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Paul Merrell

UNASUR Moves toward Continental Freedom of Movement, Venezuela Makes "Equality" Call | ... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-venezuela-makes-equality-call

regional-governments UNASUR South-American-integration de-dollarization

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • The 12 member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has taken a step toward creating South American citizenship and freedom of movement. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro also called for strategies to promote continental economic development, social equality and defence sovereignty. The new proposals for South American integration were made during a UNASUR summit in Guayaquil, Ecuador yesterday. Today regional leaders are meeting in the Ecuadorian capital Quito for the opening of the organisation’s new permanent headquarters.
  • Taking place over two days, the summit in Guayaquil sought to design strategies to further develop regional integration. “We have approved the concept of South American citizenship. This should be the greatest register of what has happened,” said UNASUR general secretary Ernesto Samper at the summit yesterday. Part of this proposal is to create a “single passport” and homologate university degrees in order to give South Americans the right to live, work and study in any UNASUR country and to give legal protection to migrants – similar to freedom of movement rules for citizens of the European Union.
  • Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, argued that the statutes of UNASUR should be changed and that majorities, rather than absolute consensus, should be the minimum necessary basis on which to advance important areas of integration. In particular, Correa called for the advancement of financial integration and sovereignty, such as the Bank of the South and Reserve Fund, a currency exchange system to minimise the use of the dollar in intercontinental trade, the creation of a regional body to settle financial disputes, and a common currency “in the medium term”.
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  • Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro agreed that the creation of new financial instruments was central to advancing regional integration and sovereignty. “From Venezuela we believe that we must take the agenda of shared economic development into our hands; a new financial architecture [that includes] the Bank of Structural Projects, that converts us into a powerful bloc,” he said to media in Guayaquil before the meeting with other UNASUR leaders. The two other priorities for the Venezuelan government at the meeting were to promote strategies for social equality and regional defence sovereignty. On defence, Maduro said that Venezuela would support a “new South American military doctrine” based on a “system of education for South American militaries, below the guidance of the South American Defence Council,” in which the thought of the continent’s 19th century independence leaders would be present.
  • Outgoing Uruguayan president Jose Mujica made a passionate speech while accepting the presidency on behalf of his country, where he stated, “There won’t be integration without commitment, willpower, and political will, because the global obstacles are enormous and the past continues to constrain us”. Meanwhile, respected former Brazilian president Lula Da Silva declared, “Today our main challenge is to deepen the construction of strategic thought of Latin America and the Caribbean. We can construct an integration project that is more daring, that takes advantage of the formation of our rich history, goods and cultures”.
  • The UNASUR was created in 2008. Its members are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14
     
    A rough equivalent of the EU for South America and the Carribean? De-dollarization? A common currency? Regional defense sovereignty? Quite obviously, the CIA needs to expand its destabilization operations in Venezuela to a few more countries, else the banksters get grumpy. 
Paul Merrell

Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement: How the Foreign Agents Registration Ac... - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...istration-act-falls-short.html

