civic duty to protect democratic processes and to safeguard liberty to be unconscionable and indefensible.

We are also appalled at your administration’s scorn for due process, the rule of law, fairness, and the presumption of innocence as regards Edward.

On June 27, 2013, Mr. Fein wrote a letter to the Attorney General stating that Edward’s father was substantially convinced that he would return to the United States to confront the charges that have been lodged against him if three cornerstones of due process were guaranteed. The letter was not an ultimatum, but an invitation to discuss fair trial imperatives. The Attorney General has sneered at the overture with studied silence.

We thus suspect your administration wishes to avoid a trial because of constitutional doubts about application of the Espionage Act in these circumstances, and obligations to disclose to the public potentially embarrassing classified information under the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Your decision to force down a civilian airliner carrying Bolivian President Eva Morales in hopes of kidnapping Edward also does not inspire confidence that you are committed to providing him a fair trial. Neither does your refusal to remind the American people and prominent Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate like House Speaker John Boehner, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann,and Senator Dianne Feinstein that Edward enjoys a presumption of innocence. He should not be convicted before trial. Yet Speaker Boehner has denounced Edward as a “traitor.”

Ms. Pelosi has pontificated that Edward “did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents.” Ms. Bachmann has pronounced that, “This was not the act of a patriot; this was an act of a traitor.” And Ms. Feinstein has decreed that Edward was guilty of “treason,” which is defined in Article III of the Constitution as “levying war” against the United States, “or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

You have let those quadruple affronts to due process pass unrebuked, while you have disparaged Edward as a “hacker” to cast aspersion on his motivations and talents. Have you forgotten the Supreme Court’s gospel in Berger v. United States that the interests of the government “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done?”

We also find reprehensible your administration’s Espionage Act prosecution of Edward for disclosures indistinguishable from those which routinely find their way into the public domain via your high level appointees for partisan political advantage. Classified details of your predator drone protocols, for instance, were shared with the New York Times with impunity to bolster your national security credentials. Justice Jackson observed in Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York: “The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally.”

In light of the circumstances amplified above, we urge you to order the Attorney General to move to dismiss the outstanding criminal complaint against Edward, and to support legislation to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed. Such presidential directives would mark your finest constitutional and moral hour.

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein

Counsel for Lon Snowden

Lon Snowden

Posted by EU Times on Aug 3rd, 2013

Liberty’s Backlash — Why We Should be Grateful to Edward Snowden

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edward.snowdenLast week, Justin Amash, the two-term libertarian Republican congressman from Michigan, joined with John Conyers, the 25-term liberal Democratic congressman from the same state, to offer an amendment to legislation funding the National Security Agency (NSA). If enacted, the Amash-Conyers amendment would have forced the government’s domestic spies when seeking search warrants to capture Americans’ phone calls, texts and emails first to identify their targets and produce evidence of their terror-related activities before a judge may issue a warrant. The support they garnered had a surprising result that stunned the Washington establishment.

It almost passed.

The final vote, in which the Amash-Conyers amendment was defeated by 205 to 217, was delayed for a few hours by the House Republican leadership, which opposed the measure. The Republican leadership team, in conjunction with President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, needed more time for arm-twisting so as to avoid a humiliating loss.

But the House rank-and-file did succeed in sending a message to the big-government types in both parties: Nearly half of the House of Representatives has had enough of government spying and then lying about it, and understands that spying on every American simply cannot withstand minimal legal scrutiny or basic constitutional analysis.

The president is deeply into this and no doubt wishes he wasn’t. He now says he welcomed the debate in the House on whether his spies can have all they want from us or whether they are subject to constitutional requirements for their warrants. Surely he knows that the Supreme Court has ruled consistently since the time of the Civil War that the government is always subject to the Constitution, wherever it goes and whatever it does.

As basic as that sounds, it is not a universally held belief among the power elites. Gen. James Clapper, the current boss of all domestic spies, obviously lied when he testified under oath to a Senate committee recently that the government was not accumulating massive amounts of data about tens or hundreds of millions of Americans.

Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, materially misled a House committee when he was asked under oath whether the NSA has the “ability” to listen to phone calls and he stated it lacks the “authority” to do so. Right off the bat, we can see that these senior spies do not feel bound by the laws prohibiting perjury and the misleading of Congress.

