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Gary Edwards

Byron York: Justice Department demolishes case against Trump order | Washington Examiner - 1 views

www.washingtonexaminer.com/...2613988

Byron-York Trump-Immigration-Order

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Feb 17
     
    "James Robart, the U.S. district judge in Washington State, offered little explanation for his decision to stop President Trump's executive order temporarily suspending non-American entry from seven terror-plagued countries. Robart simply declared his belief that Washington State, which in its lawsuit against Trump argued that the order is both illegal and unconstitutional, would likely win the case when it is tried. Now the government has answered Robart, and unlike the judge, Justice Department lawyers have produced a point-by-point demolition of Washington State's claims. Indeed, for all except the most partisan, it is likely impossible to read the Washington State lawsuit, plus Robart's brief comments and writing on the matter, plus the Justice Department's response, and not come away with the conclusion that the Trump order is on sound legal and constitutional ground. Beginning with the big picture, the Justice Department argued that Robart's restraining order violates the separation of powers, encroaches on the president's constitutional and legal authority in the areas of foreign affairs, national security, and immigration, and "second-guesses the president's national security judgment" about risks faced by the United States. Indeed, in court last week, Robart suggested that he, Robart, knows as much, or perhaps more, than the president about the current state of the terrorist threat in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and other violence-plagued countries. In an exchange with Justice Department lawyer Michelle Bennett, Robart asked, "How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?" "Your Honor, I don't have that information," said Bennett. "Let me tell you," said Robart. "The answer to that is none, as best I can tell. So, I mean, you're here arguing on behalf of someone [President Trump] that says: We have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries, and there's no support for that."
Paul Merrell

Edward Snowden: A 'Nation' Interview | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...wden-exile-exclusive-interview

