Sunday, 4 August 2013

The European Union Times

Switzerland Warning Against Obama Regime Stuns Russia

Posted: 03 Aug 2013 02:55 AM PDT

The Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is reporting today that Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) is proposing that the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA) issue an immediate “Situation: Grave, Do Not Travel” warning for the United States upgrading that North American nation from its current status as “Stable” and on par with a similar warning issued for the war torn Middle Eastern country of Syria.
According to this report, millions of data files on counter-terrorism operations from both MI6 and the CIA were stolen this past December (2012) by a senior computer technician of Swiss citizenship who planned to release them to Wikileaks.
These highly classified documents stored on NDB servers, this report continues, were stolen by what was described as a “very talented” still unnamed NDB technician senior enough to have “administrator rights,” giving him unrestricted access to most or all of the NDB’s networks.
The December, 2012 theft of these top secret British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, GRU intelligence analysts in this report say, came on the heels of a similar theft barely two years prior when MI6 spy Daniel Houghton, also a highly trained computer technician with “administrator rights,” was arrested while attempting to, also, release to Wikileaks thousands of top-secret MI6, MI5 and CIA electronic files.

Raising the fears of the NDB, however, this report says, were US National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) documents obtained from Edward Snowden by the GRU which show a “conclusive and provable link” between the man now known as the United States most wanted person, the still unnamed NDB spy, MI6 spy Houghton and US Army Private Bradley Manning, all of whom constitute what Swiss intelligence analysts say are the “iceberg tip” behind the largest theft of Western top-secret documents in modern history.
To whom the power behind these Western computer spies with unlimited “administration rights” and top security clearances, who have been releasing and/or attempting to release to the world these most secretive of documents, this GRU report quotes from NDB documents, Swiss intelligence analysts point to what they describe as a “cabal” of US military officers “fully intent” upon destroying the Obama regime, even if it means war.
Important to note is that this past February (2013) the Federal Security Services (FSB) had warned of the US military plan to assassinate Obama in what Russian intelligence analysts say will be a takeover of the United States similar to the coup currently being undertaken in Egypt; and the GRU had further warned this past November (2012) that the Obama regimes war against its own generals was, also, likely to end in a military coup after the Washington D.C. gun battle toppled the top US military leader, former Four-Star Army General and CIA director David Petraeus, of this planed takeover.
The “main tactic” being used by the Obama regime against its top military leaders, according to the NDB, has been the leaking of their private emails by the NSA/CSS as revealed by Snowden whose leaked documents prove that US intelligence operatives loyal to the Obama regime have been tapping everything done online by all Americans.
Of the greatest concern to the NDB, however, this GRU report says, was the Obama regimes targeting this past week of the renowned American statesman, retired four-star general in the United States Army, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the 65th United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, whom the NSA/CSS has threatened with the release of his private emails alleging an affair with a Romanian diplomat, which is the same tactic used to destroy the reputation and career of General Petraeus.
Unlike General Petraeus, however, this report continues, the NDB in their report note that General Powell has secretly notified the Obama regime of his intention “not to go down without a fight” and which led to forces loyal to the Obama regime opening fire on and destroying two F-16 fighter jets nearing Washington D.C. airspace Thursday evening (23:00 hrs EDT 1 August) believed to be headed towards the White House.