Congress corruption foreign-agents-registration

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Why This Matters The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign clients to disclose significantly more information about their activities than what is required of domestic lobbyists. This includes the actual documents used to influence policy makers, called informational materials. These materials include draft legislation, speeches, press releases and more, all created to influence U.S. policy. But the lobbyists do not always follow the letter of the law and enforcement by the Justice Department has been lax in recent years. Furthermore, the law itself seems to have loopholes that make enforcement difficult if not impossible. The Foreign Agents Registration Act is intended to bring transparency into the world of foreign lobbying. But when American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign interests fail to follow the law, or the Justice Department fails to enforce it, the American people are left in the dark.
  • Why This Matters The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign clients to disclose significantly more information about their activities than what is required of domestic lobbyists. This includes the actual documents used to influence policy makers, called informational materials. These materials include draft legislation, speeches, press releases and more, all created to influence U.S. policy. But the lobbyists do not always follow the letter of the law and enforcement by the Justice Department has been lax in recent years. Furthermore, the law itself seems to have loopholes that make enforcement difficult if not impossible. The Foreign Agents Registration Act is intended to bring transparency into the world of foreign lobbying. But when American lobbyists working on behalf of foreign interests fail to follow the law, or the Justice Department fails to enforce it, the American people are left in the dark.
  • Executive Summary The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires that all American citizens working to influence U.S. policy on behalf of foreign governments register with the Department of Justice and to disclose information on any and all political activity in which they engaged for foreign clients. This includes filing, within 48 hours, any informational materials disseminated to two or more people.
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  • Table of Contents Executive SummaryIntroductionBackgroundWhat the Foreign Influence Database ShowsEgypt: A Case Study Of Foreign InfluenceSame-Day ContributionsSystemic Foreign InfluenceQuid Pro Quo or Coincidence?Foreign Money and the LawLax Compliance with and Enforcement of FARAEnforcementConclusionRecommendationsEndnotes
  • The law requires lobbyists for foreign interests to plainly and conspicuously identify themselves as such in any materials distributed in the course of their lobbying—for example, emails, other correspondence, or publications. We found that many documents filed with the Justice Department lack this identification statement; furthermore, many lobbyists admitted that they did not comply with this requirement. More than half (51 percent) of the registrants we examined in a sample from 2010 checked a box on a the semi-annual Justice Department questionnaire saying they had filed informational materials, and checked another box saying they had not met the legal requirement that they identify themselves in those materials as working on behalf of foreign interests. Toby Moffett, a former Member of Congress from Connecticut who is now Chairman of the Moffett Group and one of its registered lobbyists, told POGO that “Around the edges there’s a lot of loosey-goosey stuff going on. People representing foreign interests and not reporting.”[4] But even when lobbyists do report to the Justice Department, the information they provide is not easily accessible to the public. Astonishingly, informational materials are not available online, despite the fact that the Justice Department has an electronic filing system. Instead, these documents are kept in an office at the Justice Department that is only open for four hours each weekday. Hard copies of the documents are kept in folders that are often disorganized and susceptible to misfiling. This archaic system undermines the intended transparency of the law.
  • We set out to determine the extent to which lobbyists for foreign interests were filing lobbying materials at the Justice Department within the required time frame. Based on a review of filings made in 2012, in those instances where it was possible to answer the question, POGO estimates that almost half—46 percent—were filed late. Fifteen percent were filed more than 30 business days after they were distributed, and 12 percent were filed more than 100 business days after they were distributed. In many instances, the Justice Department would be hard pressed to enforce the filing deadline. Based on the records the Department maintains to enforce the law, we found that in more than a quarter (26 percent) of the 2012 filings, it was impossible to determine whether the lobbyists complied. For example, in many cases, the records did not show when the lobbyists disseminated the materials to the targets of their lobbying. In a glaring omission, the law does not require lobbyists to provide that information. Without it, there may be no way for the government or the public to know whether lobbying materials were filed on time.
  • Though federal law bars foreign money from U.S. political campaigns, there appears to be a gray area in the law that can let in such money indirectly. POGO found many instances in which members of lobbying firms made political contributions to Members of Congress on the same day that those firms were lobbying the Members of Congress or their legislative staffs on behalf of foreign clients.[1] Lobbyists who fail to comply with certain FARA requirements may have little to fear from the Justice Department. “The cornerstone of the Registration Unit’s enforcement efforts is encouraging voluntary compliance,” a Justice Department website says.[2] When lobbyists do not voluntarily comply, the Justice Department rarely uses one of the key tools at its disposal to enforce the law—seeking a court injunction. A representative of the Department’s FARA unit told POGO: “While the FARA statute and regulations authorize the pursuit of formal legal proceedings, such as injunctive remedy options, the FARA Unit [has] not pursued injunctive remedy options recently and has instead utilized other mechanisms to achieve compliance.”[3] It appears that some registered foreign agents have been distributing materials but not filing them with the Justice Department. It’s unclear the extent to which that illustrates a lack of compliance with the law or loopholes in the law. In the process of researching this report, POGO noticed that many more lobbyists were registering as foreign agents than had filed informational materials that we could locate at the FARA office. To determine what was happening, we looked at a sampling of questionnaires that the Justice Department requires registered agents to complete every six months. Some checked one box indicating they had distributed materials and another box stating they did not file them with the FARA office.
  • The Project On Government Oversight examined thousands of these materials spanning four years, as well as additional public records related to the Justice Department’s oversight of lobbyists for foreign interests. We found that lobbyists for foreign interests have routinely failed to comply with the law—a failure that prevents journalists and watchdogs from scrutinizing the lobbying activities while foreign interests are trying to influence U.S. policy. We found a pattern of lax enforcement of FARA requirements by the Justice Department. We found that the Justice Department office responsible for administering the law is a record-keeping mess. And we found loopholes in the law that often makes it difficult if not impossible for the government to police compliance or to discipline lobbyists who fail to comply. Here are some highlights of our investigation:
  • When lobbyists for foreign interests do not follow the law, when the U.S. government fails to enforce it, and when the Justice Department makes it difficult for the American people to access records to which they are legally entitled, the public is left in the dark. To bring more transparency to this opaque realm, POGO has made four years of informational materials available for the first time online with our Foreign Influence Database, allowing the public to see how lobbyists attempt to influence American policies on behalf of their foreign clients.
  • With the release of the Foreign Influence Database, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is making years of documents from this key set of FARA filings electronically available for the first time. The materials were previously only available in hard copy at the FARA Registration Unit in Washington, DC, which is only open to the public from 11am to 3pm on weekdays.[12] In this digital age it is surprising that these materials could not be read online and are instead stored in file folders, where they are disorganized and susceptible to misfiling. Even those that were electronically filed by the registrants are not available to the public in an electronic format. POGO’s database includes informational materials filed in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.[13]
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14
     
    POGO does thorough work and doesn't let up until it gets results. Forcing DoJ to puts its foreign agents registration materials online should be a fairly trivial battle. The real war, though, will be forcing better enforcement. The new database is at http://www.pogo.org/tools-and-data/foreign-influence-database/ I punched up the word "Israel" and came up with 113 documents in the search results. Each search hit lists the name of the nation involved that the lobbying was done for. Of those 113 document hits, only two were for the nation of Israel, both for its Ministry of Tourism. The rest were by other nations who had mentioned Israel in their lobbying materials.  Now that is fairly incredible, given that Israel outright controls Congress when it comes to Middle East policy.  The last administration to attempt to do something about Israeli lobbyists not registering was the the Kennedy Administration. The result was that the major Israeli lobbying group disbanded and was promptly reformed under a new corporate charter and name. That was the very last attempt at enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act against Israel's lobbyists in the U.S., despite the fact that the reformed group, AIPAC, has even been caught more than once being passed highly classified U.S. documents by double agents working inside the U.S. military establishment. The leakers went to prison but the AIPACers were never prosecuted. AIPAC rules.  
Paul Merrell

FBI monitored and critiqued African American writers for decades | Books | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...merican-writers-j-edgar-hoover

surveillance state FBI Hoover black-American-writers

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Newly declassified documents from the FBI reveal how the US federal agency under J Edgar Hoover monitored the activities of dozens of prominent African American writers for decades, devoting thousands of pages to detailing their activities and critiquing their work. Academic William Maxwell first stumbled upon the extent of the surveillance when he submitted a freedom of information request for the FBI file of Claude McKay. The Jamaican-born writer was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, author of the sonnet If We Must Die, supposedly recited by Winston Churchill, and Maxwell was preparing an edition of his complete poems. When the file came through from the FBI, it stretched to 193 pages and, said Maxwell, revealed “that the bureau had closely read and aggressively chased McKay” – describing him as a “notorious negro revolutionary” – “all across the Atlantic world, and into Moscow”.
  • Maxwell, associate professor of English and African American studies at Washington University in St Louis, decided to investigate further, knowing that other scholars had already found files on well-known black writers such as Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. He made 106 freedom of information requests about what he describes as “noteworthy Afro-modernists” to the FBI; 51 of those writers had files, ranging from three to 1,884 pages each. “I suspected there would be more than a few,” said Maxwell. “I knew Hoover was especially impressed and worried by the busy crossroads of black protest, leftwing politics, and literary potential. But I was surprised to learn that the FBI had read, monitored, and ‘filed’ nearly half of the nationally prominent African American authors working from 1919 (Hoover’s first year at the Bureau, and the first year of the Harlem Renaissance) to 1972 (the year of Hoover’s death and the peak of the nationalist Black Arts movement). In this, I realised, the FBI had outdone most every other major institution of US literary study, only fitfully concerned with black writing.”
  • Maxwell’s book about his discovery, FB Eyes: How J Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature, is out on 18 February from Princeton University Press. It argues that the FBI’s attention was fuelled by Hoover’s “personal fascination with black culture”, that “the FBI is perhaps the most dedicated and influential forgotten critic of African American literature”, and that “African American literature is characterised by a deep awareness of FBI ghostreading”.
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  • Digital copies of 49 of the FBI files have been made available to the public online. “The collected files of the entire set of authors comprise 13,892 pages, or the rough equivalent of 46 300-page PhD theses,” Maxwell writes in the book. “FBI ghostreaders genuinely rivalled the productivity of their academic counterparts.” The academic told the Guardian that he believes the FBI monitoring stems from the fact that “from the beginning of his tenure at the FBI ... Hoover was exercised by what he saw as an emerging alliance between black literacy and black radicalism”.
  • The files show how the travel arrangements of black writers were closely scrutinised by the FBI, with the passport records of a long list of authors “combed for scraps of criminal behaviour and ‘derogatory information’”, writes Maxwell. Some writers were threatened by “‘stops’, instructions to advise and defer to the Bureau if a suspect tried to pass through a designated point of entry” to the US.
Gary Edwards