surveillance state Snowden-interview

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Snowden: That’s the key—to maintain the garden of liberty, right? This is a generational thing that we must all do continuously. We only have the rights that we protect. It doesn’t matter what we say or think we have. It’s not enough to believe in something; it matters what we actually defend. So when we think in the context of the last decade’s infringements upon personal liberty and the last year’s revelations, it’s not about surveillance. It’s about liberty. When people say, “I have nothing to hide,” what they’re saying is, “My rights don’t matter.” Because you don’t need to justify your rights as a citizen—that inverts the model of responsibility. The government must justify its intrusion into your rights. If you stop defending your rights by saying, “I don’t need them in this context” or “I can’t understand this,” they are no longer rights. You have ceded the concept of your own rights. You’ve converted them into something you get as a revocable privilege from the government, something that can be abrogated at its convenience. And that has diminished the measure of liberty within a society.
  • From the very beginning, I said there are two tracks of reform: there’s the political and the technical. I don’t believe the political will be successful, for exactly the reasons you underlined. The issue is too abstract for average people, who have too many things going on in their lives. And we do not live in a revolutionary time. People are not prepared to contest power. We have a system of education that is really a sort of euphemism for indoctrination. It’s not designed to create critical thinkers. We have a media that goes along with the government by parroting phrases intended to provoke a certain emotional response—for example, “national security.” Everyone says “national security” to the point that we now must use the term “national security.” But it is not national security that they’re concerned with; it is state security. And that’s a key distinction. We don’t like to use the phrase “state security” in the United States because it reminds us of all the bad regimes. But it’s a key concept, because when these officials are out on TV, they’re not talking about what’s good for you. They’re not talking about what’s good for business. They’re not talking about what’s good for society. They’re talking about the protection and perpetuation of a national state system. I’m not an anarchist. I’m not saying, “Burn it to the ground.” But I’m saying we need to be aware of it, and we need to be able to distinguish when political developments are occurring that are contrary to the public interest. And that cannot happen if we do not question the premises on which they’re founded. And that’s why I don’t think political reform is likely to succeed. [Senators] Udall and Wyden, on the intelligence committee, have been sounding the alarm, but they are a minority.
  • The Nation: Every president—and this seems to be confirmed by history—will seek to maximize his or her power, and will see modern-day surveillance as part of that power. Who is going to restrain presidential power in this regard? Snowden: That’s why we have separate and co-equal branches. Maybe it will be Congress, maybe not. Might be the courts, might not. But the idea is that, over time, one of these will get the courage to do so. One of the saddest and most damaging legacies of the Bush administration is the increased assertion of the “state secrets” privilege, which kept organizations like the ACLU—which had cases of people who had actually been tortured and held in indefinite detention—from getting their day in court. The courts were afraid to challenge executive declarations of what would happen. Now, over the last year, we have seen—in almost every single court that has had this sort of national-security case—that they have become markedly more skeptical. People at civil-liberties organizations say it’s a sea change, and that it’s very clear judges have begun to question more critically assertions made by the executive. Even though it seems so obvious now, it is extraordinary in the context of the last decade, because courts had simply said they were not the best branch to adjudicate these claims—which is completely wrong, because they are the only nonpolitical branch. They are the branch that is specifically charged with deciding issues that cannot be impartially decided by politicians. The power of the presidency is important, but it is not determinative. Presidents should not be exempted from the same standards of reason and evidence and justification that any other citizen or civil movement should be held to.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The Nation: Explain the technical reform you mentioned. Snowden: We already see this happening. The issue I brought forward most clearly was that of mass surveillance, not of surveillance in general. It’s OK if we wiretap Osama bin Laden. I want to know what he’s planning—obviously not him nowadays, but that kind of thing. I don’t care if it’s a pope or a bin Laden. As long as investigators must go to a judge—an independent judge, a real judge, not a secret judge—and make a showing that there’s probable cause to issue a warrant, then they can do that. And that’s how it should be done. The problem is when they monitor all of us, en masse, all of the time, without any specific justification for intercepting in the first place, without any specific judicial showing that there’s a probable cause for that infringement of our rights.
  • Since the revelations, we have seen a massive sea change in the technological basis and makeup of the Internet. One story revealed that the NSA was unlawfully collecting data from the data centers of Google and Yahoo. They were intercepting the transactions of data centers of American companies, which should not be allowed in the first place because American companies are considered US persons, sort of, under our surveillance authorities. They say, “Well, we were doing it overseas,” but that falls under a different Reagan-era authority: EO 12333, an executive order for foreign-intelligence collection, as opposed to the ones we now use domestically. So this one isn’t even authorized by law. It’s just an old-ass piece of paper with Reagan’s signature on it, which has been updated a couple times since then. So what happened was that all of a sudden these massive, behemoth companies realized their data centers—sending hundreds of millions of people’s communications back and forth every day—were completely unprotected, electronically naked. GCHQ, the British spy agency, was listening in, and the NSA was getting the data and everything like that, because they could dodge the encryption that was typically used. Basically, the way it worked technically, you go from your phone to Facebook.com, let’s say—that link is encrypted. So if the NSA is trying to watch it here, they can’t understand it. But what these agencies discovered was, the Facebook site that your phone is connected to is just the front end of a larger corporate network—that’s not actually where the data comes from. When you ask for your Facebook page, you hit this part and it’s protected, but it has to go on this long bounce around the world to actually get what you’re asking for and go back. So what they did was just get out of the protected part and they went onto the back network. They went into the private network of these companies.
  • The Nation: The companies knew this? Snowden: Companies did not know it. They said, “Well, we gave the NSA the front door; we gave you the PRISM program. You could get anything you wanted from our companies anyway—all you had to do was ask us and we’re gonna give it to you.” So the companies couldn’t have imagined that the intelligence communities would break in the back door, too—but they did, because they didn’t have to deal with the same legal process as when they went through the front door. When this was published by Barton Gellman in The Washington Post and the companies were exposed, Gellman printed a great anecdote: he showed two Google engineers a slide that showed how the NSA was doing this, and the engineers “exploded in profanity.” Another example—one document I revealed was the classified inspector general’s report on a Bush surveillance operation, Stellar Wind, which basically showed that the authorities knew it was unlawful at the time. There was no statutory basis; it was happening basically on the president’s say-so and a secret authorization that no one was allowed to see. When the DOJ said, “We’re not gonna reauthorize this because it is not lawful,” Cheney—or one of Cheney’s advisers—went to Michael Hayden, director of the NSA, and said, “There is no lawful basis for this program. DOJ is not going to reauthorize it, and we don’t know what we’re going to do. Will you continue it anyway on the president’s say-so?” Hayden said yes, even though he knew it was unlawful and the DOJ was against it. Nobody has read this document because it’s like twenty-eight pages long, even though it’s incredibly important.
  • The big tech companies understood that the government had not only damaged American principles, it had hurt their businesses. They thought, “No one trusts our products anymore.” So they decided to fix these security flaws to secure their phones. The new iPhone has encryption that protects the contents of the phone. This means if someone steals your phone—if a hacker or something images your phone—they can’t read what’s on the phone itself, they can’t look at your pictures, they can’t see the text messages you send, and so forth. But it does not stop law enforcement from tracking your movements via geolocation on the phone if they think you are involved in a kidnapping case, for example. It does not stop law enforcement from requesting copies of your texts from the providers via warrant. It does not stop them from accessing copies of your pictures or whatever that are uploaded to, for example, Apple’s cloud service, which are still legally accessible because those are not encrypted. It only protects what’s physically on the phone. This is purely a security feature that protects against the kind of abuse that can happen with all these things being out there undetected. In response, the attorney general and the FBI director jumped on a soap box and said, “You are putting our children at risk.”
  • The Nation: Is there a potential conflict between massive encryption and the lawful investigation of crimes? Snowden: This is the controversy that the attorney general and the FBI director were trying to create. They were suggesting, “We have to be able to have lawful access to these devices with a warrant, but that is technically not possible on a secure device. The only way that is possible is if you compromise the security of the device by leaving a back door.” We’ve known that these back doors are not secure. I talk to cryptographers, some of the leading technologists in the world, all the time about how we can deal with these issues. It is not possible to create a back door that is only accessible, for example, to the FBI. And even if it were, you run into the same problem with international commerce: if you create a device that is famous for compromised security and it has an American back door, nobody is gonna buy it. Anyway, it’s not true that the authorities cannot access the content of the phone even if there is no back door. When I was at the NSA, we did this every single day, even on Sundays. I believe that encryption is a civic responsibility, a civic duty.