As to if these F-16 fighter jets were indeed targeting Obama, this report says, it is not certain, but the reaction by the Obama regime to this event has been unprecedented in that within hours of them being shot down the US issued a world-wide travel alert to last until 31 August and ordered the closing of at least 17 of its overseas embassies.
The shock announcement yesterday that the US would be closing these embassies, this GRU report says the NDB has discovered, is due to the Obama regimes fears that more computer thefts of top-secret documents relating to the Obama regimes collusion with extreme Islamic terrorists groups are going to be released and will allow them time to purge all of their embassy servers of incriminating information, especially those files relating to the true events of the 2012 Benghazi Attack led by rogue CIA operatives whom US Congressman Trey Gowdy warned yesterday were being kept from testifying, being relocated and given new identities.
Unbeknownst to the American people about the Obama regime, this report says, has been its tens of millions of dollars in funding of al-Qaeda terrorists to create an Islamic Emirate in Syria and its over $8 billion in secret funding to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood radicals, both forces who are currently being defeated on the battlefield and in the streets.
Equally unknown to the American people is that Snowden, a “high-level member,” according to the NDB, of the US military cabal threatening the Obama regime, had offered to return to America to face the charges leveled against him knowing that if were able to survive the citizens of his country would learn the full horrors of the monsters ruling over them, an offer that was rejected by the US.
Snowden’s fears for his safety have, indeed proved valid since the Obama regimes assassinations of Michael Hastings, Aaron Swartz and Barnaby Jack and as we reported on in our 29 July report revealing how the Russian military is currently preparing for all-out war.
And in one of the most shameful acts against the American people by their own mainstream press, their refusal to publish, let alone mention, Edward Snowden’s fathers open letter to Obama will stand forever as an indictment against those elites seeking to enslave these once great people forever, and as we can all read in its entirety:
July 26, 2013
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Re: Civil Disobedience, Edward J. Snowden, and the Constitution
Dear Mr. President:
You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders.
A dark chapter in America’s World War II history would not have been written if the then United States Attorney General had resigned rather than participate in racist concentration camps imprisoning 120,000 Japanese American citizens and resident aliens.
Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution.
We submit that Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures of dragnet surveillance of Americans under § 215 of the Patriot Act, § 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments, or otherwise were sanctioned by Thoreau’s time-honored moral philosophy and justifications for civil disobedience. Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community. He found himself complicit in secret, indiscriminate spying on millions of innocent citizens contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the First and Fourth Amendments and the transparency indispensable to self-government. Members of Congress entrusted with oversight remained silent or Delphic. Mr. Snowden confronted a choice between civic duty and passivity. He may have recalled the injunction of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Mr. Snowden chose duty. Your administration vindictively responded with a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Espionage Act.
From the commencement of your administration, your secrecy of the National Security Agency’s Orwellian surveillance programs had frustrated a national conversation over their legality, necessity, or morality. That secrecy (combined with congressional nonfeasance) provoked Edward’s disclosures, which sparked a national conversation which you have belatedly and cynically embraced. Legislation has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and Senate to curtail or terminate the NSA’s programs, and the American people are being educated to the public policy choices at hand. A commanding majority now voice concerns over the dragnet surveillance of Americans that Edward exposed and you concealed. It seems mystifying to us that you are prosecuting Edward for accomplishing what you have said urgently needed to be done!
The right to be left alone from government snooping–the most cherished right among civilized people—is the cornerstone of liberty. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson served as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremburg. He came to learn of the dynamics of the Third Reich that crushed a free society, and which have lessons for the United States today.
Writing in Brinegar v. United States, Justice Jackson elaborated:
The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. And one need only briefly to have dwelt and worked among a people possessed of many admirable qualities but deprived of these rights to know that the human personality deteriorates and dignity and self-reliance disappear where homes, persons and possessions are subject at any hour to unheralded search and seizure by the police.
We thus find your administration’s zeal to punish Mr. Snowden’s discharge of civic duty to protect democratic processes and to safeguard liberty to be unconscionable and indefensible.
We are also appalled at your administration’s scorn for due process, the rule of law, fairness, and the presumption of innocence as regards Edward.
On June 27, 2013, Mr. Fein wrote a letter to the Attorney General stating that Edward’s father was substantially convinced that he would return to the United States to confront the charges that have been lodged against him if three cornerstones of due process were guaranteed. The letter was not an ultimatum, but an invitation to discuss fair trial imperatives. The Attorney General has sneered at the overture with studied silence.
We thus suspect your administration wishes to avoid a trial because of constitutional doubts about application of the Espionage Act in these circumstances, and obligations to disclose to the public potentially embarrassing classified information under the Classified Information Procedures Act.
Your decision to force down a civilian airliner carrying Bolivian President Eva Morales in hopes of kidnapping Edward also does not inspire confidence that you are committed to providing him a fair trial. Neither does your refusal to remind the American people and prominent Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate like House Speaker John Boehner, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann,and Senator Dianne Feinstein that Edward enjoys a presumption of innocence. He should not be convicted before trial. Yet Speaker Boehner has denounced Edward as a “traitor.”
Ms. Pelosi has pontificated that Edward “did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents.” Ms. Bachmann has pronounced that, “This was not the act of a patriot; this was an act of a traitor.” And Ms. Feinstein has decreed that Edward was guilty of “treason,” which is defined in Article III of the Constitution as “levying war” against the United States, “or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
You have let those quadruple affronts to due process pass unrebuked, while you have disparaged Edward as a “hacker” to cast aspersion on his motivations and talents. Have you forgotten the Supreme Court’s gospel in Berger v. United States that the interests of the government “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done?”
We also find reprehensible your administration’s Espionage Act prosecution of Edward for disclosures indistinguishable from those which routinely find their way into the public domain via your high level appointees for partisan political advantage. Classified details of your predator drone protocols, for instance, were shared with the New York Times with impunity to bolster your national security credentials. Justice Jackson observed in Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York: “The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally.”
In light of the circumstances amplified above, we urge you to order the Attorney General to move to dismiss the outstanding criminal complaint against Edward, and to support legislation to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed. Such presidential directives would mark your finest constitutional and moral hour.
Sincerely,
Bruce Fein
Counsel for Lon Snowden
Lon Snowden
Source

Brazil youths demand governors of Rio, Sao Paulo to resign

Posted: 03 Aug 2013 01:14 AM PDT

Brazilian protesters march towards Governor Sergio Cabral’s residence demanding him to resign in Rio de Janeiro on August 1, 2013.

Hundreds of Brazilian youths have staged protests demanding the resignation of the governors of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as well as the release of demonstrators arrested during previous rallies.
On Thursday, protesters in both cities demanded Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral and his Sao Paulo counterpart, Geraldo Alckmin, to step down, accusing them of corruption.
There were also calls for the military police to be disbanded.
In addition, the protesters demanded information about the whereabouts of 42-year-old Amarildo de Souza, who was last seen when he was taken into custody on July 14, and also called for the release of protesters who were taken into custody during earlier demonstrations.
This was the latest in a series of demonstrations held across the nation against the Brazilian government.
A day earlier on August 1, anti-government protesters stormed the city council building in Rio de Janeiro, calling on Cabral to resign over corruption.
The demonstrations initially erupted on June 17, when street rallies were held over a rise in bus fares.
However, the anger has now snowballed into nationwide demonstrations, with people demanding that the government address the issues of high taxes, inflation, corruption, and poor public services.
The protesters are also opposed to the spending of over USD 26 billion of public money on the two major sporting events of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
Source