The Business Offensive: A Symmetrical Ruling Class - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...ive-a-symmetrical-ruling-class

Ruling-Class American-Oligarchy Corporate-Oligarchs Corporate-Facsists

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Since the close of World War II, America has sought an integrated policy as the militarization of capitalism
  • In the intervening years, this was not always easy to achieve, as, depending on circumstances, one or the other, the corporate-financial order, and the military itself, asserted itself and made strong demands on government.
  • the Cold War itself providing a cover for the US globalization of power via market penetration, international financial and monetary architecture under US supervision, and the steady build-up of an Armaments State.
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  • Yet, the dynamism of early modern capitalism, realized in part through grinding methods of labor suppression, notably, the privatization of force, helped on by a compliant government, meant that within capitalism itself there was tremendous jockeying for power requiring the imposition of Order if major railroads and industrial firms were to enjoy their secure monopoly status.
  • Here government was crucial to harmonious internal structural arrangements, anticompetitive in its policies for the promotion of monopolism sector-by-sector including banking (the House of Morgan, whose offshoots firmed up the organization of railroads and manufacturing) as the means to systemic consolidation—an end to internecine competition—which was achieved in the early 20th century under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (themselves the Janus-faced construct of the Battleship Navy and supposed liberal internationalism) setting the stage for the present era.
  • In practice, we see the interpenetration of business and government as the integration of monopoly capitalism in its own right.
  • By the late 1940s one can say that the military remained a junior partner of a synthesized ruling group or class, given the overwhelming thrust of business and its ascendant banking wing in defining American capitalism.
  • American capitalism could no longer go it alone, the military increasingly supplying the muscle for continued expansion and profitability. Korea and Vietnam were important chapters in the reshaping of a capitalist polity, with numerous interventions beyond mention the underpinning for a coalescent framework of elites, all making for a structural process of shaking down to the bare essentials the capitalist and military components in search of equilibrium. For otherwise, America feared its decline and would do anything to prevent.
  • Granted, it is hard to conceive of capitalism as a perpetual war machine, especially in America, which labors under the fiction of being, or if it ever was, then remaining, a democracy.
  • But there it is, an arms budget dwarfing all else, military bases strategically gathered worldwide, death squads euphemistically termed Special Ops, presidential-directed drone assassinations, the list goes on—so much so that one almost forgets capitalism is centrally about business and profits, not murder and mayhem.
  • the Great Capitalist Synthesis
  • an accomplice to the more successful militarization of capitalism by holding its own as an integral part in the relationship. In sum, the desideratum of business as usual, as in fleecing the consumer and jeopardizing his/her safety, destroying the environment, and best of all, removing itself from the constitutional foundations of the rule of law.
  • Corporations and banks have become a law unto themselves, with all the organs of government stretching from the Executive, Congress, the Supreme Court, to myriad regulatory agencies some unbeknownst to the public, sitting as a chorus of admiring voices egging them on.
  • Corporate Rescindment of Legal Rights: Business Power Run Amuck,
  • Class-action law suits, frequently the only feasible action of the poor for seeking redress of grievances against the giant corporations, are all but prohibited, replaced in contracts by compulsory-arbitration clauses, intended in the first place to kill class actions, which compel the individual standing alone to face insurmountable odds in a process by which the corporation names the arbitrator, keeps the proceedings secret, and determines the rules of procedure.
  • Civil courts are thrown to the winds.
  • It is as though capitalism, in this one seemingly minor area touching primarily the normalization of everyday relationships, has gone on the offensive, not of course to re-establish its relation to the military, but specifically and directly to exercise its domination over the people.
  • The now-and-future business polity is the fulfillment of the fascist dream, an authoritarian power structure of corporate consolidation supported through governmental suppression of dissent at home and an aggressively waged foreign policy to capture world markets.
  • The small print of the contracts one signs, whether for car rentals or nursing homes, and thousands of transactions in between, emboldens capitalism to go its solipsistic way, to the destruction of freedom, the planet, and human dignity.
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Nov 15
     
    "Since the close of World War II, America has sought an integrated policy as the militarization of capitalism. In the intervening years, this was not always easy to achieve, as, depending on circumstances, one or the other, the corporate-financial order, and the military itself, asserted itself and made strong demands on government. The result was never an intracompetitive mold because each needed and recognized the value of the other, but still there were periods of imbalance in their respective surges of governmental policy-emphasis. American capitalism had become a functional duopoly (C. Wright Mills' Power Elite was a good popular discussion of this general structure at an earlier point in our capitalist-development trajectory after the war), the Cold War itself providing a cover for the US globalization of power via market penetration, international financial and monetary architecture under US supervision, and the steady build-up of an Armaments State. There is nothing actually new here about the American historical pattern, except of course the more explicit and pronounced role to be assigned the military in the stabilization and expansion of American capitalism. The military was never at any point following the Civil War a negligible input in synthesizing the materials for an operational ruling class, but essentially, as in the late-19th century policy of the Open Door, business was sufficiently confident of its own power (the "imperialism of free trade") to carry forward the process of expansion largely on its own. Yet, the dynamism of early modern capitalism, realized in part through grinding methods of labor suppression, notably, the privatization of force, helped on by a compliant government, meant that within capitalism itself there was tremendous jockeying for power requiring the imposition of Order if major railroads and industrial firms were to enjoy their secure monopoly status."
Paul Merrell

