Re: US strike options on TSP

[vishvak]

Why is the democracy system within USA not able to weed out these fundamentalists and fundamentalism of majority? Is it because USA is in grip of fundamentalists or that majority itself is fundamentalist and is using democracy to hide its motives and gain credibility as a normal democratic system?

[Mukesh.Kumar]

http://bostonreview.net/BR35.1/bacevich.php

‘Americans misperceive the world and their role in determining its evolution’
Andrew J. Bacevich

Adding on to Acharya's post on how the US mispercieves the world, here's an amazing documentary "Fog Of War", which is an interview with Robert McNamara. Extremely insightful as to how decisions involving the fate of millions are taken. But getting back to the point please see his second point on "Empathizing with the Enemy" and how he brings it back in at 01:17:37 when he describes the misunderstandings that aggravated the Vietnam crisis.

[abhishek_sharma]

Over the Line: Why are U.S. Border Patrol agents shooting into Mexico and killing innocent civilians?

[Kati]

Unkil got caught?
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013 ... r-cia?lite

[abhishek_sharma]

Civil liberties, press freedom, and America's global role

[abhishek_sharma]

Here Comes the White-Power Safety Patrol: Inside the White Student Union of Towson University.

[abhishek_sharma]

Gitmo's Fallen Czar: Daniel Fried was the perfect man for the hardest job in Washington, but even he couldn’t close Guantanamo.

[abhishek_sharma]

Top 10 warning signs of 'liberal imperialism'

[abhishek_sharma]

The Death and Life of Chicago

[KJo]

The Death and Life of Chicago

Englewood (actually West Englewood) is the most dangerous area of Chicago. Shootings and killings every night.
Back in 2002, when I was naadaan, I took the El train to go to the Museum close by and we got off at Englewood and walked to the museum. Real bad idea and stupidity.
Thank the Brophet nothing bad happened.

[Lilo]

Abhishek ji ,
Can you quote the article and highlight interesting stuff in the links you post ?
will be of great help to people like moi who cant do heavy readings at a stretch.

[abhishek_sharma]

^^ ajee read full articles onlee

Obama's Gray Man

[Philip]

The trial of Bradley Manning,whistleblower is taking place amidst great controversy..

There has always been a somewhat Orwellian quality to US foreign policy: “we have always been at war with Islamic fundamentalism”, for example. And yet in the 1980s, US arms were distributed through Pakistan’s secret services to the Afghan mujihadeen: they were freedom-fighters, you see. Then we ended up in a never-ending war in Afghanistan, battling on behalf of a corrupt and undemocratic government, against Islamic fundamentalist elements. Several hundred miles away, the US is proactively backing Syria’s jihadists alongside its Islamist fundamentalist ally, Saudi Arabia. Waves of Islamist fighters were recruited by the calamity of Iraq.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 41164.html
Sunday 2 June 2013
The United States should be in the dock, not Bradley Manning

The whistleblower has allowed us to scrutinise the hidden realities of US power

It has launched illegal and unjust wars with catastrophic human consequences; it has helped overthrow democratically elected governments; it arms and backs some of the most brutal dictatorships on the face of the earth; and it has a track record of supporting terrorist organisations. Even many of its ardent supporters admit that the US foreign policy elite has a somewhat chequered history.

Today, an American hero stands in the dock, damned for a relatively tiny ray of light he shone on the darker recesses of this elite. Over three years ago, US soldier Bradley Manning – even now just 25 years old – leaked 250,000 US diplomatic cables and half a million army reports. There has never been a bigger leak of classified material in the history of the United States.

His punishment has already been severe. According to Juan Méndez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, he has faced cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. For months, he was deprived of human contact. He was stripped of his clothes, left without privacy, and forced to sleep without any darkness. In 2011, P J Crowley was forced to resign as the US state department’s official spokesman after slamming Manning’s treatment as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid”.

Manning now begins a military trial, charged with a capital offence, though the prosecution promise not to seek the death penalty, leaving him facing 20 years in prison. As two US champions of the First Amendment on free speech, Floyd Abrams and Yochai Benkler, have written: “If successful, the prosecution will establish a chilling precedent: national security leaks may subject the leakers to a capital prosecution or at least life imprisonment.”

Manning is partly being tried under the Espionage Act, a piece of legislation dating back to the First World War. He faces 22 charges in total: to 10 of them he has pleaded guilty, including wilfully communicating to an unauthorised person. But the most alarming charge is that he was “aiding the enemy” – in other words, that he intentionally helped al-Qa’ida.

No wonder powerful interests in the US want to make an example of Manning. Among the videos he released was an Apache helicopter conducting a bombing raid that killed Iraqi civilians and a Reuters journalist. “The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have,” Manning has said, appalled by the lack of “value for human life” shown by the pilots’ descriptions of “dead ********”. Here was the “on-the-ground reality” of both the Iraq and Afghan wars, he claimed.

The truth is Manning has done a great service, both to the American people and to the world as a whole. US foreign policy depends on secrecy, not simply because of fear of US enemies, but because the reality would often horrify the American people.

Back in the 1970s, my parents were among South Yorkshire families who took in Chilean refugees fleeing General Pinochet’s dictatorship. One was a woman with two kids; she had been raped, her husband murdered. She ended her life by flinging herself off a Sheffield tower block. Pinochet’s bloody junta had come to power on the back of secret CIA aid: as Henry Kissinger said before the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende was overthrown: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.” Under Reagan, US-backed right-wing terrorists went on a frenzied rampage across Central America: there was an intentional conspiracy to keep this horrendous reality away from the American people.