Congress itself has legislatively attempted to amend the Constitution, knowing that the supreme law of the land can only be amended by three-quarters of the states. The Constitution requires probable cause of criminal activity to be presented to a judge as a precondition of the judge issuing a search warrant. It also requires that the warrant particularly describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

Yet, Congress told the secret FISA court that it can avoid the Constitution and issue a warrant to any spy looking for the phone calls and electronic communications of anyone in America, without probable cause, without naming the persons whose records are sought and without describing the place to be searched. Secrecy-smitten judges, whose clerks are NSA agents and who are not permitted to keep copies of their own rulings, have gone along with this.

Obama, who did not want a national debate on all this before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on it, has backed off of his earlier claims that the feds are not reading emails or listening to phone calls.

He has done this, no doubt, in light of unrefuted statements by Snowden and other NSA whistleblowers to the effect that federal spies can, with the press of a computer key, read emails and hear phone calls.

Only after the Snowden revelations did Obama welcome the “debate” in the House. That debate, in which more than half of his own party rejected his spying, lasted precisely 24 minutes.

How can a deliberative body of 434 current members debate an issue as monumental as whether the government is bound by the Constitution when it seeks out terrorists in just 24 minutes?

Apparently, the House Republican leadership that established the absurd 24-minute rule feared a serious and meaningful public discussion in which its authoritarian impulses would need to confront the Constitution its members swore to uphold. In that 24-minute time span, millions — millions — of Americans’ phone calls and emails were swept into the NSA’s supercomputers in defiance of the Constitution.

There is a political wildfire burning in the land, and we should all be grateful to Snowden for igniting it. The fire eventually will consume the political derelictions of those who have abandoned their oaths to uphold the Constitution so they can sound tough back home.

The Amash-Conyers amendment would have required the feds to tell the court the name of the person whose communications they seek and the evidence they have against that person — just as the Constitution requires. And it would have prohibited the NSA dragnets the Constitution obviously was written to prevent.

Instead we have the almost unimaginable prospect and the nearly unthinkable reality of the feds claiming that they can legally put every person in America under their privacy-invading scrutiny in order to catch a few dozen evil ones — most of whom were entrapped by the FBI in the first place and never posed a serious danger to the public or the nation.

Would we all be safer if the feds could knock down any door they wished and arrest any person they chose? Who would want to live in such a society? What value is the Constitution if those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping are afraid to do so?

I expect that the Amash-Conyers amendment will be back on the floor of the House soon. When it is, who will have the courage to preserve, protect and defend personal liberty in a free society?

By Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey; is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. His latest is “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.”

Orwell Alert–White House Creates ‘Nudge Squad’ to Reshape Behavior

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ObamaThe federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.

While the program is still in its early stages, the document shows the White House is already working on such projects with almost a dozen federal departments and agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.

“Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” reads the government document describing the program, which goes on to call for applicants to apply for positions on the team.

The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would “experiment” with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.

The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a “Behavioral Insights Team.” One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.

“Sending letters to late taxpayers that indicated a social norm — i.e., that ‘9 out of 10 people in Britain paid their taxes on time’ — resulted in a 15 percent increase in response rates over a three-month period, rolling out to £30 million of extra annual revenue,” the document reads.

Another policy aimed to convince people to install attic insulation to conserve energy.

“Offering an attic-clearance service (at full cost) to people led to a five-fold increase in their subsequent adoption of attic-insulation.”

[Read the full document here]

Such policies — which encourage behavior subtly rather than outright require it — have come to be known as “nudges,” after an influential 2008 book titled “Nudge” by former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and Chicago Booth School of Business professor Richard Thaler popularized the term.

The term “nudge” has already been associated with the new program, as one professor who received Shankar’s email forwarded it to others with the note: “Anyone interested in working for the White House in a ‘nudge’ squad? The UK has one and it’s been extraordinarily successful.”

Richard Thaler told FoxNews.com that the new program sounds good.

“I don’t know who those people are who would not want such a program, but they must either be misinformed or misguided,” he said.

“The goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government by using scientifically collected evidence to inform policy designs. What is the alternative? The only alternatives I know are hunches, tradition, and ideology (either left or right.)”

But some economists urge caution.

“I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies,” Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told FoxNews.com.

“Ultimately, nudging … assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them.”

And sometimes, he added, government actually promotes the wrong thing.

“Trans-fats were considered better than saturated and unsaturated fats in the past. Now we know this is an error.”

Every intervention would need to be tested to make sure it works well, said Harvard economics professor David Laibson, who studies behavioral economics and is in touch with the people in government setting up the program. He added that the exact way the team will function is currently unknown.

“We have to see the details to be sure, but this could work out very well,” he said.