File Says N.S.A. Found Way to Replace Email Program - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...d-after-nsa-program-ended.html

surveillance state NSA email-surveilllance lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • When the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of records about Americans’ emails came to light in 2013, the government conceded the program’s existence but said it had shut down the effort in December 2011 for “operational and resource reasons.” While that particular secret program stopped, newly disclosed documents show that the N.S.A. had found a way to create a functional equivalent. The shift has permitted the agency to continue analyzing social links revealed by Americans’ email patterns, but without collecting the data in bulk from American telecommunications companies — and with less oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  • The disclosure comes as a sister program that collects Americans’ phone records in bulk is set to end this month. Under a law enacted in June, known as the U.S.A. Freedom Act, the program will be replaced with a system in which the N.S.A. can still gain access to the data to hunt for associates of terrorism suspects, but the bulk logs will stay in the hands of phone companies.The newly disclosed information about the email records program is contained in a report by the N.S.A.’s inspector general that was obtained by The New York Times through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. One passage lists four reasons that the N.S.A. decided to end the email program and purge previously collected data. Three were redacted, but the fourth was uncensored. It said that “other authorities can satisfy certain foreign intelligence requirements” that the bulk email records program “had been designed to meet.”The report explained that there were two other legal ways to get such data. One was the collection of bulk data that had been gathered in other countries, where the N.S.A.’s activities are largely not subject to regulation by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and oversight by the intelligence court. Because of the way the Internet operates, domestic data is often found on fiber optic cables abroad.
  • The N.S.A. had long barred analysts from using Americans’ data that had been swept up abroad, but in November 2010 it changed that rule, documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden have shown. The inspector general report cited that change to the N.S.A.’s internal procedures.The other replacement source for the data was collection under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which permits warrantless surveillance on domestic soil that targets specific noncitizens abroad, including their new or stored emails to or from Americans.“Thus,” the report said, these two sources “assist in the identification of terrorists communicating with individuals in the United States, which addresses one of the original reasons for establishing” the bulk email records program.
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  • Timothy Edgar, a privacy official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations who now teaches at Brown University, said the explanation filled an important gap in the still-emerging history of post-Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story “The document makes it clear that N.S.A. is able to get all the Internet metadata it needs through foreign collection,” he said. “The change it made to its procedures in 2010 allowed it to exploit metadata involving Americans. Once that change was made, it was no longer worth the effort to collect Internet metadata inside the United States, in part because doing so requires N.S.A. to deal with” restrictions by the intelligence court.Observers have previously suggested that the N.S.A.’s November 2010 rules change on the use of Americans’ data gathered abroad might be connected to the December 2011 end of the bulk email records program. Marcy Wheeler of the national security blog Emptywheel, for example, has argued that this was probably what happened.
  • And officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive collection programs, have said the rules change and the FISA Amendments Act helped make the email records program less valuable relative to its expense and trouble. The newly disclosed documents amount to official confirmation.
Paul Merrell

Americans Fear "Phantom Terrorist Threat". 70% Consider "ISIS A Major Threat" | Global ... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5495121

war & peace terrorism-threat U.S. opinion-polls polls false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Fear-mongering gets most people to believe a phantom terrorist threat exists. State-sponsored false flags like 9/11 (the mother of them all), Paris in mid-November and most recently San Bernardino, make it easy to manipulate an uninformed public to support policies demanding condemnation. As long as most people rely on television for so-called news and information, they’ll remain mindless that terrorists “R” us. US intelligence covertly supports Al Qaeda and its affiliated entities. New York Times/CBS polling data show pre-Paris and San Bernardino, only 4% of Americans called terrorism the nation’s top problem. Now it’s 19%. Chances of a significant terrorist attack on US soil (a real one, not a false flag) is near zero. Public opinion believes otherwise. Asked in The Times/CBS poll “how likely is a terror attack in the US,” 44% said very, 35% somewhat, and only 17% not too likely or not at all.
  • These numbers are the highest registered since since the post-9/11 October 1, 2001 Times/CBS poll. Asked the same question about the likelihood of a terrorist attack in America, 53% of respondents said very, 35% somewhat, and only 10% not too likely or not at all. Fear-mongering aided by false flags works. Instead of focusing on real issues like protracted Main Street Depression conditions, poverty and the threat of possible nuclear war, most people  nonsensically believe a phantom terrorist threat is likely or somewhat likely – not realizing they’ve been duped to support an agenda harming their welfare and security. For the first time since 2006 (before the 2008 financial crisis, creating protracted Main Street Depression conditions), most Americans fear a terrorist attack on US soil – either homegrown (63%) or originating from abroad (59%), clear evidence of public ignorance and the power of propaganda to manipulate people effectively. Nearly 70% of Americans consider ISIS a major threat. Only 11% say not at all – the public mindless about US responsibility for creating the terror group and others like it, used as imperial foot soldiers. Only one-fourth of Americans think the fight against ISIS is going well or somewhat well – not realizing Washington supports what it claims to oppose, or understanding US imperial wars caused the greatest refugee crisis since WW II.
  • The public is evenly divided on whether to let displaced Syrians enter America – even after a careful vetting process to screen out threats. Post-San Bernardino, Obama’s approval rating on combating terrorism sunk to 34%, a record low. 57% of Americans disapprove of how he’s handling the issue, a record high. Two-thirds of Democrats support him, compared to 90% of Republicans and 60% of independents against. His overall approval rating is 44% – astonishing it’s not much lower given how gravely he’s affected the welfare of the vast majority of Americans. Only 24% believe the country is headed in the right direction. The Times/CBS poll was conducted from December 4 – 8 among a random sample of 1,275 adults nationwide.
Paul Merrell