  • The Nation: Some years ago, The Nation did a special issue on patriotism. We asked about a hundred people how they define it. How do you define patriotism? And related to that, you’re probably the world’s most famous whistleblower, though you don’t like that term. What characterization of your role do you prefer? Snowden: What defines patriotism, for me, is the idea that one rises to act on behalf of one’s country. As I said before, that’s distinct from acting to benefit the government—a distinction that’s increasingly lost today. You’re not patriotic just because you back whoever’s in power today or their policies. You’re patriotic when you work to improve the lives of the people of your country, your community and your family. Sometimes that means making hard choices, choices that go against your personal interest. People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy—one of the early charges leveled against me. But it’s a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail. But you are also asked to take an oath, and that’s the oath of service. The oath of service is not to secrecy, but to the Constitution—to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That’s the oath that I kept, that James Clapper and former NSA director Keith Alexander did not. You raise your hand and you take the oath in your class when you are on board. All government officials are made to do it who work for the intelligence agencies—at least, that’s where I took the oath.
  • The Nation: Creating a new system may be your transition, but it’s also a political act. Snowden: In case you haven’t noticed, I have a somewhat sneaky way of effecting political change. I don’t want to directly confront great powers, which we cannot defeat on their terms. They have more money, more clout, more airtime. We cannot be effective without a mass movement, and the American people today are too comfortable to adapt to a mass movement. But as inequality grows, the basic bonds of social fraternity are fraying—as we discussed in regard to Occupy Wall Street. As tensions increase, people will become more willing to engage in protest. But that moment is not now.
  • The Nation: You really think that if you could go home tomorrow with complete immunity, there wouldn’t be irresistible pressure on you to become a spokesperson, even an activist, on behalf of our rights and liberties? Indeed, wouldn’t that now be your duty? Snowden: But the idea for me now—because I’m not a politician, and I do not think I am as effective in this way as people who actually prepare for it—is to focus on technical reform, because I speak the language of technology. I spoke with Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the World Wide Web. We agree on the necessity for this generation to create what he calls the Magna Carta for the Internet. We want to say what “digital rights” should be. What values should we be protecting, and how do we assert them? What I can do—because I am a technologist, and because I actually understand how this stuff works under the hood—is to help create the new systems that reflect our values. Of course I want to see political reform in the United States. But we could pass the best surveillance reforms, the best privacy protections in the history of the world, in the United States, and it would have zero impact internationally. Zero impact in China and in every other country, because of their national laws—they won’t recognize our reforms; they’ll continue doing their own thing. But if someone creates a reformed technical system today—technical standards must be identical around the world for them to function together.
  • As for labeling someone a whistleblower, I think it does them—it does all of us—a disservice, because it “otherizes” us. Using the language of heroism, calling Daniel Ellsberg a hero, and calling the other people who made great sacrifices heroes—even though what they have done is heroic—is to distinguish them from the civic duty they performed, and excuses the rest of us from the same civic duty to speak out when we see something wrong, when we witness our government engaging in serious crimes, abusing power, engaging in massive historic violations of the Constitution of the United States. We have to speak out or we are party to that bad action.
  • The Nation: Considering your personal experience—the risks you took, and now your fate here in Moscow—do you think other young men or women will be inspired or discouraged from doing what you did? Snowden: Chelsea Manning got thirty-five years in prison, while I’m still free. I talk to people in the ACLU office in New York all the time. I’m able to participate in the debate and to campaign for reform. I’m just the first to come forward in the manner that I did and succeed. When governments go too far to punish people for actions that are dissent rather than a real threat to the nation, they risk delegitimizing not just their systems of justice, but the legitimacy of the government itself. Because when they bring political charges against people for acts that were clearly at least intended to work in the public interest, they deny them the opportunity to mount a public-interest defense. The charges they brought against me, for example, explicitly denied my ability to make a public-interest defense. There were no whistleblower protections that would’ve protected me—and that’s known to everybody in the intelligence community. There are no proper channels for making this information available when the system fails comprehensively.
  • The government would assert that individuals who are aware of serious wrongdoing in the intelligence community should bring their concerns to the people most responsible for that wrongdoing, and rely on those people to correct the problems that those people themselves authorized. Going all the way back to Daniel Ellsberg, it is clear that the government is not concerned with damage to national security, because in none of these cases was there damage. At the trial of Chelsea Manning, the government could point to no case of specific damage that had been caused by the massive revelation of classified information. The charges are a reaction to the government’s embarrassment more than genuine concern about these activities, or they would substantiate what harms were done. We’re now more than a year since my NSA revelations, and despite numerous hours of testimony before Congress, despite tons of off-the-record quotes from anonymous officials who have an ax to grind, not a single US official, not a single representative of the United States government, has ever pointed to a single case of individualized harm caused by these revelations. This, despite the fact that former NSA director Keith Alexander said this would cause grave and irrevocable harm to the nation. Some months after he made that statement, the new director of the NSA, Michael Rogers, said that, in fact, he doesn’t see the sky falling. It’s not so serious after all.
  • The Nation: You also remind us of [Manhattan Project physicist] Robert Oppenheimer—what he created and then worried about. Snowden: Someone recently talked about mass surveillance and the NSA revelations as being the atomic moment for computer scientists. The atomic bomb was the moral moment for physicists. Mass surveillance is the same moment for computer scientists, when they realize that the things they produce can be used to harm a tremendous number of people. It is interesting that so many people who become disenchanted, who protest against their own organizations, are people who contributed something to them and then saw how it was misused. When I was working in Japan, I created a system for ensuring that intelligence data was globally recoverable in the event of a disaster. I was not aware of the scope of mass surveillance. I came across some legal questions when I was creating it. My superiors pushed back and were like, “Well, how are we going to deal with this data?” And I was like, “I didn’t even know it existed.” Later, when I found out that we were collecting more information on American communications than we were on Russian communications, for example, I was like, “Holy shit.” Being confronted with the realization that work you intended to benefit people is being used against them has a radicalizing effect.
  • The Nation: We have a sense, or certainly the hope, we’ll be seeing you in America soon—perhaps sometime after this Ukrainian crisis ends. Snowden: I would love to think that, but we’ve gone all the way up the chain at all the levels, and things like that. A political decision has been made not to irritate the intelligence community. The spy agencies are really embarrassed, they’re really sore—the revelations really hurt their mystique. The last ten years, they were getting the Zero Dark Thirty treatment—they’re the heroes. The surveillance revelations bring them back to Big Brother kind of narratives, and they don’t like that at all. The Obama administration almost appears as though it is afraid of the intelligence community. They’re afraid of death by a thousand cuts—you know, leaks and things like that.
  • The Nation: You’ve given us a lot of time, and we are very grateful, as will be The Nation’s and other readers. But before we end, any more thoughts about your future? Snowden: If I had to guess what the future’s going to look like for me—assuming it’s not an orange jumpsuit in a hole—I think I’m going to alternate between tech and policy. I think we need that. I think that’s actually what’s missing from government, for the most part. We’ve got a lot of policy people, but we have no technologists, even though technology is such a big part of our lives. It’s just amazing, because even these big Silicon Valley companies, the masters of the universe or whatever, haven’t engaged with Washington until recently. They’re still playing catch-up. As for my personal politics, some people seem to think I’m some kind of archlibertarian, a hyper-conservative. But when it comes to social policies, I believe women have the right to make their own choices, and inequality is a really important issue. As a technologist, I see the trends, and I see that automation inevitably is going to mean fewer and fewer jobs. And if we do not find a way to provide a basic income for people who have no work, or no meaningful work, we’re going to have social unrest that could get people killed. When we have increasing production—year after year after year—some of that needs to be reinvested in society. It doesn’t need to be consistently concentrated in these venture-capital funds and things like that. I’m not a communist, a socialist or a radical. But these issues have to be 
addressed.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    Remarkable interview. Snowden finally gets asked some questions about politics. 
Gary Edwards