Asked about details, Dan Cruz, spokesman for the U.S. General Services Administration (the department which the team will be a part of) told FoxNews.com: “As part of the Administration’s ongoing efforts to promote efficiency and savings, GSA is considering adding some expertise from academia in the area of program efficiency and evaluation under its Performance Improvement Council.”

Maya Shankar did not respond to questions.

Laibson added that he hoped the U.S. program would stay away from overly controversial subjects.

“Let’s say we want people to engage in some healthy behavior like a weight loss program, and then start automatically enrolling overweight people in weight loss programs — even though they could opt out, I’m guessing that would be viewed as offensive … a lot of people would say, ‘I didn’t ask for this, this is judging who I am and who I should be.”

But Laibson added that there are very real benefits to some “nudge” policies — such as one that increases the number of people registered as organ donors by making people decide when they apply for a drivers’ license.

Thaler, who is also an adviser to the British Behavioral Insights Team, said that his research also supports automatically enrolling people in retirement savings plans.

“Many people have struggled to save enough to provide for an adequate retirement. … Two simple design changes can dramatically improve the situation … automatic enrollment (default people into the plan with the option to easily opt out) and automatic escalation, where workers can sign up to have their contributions increased annually,” he said.

Jerry Ellig, an economist at the Mercatus Center, said that some “nudges” are reasonable, but warned about a slippery slope.

“If you can keep it to a ‘nudge’ maybe it can be beneficial,” he added, “but nudges can turn into shoves pretty quickly.”

Whistle-blowing State Official Fired After Testimony in Zimmerman Trial

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Ben KruidbosThe special prosecutor appointed to the George Zimmerman case has sacked a whistle-blowing colleague who testified at the trial that the state attorney’s office failed to comply with the rules of discovery.

Ben Kruidbos, the state attorney’s office IT director, was reportedly fired in the wake of rendering testimony during a June 6 hearing that was potentially damaging to the prosecution regarding cell phone photos and text messages discovered on Trayvon Martin’s phone that were not  furnished to defense attorneys.

The Orlando Sentinel reports Kruidbos received a scathing letter from State Attorney Angela Corey’s office Friday morning, calling him untrustworthy and adding he “can never again be trusted to step foot in this office.”

trayvon_martinHowever, the Associated Press reports that Kruidbos received the pink slip Thursday, which accused him of misconduct and “violating numerous state attorney’s office policies and procedures.” Specifically, the letter reportedly accused him of disclosing confidential information, sabotage of property or equipment, and misuse of equipment.

martin-phone-picturesThe cell phone photos reportedly depict, among other things, a clump of jewelry on a bed, underage nude females, marijuana plants, as well as a hand menacingly holding a semiautomatic pistol.

Zimmerman’s attorneys were reportedly seeking sanctions against the state for not properly turning over the evidence from Martin’s phone. Judge Debra Nelson said she would revisit the matter at the trial’s end.

FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

60 Billion Planets Could Support Life

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MILKYWAYThough only about dozen potentially habitable exoplanets have been detected so far, scientists say the universe should be teeming with alien worlds that could support plant life. The Milky Way alone may host 60 billion such planets around faint red dwarf stars, a new estimate suggests.

Based on data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, scientists have predicted that there should be one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf, the most common type of star. But a group of researchers has now doubled that estimate after considering how cloud cover might help an alien planet support life.

“Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth,” study researcher Dorian Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, said in a statement. “They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That’s part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life.” [9 Alien Planets That Could Support Life]

The habitable zone is defined as the region where a planet has the right temperature to keep liquid water on its surface, thought to be a requirement for life as we know it. If a planet is too far from its star, its water freezes; too close, water vaporizes. Since red dwarfs are dimmer and cooler than our sun, their habitable zone is much cozier than our solar system’s.

“If you’re orbiting around a low-mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the sun,” explained another study author, Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University.

With such a snug orbit, a habitable planet around a red dwarf would become tidally locked, meaning it would always have one side facing its star, much like the moon faces Earth. This side would see eternal daylight.

In the new study, the researchers used 3D simulations to model the way air and moisture would move over a planet tidally locked around a red dwarf. The team found that any surface water would result in water clouds. What’s more, highly reflective clouds would build at the point of the star-facing side where it’s always high noon. This would have a cooling effect in the inner ring of the habitable zone, meaning the planets there would be able to sustain water on their surfaces much closer to their star, the researchers say.

The findings could give scientists a new way to confirm the presence of liquid water on the surface of alien planets with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a new space-based observatory scheduled for launch in 2018, the researchers say.