Bulk Collection Under Section 215 Has Ended… What's Next? | Just Security - 0 views

www.justsecurity.org/...lk-collection-ended-whats-next

surveillance state NSA-reform 215 bulk-collection EO-12333

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The first (and thus far only) roll-back of post-9/11 surveillance authorities was implemented over the weekend: The National Security Agency shuttered its program for collecting and holding the metadata of Americans’ phone calls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. While bulk collection under Section 215 has ended, the government can obtain access to this information under the procedures specified in the USA Freedom Act. Indeed, some experts have argued that the Agency likely has access to more metadata because its earlier dragnet didn’t cover cell phones or Internet calling. In addition, the metadata of calls made by an individual in the United States to someone overseas and vice versa can still be collected in bulk — this takes place abroad under Executive Order 12333. No doubt the NSA wishes that this was the end of the surveillance reform story and the Paris attacks initially gave them an opening. John Brennan, the Director of the CIA, implied that the attacks were somehow related to “hand wringing” about spying and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill to delay the shut down of the 215 program. Opponents of encryption were quick to say: “I told you so.”
  • But the facts that have emerged thus far tell a different story. It appears that much of the planning took place IRL (that’s “in real life” for those of you who don’t have teenagers). The attackers, several of whom were on law enforcement’s radar, communicated openly over the Internet. If France ever has a 9/11 Commission-type inquiry, it could well conclude that the Paris attacks were a failure of the intelligence agencies rather than a failure of intelligence authorities. Despite the passage of the USA Freedom Act, US surveillance authorities have remained largely intact. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act — which is the basis of programs like PRISM and the NSA’s Upstream collection of information from Internet cables — sunsets in the summer of 2017. While it’s difficult to predict the political environment that far out, meaningful reform of Section 702 faces significant obstacles. Unlike the Section 215 program, which was clearly aimed at Americans, Section 702 is supposedly targeted at foreigners and only picks up information about Americans “incidentally.” The NSA has refused to provide an estimate of how many Americans’ information it collects under Section 702, despite repeated requests from lawmakers and most recently a large cohort of advocates. The Section 215 program was held illegal by two federal courts (here and here), but civil attempts to challenge Section 702 have run into standing barriers. Finally, while two review panels concluded that the Section 215 program provided little counterterrorism benefit (here and here), they found that the Section 702 program had been useful.
  • There is, nonetheless, some pressure to narrow the reach of Section 702. The recent decision by the European Court of Justice in the safe harbor case suggests that data flows between Europe and the US may be restricted unless the PRISM program is modified to protect the information of Europeans (see here, here, and here for discussion of the decision and reform options). Pressure from Internet companies whose business is suffering — estimates run to the tune of $35 to 180 billion — as a result of disclosures about NSA spying may also nudge lawmakers towards reform. One of the courts currently considering criminal cases which rely on evidence derived from Section 702 surveillance may hold the program unconstitutional either on the basis of the Fourth Amendment or Article III for the reasons set out in this Brennan Center report. A federal district court in Colorado recently rejected such a challenge, although as explained in Steve’s post, the decision did not seriously explore the issues. Further litigation in the European courts too could have an impact on the debate.
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  • The US intelligence community’s broadest surveillance authorities are enshrined in Executive Order 12333, which primarily covers the interception of electronic communications overseas. The Order authorizes the collection, retention, and dissemination of “foreign intelligence” information, which includes information “relating to the capabilities, intentions or activities of foreign powers, organizations or persons.” In other words, so long as they are operating outside the US, intelligence agencies are authorized to collect information about any foreign person — and, of course, any Americans with whom they communicate. The NSA has conceded that EO 12333 is the basis of most of its surveillance. While public information about these programs is limited, a few highlights give a sense of the breadth of EO 12333 operations: The NSA gathers information about every cell phone call made to, from, and within the Bahamas, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, and possibly other countries. A joint US-UK program tapped into the cables connecting internal Yahoo and Google networks to gather e-mail address books and contact lists from their customers. Another US-UK collaboration collected images from video chats among Yahoo users and possibly other webcam services. The NSA collects both the content and metadata of hundreds of millions of text messages from around the world. By tapping into the cables that connect global networks, the NSA has created a database of the location of hundreds of millions of mobile phones outside the US.
  • Given its scope, EO 12333 is clearly critical to those seeking serious surveillance reform. The path to reform is, however, less clear. There is no sunset provision that requires action by Congress and creates an opportunity for exposing privacy risks. Even in the unlikely event that Congress was inclined to intervene, it would have to address questions about the extent of its constitutional authority to regulate overseas surveillance. To the best of my knowledge, there is no litigation challenging EO 12333 and the government doesn’t give notice to criminal defendants when it uses evidence derived from surveillance under the order, so the likelihood of a court ruling is slim. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is currently reviewing two programs under EO 12333, but it is anticipated that much of its report will be classified (although it has promised a less detailed unclassified version as well). While the short-term outlook for additional surveillance reform is challenging, from a longer-term perspective, the distinctions that our law makes between Americans and non-Americans and between domestic and foreign collection cannot stand indefinitely. If the Fourth Amendment is to meaningfully protect Americans’ privacy, the courts and Congress must come to grips with this reality.
Paul Merrell

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html

class warfare income inequality economic mobility land of opportunity myth

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
  • But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage. Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”
  • Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.
  • Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
Gary Edwards

We Call a Top NSA Whistleblower … And Get the REAL SCOOP on Spying | Washingt... - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ope-of-the-spying-program.html

William-Binney NSA-Whistleblower NSA-Patriot-Act NARUS Verint

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 13
     
    "NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake corroborated Klein's assertions, testifying that while the NSA is using Israeli-made NARUS hardware to "seize and save all personal electronic communications." ..................... I then asked the NSA veteran Binney if the government's claim that it is only spying on metadata - and not content - was correct. We have extensively documented that the government is likely recording content as well. (And the government has previously admitted to "accidentally" collecting more information on Americans than was legal, and then gagged the judges so they couldn't disclose the nature or extent of the violations.) Binney said that was not true; the government is gathering everything, including content. Binney explained - as he has many times before - that the government is storing everything, and creating a searchable database … to be used whenever it wants, for any purpose it wants (even just going after someone it doesn't like). ..................... Binney said that former FBI counter-terrorism agent Tim Clemente is correct when he says that no digital data is safe (Clemente says that all digital communications are being recorded). Both Verint and Narus were founded in Israel in the 1990s. *** Binney next confirmed the statement of the author of the Patriot Act - Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner - that the NSA spying programs violate the Patriot Act. After all, the Patriot Act is focused on spying on external threats … not on Americans. Binney asked rhetorically: "How can an American court [FISA or otherwise] tell telecoms to cough up all domestic data?!" Update: Binney sent the following clarifying email about content collection: It's clear to me that they are collecting most e-mail in full plus other text type data on the web. As for phone calls, I don't think they would record/transcribe the approximately 3 billion US-to-US calls every day. It's more likely that they are reco
Gary Edwards