French court overturns ban on Monsanto corn

Posted: 03 Aug 2013 01:02 AM PDT

One of France’s top courts has thrown out a ban on genetically modified corn, which had been in place since March 2012, leaving the door open for Monsanto’s GMO seed to be introduced into the country’s farmland.
The decision by the top administrative court on Thursday argued that the moratorium on the GMO MON810 corn, one of two types of genetically altered crops approved by the European Union, lacked legal basis, reports AFP.
According to the Council of State court, a ban “can only be taken by a member state in case of an emergency or if a situation poses a major risk” to the health of people or animals, or to the environment.
The EU, which arguably has the most restrictive GMO regulations in the world, requires extensive testing and evaluation by the European Food Safety Authority before authorizing any genetically modified products.
The EU approved Monsanto’s MON810 corn in 1998 for a period of 10 years, and the biotech giant applied in 2007 for that period to be extended, although Brussels has yet to make a final decision on the matter. In the meantime, MON810 is currently being cultivated in small scale within countries such as Spain and Portugal that are more receptive to GMOs, which are widely rejected within the Eurozone.
France’s Agriculture Minister Stephane LE Foll has said that his government opposes genetically modified crops, and suggested that they will seek other legal routes to halt their use.
The court’s overturn of the MON810 corn ban is only the latest phase in a long-running dispute between the agriculture sector and French public opinion, which is highly critical of GMOs in general.
In September of last year Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced that France would be maintaining its ban on the GMO maize after a previous moratorium was thrown out by a top court in November.
Likewise, France is sensitive to the use of chemicals on its crop as well. Last year a French court found Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning based on a case from a farmer in Lyon, who claimed to have suffered neurological damage caused by one of the biotech’s weedkillers.
Frustrated by the EU’s GMO approval process, Monsanto withdrew all pending approval requests for new types of GMO crops in July.
“We will be withdrawing the approvals in the coming months,” said Monsanto’s President and Managing Director for Europe, Jose Manuel Madero.
Facing inhospitable public opinion of their GMO products German biotech company BASF also halted the development of new crops in 2011, and moved its entire European GMO research operations to the United States.
Germany along with France and Italy have all imposed national bans on GMOs, though Germany permitted Amflora, a potato modified with higher levels of starch, for industrial purposes. Other EU countries with bans and cultivation on GMOs include Austria, Luxembourg and Hungary. In May, Hungary went so far as to burn 1,200 acres of GMO corn after its government became aware of the banned crop.
Source

Oakland’s creepy new surveillance program

Posted: 03 Aug 2013 12:47 AM PDT

Oakland’s director of emergency services, scans a monitoring screen at the Domain Awareness Center.

Earlier this week, the Oakland City Council voted to approve the second phase of a $10.9 million surveillance center that would enable the City to engage in widespread warrantless surveillance of Oakland residents who have engaged in no wrongdoing whatsoever. This is a terrible blow to privacy.
The so-called Domain Awareness Center (DAC) would consolidate a vast network of surveillance data. The project was initially supposed to be about port security.
But in a classic illustration of mission creep, the project as proposed would have pulled in over 1,000 cameras and sensors pointed at Oakland residents, including 700 cameras in Oakland schools.
While surveilling schoolchildren is not going to secure the Port of Oakland, it would allow for the comprehensive tracking of innocent Oakland residents.
The DAC would enable the city to track individuals when they visit the abortion clinic, the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, or the union hall, or engage in other private activities.
Although proponents of the project claimed that it did nothing more than consolidate existing surveillance systems, the mere combination of surveillance data is extremely intrusive. A mosaic depicts far more information than any individual tile.
Shockingly, the City Council was poised to approve the project even though there was no privacy framework in place whatsoever.
Although the City’s proposed contract with a vendor to build the DAC took pains to prescribe in minute detail the precise manner in which, for example, metal framing systems are to be installed (studs are to be placed not more than 2 inches from abutting walls), there were no privacy provisions addressing key issues such as data retention and dissemination.
Disappointingly, and in the face of enormous opposition, the City Council voted on Tuesday to approve the DAC.
The resolution it ultimately adopted requires the City Council to approve privacy policies and specifies which surveillance systems can be included in the DAC (the cameras in Oakland schools are no longer included).
While the resolution contains a few nods to privacy, the City Council still put the cart before the horse.
The City Council would never have approved a construction project, only to say that they’d review financial costs after the project is built. But it did just that with privacy costs.
Source

Australia underestimated growth, unemployment, and debt figures by billions

Posted: 03 Aug 2013 12:41 AM PDT

Australia will post a budget deficit of $30.1 billion for the fiscal year, a gross miscalculation from its May estimate of $18 billion, but the government promises to stay on track.
Federal Treasurer Chris Bowen, speaking on the newly-released economic report, said Australia is undergoing ‘economic transition’ and ‘not a crisis’. Bowen predicts weaker economic growth, increased unemployment, and more government debt on the horizon.
The forecast 2014-2015 deficit has surged to $24 billion, up from the previously $10.9 billion. The government has vowed to curb the deficit for the 2016-2017 period.
The report shows that Australia’s 2013-2014 deficit will be 1.9 percent of GDP, much lower than the US deficit of 5.4 percent of the economy, Japan’s 7 percent, or the euro zone’s 2.6 percent, according to April IMF data.
Australia isn’t expected to reach a surplus until 2016-2017, when it is projected to be $4 billion, also trimmed from its May figure of $6.6 billion. Many government officials are skeptical the budget will reach a surplus by the 2016-2017 fiscal year.
“It’s blatantly obvious – Labor has lost control of the budget and is losing control of the economy,” Coalition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said, pointing his finger at the Labor party for derailing the economy. Hockey added the budget is in a ‘free fall’.
The booming mining business has been stunted by low metals prices, and low commodity prices could be a small factor in the budget shortfall. Before the metals pricing slump, minerals and natural resources had propped up the economy amidst surrounding global economic recession.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is seeking election on a widening deficit instead of austerity measures, which the Aussies view favorably in opinion polls. He may call for an early election as early as September 7.
Growth has slowed to 2.5 percent, still above the 1.7 percent US economic expansion, but much lower than its Pacific counterparts. The May budget projected a 2.75 percent growth rate.
Unemployment isn’t expected to drop until at least 2015, according to the updated economic outlook. The jobless is expected to rise from 5.5 percent to 5.75 percent, and is slated to expand to 6.25 percent before returning below 5 percent in 2015.
The weakening Aussie dollar is helping boost natural resource exports, especially in competition with New Zealand, as the Australian dollar hit a 4.5 year low against the New Zealand dollar late July.
The Australian government is also exploring the option of levying its banks in order to collect budget revenue. It would be imposed on banks, and not account holders, but banks have warned they may pass on levies to customers.
Debt: More debt, says bank chief
The National Australia Bank chief executive agrees Australia needs to expand its deficit in order to grow.
”Australia has a debt problem: we don’t have enough,” Cameron Clyne said on Thursday.
Clyne believes Australia has a ‘unique window’ as AAA-rated country to issue more government debt in order to fund domestic infrastructure and growth.
At present, Canberra has a $300 billion cap on government and securities borrowing for 2013, but this limit may need to be raised according to Clyne.
”If we continue to have the debate that suggests that all debt is bad, and not a debate on the productive use of debt, we will simply not be able to fund the infrastructure this economy needs to thrive into the future,” said Clyne.
Source