“If you look at Brazil or Indonesia with an infrared telescope from space, it can look cold, and that’s because you’re seeing the cloud deck,” Cowan said. “The cloud deck is at high altitude, and it’s extremely cold up there.”

The same could be true of a habitable exoplanet with a highly reflective cloud cover, the researchers say. If JWST detects a similar cold signal over the dayside of an alien world, Abbot said, “it’s almost definitely from clouds, and it’s a confirmation that you do have surface liquid water.”

The research was detailed June 27 in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Edward Snowden Seeking Asylum in Russia

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edward.snowdenFollowing a week of hide-and-seek in the international “transit zone” of the Moscow airport, NSA leaker Edward Snowden is reported to be seeking political asylum in Russia.

The Russian government had been distancing itself from Snowden over the past week, as has the government of Ecuador, locations where Snowden had reportedly been trying to relocate.

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange has claimed to be assisting Snowden find a more permanent “home” to ride out the spying charges filed against him by the US Department of Justice.

Whether Snowden is a hero whistle-blower or a traitor is much in the eye of the beholder at this point, with only a small portion of the leaked information having come to light. Indeed, candidate Barack Obama praised government whistle-blowers:

Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out . . . [I] will strengthen whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Barack Obama

Of course, it is Barack Obama whose government has been fingered by the former NSA spy as being the most abusive wielder of power through intrusive spying on citizens and foreign governments in the history of the US.

PUBLIUS

Euro Allies Fume Over NSA Claim

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Allegations of NSA bugging stir tension with European allies

obama_nsaEmerging allegations that America’s National Security Agency bugged and hacked European Union offices stoked tension Sunday between U.S. and European officials, with German prosecutors announcing they are probing the claims.

The allegations were carried in a report by the German magazine Der Spiegel. They are the latest claims to surface regarding NSA surveillance activity, as on-the-lam leaker Edward Snowden feeds a series of sensitive documents to the media. Der Spiegel did not specifically say how it obtained the information.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz, in response, demanded a clarification from the NSA about the alleged program.

“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of U.S. authorities spying on EU offices,” Schulz said in a statement, according to The Wall Street Journal. “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations.”

German federal prosecutors also said they are looking into the reports. The Federal Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement Sunday that it was probing the claims so as to “achieve a reliable factual basis” before considering whether a formal investigation was warranted.

It also said private citizens were likely to file criminal complaints on the matter.

A representative with the NSA referred questions on the matter to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which has not yet commented on the report.

But Michael Hayden, the former director of both the NSA and CIA, said Sunday that European officials should look in the mirror before criticizing the U.S.

“Any European who wants to go out and rend their garments with regard to international espionage should look first and find out what their own governments are doing,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Hayden noted he’s been out of the agency for years and said he didn’t know the accuracy of the Der Spiegel report, nor could he confirm or deny it if he did.

But he said “the United States does conduct espionage,” and that the Fourth Amendment right to privacy “is not an international treaty.”

Der Spiegel reported that the NSA appears to have installed bugs in an EU building in Washington, D.C., as well as infiltrated their computer network. According to the report, this let U.S. officials monitor discussions and emails.

U.S. officials have warned that the string of NSA leaks are damaging to national security.

Snowden is believed to still be at the Moscow airport. Russian officials so far have refused to expel him to the U.S., claiming he is in a transit zone and not technically in their hands.

Meanwhile, Vice President Biden on Friday called Ecuador’s president to urge the country to reject a request by Snowden for asylum in that country.

FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Did FBI Probe Result in Fiery Crash?

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Michael_HastingsMere hours before the fiery car crash that took his life, journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to friends and colleagues urging them to get legal counsel if they were approached by federal authorities.

“Hey [redacted] the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates,'” read the message dated June 17 at 12:56 p.m. from Hastings to editors at the website BuzzFeed, where he worked.

“Perhaps if the authorities arrive ‘BuzzFeed GQ’, er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.”

Hastings added that he was onto a big story and that he would, “need to go off the radat [radar] for a bit,” according to KTLA in Los Angeles.

Fifteen hours later, in the early morning of June 18, Hastings was driving a Mercedes C250 at a high speed when he lost control in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park neighborhood, causing the car to fishtail and crash into a palm tree. The impact caused the car to burst into flames, trapping the 33-year-old inside.

Conspiracy theories surrounding Hastings’ death began to circulate almost immediately.

On Twitter and several sites across the web, speculation was rampant that the death of Hastings — whose 2010 article for Rolling Stone led to the resignation of U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then head of the U.S. operation in Afghanistan — was no accident.