THE TRUTH ABOUT SPYING: The Feds Are Intercepting Your Internet Data And Tech Giants Kn... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/he-nsas-data-collection-2013-6

Prism NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Edward-Snowden

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Last year James Bamford of Wired — who wrote the book "The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America" — reported that the NSA hired secretive companies linked to Israeli intelligence to establish 10 to 20 wiretapping rooms at key Internet Service Provider (ISP) telecommunication points throughout the country.
  • In 2004 AT&T engineer Mark Klein discovered that a special NSA network actively "vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T," emphasizing that "much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic."
  • Glenn Greenwald revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) is secretly using the so-called "business records" provision of the Patriot Act to collect telephone records of millions of Americans from Verizon. Greenwald noted that "previous reporting has suggested the NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks," which was best illustrated by this ACLU infographic graphic illustrating how the NSA intercepts more than a billion electronic records and communications every day.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake corroborated Klein's assertions: Binney contends that the NSA analyzes the information "to be able to monitor what people are doing" and who they are doing it with while Drake maintains that the NSA is using Israeli-made NARUS hardware to "seize and save all personal electronic communications."
  • Eric Lichtblau and James Risen of the New York Times won a Pulitzer-Prize for this 2005 story: As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.
  • in January Google released a transparency report detailing the government's use of controversial legislation that bypasses judicial approval to access the online information of private citizens.
  • Given the fact that the CIA's recently visited tech conference to detail the Agency's vision for collecting and analyzing all of the information people put on the Internet, it would be naïve to think that American tech giants hasn't know that all their data belongs to NSA.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Jun 13
     
    Timeline for reports and whistleblower information going public about NSA world wide dragnet of information and communications.  Note that the official timeline the NSA slides depict the start of the Internet dragnet as late 2007, when the Bush Administration wrangled Microsoft as a source.  The whistleblower timeline starts in 2001 and is rolling worldwide by 2004.
Gary Edwards

The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool: NARUS - 0 views

www.wired.com/...70914

NSA Domestic-Spying NARUS

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 13 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 13
     
    Chilling stuff.  Note that Mark Klien is an important whistleblower whose testimony has helped expose the  Federal Government - NSA domestic dragnet that has violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of law abiding American citizens.  The question I have concerns cooperation between NSA NARUS spying and the IRS. We know that the IRS used key words such as "TEA PARTY", "PATRIOT", "Constitution", and "Tenth Amendment" to target American citizens.  Does the NSA NARUS target Americans in the same way?  Are there political enemy lists with background surveillance information now circulating through different government agencies based on this targeted and illegal spying? The first thing we need to do is protect whistle blowers who are risking it all to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens and save our country.   "The equipment that technician Mark Klein learned was installed in the National Security Agency's "secret room" inside AT&T's San Francisco switching office isn't some sinister Big Brother box designed solely to help governments eavesdrop on citizens' internet communications. Rather, it's a powerful commercial network-analysis product with all sorts of valuable uses for network operators. It just happens to be capable of doing things that make it one of the best internet spy tools around. "Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record," says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. "We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls."" Narus' product, the Semantic Traffic Analyzer, is a software application that runs on standard IBM or Dell servers using the Linux operating system. It's renowned within certain circles for its ability to inspect traffic in real time on high-bandwidth pipes, identifying packets of interest as they r
Paul Merrell

NEW TIME POLL: Support for the Leaker-and His Prosecution | TIME.com - 0 views

swampland.time.com/...the-leaker-and-his-prosecution

surveillance state NSA polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • More than half of Americans approve of a former intelligence contractor’s decision to leak classified details of sprawling government surveillance programs, according to the results of a new TIME poll. Fifty-four percent of respondents said the leaker, Edward Snowden, 29, did a “good thing” in releasing information about the government programs, which collect phone, email, and Internet search records in an effort, officials say, to prevent terrorist attacks. Just 30 percent disagreed. But an almost identical number of Americans —  53 percent —  still said he should be prosecuted for the leak, compared to 28% who said he should not. Americans aged 18 to 34 break from older generations in showing far more support for Snowden’s actions. Just 41 percent of that cohort say he should face charges, while 43 percent say he should not. Just 19 percent of that age group say the leak was a “bad thing.”
  • Overall, Americans are sharply divided over the government’s use of surveillance programs to prevent terrorist attacks, according to the results of the poll. Forty-eight percent of Americans approve of the surveillance programs, while 44 percent disapprove, a statistical tie given the poll’s four-point margin of error.
  • A majority of the poll’s respondents say that the surveillance programs have helped protect national security, with 63 percent saying they’ve had “some” or a “great deal” of impact in protecting the country. Just 31 percent says they’ve done “not much” or “nothing at all.” A narrow plurality of those polled, 48 percent to 43 percent, believe that the federal government is striking the right balance between protecting Americans’ privacy and protecting their physical well-being or that the government should be doing more to prevent terrorism.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Nearly 60 percent believe the revelations will not force the government to curtail the surveillance program. But 76 percent of Americans believe there will soon be additional disclosures that the spying programs are bigger and more widespread than currently known. Americans are largely split on partisan grounds as to whether Obama is more careful about respecting privacy than President George W. Bush. Twenty-eight percent said Bush was more careful, one-quarter sided with Obama, and 42 percent say there has been little difference between the two.
Gary Edwards