Zimbabwe’s ruling party wins parliamentary elections

Posted: 02 Aug 2013 02:18 PM PDT

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has won most of the parliamentary seats in the general elections, says a senior source in the ruling party ZANU-PF.
ZANU-PF party spokesman Rugare Gumbo announced on Friday that Mugabe has won way over 50 percent of the 210 parliamentary seats.
The opposition MDC party, which is led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, won only 10 seats.
Election results also showed that Mugabe reclaimed some seats lost to Tsvangirai in the 2008 elections.
Meanwhile, Olusegun Obasanjo, the head of the African Union observer mission, head has declared Zimbabwe’s election as “free, honest and credible”.
Tsvangirai’s party says the ruling party of the incumbent president has committed vote rigging.
Vote counting began immediately after the presidential and parliamentary elections ended on Wednesday night, July 31.
Some 6.4 million people, or half of the Zimbabwean population, were eligible to cast their ballots at 9,670 polling stations across the country.
Mugabe has become Africa’s oldest leader at 89, having ruled Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980.
The previous presidential election in Zimbabwe was held in 2008. That vote went to a run-off, from which Tsvangirai withdrew citing violence against his supporters. The withdrawal led to Mugabe’s uncontested victory in the country.
Source

Telecom giants give GCHQ unlimited access to networks

Posted: 02 Aug 2013 02:04 PM PDT

Major telecom companies have been assisting the UK intelligence agency GCHQ by granting access to all the traffic passing through their fiber-optic cables – and by developing Trojan software, leaked papers obtained by German media reveal.
The classified slides obtained by German news agencies Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and NDR list global telecommunication operators among the collaborators of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters. The documents are said to have been leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The 2009-dated GCHQ slides reportedly provide the names of the following companies, along with their agency’s internal aliases: American provider Verizon Business (code name: “Dacron”), British majors BT (“Remedy”) and Vodafone Cable (“Gerontic”), as well as Global Crossing (“Pinnage”), Level 3 (“Little”), Viatel (“Vitreous”) and Interoute (“Streetcar”).
The listed telecom giants have allegedly been passing on details of phone calls, emails and Facebook entries to the agency in line with the GCHQ’s operation Tempora. Snowden earlier revealed that Tempora was part of the UK’s data collection programs dubbed ‘Mastering the Internet’ and ‘Global Telecoms Exploitation.’
The seven providers named in the reports own tens of thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic networks, including the high-capacity undersea cables, and literally form the backbone of the internet’s infrastructure.
According to a Guardian intelligence source cited in June, all such firms had “no choice” but to engage in spying, compelled by the GCHQ warrants. Until now, the companies’ names had been strictly kept secret by the agency for fear of “high-level political fallout” and major market losses.
But the fresh leaks also claim to be showing another side of the secret deal, with telecom majors allegedly receiving rewards for developing the spying software for GCHQ on their own. Such software could come in a form of Trojan viruses installed on targeted computers, the reports say, stating that the companies’ involvement in data collection is much larger and more complicated than previously thought.
The reports also list network attacks and deliberate disinformation as the tactics employed by the UK’s intelligence agency in their task for ‘dominating’ the internet.
So far, all but one of the providers listed in the report failed to directly confirm or deny the claims, some saying they comply with the law of the countries they operate in. German market leader Level 3 denied providing access to its communication networks to “any foreign government,” according to SZ. But the news agency then speculated that the company could still serve as a hub for outside data transfer, as in 2011 it acquired the Global Crossing, inheriting its foreign networks – and, possibly, agreements.
The sensitive revelations about GCHQ’s so-called ‘intercept partners’ come as a follow up of the recent Snowden leak saying that the British agency has received at least $150 million from its American counterpart NSA for the “dirty work” of massive intelligence gathering.
The fugitive whistleblower has repeatedly said that the massive surveillance was “not just a US problem,” and that the UK also “has a huge dog in this fight” – GCHQ, which makes it “worse than the US.”
Source

Rand Paul: Obama’s Goal In Syria Is To “Fight To A Stalemate”