Also Friday, WikiLeaks released two messages on Twitter that added fuel to the fire.

“Michael Hastings’ death has a very serious non-public complication. We will have more details later,” said the first. Two hours later, WikiLeaks tweeted more specific information.

“Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him,” the second message read.

It was speculated by others that Hastings was working on a story about Drone Surveillance in the U.S.

LAPD officials said on Friday that no foul play was suspected in the fatal accident, although that did little to quell theories about his death.

Investigators are trying to determine whether there was a mechanical problem with the car, according to the Los Angeles Times. The car burst into flames after hitting a tree in the one-car accident at 4:20 a.m. Law enforcement sources said the car was believed to have been traveling at a high rate of speed.

FoxNews.com

Google Claims First Amendment Right To Release NSA Data Demands

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NSA-GoogleFor the past two weeks, Google has been petitioning the government to allow it to publish the exact number of data requests it receives from the NSA. There’s not been a lot of progress made on that front, but now Google is pulling out the big guns in attempt to force transparency.

In a recent filing, obtained by The Washington Post, before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Google argues the gag order that prevents it from publishing the number of data requests it receives is unconstitutional. In particular, Google says that such gag orders violate its First Amendment rights:

“Google seeks a declaratory judgment that Google has a right under the First Amendment to publish, and that no applicable law or regulation prohibits Google from publishing, two aggregate unclassified numbers: (1) the total number of FISA requests it receives, if any; and (2) the total number of users or accounts encompassed within such requests.”

Now, why is this so difficult? What’s wrong with publishing nothing but numbers? Well, it may seem kind of silly to you, but the government argues that even publishing the exact number of data requests it sends would put the nation in danger. Google isn’t asking to publish any specific requests nor it it asking to reveal inner workings of its relationship with the NSA. Google is only asking to publish some numbers, and that has thus far proven to be incredibly difficult.

In the last week, we’ve seen the government slightly budge on the issue. Facebook, Apple and Yahoo all published statements that listed a ballpark figure of data requests it receives from local, state and federal governments. Google was presumably allowed to publish the same figure, but it refrained because “lumping national security requests together with criminal requests … would be a backward step for our users.”

Google took that stance because it already publishes the amount of national security letters it receives from the government. Well, it can publish ballpark figures that say it received between 0 and 999 requests for user data in 2012. It’s not exactly helpful and lumping those figures in with criminal requests would make the numbers even more opaque.

The core argument here is that publishing these wide ranging numbers doesn’t do the public or Google any good. Sure, Google could say it receives anywhere between 9,000 to 12,000 data requests per year, but we wouldn’t know if those requests were from local law enforcement or the NSA. In turn, that unknown factor would only serve to increase consumer distrust for Google and drive them away to competitors.

What makes this all the more silly is that Google isn’t even asking to publish the exact number of data requests. As per the filing, here’s what Google would like to publish:

“Google’s publication would disclose numbers as part of the regular Transparency Report publication cycle for National Security Letters, which covers data over calendar year time periods. There would be two new categories to cover requests made under FISA: (a) total requests received and (b) total users/accounts at issue. Each of these entries will be reported at a range, rather than an actual number. That range would be the same as used by Google in its reporting of NSLs currently, in increments of one thousand, starting with zero. As with the NSL reporting, Google would have a Frequently Asked Questions section that would describe the statutory FISA authorities themselves.”

That doesn’t sound bad at all. The government already lets Google publish a ballpark figure for national security letters, so why not this? What’s the problem with making the federal government more transparent? Doing so would benefit not only the Obama administration’s declining reputation, but it would also immensely help Silicon Valley as well.

As was argued last week, tech companies have just as much to lose from the government keeping quiet as we do. Publishing opaque data request numbers may initially look good for the likes of Facebook and Apple, but Google is taking the higher ground here. It’s fighting to publish these numbers to advance the public debate over the NSA “in a thoughtful and democratic manner.” Lord knows the issue of NSA spying powers needs that right now.

By Zach Walton – Writer for WebProNews

Do you think Google should be allowed to publish data request numbers? Would it adversely impact national security?

google_cia_nsa

Technology Makes Possible the Surveillance State

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obama-big-brotherTechnology is making your every move — perhaps even those movements you make in the bathroom — ready for broadcast. The question is, are you ready for it?

Following the revelations about some of what the U.S. National Security Agency has been up to — secretly collecting millions of phone records and innumerable personal online searches and e-mails — government officials have been scrambling to reassure the public that the amount of information it is collecting is negligible, even trivial, and doesn’t impinge on personal freedom. However, the technology itself argues against the idea that what’s being collected about you is harmless.