The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...st-obama-closures-for-shutdown

government-shutdown Obammunism financial-crisis

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13
     
    "The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction.  The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...-list-33-most-intriguing-cases

Clinton-Body-Count

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17
     
    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Paul Merrell

FBI Flouts Obama Directive to Limit Gag Orders on National Security Letters - The Inter... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ders-national-security-letters

surveillance state FBI NSLs litigation 1st Amendment civil-liberties

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Despite the post-Snowden spotlight on mass surveillance, the intelligence community’s easiest end-run around the Fourth Amendment since 2001 has been something called a National Security Letter. FBI agents can demand that an Internet service provider, telephone company or financial institution turn over its records on any number of people — without any judicial review whatsoever — simply by writing a letter that says the information is needed for national security purposes. The FBI at one point was cranking out over 50,000 such letters a year; by the latest count, it still issues about 60 a day. The letters look like this:
  • Recipients are legally required to comply — but it doesn’t stop there. They also aren’t allowed to mention the order to anyone, least of all the person whose data is being searched. Ever. That’s because National Security Letters almost always come with eternal gag orders. Here’s that part:
  • That means the NSL process utterly disregards the First Amendment as well. More than a year ago, President Obama announced that he was ordering the Justice Department to terminate gag orders “within a fixed time unless the government demonstrates a real need for further secrecy.” And on Feb. 3, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced a handful of baby steps resulting from its “comprehensive effort to examine and enhance [its] privacy and civil liberty protections” one of the most concrete was — finally — to cap the gag orders: In response to the President’s new direction, the FBI will now presumptively terminate National Security Letter nondisclosure orders at the earlier of three years after the opening of a fully predicated investigation or the investigation’s close. Continued nondisclosures orders beyond this period are permitted only if a Special Agent in Charge or a Deputy Assistant Director determines that the statutory standards for nondisclosure continue to be satisfied and that the case agent has justified, in writing, why continued nondisclosure is appropriate.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Despite the use of the word “now” in that first sentence, however, the FBI has yet to do any such thing. It has not announced any such change, nor explained how it will implement it, or when. Media inquiries were greeted with stalling and, finally, a no comment — ostensibly on advice of legal counsel. “There is pending litigation that deals with a lot of the same questions you’re asking, out of the Ninth Circuit,” FBI spokesman Chris Allen told me. “So for now, we’ll just have to decline to comment.” FBI lawyers are working on a court filing for that case, and “it will address” the new policy, he said. He would not say when to expect it.
  • There is indeed a significant case currently before the federal appeals court in San Francisco. Oral arguments were in October. A decision could come any time. But in that case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is representing two unnamed communications companies that received NSLs, is calling for the entire NSL statute to be thrown out as unconstitutional — not for a tweak to the gag. And it has a March 2013 district court ruling in its favor. “The gag is a prior restraint under the First Amendment, and prior restraints have to meet an extremely high burden,” said Andrew Crocker, a legal fellow at EFF. That means going to court and meeting the burden of proof — not just signing a letter. Or as the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez put it, “To have such a low bar for denying persons or companies the right to speak about government orders they have been served with is anathema. And it is not very good for accountability.”
  • In a separate case, a wide range of media companies (including First Look Media, the non-profit digital media venture that produces The Intercept) are supporting a lawsuit filed by Twitter, demanding the right to say specifically how many NSLs it has received. But simply releasing companies from a gag doesn’t assure the kind of accountability that privacy advocates are saying is required by the Constitution. “What the public has to remember is a NSL is asking for your information, but it’s not asking it from you,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice. “The vast majority of these things go to the very large telecommunications and financial companies who have a large stake in maintaining a good relationship with the government because they’re heavily regulated entities.”
  • So, German said, “the number of NSLs that would be exposed as a result of the release of the gag order is probably very few. The person whose records are being obtained is the one who should receive some notification.” A time limit on gags going forward also raises the question of whether past gag orders will now be withdrawn. “Obviously there are at this point literally hundreds of thousands of National Security Letters that are more than three years old,” said Sanchez. Individual review is therefore unlikely, but there ought to be some recourse, he said. And the further back you go, “it becomes increasingly implausible that a significant percentage of those are going to entail some dire national security risk.” The NSL program has a troubled history. The absolute secrecy of the program and resulting lack of accountability led to systemic abuse as documented by repeated inspector-general investigations, including improperly authorized NSLs, factual misstatements in the NSLs, improper requests under NSL statutes, requests for information based on First Amendment protected activity, “after-the-fact” blanket NSLs to “cover” illegal requests, and hundreds of NSLs for “community of interest” or “calling circle” information without any determination that the telephone numbers were relevant to authorized national security investigations.
  • Obama’s own hand-selected “Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies” recommended in December 2013 that NSLs should only be issued after judicial review — just like warrants — and that any gag should end within 180 days barring judicial re-approval. But FBI director James Comey objected to the idea, calling NSLs “a very important tool that is essential to the work we do.” His argument evidently prevailed with Obama.
  • NSLs have managed to stay largely under the American public’s radar. But, Crocker says, “pretty much every time I bring it up and give the thumbnail, people are shocked. Then you go into how many are issued every year, and they go crazy.” Want to send me your old NSL and see if we can set a new precedent? Here’s how to reach me. And here’s how to leak to me.
Gary Edwards

Member List - ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA - 0 views

www.icleiusa.org/...member-list

Property-Rights Property-Seizure-AND-Redistribution-of-Wealth Agenda-21 ICLEI

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 13 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 13
     
    ICLEI is a UN Agenda 21 initiative.  It's a direct assault on property ownership rights.  I had my own first hand view of these Marxists at work in the small town of Belmont California, when the Fire Chief presented a plan to turn 2/3rd's of the cities land over to the State by declaring it "a risk fire hazard zone".  The declaration would move the 2/3rds to State control and regulation, dramatically increasing the costs of building codes compliance and insurance, while effectively ending development and property improvement.  It would also end the sale of homes in these sectors since Home Owners insurance and property compliance would be prohibitively expensive.  Agenda 21 at work.  Right next door.   From TeaPartyORG:  http://goo.gl/QHIOS ......   "The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is a conglomerate of 600 national, regional, and local government associations who promote "sustainable development" and protection of the environment because of man-made global warming that does not exist. "Sustainable development" is the United Nations effort to contain and limit economic development in developed countries and thus control population growth. It is "sustainable de-growth," plain and simple. The focus is "low-income agriculture" and to set limits on the developed world. United Nations and its affiliates believe that first world countries polluted significantly during their development while urging third world countries to reduce pollution thus impeding their growth. Implementation of"sustainable development" would revert our society to a pre-modern lifestyle. ICLEI wants to keep the environment as pristine as possible through "ideal-seeking behavior." These euphemisms are not clearly defined in terms of what or who will evaluate or set the standards for this "ideal-seeking behavior." Agenda 21 sets up the global infrastructure to manage, count, and control assets. It is not concerned with
Gary Edwards