Posted: 02 Aug 2013 01:42 PM PDT

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul slammed the Obama administration’s “world policeman” outlook on foreign policy and accused the president of intentionally planning to “fight to a stalemate” in Syria in a speech Monday.
Appearing at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Kentucky, Paul condemned the administration’s policy of endless war, and appealed for a more humble approach to oversees affairs.
“For our country’s sake, certainly for our soldiers’ sake — for the sake of every veteran who ever donned a uniform and fought for this country — America’s mission should always be to keep the peace, not police the world,” Paul urged.
“There is no greater priority for the federal government than the defense of the Constitution and the nation,” Paul added. “Yet, sometimes I think our defense is weakened by our overeagerness to be involved in every civil war on the planet.”
The Senator asserted that US military involvement in Egypt, Syria and Libya was not based on “common sense” rationale, and that the nation’s military and civilian leaders now “often don’t think” before they act.
“Last week I was told by the administration, you know what their goal is in Syria? To fight to a stalemate,” Paul told the audience.
“I’ve told them I’m not sending my kids or your kids or any American soldiers to fight for stalemate. When we fight, we fight to win, we fight for American principles, we fight for the American flag and we come home after we win.”
The Senator also voiced great displeasure that the US government was willing to see weapons it is supplying to so called rebels be used against millions of Syrian Christians who oppose the Assad regime anyway.
Describing the situation as “a great irony”, the Senator stated “I, for one, will fight with every ounce of my energy to prevent arms, American arms, that you paid for, from being used against Christians.”
As Infowars reported today, the atrocities against Syrian Christians continue to be carried out by Obama-backed FSA rebels.
Photos have emerged showing the aftermath of an alleged massacre of a Christian village in Syria during which men, women and children were slaughtered and churches desecrated.
Source

Germany cancels surveillance pact with US

Posted: 02 Aug 2013 01:33 PM PDT

The July 8, 2013 photo shows the former monitoring base of the U.S. intelligence organization National Security Agency (NSA) in Bad Aibling, near Munich.

Germany says it has canceled its surveillance agreement with the US and Britain following the revelations by the former contractor to National Security Agency (NSA) Edward Snowden about Washington’s mass spying program worldwide.
The agreement dated back to 1960s and allowed Washington and London to carry out spying operations in German territory to protect their troops there.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, in a statement, described the cancelation as “a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”
Just weeks ahead of the country’s national elections, the German government has been under pressure from the public and the opposition parties over its cooperation with White House’s controversial surveillance program which also targeted German citizens.
Meanwhile, a statement from the British Foreign Office said the German measure is not significant because the agreement has not been used since 1990.
“It’s a loose end from a previous era which is right to tie up,” said the statement.
A German official also told the AP that the move was symbolic. The official, who declined to be named, added that ending the agreement would not affect the intelligence cooperation between Berlin and its allies.
The revelations by Snowden sparked strong and angry reactions among Germans. Many civil rights activists drew a parallel between the NSA spying program and the activities of the secret police during the communist East Germany and the Nazi era.
Source

Mexico and Canada declared part of US homeland by Senate maps

Posted: 02 Aug 2013 12:49 PM PDT

Sen. Dianne Feinstein referred to the US, Canada and Mexico as “the Homeland” at an NSA Senate briefing on Wednesday, presenting a map that united the three nations as one.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting held to acquire details on the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs, Sen. Feinstein (D-Calif.) made a geographic mistake in which she united three large countries into one. The error went by without comment during the briefing, but generated a significant response upon closer examination of the map.
During the briefing, Feinstein, who serves as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was defending the NSA’s data-collection programs when she pulled out a world map that identified North America as the “Homeland”. The newly-declassified diagram showed terror activity that the NSA had allegedly disrupted throughout the world.
But while Europe, Africa and Asia were correctly identified by their continent’s name, countries of North America were all encompassed as a new mega-nation.
“Now, the NSA has produced and declassified a chart, which I’d like to make available to all members. It has the 54 total (terror) events,” Feinstein said. “And it shows the events disrupted… 13 in the Homeland, 25 in Europe, five in Africa and 11 in Asia.”
Although it might be easy to brush off the map as nothing more than a mistake made by a staffer, a writer at The Atlantic suggested that it might indicate a potential NSA attempt at tallying thwarted attacks in North America to make anti-terrorism efforts in the US look more successful.
“Normally, this would be written off as a design goof, as one of the NSA’s (newly adept) graphics guys using a little more light blue than he ought,” writes the Atlantic’s Philip Bump. “This being the NSA, we’re not inclined to offer that benefit of the doubt. Is this a way of blending in Canadian and Mexican terror activity disruptions (which, we’ll remind you, is different from actual plots interrupted) to give a larger sense of the NSA’s success at halting terrorism within our borders?”
Whatever the reason for the NSA’s creation of “the Homeland”, the spy agency has already been condemned for failing to respect the sovereignty of other nations through its extensive data-collection efforts.
Some people have taken to Twitter to sarcastically welcome Canada and Mexico to the United States.
“Earths newest continent. Welcome to the Homeland, Mexico and Canada!” wrote Twitter user Kat Capps.
“Are Canadians losing their sovereignty?” tweeted user Kevin King.
“We did it! Canada is now part of the American ‘homeland,’” tweeted Canada.com, a site for “spirited discussions on what’s important to Canadians.”
Source

The threat of nuclear war? North Korea or the United States

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 12:30 PM PDT

This composite image shows the LGM-30G Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) (L) and the LG-118A Peacekeeper missile(R).