This was a long time ago, some will say; it was the Cold War, after all, and normal rules were suspended. That’s probably little comfort to those still grieving the Disappeared, and indeed there is substantial evidence of US involvement in the more recent 2002 coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. But there has been a striking continuity in US foreign policy since 1898, when the American Anti-Imperialist League – dominated by an old guard horrified at a slide towards European-style colonialism – opposed the bloody invasion of the Philippines.

There has always been a somewhat Orwellian quality to US foreign policy: “we have always been at war with Islamic fundamentalism”, for example. And yet in the 1980s, US arms were distributed through Pakistan’s secret services to the Afghan mujihadeen: they were freedom-fighters, you see. Then we ended up in a never-ending war in Afghanistan, battling on behalf of a corrupt and undemocratic government, against Islamic fundamentalist elements. Several hundred miles away, the US is proactively backing Syria’s jihadists alongside its Islamist fundamentalist ally, Saudi Arabia. Waves of Islamist fighters were recruited by the calamity of Iraq.

There is nothing patriotic about the poorly scrutinised actions of the US foreign policy elite. Scores of young men or women are sent to be killed or maimed: those who call for bringing them to safety are smeared as “unpatriotic”. US civilians are put at risk of “blowback”, a CIA word for the unintended consequences of foreign interventions. They can even fail disastrously on their own terms. Back in the 1950s, the US helped overthrow Iran’s last democratically-elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, fuelling anti-American sentiment that helped drive the Iranian Revolution.

That is why Manning has done us such a service. He has encouraged us to scrutinise the hidden realities of US power, and consider the dire consequences of decisions shrouded in secrecy. His actions should compel us to build a more open, balanced world, where great powers are less able to throw their poorly understood weight around. It would be a long-term investment: the US is in long-term decline, and autocratic China may take its place, quite possibly using its power more unjustly. Better, then, to challenge this world order now.

I happen to believe the creation of such a world is not a naïve fantasy. It can and must be built. And however your trial goes, you, Mr Manning, will be remembered for your own contribution in building it.

And sensationally,was the world famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda actually murdered by the Pinochet regime and the CIA? New evidence seems to suggest just that,Micheal Townley a known CIA double agent,who admitted to killing critics of the regime,working with the secret police.appears to be the culprit who carried out the hit.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 41352.html


Was Pablo Neruda killed by Pinochet?
When the great poet died 40 years ago in Chile, it was said to be from cancer. Now, lawyers say it was murder

Dr Sergio Draper now claims a doctor called Price was with Neruda. There is no record of a Doctor Price in any of the hospital’s records and Draper said he never saw the man again after leaving him with Neruda.

The prosecutor believes that whoever the man was, “the important fact is that this was the person who ordered the injection” that may have killed Neruda. The description of Price as tall and blond with blue eyes matches Michael Townley, a CIA double agent who worked with the Chilean secret police under Pinochet.

Townley was put into the witness protection programme after he admitted killing critics of the Chilean dictator in Washington and Buenos Aires.

[Philip]

How to destroy the future

From the Cuban missile crisis to a fossil fuels frenzy, the US is intent on winning the race to disaster

Noam Chomsky
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... am-chomsky

Noam Chomsky for TomDispatch, part of the Guardian Comment Network
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 June 2013

JFK on the Cuban missile crisis
'What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded.' Photograph: Ralph Crane/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

What is the future likely to bring? A reasonable stance might be to try to look at the human species from the outside. So imagine that you're an extraterrestrial observer who is trying to figure out what's happening here or, for that matter, imagine you're an historian 100 years from now – assuming there are any historians 100 years from now, which is not obvious – and you're looking back at what's happening today. You'd see something quite remarkable.

For the first time in the history of the human species, we have clearly developed the capacity to destroy ourselves. That's been true since 1945. It's now being finally recognized that there are more long-term processes like environmental destruction leading in the same direction, maybe not to total destruction, but at least to the destruction of the capacity for a decent existence.

And there are other dangers like pandemics, which have to do with globalization and interaction. So there are processes underway and institutions right in place, like nuclear weapons systems, which could lead to a serious blow to, or maybe the termination of, an organized existence.

The question is: What are people doing about it? None of this is a secret. It's all perfectly open. In fact, you have to make an effort not to see it.

There have been a range of reactions. There are those who are trying hard to do something about these threats, and others who are acting to escalate them. If you look at who they are, this future historian or extraterrestrial observer would see something strange indeed. Trying to mitigate or overcome these threats are the least developed societies, the indigenous populations, or the remnants of them, tribal societies and first nations in Canada. They're not talking about nuclear war but environmental disaster, and they're really trying to do something about it.

In fact, all over the world – Australia, India, South America – there are battles going on, sometimes wars. In India, it's a major war over direct environmental destruction, with tribal societies trying to resist resource extraction operations that are extremely harmful locally, but also in their general consequences. In societies where indigenous populations have an influence, many are taking a strong stand. The strongest of any country with regard to global warming is in Bolivia, which has an indigenous majority and constitutional requirements that protect the "rights of nature."

Ecuador, which also has a large indigenous population, is the only oil exporter I know of where the government is seeking aid to help keep that oil in the ground, instead of producing and exporting it – and the ground is where it ought to be.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died recently and was the object of mockery, insult, and hatred throughout the Western world, attended a session of the U.N. General Assembly a few years ago where he elicited all sorts of ridicule for calling George W. Bush a devil. He also gave a speech there that was quite interesting. Of course, Venezuela is a major oil producer. Oil is practically their whole gross domestic product. In that speech, he warned of the dangers of the overuse of fossil fuels and urged producer and consumer countries to get together and try to work out ways to reduce fossil fuel use. That was pretty amazing on the part of an oil producer. You know, he was part Indian, of indigenous background. Unlike the funny things he did, this aspect of his actions at the U.N. was never even reported.