25 Facts That The Mainstream Media Doesn't Really Want To Talk About - BlackListedNews.com - 1 views

www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html

globalist-media Globalist Banksters mainstream-media

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 12
     
    Excellent list!  Also check out "Who Owns the Media?" http://goo.gl/O18r excerpt: "For decades, the mainstream media in the United States was accustomed to being able to tell the American people what to think.  Unfortunately for them, a whole lot of Americans are starting to break free from that paradigm and think for themselves.  A Gallup survey from earlier this year found that 60 percent of all Americans "have little or no trust" in the mainstream media.  More people than ever are realizing that the mainstream media is giving them a very distorted version of "the truth" and they are increasingly seeking out alternative sources of information.  In the United States today, just six giant media corporationscontrol the mainstream media.  Those giant media corporations own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many prominent websites.  But now thanks to the Internet the mainstream media no longer has a complete monopoly on the news.  In recent years the "alternative media" has exploded in popularity.  People want to hear about the things that the mainstream media doesn't really want to talk about.  They want to hear news that is not filtered by corporate bosses and government censors.  They want "the truth" and they know that they are not getting it from the mainstream media. We are watching a media revolution happen, and many in the mainstream media are totally freaking out about it.  In fact, some in the mainstream media have even begun publishing articles that mock the American people for not trusting them. " Anyone that does not acknowledge that the mainstream media has an agenda is not being honest with themselves.  The mainstream media presents a view of the world that is very favorable to their big corporate owners and the big corporations that spend billions of dollars to advertise on their networks.  The mainstream media is the mo
Gary Edwards

Obama's Plan To Destroy America Hatched at Columbia University, Says Classmat... - 0 views

personalliberty.com/...mbia-university-says-classmate

cloward-piven Columbia-University Marxism Liberty-Tryanny Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The plan was revolting, but brilliant. Cloward and Piven taught that America could be destroyed only from within. Only by overwhelming the system with debt, welfare and entitlements could capitalism and the American economy be destroyed. So the plan was to make a majority of Americans dependent on welfare, food stamps, disability, unemployment and entitlements of all kinds. Then, under the weight of the debt, the system would implode and the economy collapse, bankrupting business owners (i.e., conservative donors). Americans would be brought to their knees, begging for big government to save them. Voilà! You’d have a new system: a system based on fairness, equality and social justice. It’s called socialism.
  • Under Obama, 660,000 Americans dropped off the job rolls… just last month. Ninety million working-age, able-bodied Americans are no longer in the workforce. Almost 50 million Americans are on food stamps (20 percent of all eligible adults). Fourteen million are on disability. Millions more are on welfare, unemployment and so many different categories of entitlements that my head is spinning. Now, add in free healthcare, plus 22 million government employees. Record-setting numbers of Americans are emptying their retirement accounts to survive. Student loan debt is a national disaster — with defaults up 36 percent from a year ago. Some 16.4 million Americans live in poverty… in the suburbs.
  • Obama promised to cut the deficit in half; instead, he gave us five consecutive trillion-dollar deficits. He promised to spend responsibly; instead, he now owns the title of “biggest spender in world history.” He called Bush’s $4 trillion in debt over eight years reckless, then proceeded to pile on $6 trillion in only four years. He added 6,118 new rules, regulations and mandates in just the past 90 days. He claimed taxes are low, yet he just raised taxes to the same level as bankrupt EU countries like Greece, Spain, Italy and France. Our Federal income taxes are now far higher than the former Soviet Republics’.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Overwhelm the system with debt.
  • use it to bring down the U.S. economy and destroy capitalism to create what they consider to be “equality, fairness and social justice.”
Gary Edwards

I Am a Peaceful AR-15 Assault Rifle Owner | Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...eful-ar-15-assault-rifle-owner

second-amendment Guns

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 May 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 May 13
     
    ""Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurances and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." George Washington I can't think of any reason I need to own my AR-15 assault[1] rifle. I don't pretend to need it for self defense. I also own several handguns. Any one of my handguns would be adequate to allow me an opportunity to defend myself, or another person, from virtually any act of aggression by another individual. Indeed, I could have easily halted any of the recent gun based rampages, by any of those deranged lunatics, with just one of my handguns. I wish I had been there. I have needlessly and peacefully owned my AR-15 for many years. I keep my AR-15 securely locked in a gun safe in the very same home where my young children live. My children are aware of my AR-15. Like many other things in life, I have taught my children about guns. Recently, some of my kids attended a private gun safety class given by a highly experienced gun expert. I enjoyed watching my kids learn about my AR-15. I admit being a bit nostalgic about my AR-15. I spent lots of time learning about every aspect of the AR-15 when I was in Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. I also carried an AR-15 when I served my country in Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia. I had it with me when I lived in a dirt hole on the border of Kuwait. It is the weapon I know better than any other. I own lots of dangerous things I don't need. I don't need my highly modified 600+ hp Z06 Corvette, or my Harley Davidson motorcycle, or that crazy looking knife I sometimes jokingly say was imported directly from the Klingon Empire.[2] Al
Gary Edwards

Jon Christian Ryter -- What Do You Do? - 1 views

www.newswithviews.com/...jon373.htm

Jon-Christian-Ryter

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 12
     
    A biblical primer for Christians and Jews on the importance of this election. excerpt: What do you do when the guy in the White House deliberately lies to the American people because he's afraid they won't vote for him if he tells them the truth that, because he spent four days in Charlotte bragging about how good he was for killing Osama bin Laden, he inflamed al Qaeda enough to retaliate against him on Sept. 11, 2012 by attacking the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya and killing US Ambassador Chris Stevens, IT specialist Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Glenn Dhoherty and Tyrone Woods, and scaling the walls at the US Embassy in Cairo? What do you do when evidence clearly suggests that the envoys in both the US Embassy in Cairo and the Consultate in Benghazi received forewarning of protests and possible displays of anti-Americanism at their embassies on Sept. 11? And, what do you do when you learn the US Ambassador of Egypt jumped on a plane heading back to Washington on Sept. 10­after leaving orders for the US Martines guarding her embassy to unload their weapons? What do you do when you realize Muslim Brotherhood radical associated with al Qaeda stormed the walls of the US embassy, burned the American flag and hoisted an al Qaeda flag on American soil? (US embassies, by international law, are the sovereign territory of the country who occupies the embassy) .....................................
Paul Merrell