Obama gives himself control of all communication systems in America - RT - 0 views

rt.com/...ident-order-communications-770

Obammunism executive-orders

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12
     
    Awful stuff.  Another Obama executive order suspending the Constitution and terminating the Bill of Rights. Revoking the right of habeas corpus is unconstitutional. So is declaring a national emergency without congressional approval. The Constitution declares, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." While Congress has passed many an unConstitutional Law regarding "National Emergency Powers", there is nothing in the Constitution granting any branch of the Federal government to tear up the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Atrocities like FiSA, The Military Commissions Act, NSP51, HSPD20, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, the National Emergencies Act, and the Patriot Act are un Constitutional to the core.   Only the American people, through their representatives in Congress, can declare a national emergency.  With the exception of the habeas corpus clause, the Constitution makes no allowance for the suspension of any of its provisions during a national emergency.  Many statist seeking to breach the Constitution and Bill of Rights argue that the granting of emergency powers by Congress is implicit in its Article I, section 8 authority to "provide for the common Defense and general Welfare," the commerce clause, its war, armed forces, and militia powers, and the "necessary and proper" clause empowering it to make such laws as are required to fulfill the executions of "the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." But this issue of "implied" powers defies an actual reading of the Constitution, and seeks to breach the meaning of that most basic of all Madisonian  Constitutional concepts embedded into the framework of limited government: "enumerated powers".  The United States is a government of enumerated powers.  N
Gary Edwards

Do Obama's Executive Orders Reveal A Pattern? by Warren Beatty at American Thinker - 0 views

www.americanthinker.com/printpage

executive-orders Obammunism Tyranny

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jul 12
     
    The Obama Executive Orders are frightening steps on the road to the destruction of our beloved Constitution and the implementation of totalitarian tyranny. The thing is, neither Obama or Congress can issue an executive order or pass a law that compromises the Constitution, including the rights and liberty of individual citizen and the States. The Constitution is a document of strictly "enumerated powers" - NOT "implied powers". These executive orders are un Constitutional!!!!!! excerpt: President Barack Hussein "kill list" Obama has offered over 900 Executive Orders (EO), and he is not even through his first term. He is creating a wonderland of government controls covering everything imaginable, including a list of "Emergency Powers" and martial law EOs. And while Obama is busy issuing EOs to control everything inside the US, he has been issuing EOs to force us to submit to international regulations instead of our US Constitution. And comments by North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue and former OMB director Peter Orszag only contribute to this pattern. Is it now time to start connecting the dots? Obama signed EO 13603 on March 22, 2012. Then he signed EO 13617 on June 25, 2012, declaring a national emergency. Then he signed EO 13618 on July 6, 2012. In EO 13603, entitled, "National Defense Resources Preparedness," Obama says (among other things) that [we must]: be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements; Obama has the power, through this EO, to "nationalize" (not seize) private assets in order to protect national interests. Further, the EO effectively states that he can: 1. "identify" requirements for emergencies 2. "assess" the capability of the country's industrial and technological base 3. "be prepared" t
Gary Edwards

Articles of Impeachment Against Obama - 0 views

blackrepublican.blogspot.com/...an-citizens-file-articles.html

Impeachment articles-of-impeachment

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  • Gary Edwards on 16 Aug 13
     
    Sarasota, FL ( August 12, 2013) - The National Black Republican Association (NBRA) based in Sarasota, FL, headed by Chairman Frances Rice, filed Articles of Impeachment against President Barack Obama with the following language.   We, black American citizens, in order to free ourselves and our fellow citizens from governmental tyranny, do herewith submit these Articles of Impeachment to Congress for the removal of President Barack H. Obama, aka, Barry Soetoro, from office for his attack on liberty and commission of egregious acts of despotism that constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.   On July 4, 1776, the founders of our nation declared their independence from governmental tyranny and reaffirmed their faith in independence with the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791.   Asserting their right to break free from the tyranny of a nation that denied them the civil liberties that are our birthright, the founders declared:   "When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."  -  Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.   THE IMPEACHMENT POWER   Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution provides: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."   THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT   In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Barack H. Obama, aka Barry Soetoro, personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that:   ARTICL
Paul Merrell

Washington Confesses to Backing "Questionable Actors" in Syria | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

journal-neo.org/...g-questionable-actors-in-syria

war & peace Syria Iraq ISIL Al-Nusrah al-Qaeda U.S.-foreign-policy U.S.-terrorism

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 May 15 - No Cached
  • However, now, there is a US Department of Defense (DoD) document confirming without doubt that the so-called “Syrian opposition” is Al Qaeda, including the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), and that the opposition’s supporters – the West, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar – specifically sought to establish safe havens in Iraq and eastern Syria, precisely where ISIS is now based. America is Behind ISISFirst appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/25/washington-confesses-to-backing-questionable-actors-in-syria/
  • Paul Merrell on 25 May 15
     
    Finally out in the open. The U.S. DoD document released by Judical Watch makes it crystal clear that the U.S. and allies in 2012 were supporting al-Nusrah (al Qaeda in Syria) and the Islamic State in Iraq (Salafist predecessor to the proclaimed Islamic State). In Pogo's words, "we have met the enemy and he is us." This is confirmation of a mountain of evidence that the U.S. and its allies have supplied and provided command and control for ISIL and al Qaeda/al Nusrah foreces in Iraq and Syria. The document admits a similar relationshp with the Muslim Brotherhood fighting forces in those nations. More importantly than the confirmatiion, the document constitutes an admission by the U.S. that it is waging a proxy war against the nations of Iraq and Syria. The emergence of the Islamic State can no longer credibly serve as justification for U.S. military action in Syria because that justification depends on a combination of the right to militarily aid a nation at war that requests it and the doctrine that when a nation (Syria) is unwilling or unable to control civilian actors who inflict harm on another nation (Iraq), the injured nation has the right to invade the other nation to the extent necessary to remove the threat. But with this document in the open, we have a doctrine of unclean hands barrier to the U.S. assertion of right to invade Syria's sovereign territory; the U.S. is concurrently backing the civilian force in Syria that is threatening Iraq. Therefore, the U.S. has unclean hands and may not lawfully invoke the doctrine permitting a state to invade a state unwilling or unable to control civilian actors who injure another state. U.S. invasion of Syria is now established as a war of agression, the most serious of war crimes. This also means that President Obama has been far less than candid in requesting a retroactive Authorization for Use of Military Force in Congress that would encompass military invasion of Syria, raising the issue of an impeachable abu
Paul Merrell