So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying to stem the race to disaster. At the other extreme, the richest, most powerful societies in world history, like the United States and Canada, are racing full-speed ahead to destroy the environment as quickly as possible. Unlike Ecuador, and indigenous societies throughout the world, they want to extract every drop of hydrocarbons from the ground with all possible speed.

Both political parties, President Obama, the media, and the international press seem to be looking forward with great enthusiasm to what they call "a century of energy independence" for the United States. Energy independence is an almost meaningless concept, but put that aside. What they mean is: we'll have a century in which to maximize the use of fossil fuels and contribute to destroying the world.

And that's pretty much the case everywhere. Admittedly, when it comes to alternative energy development, Europe is doing something. Meanwhile, the United States, the richest and most powerful country in world history, is the only nation among perhaps 100 relevant ones that doesn't have a national policy for restricting the use of fossil fuels, that doesn't even have renewable energy targets. It's not because the population doesn't want it. Americans are pretty close to the international norm in their concern about global warming. It's institutional structures that block change. Business interests don't want it and they're overwhelmingly powerful in determining policy, so you get a big gap between opinion and policy on lots of issues, including this one.

So that's what the future historian – if there is one – would see. He might also read today's scientific journals. Just about every one you open has a more dire prediction than the last.

The other issue is nuclear war. It's been known for a long time that if there were to be a first strike by a major power, even with no retaliation, it would probably destroy civilization just because of the nuclear-winter consequences that would follow. You can read about it in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. It's well understood. So the danger has always been a lot worse than we thought it was.

We've just passed the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was called "the most dangerous moment in history" by historian Arthur Schlesinger, President John F. Kennedy's advisor. Which it was. It was a very close call, and not the only time either. In some ways, however, the worst aspect of these grim events is that the lessons haven't been learned.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane. There was a point, as the missile crisis was reaching its peak, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy offering to settle it by a public announcement of a withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and U.S. missiles from Turkey. Actually, Kennedy hadn't even known that the U.S. had missiles in Turkey at the time. They were being withdrawn anyway, because they were being replaced by more lethal Polaris nuclear submarines, which were invulnerable.

So that was the offer. Kennedy and his advisors considered it – and rejected it. At the time, Kennedy himself was estimating the likelihood of nuclear war at a third to a half. So Kennedy was willing to accept a very high risk of massive destruction in order to establish the principle that we – and only we – have the right to offensive missiles beyond our borders, in fact anywhere we like, no matter what the risk to others – and to ourselves, if matters fall out of control. We have that right, but no one else does.

Kennedy did, however, accept a secret agreement to withdraw the missiles the U.S. was already withdrawing, as long as it was never made public. Khrushchev, in other words, had to openly withdraw the Russian missiles while the US secretly withdrew its obsolete ones; that is, Khrushchev had to be humiliated and Kennedy had to maintain his macho image. He's greatly praised for this: courage and coolness under threat, and so on. The horror of his decisions is not even mentioned – try to find it on the record.

And to add a little more, a couple of months before the crisis blew up the United States had sent missiles with nuclear warheads to Okinawa. These were aimed at China during a period of great regional tension.

Well, who cares? We have the right to do anything we want anywhere in the world. That was one grim lesson from that era, but there were others to come.

Ten years after that, in 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called a high-level nuclear alert. It was his way of warning the Russians not to interfere in the ongoing Israel-Arab war and, in particular, not to interfere after he had informed the Israelis that they could violate a ceasefire the U.S. and Russia had just agreed upon. Fortunately, nothing happened.

Ten years later, President Ronald Reagan was in office. Soon after he entered the White House, he and his advisors had the Air Force start penetrating Russian air space to try to elicit information about Russian warning systems, Operation Able Archer. Essentially, these were mock attacks. The Russians were uncertain, some high-level officials fearing that this was a step towards a real first strike. Fortunately, they didn't react, though it was a close call. And it goes on like that.

At the moment, the nuclear issue is regularly on front pages in the cases of North Korea and Iran. There are ways to deal with these ongoing crises. Maybe they wouldn't work, but at least you could try. They are, however, not even being considered, not even reported.

Take the case of Iran, which is considered in the West – not in the Arab world, not in Asia – the gravest threat to world peace. It's a Western obsession, and it's interesting to look into the reasons for it, but I'll put that aside here. Is there a way to deal with the supposed gravest threat to world peace? Actually there are quite a few. One way, a pretty sensible one, was proposed a couple of months ago at a meeting of the non-aligned countries in Tehran. In fact, they were just reiterating a proposal that's been around for decades, pressed particularly by Egypt, and has been approved by the U.N. General Assembly.

The proposal is to move toward establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. That wouldn't be the answer to everything, but it would be a pretty significant step forward. And there were ways to proceed. Under U.N. auspices, there was to be an international conference in Finland last December to try to implement plans to move toward this. What happened?

You won't read about it in the newspapers because it wasn't reported – only in specialist journals. In early November, Iran agreed to attend the meeting. A couple of days later Obama cancelled the meeting, saying the time wasn't right. The European Parliament issued a statement calling for it to continue, as did the Arab states. Nothing resulted. So we'll move toward ever-harsher sanctions against the Iranian population – it doesn't hurt the regime – and maybe war. Who knows what will happen?