Consider that phone numbers with time and location information can be easily combined with Web searches (for “anti-depressants,” say) and text message information to form a picture of where you are and what you’re doing. No one needs to listen to the content of a call if they know everything else about you, like the fact that you’ve messaged a therapist several times this week, belong to a gun club, and gave money to a Tea Party candidate.

Furthermore, the government’s Prism program looks positively mundane when you consider the other possible sources of information available through secret government surveillance. It is technically possible to monitor nearly every U.S. citizen — through automated scanning software programs — seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Video cameras monitor you walking down the sidewalk. Toll tags and on-board connected car systems monitor you behind the wheel, even relaying rabbit starts, severe braking, and excessive speed. Security systems at work oversee cubicles, and employers monitor computer habits with hidden software that tracks keystrokes. At home, smart TVs with streaming services collect information about what you’re watching. Some sets and gaming consoles even include cameras that can tell who is in the room sitting on the couch.

big_brother_watchingWorse, our addiction to smartphones means we’re beaming our location, purchases, banking information, and personal relationships over networks that can be easily tapped — by government officials or by malware from hackers. Indeed, a computer program known as Flame that security experts say was created for espionage purposes has the demonstrated ability to secretly turn on a device’s microphone and record a conversation.

And then there’s Google Glass.

The much anticipated eyewear isn’t even available to the public yet, but when it is people won’t have to hold up a phone to take a picture, they’ll be able to record video in the blink of an eye. At a recent shareholder meeting, Google CEO Larry Page told attendees not to be terrified that people might use Glass in a public bathroom, just as we shouldn’t worry about people using smartphones in the bathroom.

I think there are some choice words folks would have for people who use Google Glass in the bathroom. (Try explaining to the friendly police officer that you were just reading FoxNews.com on the eyepiece, honest.)

The problem, of course, is the surreptitious nature of the technology and the secret monitoring it enables. It means that information — information you might think is innocuous — can be used against you without your knowledge. (Never mind embarrassing videos showing your lack of hygiene in the bathroom.) You may never know why you were rejected for a job or your kid didn’t get into a particular school.

Hypothetically speaking, you might be pulled over on the highway in the middle of the night by an officer who claims you were dallying in the passing lane. Unbeknownst to you, the real reason was that your plate was flagged by a license plate reader (LPR) camera, which was relying on an algorithm that detected that an individual who made phone calls to Eastern Europe and conducted Web searches for gun clubs is associated with that plate number.

The police officer lets you go on your way, but the next week, late at night, the same thing happens. And then the week after that, and, well, you get the picture.

So even if you never do anything wrong, never jaywalk or get a parking ticket, the information collected could be used against you, and you would be none the wiser. Catching terrorists is a laudable aim of such technological surveillance, and you might trust the Obama administration that such surveillance will never be misused. But what about the next administration?

Should people associated with the Tea Party get extra scrutiny from the IRS? Should people who are against gun control be monitored by state police? Should anti-war activists have their search history scrutinized by the NSA?

There are technological ways to limit the intrusion of such technology and prevent it from diminishing our privacy and freedoms, but it requires extra work. Programmers can limit the scope and fine tune communications monitoring software, and government officials could submit to more oversight by courts that are not secret.

But in a society where most of us are scrutinized on camera already — with the bathroom soon to come — it may be too late to put the digital genie back in the bottle.

EPA Drops Study Linking Pollution to Fracking

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epa-logoCHEYENNE, Wyo. –  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday it is dropping its longstanding plan to have independent scientists review its finding that hydraulic fracturing may be linked to groundwater pollution in central Wyoming.

The EPA is standing by its findings, but state officials will lead further investigation into the pollution in the Pavillion area. The area has been a focus of the debate over whether fracking can pollute groundwater ever since the EPA’s initial report came out in late 2011.

“We stand behind our work and the data, but EPA recognizes the state’s commitment to further investigation,” said agency spokesman Tom Reynolds in Washington, D.C. The EPA will let state officials carry on the investigation with the federal agency’s support, he said.

Wyoming officials have been skeptical about the theory that fracking played a role in the pollution at Pavillion, but Reynolds expressed confidence the state could lead the work from here. He described the shift as the best way to ensure Pavillion-area residents have a clean source of drinking water.

Even so, industry officials who have been doubtful about the EPA findings all along praised the change as confirmation of their view that the science wasn’t sound.