Top Stories - U.S. has Military Bases in at least 38 Countries and Sent Weapons to 94 C... - 0 views

www.allgov.com/...untries-in-last-5-years-150412

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy empire military-positioning stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • The old recruiting slogan was “Join the Navy and See the World.” Those advertisements were prescient; the U.S. military has a presence of some kind in 171 nations and jurisdictions in addition to the United States and its possessions. Many times the presence is one officer as a military attaché or similar post or even a military dependent. But some countries host significant numbers of members of the U.S. armed forces. The two countries hosting the most members of the U.S. military are the two the U.S. conquered in World War II. There were 49,503 members of the military in Japan as of the end of last year, according to the Department of Defense. Germany was next with 38,826 members of the U.S. armed forces stationed there. Although it’s difficult to nail down the exact worldwide number of U.S. military sites, the most recent Department of Defense report lists buildings in 38 foreign nations and territories. The U.S. has 179 bases in Germany and 109 installations in Japan.
  • Other countries have much smaller U.S. contingents. Greenland is the home of 142 lucky Air Force personnel. Fourteen members of different military branches are now stationed in Vietnam, 40 years after U.S. troops abandoned the ill-fated war there. And there’s likely a very short line at the PX in Mongolia; only four U.S. military personnel are stationed in that land-locked Asian nation. Indeed, U.S. bases can come in a variety of shapes and sizes, according to David Vine, author of Base Nation: How US Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. They include “small radar facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico….Even military resorts and recreation areas in places like Tuscany and Seoul are bases of a kind; worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.” Even where the U.S. doesn’t send military personnel, the U.S. does send weapons. The United States is the world largest arms exporter. From 2010 to 2014, Americans sent weapons to at least 94 countries, according to a report (pdf) by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The country that got the largest share of the weaponry was South Korea, at 9%, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 8% and Australia at 8%. The United States accounts for 31% of the world’s arms exports, followed by Russia at 27% and China at 5%.
  • These Are All the Countries Where the U.S. Has a Military Presence (by Annalisa Merelli, Quartz) Base Structure Report: Fiscal Year 2014 Baseline (Department of Defense) (pdf) Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2014 (by Pieter D. Wezeman and Siemon T. Wezeman, SIPRI) (pdf) U.S. Will Close 15 Military Bases in Europe, but Keep Troop Levels the Same (by Steve Straehley, AllGov) U.S. Dominates Weapons Export Market as Profits Grow with Sales to the Middle East (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Gary Edwards

Stopping America's Federal Debt Explosion by Martin Feldstein - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...on-by-martin-feldstein-2016-02

martin-feldstein National-debt Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • the fiscal deficit is the most serious long-term economic problem facing US policymakers.
  • A decade ago, the federal debt was just 35% of GDP. It is now more than double that and projected to reach 86% in 2016. But that’s just the beginning. The annual budget deficit projected for 2016 is 5% of GDP. If it stays at that level, the debt ratio would eventually rise to 125%.
  • The high and rising level of the national debt hurts the US economy in many ways. Paying the interest requires higher federal taxes or a larger budget deficit. In 2016, the interest on the national debt is equal to nearly 16% of the revenue from personal income tax. By 2026, the projected interest on the national debt will equal more than 31% of this revenue, even if interest rates rise as slowly as the CBO projects.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the time will come when the US will have to pay the interest by exporting more goods and services than it imports. And boosting net exports will require a weaker dollar to make US products more attractive to foreign buyers and foreign goods more expensive to US buyers, implying a loss in Americans’ standard of living.
  • Increased borrowing by the federal government also means crowding out the private sector. Lower borrowing and capital investment by firms reduces future productivity growth and growth in real incomes.
  • Federal taxes now take 18.3% of GDP and are projected to remain at that level for the next decade, unless tax rules or rates are changed. The rate structure for personal taxation has changed over the past 30 years, with the top tax rate rising from 28% in 1986 to more than 40% now. The corporate rate of 35% is already the highest in the industrial world.
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Feb 16
     
    "CAMBRIDGE - The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just delivered the bad news that the national debt is now rising faster than GDP and heading toward ratios that we usually associate with Italy or Spain. That confirms my view that the fiscal deficit is the most serious long-term economic problem facing US policymakers. A decade ago, the federal debt was just 35% of GDP. It is now more than double that and projected to reach 86% in 2016. But that's just the beginning. The annual budget deficit projected for 2016 is 5% of GDP. If it stays at that level, the debt ratio would eventually rise to 125%. Support Project Syndicate's mission Project Syndicate needs your help to provide readers everywhere equal access to the ideas and debates shaping their lives. LEARN MORE Even that projection assumes that interest rates on the national debt will rise slowly, averaging less than 3.5% in 2026. But if the US debt ratio really is on the fast track to triple-digit levels, investors in the US and abroad may rightly fear that the government has lost control of the budget process. With debt exploding, foreign bondholders could begin to worry that the US will find a way to reduce its real value by stoking inflation or imposing a withholding tax on all government bond interest. In that case, investors will insist on a risk premium: higher interest rates on Treasury debt. Higher interest rates, in turn, would increase the deficit - and thus the future level of the debt ratio - even more. The high and rising level of the national debt hurts the US economy in many ways. Paying the interest requires higher federal taxes or a larger budget deficit. In 2016, the interest on the national debt is equal to nearly 16% of the revenue from personal income tax. By 2026, the projected interest on the national debt will equal more than 31% of this revenue, even if interest rates rise as slowly as the CBO projects. Foreign investors now own more than half of net government debt, and
Gary Edwards

Major Banksters, Governmental Officials and Their Comrade Capitalists Targets of Spire ... - 0 views

www.marketwatch.com/...ted-states-treasury-2012-10-25

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12
     
    "NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Spire Law Group, LLP's national home owners' lawsuit, pending in the venue where the "Banksters" control their $43 trillion racketeering scheme (New York) - known as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History and identifying $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the "Banksters" and their U.S. racketeering partners and joint venturers - now pinpoints the identities of the key racketeering partners of the "Banksters" located in the highest offices of government and acting for their own self-interests. In connection with the federal lawsuit now impending in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York (Case No. 12-cv-04269-JBW-RML) - involving, among other things, a request that the District Court enjoin all mortgage foreclosures by the Banksters nationwide, unless and until the entire $43 trillion is repaid to a court-appointed receiver - Plaintiffs now establish the location of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money in a racketeering enterprise participated in by the following individuals (without limitation): Attorney General Holder acting in his individual capacity, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, the brother in law of Defendant California Attorney General Kamala Harris (both acting in their individual capacities), Jon Corzine (former New Jersey Governor), Robert Rubin (former Treasury Secretary and Bankster), Timothy Geitner, Treasury Secretary (acting in his individual capacity), Vikram Pandit (recently resigned and disgraced Chairman of the Board of Citigroup), Valerie Jarrett (a Senior White House Advisor), Anita Dunn (a former "communications director" for the Obama Administration), Robert Bauer (husband of Anita Dunn and Chief Legal Counsel for the Obama Re-election Campaign), as well as the "Banksters" themselves, and their affiliates and conduits. The lawsuit alleges serial violations of the United States Patri
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12
     