In Northeast Asia, it's the same sort of thing. North Korea may be the craziest country in the world. It's certainly a good competitor for that title. But it does make sense to try to figure out what's in the minds of people when they're acting in crazy ways. Why would they behave the way they do? Just imagine ourselves in their situation. Imagine what it meant in the Korean War years of the early 1950s for your country to be totally leveled, everything destroyed by a huge superpower, which furthermore was gloating about what it was doing. Imagine the imprint that would leave behind.

Bear in mind that the North Korean leadership is likely to have read the public military journals of this superpower at that time explaining that, since everything else in North Korea had been destroyed, the air force was sent to destroy North Korea's dams, huge dams that controlled the water supply – a war crime, by the way, for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And these official journals were talking excitedly about how wonderful it was to see the water pouring down, digging out the valleys, and the Asians scurrying around trying to survive. The journals were exulting in what this meant to those "Asians," horrors beyond our imagination. It meant the destruction of their rice crop, which in turn meant starvation and death. How magnificent! It's not in our memory, but it's in their memory.

Let's turn to the present. There's an interesting recent history. In 1993, Israel and North Korea were moving towards an agreement in which North Korea would stop sending any missiles or military technology to the Middle East and Israel would recognize that country. President Clinton intervened and blocked it. Shortly after that, in retaliation, North Korea carried out a minor missile test. The U.S. and North Korea did then reach a framework agreement in 1994 that halted its nuclear work and was more or less honored by both sides. When George W. Bush came into office, North Korea had maybe one nuclear weapon and verifiably wasn't producing any more.

Bush immediately launched his aggressive militarism, threatening North Korea – "axis of evil" and all that – so North Korea got back to work on its nuclear program. By the time Bush left office, they had eight to 10 nuclear weapons and a missile system, another great neocon achievement. In between, other things happened. In 2005, the U.S. and North Korea actually reached an agreement in which North Korea was to end all nuclear weapons and missile development. In return, the West, but mainly the United States, was to provide a light-water reactor for its medical needs and end aggressive statements. They would then form a nonaggression pact and move toward accommodation.

It was pretty promising, but almost immediately Bush undermined it. He withdrew the offer of the light-water reactor and initiated programs to compel banks to stop handling any North Korean transactions, even perfectly legal ones. The North Koreans reacted by reviving their nuclear weapons program. And that's the way it's been going.

It's well known. You can read it in straight, mainstream American scholarship. What they say is: it's a pretty crazy regime, but it's also following a kind of tit-for-tat policy. You make a hostile gesture and we'll respond with some crazy gesture of our own. You make an accommodating gesture and we'll reciprocate in some way.

Lately, for instance, there have been South Korean-U.S. military exercises on the Korean peninsula which, from the North's point of view, have got to look threatening. We'd think they were threatening if they were going on in Canada and aimed at us. In the course of these, the most advanced bombers in history, Stealth B-2s and B-52s, are carrying out simulated nuclear bombing attacks right on North Korea's borders.

This surely sets off alarm bells from the past. They remember that past, so they're reacting in a very aggressive, extreme way. Well, what comes to the West from all this is how crazy and how awful the North Korean leaders are. Yes, they are. But that's hardly the whole story, and this is the way the world is going.

It's not that there are no alternatives. The alternatives just aren't being taken. That's dangerous. So if you ask what the world is going to look like, it's not a pretty picture. Unless people do something about it. We always can.

[shyamd]

Tom Donilon will be replaced by Susan Rice today as the US Nat sec advisor to Obama. This is not released in the press yet or officially announced

[Philip]

O'Bomber in trouble over tel-taps.He looks to be an even more sinister figure than Richard Nixon on his worst day!
Imagine if the NSA can blatantly do this to its own citizens,what it is doing to the rest of the world!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... on-records

White House defends NSA phone records collection as 'critical tool'
Obama administration says order is 'critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats' as senior politicians condemn surveillance
• Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

White House defends NSA phone records collection as 'critical tool'

Obama administration says order is 'critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats' as senior politicians condemn surveillance

• Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

Dan Roberts and Spencer Ackerman in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 June 2013 17.36 BST

Barack Obama crowdfunding charities
Obama administration said the practice was 'a critical tool in protecting the nation'. Photograph: Rex Features

The White House has sought to justify its surveillance of millions of Americans' phone records as anger grows over revelations that a secret court order gives the National Security Agency blanket authority to collect call data from a major phone carrier.

Politicians and civil liberties campaigners described the disclosures, revealed by the Guardian on Wednesday, as the most sweeping intrusion into private data they had ever seen by the US government.

But the Obama administration, while declining to comment on the specific order, said the practice was "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States".

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

The disclosure has reignited longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice under President Obama.

The White House stressed that orders such as the one disclosed by the Guardian would only cover data about the calls rather than their content. A senior administration official said: "Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counter-terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.

"As we have publicly stated before, all three branches of government are involved in reviewing and authorising intelligence collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress passed that act and is regularly and fully briefed on how it is used, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorises such collection. There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."

The administration stressed that the court order obtained by the Guardian relates to call data, and does not allow the government to listen in to anyone's calls.