“EPA has to do a better job, because another fatally flawed water study could have a big impact on how the nation develops its massive energy resources,” Erik Milito, director of upstream and industry operations for the American Petroleum Institute, said in a release.

Richard Garrett, energy and legislative advocate with the Wyoming Outdoor Council in Lander, said he believes Thursday’s announcement shows the EPA is finding it more difficult than originally expected to come to grips with the full environmental effect of fracking. He noted that the EPA is pushing back other work aimed at gauging the how energy production may pollute groundwater.

“It’s not surprising to me that they’re kind of taking a secondary role in rural Pavillion,” Garrett said. “It looks to me like it might be a resource issue. That goes to the federal budget I suppose, and EPA administration.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, boosts the productivity of oil and gas wells by pumping pressurized water mixed with sand and chemicals into well holes to crack open fissures in the ground.

Environmentalists have voiced concern about fracking causing groundwater pollution for years, but the practice has significantly boosted oil and gas production in regions such as the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Marcellus Shale underlying Eastern states.

The EPA’s 2011 report marked the first time the agency publicly linked fracking and groundwater contamination, causing a stir on both sides of the issue.

The federal agency began seeking nominations last year for experts to serve as peer reviewers for its draft report, and it has extended public comment periods on the report three times since it came out. Each extension delayed the peer-review plans.

EPA officials insisted Thursday that the agency is not giving up on its Pavillion research and reserves the right to pick up the investigation in the future and open it to peer review. The EPA also has been examining the relationship between fracking and groundwater in different areas of the country and is proceeding with that study.

The Northern Arapaho Tribe on the Wind River Indian Reservation surrounding the Pavillion area has been seeking to maintain a role in the Pavillion research since taking part in new sampling last year. A tribal official said, however, that the EPA hasn’t worked closely with the tribe lately.

“They have a legal duty to consult with the tribe and that didn’t happen as part of their dialogue with the governor,” Ronald Oldman, co-chairman of the tribe’s business council, said in a statement.

The new research led by Wyoming officials would be funded at least in part by a $1.5 million grant from Encana Corp.’s U.S. oil and gas subsidiary, which owns the Pavillion gas field. The state will issue a final report in late 2014, Gov. Matt Mead’s office said in a news release.

Mead said Wyoming will focus on making sure the few dozen affected residents of the rural, farming and ranching country a few miles outside Pavillion, population 230, have a clean source of drinking water. The state has been providing water cisterns to 20 people in the area.

“It is in everyone’s best interest — particularly the citizens who live outside of Pavillion — that Wyoming and the EPA reach an unbiased, scientifically supportable conclusion,” Mead said in a news release. “I commend EPA and Encana for working with me to chart a positive course for the investigation.”

The study will assess the need for any further action to protect drinking water sources, according to the release.

The Encana funding will pay to examine 14 domestic water wells in the Pavillion field for water quality and palatability concerns.

Local residents have complained for more than seven years that their water began to reek of chemicals since fracking occurred in their neighborhood. However, EPA efforts to find potential pathways from deeper areas where gas is extracted to shallower areas tapped by domestic water wells have been inconclusive, the news release said.

“We’re pleased that EPA has agreed to discontinue the investigation,” Encana spokesman Doug Hock said. “We applaud the fact that further efforts in Pavilion will focus on a few specific complaints about perceived changes in domestic water well quality.”

Associated Press

Is Obama Targeting LDS Canneries?

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Enoch_Adam_ad

LDS_Temple_TargetThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) has a network of food canning and distribution centers around the nation, where volunteer church members donate time to can food grown on the church’s farms and orchards or purchased from other sources. The purpose of this network of canneries is to provide food to those who have been caught in disasters or just caught short by an ever-declining national economy. Millions of pounds of food are prepared for distribution annually in the LDS canneries.

LDS_Cannery_1Recently, we have heard rumblings that the federal government has been paying very close attention to the church’s cannery network and that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration have been imposing increasingly burdensome regulations and requirements on the LDS canneries. Despite the cutting-edge technologies and state-of-the-art equipment at these ‘clean-room’ quality facilities, federal agencies have been hitting the LDS church with improvised fines for “violations” they find during surprise inspections. Reports of an FBI “raid” at one facility where agents demanded a list of the names of the cannery’s patrons was especially troublesome.

LDS_Cannery_2Indeed, a muffled discussion within the LDS canning network has confirmed all of these abuses, but the LDS Church has refused to report the abuses openly, wishing to avoid a ‘Tea Party’ type of confrontation with the federal government–although the Church has almost certainly been targeted by the Administration in the same manner as other independent-thinking groups.