    This is the first time anyone has tried to go after the Bankster class of midievil (mediæval) elites to recover theft of funds. Charges include racketeering, fraud and international money laundering. The mass tort action is now in the Brooklyn Federal Courts. Dead bodies are starting to show up as the Banksters move to shut down press coverage. Amazing stuff.
Paul Merrell

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The Whit... - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...nited-nations-general-assembly

war & peace Obama-speech U.N. hypocrisy

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations General Assembly Hall New York City, New York 10:13 A.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen:  We come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope. Around the globe, there are signposts of progress.  The shadow of World War that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted, and the prospect of war between major powers reduced.  The ranks of member states has more than tripled, and more people live under governments they elected. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been freed from the prison of poverty, with the proportion of those living in extreme poverty cut in half.  And the world economy continues to strengthen after the worst financial crisis of our lives. 
  • And yet there is a pervasive unease in our world -- a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces.  As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa and threatens to move rapidly across borders.  Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.  The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.
  • First, all of us -- big nations and small -- must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.  We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. 
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Recently, Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order.  Here are the facts.  After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled.  Against the will of the government in Kyiv, Crimea was annexed.  Russia poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands.  When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days.  When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border. This is a vision of the world in which might makes right -- a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for something different.  We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to choose their own future.
  • nd these are simple truths, but they must be defended. America and our allies will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy.  We will reinforce our NATO Allies and uphold our commitment to collective self-defense.  We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and we will counter falsehoods with the truth.  And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history -- for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions. Moreover, a different path is available -- the path of diplomacy and peace, and the ideals this institution is designed to uphold.  The recent cease-fire agreement in Ukraine offers an opening to achieve those objectives.  If Russia takes that path -- a path that for stretches of the post-Cold War period resulted in prosperity for the Russian people -- then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia’s role in addressing common challenges.  After all, that’s what the United States and Russia have been able to do in past years -- from reducing our nuclear stockpiles to meeting our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to cooperating to remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons.  And that’s the kind of cooperation we are prepared to pursue again -- if Russia changes course. 
  • This speaks to a central question of our global age -- whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interest and mutual respect, or whether we descend into the destructive rivalries of the past.  When nations find common ground, not simply based on power, but on principle, then we can make enormous progress.  And I stand before you today committed to investing American strength to working with all nations to address the problems we face in the 21st century.
  • America is pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue, as part of our commitment to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and pursue the peace and security of a world without them.  And this can only take place if Iran seizes this historic opportunity.  My message to Iran’s leaders and people has been simple and consistent:  Do not let this opportunity pass.  We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.  America is and will continue to be a Pacific power, promoting peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce among nations.  But we will insist that all nations abide by the rules of the road, and resolve their territorial disputes peacefully, consistent with international law. 
  • In other words, on issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule book written for a different century.  If we lift our eyes beyond our borders -- if we think globally and if we act cooperatively -- we can shape the course of this century, as our predecessors shaped the post-World War II age.  But as we look to the future, one issue risks a cycle of conflict that could derail so much progress, and that is the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world. Of course, terrorism is not new.  Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well:  “Terror is not a new weapon,” he said.  “Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example.”  In the 20th century, terror was used by all manner of groups who failed to come to power through public support.  But in this century, we have faced a more lethal and ideological brand of terrorists who have perverted one of the world’s great religions.  With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels -- killing as many innocent civilians as possible, employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities.
  • I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism.  Instead, we’ve waged a focused campaign against al Qaeda and its associated forces -- taking out their leaders, denying them the safe havens they rely on.  At the same time, we have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.  Islam teaches peace.  Muslims the world over aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice.  And when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us -- because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country. So we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations. Belief in permanent religious war is the misguided refuge of extremists who cannot build or create anything, and therefore peddle only fanaticism and hate.  And it is no exaggeration to say that humanity’s future depends on us uniting against those who would divide us along the fault lines of tribe or sect, race or religion.
  • But this is not simply a matter of words.  Collectively, we must take concrete steps to address the danger posed by religiously motivated fanatics, and the trends that fuel their recruitment.  Moreover, this campaign against extremism goes beyond a narrow security challenge.  For while we’ve degraded methodically core al Qaeda and supported a transition to a sovereign Afghan government, extremist ideology has shifted to other places -- particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where a quarter of young people have no job, where food and water could grow scarce, where corruption is rampant and sectarian conflicts have become increasingly hard to contain.   As an international community, we must meet this challenge with a focus on four areas.  First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded and ultimately destroyed.
  • The second:  It is time for the world -- especially Muslim communities -- to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of organizations like al Qaeda and ISIL.
  • Later today, the Security Council will adopt a resolution that underscores the responsibility of states to counter violent extremism.  But resolutions must be followed by tangible commitments, so we’re accountable when we fall short.  Next year, we should all be prepared to announce the concrete steps that we have taken to counter extremist ideologies in our own countries -- by getting intolerance out of schools, stopping radicalization before it spreads, and promoting institutions and programs that build new bridges of understanding.
  • Third, we must address the cycle of conflict -- especially sectarian conflict -- that creates the conditions that terrorists prey upon.
  • The good news is we also see signs that this tide could be reversed.  We have a new, inclusive government in Baghdad; a new Iraqi Prime Minister welcomed by his neighbors; Lebanese factions rejecting those who try to provoke war.  And these steps must be followed by a broader truce.  Nowhere is this more necessary than Syria.  Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime.  But the only lasting solution to Syria’s civil war is political -- an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of creed.
  • My fourth and final point is a simple one:  The countries of the Arab and Muslim world must focus on the extraordinary potential of their people -- especially the youth.
  • We recognize as well that leadership will be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.  As bleak as the landscape appears, America will not give up on the pursuit of peace.  Understand, the situation in Iraq and Syria and Libya should cure anybody of the illusion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of problems in the region.  For far too long, that's been used as an excuse to distract people from problems at home.  The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace.  And that's something worthy of reflection within Israel.
  • Because let’s be clear:  The status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable.  We cannot afford to turn away from this effort -- not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region and the world will be more just and more safe with two states living side by side, in peace and security. So this is what America is prepared to do:  Taking action against immediate threats, while pursuing a world in which the need for such action is diminished.  The United States will never shy away from defending our interests, but we will also not shy away from the promise of this institution and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- the notion that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of a better life. 
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 14
     