This point was also made by the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein. "This is just meta data. There is no content involved," she told reporters on Capitol Hill. "In other words, no content of a communication. … The records can only be accessed under heightened standards."
Senators Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Saxby Chambliss, the vice chairman, speak to reporters about the NSA cull of phone records. Senators Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Saxby Chambliss, the vice chairman, speak to reporters about the NSA cull of phone records. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

However, in 2013, such metadata can provide authorities with vast knowledge about a caller's identity. Particularly when cross-checked against other public records, the metadata can reveal someone's name, address, driver's licence, credit history, social security number and more. Government analysts would be able to work out whether the relationship between two people was ongoing, occasional or a one-off.

"From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming. It's a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents," said Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director. "It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies."

The order names Verizon Business Services, a division of Verizon Communications. In its first-quarter earnings report, published in April, Verizon Communications listed about 10 million commercial lines out of a total of 121 million customers. The court order does not specify what type of lines are being tracked. It is not clear whether any additional orders exist to cover Verizon's wireless and residential customers, or those of other phone carriers.

Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific, named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual.

The Verizon order expressly bars the company from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself. "We decline comment," said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman said on Wednesday.
'Secret blanket surveillance'

Feinstein said she believed the order had been in place for some time. She said: "As far as I know this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the [foreign intelligence surveillance] court under the business records section of the Patriot Act. Therefore it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress."

News of the order brought swift condemnation from senior US politicians. Former vice-president Al Gore described the "secret blanket surveillance" as "obscenely outrageous". "In [the] digital era, privacy must be a priority," he said.

The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.

For about two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.

Udall, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said on Wednesday night: "While I cannot corroborate the details of this particular report, this sort of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking."

Russell Tice, a retired National Security Agency intelligence analyst and whistleblower, said: "What is going on is much larger and more systemic than anything anyone has ever suspected or imagined."

Although an anonymous senior Obama administration official said that "on its face" the court order revealed by the Guardian did not authorise the government to listen in on people's phone calls, Tice now believes the NSA has constructed such a capability.

"I figured it would probably be about 2015" before the NSA had "the computer capacity ... to collect all digital communications word for word," Tice said. "But I think I'm wrong. I think they have it right now."

The Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement that the secret court order was unprecedented. "As far as we know this order from the Fisa court is the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued: it requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon [business services] subscribers anywhere in the US.

"The Patriot Act's incredibly broad surveillance provision purportedly authorizes an order of this sort, though its constitutionality is in question and several senators have complained about it."

Mark Rumold, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: "This is confirmation of what we've long feared, that the NSA has been tracking the calling patterns of the entire country. We hope more than anything else that the government will allow a judge to decide whether this is constitutional, and we can finally put an end to this practice."

Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor of New York, described the revelations as "a shocking report that really exploded overnight".

"A lot of people are waking up now and I think they will be horrified," he said. "It is not just the civil libertarian wings of the Republican and Democratic parties; I think most Americans will be really surprised that their government is having access to all of the phone calls they make."

"I don't think the administration's response [so far] is anywhere near adequate. I think you will see a lot of questions being asked in the coming days."

Oregon senator Jeff Merkley said: "This type of secret bulk data collection is an outrageous breach of Americans' privacy. Can the FBI or the NSA really claim that they need data scooped up on tens of millions of Americans?"

[ramana]

its same genre as the DNA extraction of suspects to screen against existing records without a warrant or specific linkage.
FSU collpase has led to "us, becoming them!"

Telugu: "Vaaru veeru aiyyaru!"

End of Cold War had numerous strategic experts wondering how will US continue after the loss of a enemy that forced cohesion. History of Rome after Carthage, UK after Nazis and so on.

[Philip]

More on O'Bomber's secret snooping worldwide,through "PRISM",which has secretly prised open the Net's most popular systems.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

US security agency has direct access to Google, Facebook and Apple user data
National Security Agency taps into internet giants' systems to mine user details, according to top secret document

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.

An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of PRISM.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.
Prism

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

Disclosure of the PRISM program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.

The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.

Some of the world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.

It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.

Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.

[Philip]

The Sscret world of the NSA,"No Such Agency"!.


The National Security Agency: surveillance giant with eyes on America

The NSA is the best hidden of all the US intelligence services – and its secrecy has deepened as its reach has expanded

• Revealed: NSA taps into tech giants' systems to mine user data
Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 June 2013 23.55 BST

One well-informed estimate suggests 100,000 people are employed at the National Security Agency. Photograph: Terry Ashe/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The very existence of National Security Agency (NSA) was not revealed for more than two decades after its establishment in 1952, and even now its structure and activities remain largely unknown. Hence its wry nickname: No Such Agency.

Of all the US intelligence services, it is has been the best hidden, and has prided itself on having the fewest leaks – at least until now. How many people does it employ? That is classified. Just how many people does it target? The NSA tells members of Congress that it does not have the tools to provide such figures.

When Harry Truman set up the NSA, it was exclusively aimed at monitoring communications abroad. The question that had exercised politicians and civil rights organisations since the Senate unveiled it in 1975 is to what extent its ferocious appetite for data has encompassed American citizens. General Lou Allen, the first NSA chief to appear in public, told Congress in the mid-1970s that the agency maintained lists of hundreds of names, including US citizens under surveillance for anti-war dissent or suspicious foreign connections.

As technology has evolved, so has the NSA's capacity to intercept an astonishing variety and volume of communications. Satellites scoop up calls and emails in the ether and beam the information back to earthbound receiving stations. One estimate suggests that each of these bases hoovers up roughly one billion emails, phone calls and other forms of correspondence every day, and the agency has up to 20 bases.

"This is not science fiction. It is happening now," a source with knowledge of the NSA said.