Accounts confirm that in fact, the LDS Church is shutting down all of its canning facilities east of the Mississippi River, and some in the west as well. These units will cease canning operations by the end of this month, and will only make prepackaged items available to patrons thereafter.

Reagan_Ogden_CanneryWhy is the federal government going after the LDS Church? There are a number of reasons that come to mind. Obama’s nemesis in the general election was a prominent member of the LDS Church. Members of the church tend to vote in a conservative block. The LDS Church teaches the worship of God and His Son Jesus Christ, independence, morality, education, and family and traditional values–all things that are abhorrent to the current administration, which has proven its willingness to abuse its authority to go after those with whom it disagrees (Romney supporters, patriotic groups, conservatives, Christians, etc.).

J.L. Thompson is an LDS/Christian writer, and holds a Juris Doctor degree. He is Editor-in-Chief of Scottsdale Multimedia, Inc., a leading ghostwriting firm.  Volume One of his new novel series “The Coming Flood” has just been released, titled Enoch in the City of Adam. Visit J.L. Thompson on Facebook

Readers may be interested in these stories as well:

The Tree of Liberty is Dying—Is Civil War Coming?

Mormons and Progressivism: United Order vs. Socialism

This Easter Morning, Remember

What ‘NOAH’ Movie Gets Wrong, and Right

Christians: Marked For Extinction?

Harry Reid: Worst Human On Earth

British Court Dismisses Case Against LDS Church President

 

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FBI Director Rattled Over IRS, Surveillance and Benghazi Scandals

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Robert_MuellerThe country’s top investigator seemed to be in the dark Thursday when pressed to provide details of the IRS investigation into the tax agency’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups.Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, seemed to rattle FBI Director Robert Mueller for not knowing the specifics surrounding the IRS probe.“You’ve had a month now to investigate,” Jordan said. “This has been the biggest story in the country and you can’t even tell me who the lead investigator is. You can’t tell me the actions the inspector general took which are not typically how investigations are done. You can’t tell me if that’s appropriate or not. This is not speculation. This is what happened.”

Mueller repeatedly declined to answer Jordan’s questions, saying he couldn’t because the investigation was ongoing or that he’d have to get back to the lawmakers with answers.

When Jordan asked again,” Can you tell me who the lead investigator is?” Mueller responded, “Off the top of my head, no.”

The day didn’t go much better for the outgoing FBI chief. He was grilled for hours by lawmakers on a number of different topics, including the federal government’s surveillance programs, the Benghazi scandal and the Boston Marathon bombings.

Mueller defended the government’s collection of millions of U.S. phone records, emails and other information as vital to the nation’s national security.

Early in the hearing, Mueller tried to make the case for the National Security Agency surveillance programs and said that law enforcement “must stay a step ahead of criminals and terrorists” while still heeding the civil liberties of Americans.

Mueller, who is stepping down from his post in September, said that if the metadata collection program had been in place before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, they would have identified one of the 9/11 hijackers in San Diego and most likely derailed the plot.

But Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. said he was “not persuaded that the argument makes it OK to collect information on every call,” adding, that by Mueller’s interpretation, it would be “anything and everything goes” situation.

Mueller also testified that the government’s controversial surveillance programs that recently surfaced complied “in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution.”
The Justice Department revealed last month that it had secretly gathered emails of Fox News correspondent James Rosen and phone records of The Associated Press in an effort to crack down on leakers of classified information.

The department later acknowledged that Attorney General Eric Holder was on board with a search warrant for Rosen’s personal emails, obtained after federal officials accused him in an affidavit of being a likely criminal “co-conspirator” under a wartime law known as the Espionage Act.

Authorities also obtained phone records for Fox News lines, including those for a number that matched the number of Rosen’s parents.

In the past week, a 29-year-old contractor leaked National Security Agency documents on the agency’s collection of millions of U.S. phone records and the NSA’s collection of emails and other information that people transmit online to and from foreign citizens.

That has touched off a national debate over whether the Obama administration, in its efforts to thwart terrorism, has overstepped by using intrusive surveillance methods.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the committee’s chairman, said when it comes to national security leaks, it’s important to balance the need to protect secrecy with the need to let the news media do its job.

Goodlatte also said the committee planned to find out more about the status of what the congressman called the FBI’s “stalled investigation” into the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.

As for the Boston Marathon bombings, committee members want to know whether there was a breakdown in information-sharing between federal agencies, preventing the FBI from thwarting the explosions that killed three people and injured more than 260.

Published June 13, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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