While the Western media portrays North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as a threat to Global Security, it fails to acknowledge that the US has being threatening North Korea with a nuclear attack for more than half a century.
On July 27, 2013, Armistice Day, Koreans in the North and the South will be commemorating the end of the Korean war (1950-53). Unknown to the broader public, the US had envisaged the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea at the very outset of the Korean War in 1950. In the immediate wake of the war, the US deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea for use on a pre-emptive basis against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in violation of the July 1953 Armistice Agreement.
The Hiroshima doctrine applied to North Korea
US nuclear doctrine pertaining to Korea was established following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which were largely directed against civilians.
The strategic objective of a nuclear attack under the “Hiroshima doctrine” was to trigger a “massive casualty producing event” resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. The objective was to terrorize an entire nation, as a means of military conquest. Military targets were not the main objective: the notion of “collateral damage” was used as a justification for the mass killing of civilians, under the official pretence that Hiroshima was “a military base” and that civilians were not the target.
In the words of President Harry Truman:
“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. … This weapon is to be used against Japan … [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. … The target will be a purely military one… It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.” (President Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945)
“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..” (President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).
[Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the Second on Nagasaki, on August 9, on the same day as Truman's radio speech to the Nation]
Nobody within the upper echelons of the US government and military believed that Hiroshima was a military base, Truman was lying to himself and to the American public. To this day the use of nuclear weapons against Japan is justified as a necessary cost for bringing the war to an end and ultimately “saving lives”.
US nuclear weapons stockpiled and deployed in South Korea
Barely a few years after the end of the Korean War, the US initiated its deployment of nuclear warheads in South Korea. This deployment in Uijongbu and Anyang-Ni had been envisaged as early as 1956.
It is worth noting that the US decision to bring nuclear warheads to South Korea was in blatant violation of Paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice Agreement which prohibited the warring factions from introducing new weapons into Korea.
The actual deployment of nuclear warheads started in January 1958, four and a half years after the end of the Korean War, “with the introduction of five nuclear weapon systems: the Honest John surface-to-surface missile, the Matador cruise missile, the Atomic-Demolition Munition (ADM) nuclear landmine, and the 280-mm gun and 8-inch (203mm) howitzer.” (See The nuclear information project: US Nuclear Weapons in Korea)
Officially the US deployment of nuclear weapons in South Korea lasted for 33 years. The deployment was targeted against North Korea as well as China and the Soviet Union.
South Korea’s nuclear weapons program
Concurrent and in coordination with the US deployment of nuclear warheads in South Korea, the ROK had initiated its own nuclear weapons program in the early 1970s. The official story is that the US exerted pressure on Seoul to abandon their nuclear weapons program and “sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in April 1975 before it had produced any fissile material.” (Daniel A. Pinkston, “South Korea’s Nuclear Experiments,” CNS Research Story, 9 November 2004, http://cns.miis.edu.]
The ROK’s nuclear initiative was from the outset in the early 1970s under the supervision of the US and was developed as a component part of the US deployment of nuclear weapons, with a view to threatening North Korea.
Moreover, while this program was officially ended in 1978, the US promoted scientific expertise as well as training of the ROK military in the use of nuclear weapons. And bear in mind: under the ROK-US CFC agreement, all operational units of the ROK are under joint command headed by a US General. This means that all the military facilities and bases established by the Korean military are de facto joint facilities. There are a total of 27 US military facilities in the ROK (See List of United States Army installations in South Korea – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
The Planning of Nuclear Attacks against North Korea from the Continental US and from Strategic US Submarines
According to military sources, the removal of US nuclear weapons from South Korea was initiated in the mid 1970s. It was completed in 1991:
The nuclear weapons storage site at Osan Air base was deactivated in late 1977. This reduction continued over the following years and resulted in the number of nuclear weapons in South Korea dropping from some 540 in 1976 to approximately 150 artillery shells and bombs in 1985. By the time of the Presidential Nuclear Initiative in 1991, roughly 100 warheads remained, all of which had been withdrawn by December 1991. (The nuclear information project: withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from South Korea)
According to official statements, the US withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea in December 1991.
This withdrawal from Korea did not in any way modify the US threat of nuclear war directed against the DPRK. On the contrary: it was tied to changes in US military strategy with regard to the deployment of nuclear warheads. Major North Korean cities were to be targeted with nuclear warheads from US continental locations and from US strategic submarines (SSBN) rather than military facilities in South Korea.
“Although the South Korean government at the time confirmed the withdrawal, U.S. affirmations were not as clear. As a result, rumors persisted for a long time — particularly in North and South Korea — that nuclear weapons remained in South Korea. Yet the withdrawal was confirmed by Pacific Command in 1998 in a declassified portion of the CINCPAC Command History for 1991. (The nuclear information project: withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from South Korea, emphasis added))
The Bush administration’s 2001 nuclear posture review: Pre-emptive nuclear war
The Bush administration in its 2001 Nuclear Posture Review established the contours of a new post 9/11 “pre-emptive” nuclear war doctrine, namely that nuclear weapons could be used as an instrument of “self-defense” against non-nuclear states
“Requirements for U.S. nuclear strike capabilities” directed against North Korea were established as part of a Global Strike mission under the helm of US Strategic Command Headquarters in Omaha Nebraska, the so-called CONPLAN 8022, which was directed against a number of “rogue states” including North Korea as well as China and Russia:.
On November 18, 2005, the new Space and Global Strike command became operational at STRATCOM after passing testing in a nuclear war exercise involving North Korea.
Current U.S. Nuclear strike planning against North Korea appears to serve three roles: The first is a vaguely defined traditional deterrence role intended to influence North Korean behavior prior to hostilities.
This role was broadened somewhat by the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review to not only deter but also dissuade North Korea from pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Why, after five decades of confronting North Korea with nuclear weapons, the Bush administration believes that additional nuclear capabilities will somehow dissuade North Korea from pursuing weapons of mass destruction [nuclear weapons program] is a mystery. (Ibid, emphasis added)
Who is the threat? North Korea or the United States?
The asymmetry of nuclear weapons capabilities between the US and the DPRK must be emphasised. According to ArmsControl.org (April 2013) the United States:
“possesses 5,113 nuclear warheads, including tactical, strategic, and non-deployed weapons.”
According to the latest official New START declaration, out of more than 5113 nuclear weapons,
“the US deploys 1,654 strategic nuclear warheads on 792 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers…” ArmsControl.org (April 2013).
Moreover, according to The Federation of American Scientists the U.S. possesses 500 tactical nuclear warheads. (ArmsControl.org April 2013)
In contrast the DPRK, according to the same source:
“has separated enough plutonium for roughly 4-8 nuclear warheads. North Korea unveiled a centrifuge facility in 2010, buts ability to produce highly-enriched uranium for weapons remains unclear.”
The threat of nuclear war does not emanate from the DPRK but from the US and its allies.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the unspoken victim of US military aggression, has been incessantly portrayed as a war mongering nation, a menace to the American Homeland and a “threat to World peace”. These stylized accusations have become part of a media consensus.
Meanwhile, Washington is now implementing a $32 billion refurbishing of strategic nuclear weapons as well as a revamping of its tactical nuclear weapons, which according to a 2002 Senate decision “are harmless to the surrounding civilian population.”
These continuous threats and actions of latent aggression directed against the DPRK should also be understood as part of the broader US military agenda in East Asia, directed against China and Russia.
It is important that people across the land, in the US, Western countries, come to realize that the United States rather than North Korea or Iran is a threat to global security.
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.
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Hundreds hold rally in Cyprus against Turkish occupation