Domestic snooping exploded in scale after 9/11, when George W Bush authorised the agency to eavesdrop on Americans without the previous requirement for warrants. Within a few months of taking office in 2009, the Obama administration's Justice Department conceded that the agency had been guilty of "over-collection" of domestic communications but claimed the excess had been accidental.

With every passing administration, the NSA has ballooned. One well-informed estimate of its staffing levels is 100,000, of whom about 30,000 are military and the rest private contractors. Its headquarters is a vast edifice of smoked glass in Fort Meade, in the leafy Washington suburbs, with sizeable complexes in Georgia and Texas and overseas bases in Japan, Germany and the UK.

While the NSA is by far the biggest surveillance agency in the world, it shares some of its work with four other allies: Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Collectively, they are known as the "five eyes". Of the five, the biggest after the NSA is Britain's General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

The predecessor to the NSA was the short-lived Armed Forces Security Agency, which was set up in 1949. It was a relatively modest body compared with the mammoth the NSA has since become.

The young agency suffered some early embarrassments. In 1960, two of its staff defected to the Soviet Union. Three years later, a former NSA employee published code-breaking secrets in the Soviet paper Izvestia; the same year, an NSA employee killed himself while being investigated for selling secrets to Moscow.

Since then, internal security has been tightened significantly, but as the agency's secrecy deepened, its reach expanded relatively unchecked. It was a Democratic senator and lawyer, Frank Church, who in 1975 first raised the alarm at the agency's sprawling tentacles. During a series of hearings into the work of the intelligence agencies, he warned that the NSA's magnifying glass could be turned inwards on the American people.

"I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge," he said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

The Church Senate hearings led to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), which required a warrant to conduct surveillance of communications within the US. A Fisa court, made up of a small group of judges appointed by the chief justice and located inside in the justice department, was given the job of deciding whether to grant warrants – it approves almost all requests.

In the years since 9/11, as the role of the NSA has snowballed, so has the debate over its operations. In 2005, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had secretly authorised the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the US, to search for terrorist activity without the Fisa court warrants. The order had been signed in 2002, but the newspaper cited about a dozen serving or former officials who expressed concern about the legality. The Times delayed publication of the article for a year because of government concerns about its impact.

In the face of the subsequent uproar, the Bush administration said it had ceased the warrantless surveillance in January 2007 and resumed the practice of requiring NSA warrants. In 2008, Congress loosened some of those constraints in the Fisa Amendment Act.

The massive surveillance programme has continued under the Obama administration, at home as well as abroad. And the culture of intense secrecy persists. For years, Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been demanding to know just how many people inside the US have been spied on by the NSA. No answer has been forthcoming.

PS:the NSA is reputed to have millions of sq. ft. of underground facilities in its HQ at Fort Meade Maryland,with super-computers ad nauseum,monitoring virtually every digital communication worldwide through a network of ground based staions in Oz,Diego Garcia,Britain's GCHQ,etc.There are at least 100,000 personnel employed by it,say sources and the outfit has been expanding year after year as digital communications and social websites are acting as catalysts for global political change.Some even accuse the NSA/CIA of actually flooding the net with fake posts to further unrest in selected nations.

[Vayutuvan]

100,000? I doubt it.

[abhishek_sharma]

Government Phone Surveillance for Dummies

[Prem]

Great transition In Philosophy from Cold War Era: From (US) United States ways to (SU)Soviet Union ways. Reversal of Role Is Revealing ....

[abhishek_sharma]

A True War Story

[Kati]

aab maza aayegaa...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... akers-live

[Kati]

NSA Whistleblower's interview....
(The next Julian Assange???)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... nowden-why

[Kati]

Let the NSA and/or GCHQ collect billions of intercepts, but in coming days
it would be of interest for applied math and/or theoretical comp scientists
how to fool that system.......In other words, how to feed garbage to this
PRISM or any other such system to mask or safeguard the useful communications
which can miss the adversaries' eyes.

[Gagan]

Remember how google has been insisting on sending SMS to phone numbers to establish email veracity.

That is a legal way to link the email with a phone number and thereby a person who's identity is known. It is probably admissible in a court of law.

[Kati]

"We hack everyone, everywhere..."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hack-ever ... 44289.html



I bet, that gigabytes of data contained a good portion of SPAM. No wonder Google and Microsoft joined hands to stop SPAM. Actually, most of the NSA activities started with coopting these two companies. I guess, to counter PRISM, the best bet is to generate
more SPAM.

[Philip]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... rveillance

Edward Snowden: former CIA man behind the NSA intelligence leak

The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows

• Q&A with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again'

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'

Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose.

He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year.

As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world."

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.

He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.

Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him.

Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.

And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks.

"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.

"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.

"We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."

Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."

He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".

The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears.
'You can't wait around for someone else to act'

Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.

By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.

After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.

By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.

That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.

First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.

He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."

The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."

Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".

He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".

But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.
A matter of principle

As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."

For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.

His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.

Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer.

He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.

His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.

Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.

Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.

He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.

Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news.

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.

As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty".

He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom – at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.

But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."

PS:Edith Piaf's unforgettable song,
"Non,Je ne regrette rien" must be his swan song! Enjoy it here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzy2wZSg5ZM

[abhishek_sharma]

Ghosts of the Rio Grande: Every year hundreds of immigrants die along the U.S.-Mexico border. Too many are never identified.

Book Review: Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld

[abhishek_sharma]

America's Worst Charities

----
Mercenary for Justice

Pro-life zealot James Kopp murdered an upstate abortion doctor in 1998. And he might well have escaped the FBI if not for an informant whose desire for the big reward money led him to betray a lifelong friend. In the following chronicle, the informant tells his story for the first time, offering the inside account of how the abortion war’s most notorious assassin was finally taken down.