House GOP bucks Donald Trump, scraps legislation to "buy American" iron and steel - Sal... - 0 views

www.salon.com/...to-buy-american-iron-and-steel

Trump legislation buy-America

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • At one of his victory rallies last week in Cincinnati, Trump told the crowd, “We will have two simple rules when it comes to this massive rebuilding effort: Buy American and hire American. Whether it is producing steel, building cars or curing disease, we want the next generation of innovation and production to happen right here in America and right here in Ohio, right?”But Republicans in Congress, apparently ready to buck their party’s leader, days later announced that they were removing the “buy America” amendment from a water infrastructure bill that would require the government to only fund projects that use American-made steel. The provision would have allowed for exceptions if American steel had quality or supply problems or drove up costs substantially.Ignoring Trump’s demand that the government find ways to support U.S. manufacturers, particularly the steel industry, House Republicans stripped a “buy America” provision from their version of the Water Resources Development Act that had already passed the Senate. The bill is for infrastructure spending on the country’s waterways.Language in the Senate-passed version of the Water Resources Development Act required the use of American iron and steel products in projects using billions of dollars in federal funding from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund — a provision that would have been a major boon for steelmakers who have hemorrhaged production to China and Turkey.
Paul Merrell

NSA 'not interested in' Americans, privacy officer claims | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...ericans-privacy-officer-claims

surveillance state NSA not-interested Richards

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency’s internal civil liberties watchdog insisted on Thursday that the agency has no interest in spying on Americans under its controversial spying tools. “Our employees are trained to not look for U.S. persons,” NSA privacy and civil liberties officer Rebecca Richards said on Thursday.
  • “We’re not interested in those U.S. persons. We’re trying to look away from those,” she added. “Instead, we’re looking for where are our targets?”Richards’s comments came up during a Capitol Hill panel discussion about a new report on U.S. spying from the Brennan Center for Justice.The analysis looks at aspects of a presidential order that dates back to Ronald Reagan and was updated by then-President George W. Bush, called Executive Order 12333.
  • Programs under the order, which is meant to guide foreign surveillance, “have implications for Americans’ privacy that could well be greater than those of their domestic counterparts,” the organization wrote in its analysis. “The vast majority of Americans — whether wittingly or not — engage in communication that is transmitted or stored overseas.”“This reality of the digital age renders Americans’ communications and data highly vulnerable to NSA surveillance abroad.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • NSA surveillance under Executive Order 12333 is separate from the agency’s higher profile bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, which ended last year. It also occurs under separate legal powers than a controversial provision of the 2008 update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which comes up for renewal at the end of 2017.The executive order targets foreigners, but can “incidentally” pick up data about Americans if their activity on the Internet crosses international borders, Richards acknowledged.“Our procedures are designed to say: There are occasions when you are going to get U.S. persons,” she said, “and when you get those U.S. persons, here’s the rules.”
  • Richards is the agency’s first ever civil liberties officer. She was hired in early 2014, on the heels of fallout from Edward Snowden’s leaks about the spy agency. 
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 16
     
    Not interested. Apparently that's why NSA was turning over raw search results to Israel without filtering out "U.S. persons" data. And why they just decided to give other agencies including law enforcement access to raw search results. And why Gen. Keith Alexander personally put together a program to ruin people's reputations including a "U.S. person." And why Russell Tice said that he personally had Obama's NSA dossier in his hands when Obama was running for the U.S. Senate. And why Tice says NSA had similar dossiers on members of Congress and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and targeted "lots of lawyers." On and on.  Ms. Richards appears to have become a quick study in NSA's hallmark skill of lying to the public. 
Gary Edwards

Alleged US Army doc: Re-education camps and psy-op missions aimed at activists - RT - 0 views

rt.com/...ts-internment-resettlement-526

Internment-and-Resettlement-Operations Manual-FM-3-39.40

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 May 12
     
    Not sure if i had bookmarked this.  The Globalist Establishments assault on American liberty and the Constitution continues.  Now the USA Military is plotting against American liberty, and trampling the Constitution in the process!! excerpt: An American military document just uncovered appears to detail an US Army plan that calls for detaining "political activists" at re-education camps staffed by military-hired "PSYOP officers" in both America and abroad. The website Infowars.com has unearthed the smoking gun, a copy of a United States military manual entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations, which appears to offer Defense Department insiders instructions on dealing with the imprisonment of anyone considered an enemy to the American way of life and how to go about indoctrination them with an "appreciation of US policies and actions" through psychological warfare. The PDF made available is dated February 2010 but has only now been leaked online. A copy of the document has been uploaded to the website PublicIntelligence.net for viewing, and additionally a version appears to be hosted on the US Military's Doctrine and Training Publications page at armypubs.us.army.mil, although access to papers published there are unavailable to those without the Pentagon's authorization, therefore making it impossible to verify the authenticity of the manual at this time. The military site that appears to host a copy has also implemented security measures on its servers that it cautions visitors are "not for your personal benefit or privacy." Further, the title page of the manual warns that the material contained in its 326 pages is be distributed to US Defense Department and its contractors only, and that must be "destroy[ed] by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or construction of the document."
Gary Edwards

Obama Comes Out of the Closet and Embraces Gay Marriage « azizonomics - 0 views

azizonomics.com/...obama-embraces-gay-marriage

azonomics Liberty-in-the-breach

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 May 12
     
    Good discussion about the crap being thrown at Americans, as big media bangs the drum of nonsense, and the "sturm und drang" of election politics rolls on.  What really matters is what's not being discussed; the destruction of America, American individual liberty, and our Constitutional way of life.   excerpt: It just seems like an easy issue for Obama to posture on, while trampling the Constitution into the dirt. When it comes to civil liberties, Obama has always talked a good game, and then acted more authoritarian than Bush. He talked about an end to the abuses of the Bush years and an open and transparent government, yet extended the Fourth-Amendment-shredding Patriot Act, empowered the TSA to produce naked body scans and engage in humiliatingly sexual pat-downs, signed indefinite detention of American citizens into law, claimed and exercised the power to assassinate American citizens without trial, and aggressively prosecuted whistleblowers. Under his watch the U.S. army even produced a document planning for the reeducation of political activists in internment camps. Reeducation camps? In America? And some on the left are still crowing that talking about being in favour of gay marriage makes him "pro-civil liberties"? Is this a joke? Here are a few metrics that we should be judging Obama on: People not in the labour force is spiking:
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