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:16 AM PDT

Hundreds of Greek flags and torches filled the streets as activists of ELAM marched against the Turkish occupation of Greek soil. The chants of the patriots resonated through the air, as a simple message was given: 39 years later this soil is still Greek and always will be, prepare for the nationalist earthquake!
In the early afternoon, the people collected in this march for national liberation. The National People’s Front (ELAM) has gained extraordinary momentum, and is leading the rush to the barricades to condemn Turkish barbarism. Patriotic songs and the sound of marching filled the skies, soon followed by a series of speeches. The barricade of shame that separates the island was symbolically undermined, when the security team of our movement prohibited the transportation to and from the occupied territories.
The flames of torches commemorated the sacrifice of those heroes that fell in battle and went missing 1974, fighting until the bitter end the Turkish invasion. Cyprus is Greek, and this is not up for debate!
The 1,000 strong bloc of nationalists were greeted with enthusiasm and applause by bystanders. The power of Hellenism vibrated through the atmosphere, with ordinary citizens urging the Social-Nationalists to continue the hard struggle.
Long live the Nation of the Greeks! Long Live ELAM! Long live victory!
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Uruguay parliament passes bill on production, distribution of marijuana

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 10:33 AM PDT

View of Uruguay’s lower house during the debate of a bill that legalizes marijuana, Montevideo, July 31, 2013.

Uruguay’s parliament has passed a controversial bill that legalizes for the first time the production and distribution of marijuana by the government.
The legislation was approved on Wednesday with 50 lawmakers out of 96 voting in favor of it following 14 hours of tough discussion.
The Senate must give the bill the final approval.
“The regulation is not meant to promote consumption,” lawmaker Sebastian Sabini claimed at the beginning of the voting session. “Consumption already exists,” he argued.
President Jose Mujica’s leftist government has also supported the legislation.
The supporters of the bill say the consumption of marijuana has doubled in the last ten years in the South American country of 3.4 million people.
Gerardo Amarilla of the opposition National Party warned against the bill, saying the plan was “playing with fire.”
A recent survey shows that a total of 63 percent of people in Uruguay are against the government’s plan.
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German physicist stops Universe