[abhishek_sharma]

THE PRISM: Privacy in an age of publicity.

[ramana]

"We hack everyone, everywhere..."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hack-ever ... 44289.html



I bet, that gigabytes of data contained a good portion of SPAM. No wonder Google and Microsoft joined hands to stop SPAM. Actually, most of the NSA activities started with coopting these two companies. I guess, to counter PRISM, the best bet is to generate
more SPAM.

or write in Saiklogy

[abhishek_sharma]

Missing Michael Hastings

[Kati]

'THE WATCHERS'

Listen to the whole program........ Amazing
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlaye ... 06-19-2013

[ramana]

Stanford's Hoover Institute:


Coming Demographic Crisis

The Coming Demographic Crisis
by Bruce Thornton (Research Fellow and W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow, 2009–10, 2010–11)
What should we expect when no one is expecting?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For two centuries, overpopulation has haunted the imagination of the modern world. According to Thomas Malthus, writing in 1798, human population growth would always surpass agricultural production, meaning “gigantic inevitable famine” would “with one mighty blow level the population with the food of the world.”

Later, eugenicists like Margaret Sanger in the 1920s fretted over the wrong people reproducing too much, creating what she called “human weeds,” a “dead weight of human waste” to inherit the earth. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich predicted that in the 1970s, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” because of the “population bomb.” These days, environmentalists worry that too many people will overload the natural world’s resources and destroy the planet with excessive consumption and pollution, leading to catastrophic global warming.


Photo credit: paparutzi A strain of anti-humanism has always run through population paranoia, a notion that human beings are a problem rather than a resource. But as Jonathan Last documents in his new book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As Last writes, “Throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by Very Bad Things.” Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource.

The Facts of Population Decline

Last, a senior writer for the Weekly Standard and father of three, provides a reader-friendly but thorough analysis of the demographic crisis afflicting the West and the “Very Bad Things” that will follow population decline. Clearly argued and entertainingly written, Last covers the how and why of our refusal to reproduce, and the consequences that will follow.

The facts of population decline are dramatic. Women must average a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 children apiece for populations to remain stable. But across the developed world, and increasingly everywhere else, fertility is quickly declining below this number: “All First World countries are already below the 2.1 line,” Last writes, and the rates of decline among Third World countries “are, in most cases, even steeper than in the First World.”

Japan and Italy, for example, have a 1.4 TFR, a “mathematical tipping point” at which the population will decline by 50 percent in 45 years. As for the rest of Europe, by 2050 only three countries in the E.U., which today has an average rate of 1.5 TFR, will not be experiencing population declines. Those countries are France, Luxembourg, and Ireland.

Immigration from the Third World will not provide a long-term solution, as fertility rates are declining there as well. The average fertility rate for Latin America was six children per woman in the 1960s; by 2005, it had dropped to 2.5. At that rate of decline, within a few decades, Latin American countries will likely have a fertility rate lower than that of the United States.

Compared to Singapore’s 1.1 TFR, or Germany’s 1.36, the U.S.’s 2.0 (an average of varying rates ranging from 1.93 to 2.18) looks pretty good. But, in Last analysis, the negative trends do not bode well for the future. The large numbers of Hispanic immigrants reached 50.5 million in 2010, compared to 22.3 million in 1990, a doubling of their population in 20 years. Hispanic women are outpacing the U.S. fertility rate with their 2.35 TFR. But that number represents a decline from 2.96 in 1990, plunging nearly 10 percent just between 2007 and 2009.

Last warns, “Our population profile is so dependent on Hispanic fertility that if this group continues falling toward the national average––and everything about American history suggests that it will––then our 1.93 fertility rate will take a nosedive.” The United States should not count on a population surge via Mexico, where 60 percent of the Hispanic immigrants into this country come from. Mexico’s fertility rate has fallen from 6.72 in 1970 to 2.07 in 2009, a trend that points to further decline. In addition, labor shortages in Latin America will likely lead to diminished emigration.

Causes and Consequences

Such are the brute facts of population decline. Why it has happened, what the consequences of it will be, and what we can do to arrest it make up the remaining bulk of Last’s book. The most general cause of population decline is modernity itself; birthrates started declining in the nineteenth century when industrialization and technological advances began to accelerate. Better nutrition, sanitation, and health care, for example, have reduced infant mortality in America from about 300 babies dying out of 1,000 live births in 1850, to about six today. More babies surviving lessened the need for multiple pregnancies, which in turn reduced family size.

During the Industrial Revolution, migration to cities made children less useful than they were on farms and more expensive. Easier divorce, reliable birth control, cohabitation replacing marriage, and women entering the workforce in greater numbers––since 1990, about 70 percent of women have been working at any given time––have all contributed to the decline in marriage and the diminishing centrality of children in people’s lives. These forces have created disincentives to reproduction, not the least being the $1.1 million price tag for rearing and educating a child today.

Two larger cultural trends have reinforced the effects of technological developments and industrialization. As Last points out, fertility rates among the educated classes began falling in the middle of the eighteenth century, which was about the same time as the rise of capitalism. The pursuit of individual initiative and self-interest contributed to the erosion of community and family. Economic advancement requires mobility and fewer obligations; constraints hamper self-improvement and risk-taking, after all. Having children, perhaps the greatest constraint of all, became less and less a factor in people’s calculations of their self-interests. Something else would be required to get people to procreate.