    Epic hypocrisy. He bows to international law while waging multiple wars in direct defiance of it. And that's just in the first few paragraphs. It gets worse the farther he gets in his speech.
Gary Edwards

Oklahoma House Passes Bill to Ban UN Agenda 21 - 0 views

thenewamerican.com/...asses-bill-to-ban-un-agenda-21

Oklahoma Agenda-21

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 13
     
    The State of Oklahoma looks to be well on its way towards joining Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee as States passing laws to block any efforts to implement the insidious United Nations socialist initiative known as Agenda 21.   Excerpts: lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Tennessee adopted a resolution blasting the dubious UN agenda as a radical "socialist" plot at odds with individual liberty, private-property rights, and the U.S. Constitution. Lawmakers in Kansas followed suit. Numerous other state governments, under heavy pressure from activists across the political spectrum, are also working to ban the "sustainable development" scheme in their jurisdictions. City and county governments, meanwhile, are taking action to protect residents, too.  "One of the goals of the United Nations Agenda 21 Initiative is to influence governments," Kern explained. "My constituents are concerned about that influence and about their property rights being infringed upon by government regulations that originated from Agenda 21. My legislation addresses those concerns by protecting individual property rights." "The Oklahoma bill passed by the House last week reads: "The state or any political subdivision of the state shall not adopt or implement policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe upon or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in, or traceable to United Nations Agenda 21/Sustainable Development." Also prohibited under the measure is state or local government participation in "any other international law or ancillary plan of action that contravenes the Constitution of the United States or the Oklahoma Constitution." The legislation also ensures that state and local governments are barred from working with UN-linked groups promoting the controversial agenda. "Since the United Nations has accredited or enlisted numerous nongovernmental and intergovernmen
Paul Merrell

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

surveillance state NSA Snowden privacy-violations lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.
  • The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
  • Read the documents NSA report on privacy violations Read the full report with key sections highlighted and annotated by the reporter.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.
  • The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Aug 13
     
    4 Part Article; this is page 1. Based on a Congressional Audit of the NSA, and, the NSA documents provided by uber patriot Edward Snowden.
Gary Edwards

Larry Summers and the Secret "Bankster End Game" Memo : http://goo.gl/wDhDhL - 1 views

news.google.com/?ar=1379450048

banksters Larry-Summers Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Sep 13
     
    Diigo is screwing up the URL AGAIN!!!!! WTF!!! The correct title is "Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo :: http://goo.gl/wDhDhL From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial ba
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Sep 13
     
    Related link: Summers Withdraws From Consideration for Fed Chairmanship, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-15/obama-said-he-accepted-summers-decision-to-withdraw-his-name.html
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Sep 13
     
    From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels. Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  "d
Gary Edwards

Larry Summers and the Secret End Game Memo - by Greg Palast | Investigative Reporter - 1 views

www.gregpalast.com/s-and-the-secret-end-game-memo

Banksters WTO Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel New-World-Order Globalist-Elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Oct 13
     
    excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels. Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  "derivatives trading."  JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets." Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives. But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws? The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five:  eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet - in one single move.    It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous. How could they pull off this mad caper?  The bankers' and Summers' game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization. Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods-that is, my cars for your bananas.  The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in "bads" - toxic assets like financial derivatives. Until the bankers' re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders.  The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives "products." And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives. The job of turning the FSA into the bankers' battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization. "
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Oct 13
     
    Greg Palast does good work. I'm reminded of a passage from Carl Oglesby's The Yankee and Cowboy War where he argued rather convincingly that conspiracy is the norm rather than the exception at the boundary line between government and big business.
Paul Merrell

'This Week' Transcript: Ambassador Samantha Power - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

war & peace ISIL Iraq Syria U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • STEPHANOPOULOS: And we are joined now by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Thanks for coming back to This Week. And you know, the president said he's prepared to strike Syria. Those strikes could be imminent. Will the United States try to get UN Security Council authorization first? Or do you accept now that's just not going to be possible? SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Well, let me say that Secretary Kerry just convened a meeting of the Security Council on Friday which showcased just how much support there is on the Security Council and in the broader international community for the anti-ISIL effort. STEPHANOPOULOS: But the Russia veto.
  • POWER: Russia has vetoed in the past, but on very different issues. I think Russia has made clear for a long time its opposition to ISIL. The Iraqis have appealed to the international community to come to their defense not only in Iraq, but also to go after safe havens in foreign countries. And what they mean by that of course is Syria. And they're quite explicit about that. So they have made an appeal to the international community for collective defense. And we think we have a legal basis we need if the president decides... STEPHANOPOULOS: Without a UN authorization. POWER: Consistent with the UN charter, we -- it will depend on the facts and circumstances of any particular strike in Syria, but we have a legal basis we need.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14
     
    Context: U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, holds the U.N. Security Council's rotating chair this month. Powers'  claims a right for the U.S. to wage war against ISIL in Syria on grounds of the collective security exception to the U.N. Charter's prohibition; that is, that the U.S. has a collective security agreement with the nation of Iraq, that makes it lawful for the U.S. to strike ISIL. True enough as a matter of international law, ignoring the fact that Obama has yet to obtain permission from the U.S. Congress, which the U.S. Constitution requires him to do. But ISIL is not the nation of Syria; hence to attack ISIL in Syria, an additional exception is necessary for both Iraq and the U.S. The only other recognized exception that might seem to do deals with the situation when a nation in which a private organization inflicting harm on another nation  is "unwilling or unable" to protect the second nation (Iraq) from the depradations of the private organization. And that is where Powers' legal analysis dissembles because the U.S. has been actively attempting to overthrow the Syrian government via proxy terrorist organizations including ISIL. So the U.S. lacks clean hands in claiming any lawful right to invade Syria on the theory that the Syrian government is unwilling or unable to put down the ISIL organization. The Syrian government is certainly willing and has been attempting to do so. But its inability to do so thus far is entirely due to the U.S., its Gulf Coast state allies, and its ally Turkey continuing to supply ISIL and other terrorist groups in Syria with weapons, training, and supplies, aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government. The doctrine of unclean hands has limited applicability in international law governing human rights. See Lisa LaPlante, The Law of Remedies and the Clean Hands Doctrine: Exclusionary Reparation Policies in Peru's Political Transition, 23 Am Univ Int Law Rev 50 (2007), https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cg
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