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 10:11 AM PDT

German physicist Christof Wetterich proposed an interesting model of the universe, which, in contrast to the standard view, is not expanding. According to his concept, modern space is quite stationary, or even already started to slowly shrink. The scientist managed to bypass numerous slippery questions of the Big Bang Theory.
The idea that the universe is expanding is quite young, and emerged less than a hundred years ago. At the beginning of the last century, many physicists, including Albert Einstein, favored the hypothesis that our universe is stationary and stable. This is precisely why the great scholar initially reacted very negatively to the work of Alexander Friedman published in 1922 that proposed the idea of non-stationary universe. Later, after checking the calculations, Einstein acknowledged that his opponent was right.
Soon, this hypothesis has received an experimental confirmation. In the 1920s, several astronomers, including Georges Lemaitre and Edwin Hubble, independently discovered the so-called red shift (a special case of the Doppler Effect). If an object moves in the direction opposite to that of the Earth, the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation will be shifted towards the red part of the spectrum (in the same way as the sound of a vehicle moving away always shifts to bass).
The astrophysicists noticed that most galaxies have this redshift, and the farther away a galaxy is, the stronger the effect. This gave impetus to the hypothesis of an expanding universe. In the second half of the twentieth century it was followed by the Big Bang theory that explained not only how the universe appeared, but also this expansion that seems strange at first glance. As it often happens, while explaining some things, this hypothesis created a number of difficulties in other areas of physics.
One of them is the so-called cosmological singularity, the state of the universe at the initial moment of the Big Bang, characterized by infinite density and temperature of the matter. This state is absurd from the point of view of classical thermodynamics, because if the density is infinite, then the entropy (a measure of randomness of the system) must tend to zero. However, it cannot coexist with infinite temperature (as this would cause an infinite increase of entropy).
This and other inconsistencies prompted the great physicist Stephen Hawking to make his famous statement that the results of our observations supported the hypothesis that the universe originated at a specific point in time. However, the moment of the beginning of creation, the singularity, is not subject to any of the known laws of physics. The statement could be expected of Hawking who has long been thinking in the universal categories. It was much more difficult for his more “mundane” colleagues to acknowledge the fact that at the heart of the universe there is a process that cannot be studied through the techniques of modern physics.
When contemplating this idea, it turns out that science was penetrated by the idea of a supernatural origin of the world, which is not scientific, but religious. This is nonsense, because science cannot go beyond its well-defined framework. That is why now many scientists are trying to deal with this unfortunate singularity and other “side effects” of the Big Bang theory. A theoretical physicist with the University of Heidelberg (Germany), Christof Wetterich created and presented to the world his cosmological model. In his model the universe is not expanding, and therefore there is no need for singularity in the Big Bang. This is the new version of the stationary model of the universe.
But how did this scientist managed to ignore such an obvious fact as the redshift of galaxies? Wetterich did not ignore it, he just offered a different interpretation of this phenomenon. He noted that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the atoms depends on the mass of elementary particles that constitute the atoms, in particular electrons. It turns out that if the mass of the atom increases, the emitted photons carry more energy. Since higher energy corresponds to a “high-frequency” of emission and absorption, it is logical to assume that for the observer they will shift to the blue part of the spectrum. However, an inverse effect is possible, and if the particles become lighter, the frequency of the radiation undoubtedly demonstrates that same redshift.
Next, Dr. Wetterich concluded that since the speed of light is finite, when observers are looking at distant galaxies they seem to be traveling back in time, watching them as they were at the time of emission of radiation. Thus, if the mass of the universe was lower in the past and has since steadily increased, the emission of old galaxies seems to be shifted to the red part of the spectrum, and the degree of red shift is proportional to their distance from Earth. This would not mean that they will be moving away from us.
However, Christof Wetterich does not eliminate the expansion and the Big Bang. According to his model, the universe expanded rapidly over a short period of inflation (the period of accelerated expansion immediately after the Big Bang). According to the same model, this expansion was not preceded by the ill-fated moment of singularity. The scientist established that the Big Bang was stretched in the past for essentially infinite time. The modern space according to this hypothesis is quite static, or even began to slowly shrink.
So far, Wetterich’s work has not been published in any peer-reviewed journals, but none of the experts contacted by Nature journal saw any obvious errors in the preprint of the article. Moreover, some of them had very favorable reviews. An astrophysicist HongSheng Zhao with the University of St. Andrews (United Kingdom) said that Wetterich demonstrated a serious approach worthy of consideration.
However, all reviewers, as well as the author of the work, recognize one significant weak point in this research. It is unlikely that an experiment to test this hypothesis could be successful. Since mass is dimensionless, it can be measured only in one way – by comparison to a certain model whose weight is well-known (for example, the mass of objects on the Earth’s surface is measured relative to the standard kilogram stored at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in the outskirts of Paris). This implies that if the mass of all particles in the universe grows proportionally, it is impossible to record this change in practice because there is no point of comparison.
However, some of Wetterich’s colleagues believe that this hypothesis is still useful for the world of science. “It is always good to find an alternative explanation consistent with all the known observations before we get too comfortable with the standard model,” said physicist Arjun Berera with the University of Edinburgh (UK). And then the fact that the verification of the scientist’s hypothesis is impossible now does not mean that it is impossible in principle. The theory of relativity, for example, had to wait for a decade to be tested, but it still happened.
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NSA claims inability to search agency’s own emails

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 08:58 AM PDT

Despite the ability to monitor the Internet and cell phone activities of millions, the National Security Agency says it lacks the technology necessary to sift through its own employees’ personal email accounts, according to a new report.
The claim came in response from a Freedom of Information Act request sent by Justin Elliot, a reporter at Pro Publica seeking to identify to relationship between the NSA and the National Geographic Channel, which has aired what Pro Publica characterized as sympathetic documentaries on the secretive intelligence entity.
“There’s no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately,” NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told Elliot, adding that the current system is “a little antiquated and archaic.”
In a trailer for the National Geographic Channel documentary entitled Inside the NSA: America’s Cyber Secrets, an NSA official described the agency as “energy central” and “the emergency room” to gain intelligence for American decision makers.
“Back in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s we had an adversary: it was the Soviet Union,” Dickie George, a former NSA technical director, says in the documentary. “They were very much like us: same intent, same motivation, same kind of capabilities and resources. There was a line in the sand, you didn’t go beyond that line. Today’s world is completely different.”
Elliot wrote that the NSA’s FOIA officer contacted him again days after the request to ask that he narrow it to a “person by person” approach for the Agency’s 30,000 employees rather than a broader request for National Geographic-related correspondence.
“It’s just baffling,” said Mark Caramanica of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. “This is an agency that’s charged with monitoring millions of communications globally and they can’t even track their own internal communications in response to a FOIA request.”
Pro Publica’s case is hardly unique. Since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the true, shocking and indiscriminate scope of government surveillance, the agency has been inundated with requests from citizens demanding to know what, if any, of their own information has been collected.
Clayton Seymour, a 26-year-old IT specialist who lives in Ohio, told the Tikkun Daily, a progressive blog, that he submitted a FOIA request but was quickly denied under an exception to NSA’s FOIA policy, authorized by US President Barack Obama in 2009.
“Thus, your request is denied pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA, which provides that the FOIA does not apply to matters that are specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign relations and are properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order,” stated the denial.
The order in question allows the NSA to refuse to disclose information if is collected covertly, a rule still in effect – and presumably relied upon – after the Snowden leak.
“I am a generally law abiding citizen with nothing I can think of that would require monitoring, but I wanted to know if I was having data collected about me and if so, what,” Seymour told Tikkun Daily. “When I got the declined letter, I was furious. I feel betrayed.”
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