That imperative to reproduce used to be grounded in religion, but during the eighteenth century, secularization began to loosen the hold that religious practice––actually going to church rather than just self-identifying by sect––used to have on people’s behavior. The effect of religious practice on fertility is obvious from statistics. Indeed, the effects of religion on fertility can be “so powerful that even if you’re not the churchgoing type yourself, you’ll be affected if your parents are.”

People whose mothers never went to church are twice as likely to cohabit than those whose mothers went more than once a week. The direct effects of churchgoing are even more dramatic. A woman who never attends church is seven times more likely to cohabit than one who goes weekly. Cohabitation in turn affects marriage and divorce, making marriage less likely and divorce more likely. Churchgoers have happier, more stable marriages, contributing to the chance they’ll have more children.

This effect can be seen in “desired fertility” statistics, a measure of the number of children people say is ideal. Among non-religious Americans, 21 percent say three or more children make the ideal family size. Among weekly churchgoers, 41 percent do. Last concludes, “Religion helps marriage and marriage helps fertility––the end result being that religiosity winds up being an even better predictor of fertility than either education or income.” Fertility rates prove Last’s point. Observant Protestants and Catholics have a TFR of 2.25 compared to secular Americans’ 1.66. The highest fertility rate in the U.S. is in Mormon Utah, at 2.60.

The dire economic and social effects of plummeting birthrates remind us that marriage and childbirth are not just private lifestyle choices. A country with fewer children becomes, on average, increasingly older. Cities and towns begin to empty, while the cost of caring for retirees and elderly sick people skyrockets. Old people spend less and invest less, shrinking capital pools for the new businesses that create new jobs. Entrepreneurs do not come from among the aged: countries with a higher median age have a lower percentage of entrepreneurs.

Most important, a shrinking labor force means fewer workers contributing the payroll taxes that finance old-age care. The Social Security program is already beginning to be impacted by the decline in the worker-to-retiree ratio. In 1940, there were 160 workers for each retiree. By 2010, there were just 2.9. Once some 80 million Baby Boomers retire, the number will plummet to 2.1. This means taxes will have to increase and benefits be cut substantially to keep the program solvent. Medicare is similarly threatened by declining fertility. Both programs will cost more but have fewer workers footing the bill.

Finally, foreign policy will increasingly be impacted by the global decline in fertility. Those who fear China as a future superpower threat to our interests should remember that by 2050, China’s population will be declining by 20 million every five years, and one out of four people will be over the age of 65. China’s public pension system covers only 365 million people and is unfunded by 150 percent of GDP. What we need to prepare for “is not a shooting war with an expansionist China,” Last writes, “but a declining superpower with a rapidly contracting economic base and an unstable political structure. It’s not clear which scenario is more worrisome.”

Let us not forget the other rapidly aging and shrinking superpower, Russia. It has a fertility rate of 1.3, and an average life expectancy of 66 years. By 2050, its population will be a third smaller than it is today. Russia’s current global belligerence under Vladimir Putin in part reflects the fact that, as Last writes, “the country has very little to lose.” A “wounded bear,” as Last calls Russia, armed with nuclear weapons is likely to remain a serious font of global disorder.

Solving such a complex problem as declining fertility is not going to be easy. Last at least tells us what doesn’t work. As with many social problems, government intervention isn’t very successful. Bonus payments to expectant mothers, paid paternity leave, public holidays, “Motherhood Medals,” and tax incentives and subsidies have barely moved the needle in Russia, Japan, and Singapore. “People cannot be bribed into making babies,” Last concludes.

The best governments can do is “help people have the children they do want.” Since low fertility correlates with education, we could stop the government-subsidized promotion of a university education for all. A college degree doesn’t prepare people for specific jobs, but rather gives employers an idea of their intelligence and work habits, something that can be done more cheaply and efficiently. Making child-friendly housing more affordable, letting workers telecommute to lessen the career-costs of having children, welcoming more fecund immigrants, and ending the hostility to religion and the faithful, “if for no other reason than they’re the ones who create most of the future taxpayers,” are some of Last’s solutions. Unfortunately, they are as unlikely as they are sensible.

Last’s informative and crisply argued book strives to let “hope have the last word.” Yet his documentation of our self-absorbed commitment to our own pleasure and comfort, both of which child-bearing interferes with, and our indifference to the world that will come after us, suggests that for “a deeply unserious people,” as Last calls us, change will not come until the costly wages of our selfishness become manifest.


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[Gus]

from the 'daily show' segment of dawn porters documentary - gideon's army

2.3 million prison population. mass no.1 - this is known.

unknown is 80% cannot afford lawyers and 90 to 95% plead guilty, without going to trial.

[abhishek_sharma]

Comey Don't Play That: How Obama's pick to lead the FBI tried to put the brakes on the NSA's surveillance dragnet.

Obama's Drone-Master

John Brennan, the CIA director and the man largely responsible for the U.S.'s drone strategy, is so influential that some Pentagon officials have taken to calling him the "Deputy President." In an exclusive interview, GQ's Reid Cherlin talks to Brennan about the ethics of targeted killing, the next global arms race (get ready for everybody to have their own drones), and what it feels like to be the guy the president turns to when he wants a bad guy blown away

[abhishek_sharma]

Goodbye, Miami

By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin

[Cosmo_R]

Goodbye, Miami

By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin

The same sea rise levels will impact Bangladesh and other parts of the BoB. Zillion Bangladeshis will be heading north, east and west into a 'neighborhood near you'.

Cubans will head north but they are not in the zillions.