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Glen Greenwald criticizes NSA for staged leaks


RT
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 16:35 UTC
glen greenwald
© AFP Photo / Evaristo SaThe Guardian's Brazil-based reporter Glenn Greenwald.
Reeling from the leak of classified data, NSA officials have anticipated future leaks by sometimes announcing them to the media preemptively, a minimization tactic according to one of the journalists still holding the intel agency's documents.

Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Guardian and now of First Look Media, penned a column Monday criticizing both US National Security Agency brass and what he sees as complicit reporters for their role in repeating unverified claims about the intelligence agency.

The outspoken columnist ripped outgoing NSA Director General Keith Alexander, who will be replaced at the top of the agency soon, for trying to prey on the public's emotions.

Comment: For more reading on this subject, check out:
About that 'greatest whistleblower ever': Ellsberg, Snowden, and the Secret Team

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Bad Guys

CIA lied about interrogation program (aka torture), according to Senate report

Greg Miller, Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 19:47 UTC
waterboarding
© Reuters/Kevin LamarqueDemonstrator Maboud Ebrahimzadeh lies on the pavement after his ordeal in a simulation of waterboarding outside the Justice Department in Washington November 5, 2007
A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years - concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use - and later tried to defend - excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

"The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives," said one U.S. official briefed on the report. "Was that actually true? The answer is no."

Current and former U.S. officials who described the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the document remains classified. The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention sites that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009.

Comment: Since it is a fact that the official 911 story is a lie, and the same stands for Osama Bin Laden's "capture and execution", the torture used on "terrorist suspects" was nothing but the product of the perverted and sadist mindset prevailing among those who commanded its use and those who supported it.

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Dollar

The odds are never in our favor

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 19:34 UTC
High Frequency Trading
© The Economic Collapse Blog

How would you feel if you went to the store to buy something, and someone rushed ahead of you and purchased it first and then sold it to you at a higher price? Well, in the financial world this happens millions upon millions of times. In fact, this practice has become so popular that it has spawned an entire industry known as "high frequency trading".

At this point, high frequency trading makes up about half of all trading volume on Wall Street, and it is costing the rest of us billions of dollars a year. And the funny thing is that this is all perfectly legal.

High frequency trading firms are exploiting a glitch in the system, and by allowing this to go on, the authorities have essentially given them a license to steal from the rest of us. Sadly, this is just another example that shows that the odds are never in our favor. The "little guy" never seems to be able to win, and those at the top of the food chain like it that way.

Making money in the stock market is supposed to be about making wise investment decisions. It isn't supposed to be about finding a glitch in a video game and exploiting it. But that is essentially what these high frequency traders have done. They have spent an extraordinary amount of time and energy figuring out ways to make pennies (or sometimes just fractions of a penny) on the trades that the rest of us make.
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Bad Guys

Christians flee Syria's Kessab, Armenia accuses Turkey


RT
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:32 UTC
Image
AP's video still shows deserted streets of Syrian Kessab on March 27 2014
The Syrian Army is trying to retake the Christian majority town of Kessab reportedly seized by al-Qaeda-linked forces. The attack made hundreds of ethnic Armenians flee and caused international outcry with Armenia blaming Turkey for supporting extremists.

Kessab - located in Syria's Latakia province, near the border with Turkey - fell to rebels sparking a fierce battle in the media as conflicting reports are coming in about the events in the town which is home to over 2,000 ethnic Armenians.

Reportedly, on March 21, extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda crossed into Syria from Turkey and seized the town after clashes with Syrian government troops and local self-defense squads.

According to the Armenian side, the jihadists were supported by Turkish forces. Ankara denied the allegations as "totally unfounded and untrue".

"We consider the efforts of such circles, moving from these claims, to draw an analogy between the developments in the Kessab region and the painful incidents of the past as confrontational political propaganda attempt and particularly condemn it," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week.

The relations between Armenia and Turkey have long been strained over Ankara's refusal to recognize Armenian genocide after WWI.
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Snakes in Suits

Russia sets terms for Ukraine deal as 40,000 troops mass on border

Simon Tisdall and Rory Carroll
The Guardian
Sun, 30 Mar 2014 18:08 UTC
Image
© Rex FeaturesSergei Lavrov
Lavrov demands that Kiev have only limited powers as Kerry says military moves are obstructing peace deal

Russia on Sunday night repeated its demand that the US and its European partners accept its proposal that ethnic Russian regions of eastern and southern Ukraine be given extensive autonomous powers independent of Kiev as a condition for agreeing a diplomatic solution to the crisis over its annexation of Crimea.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, told reporters Ukraine could not function as a "unified state" and should become a loose federation. He made the remarks after an inconclusive meeting with John Kerry, the US secretary of state, at the Russian ambassador's residence in Paris following a day in which tensions over Ukraine deepened appreciably. Lavrov called the talks "very, very constructive".

Kerry told reporters the US and Russia agreed on the need for a diplomatic solution but made clear there had been no breakthrough, saying the Russian troop build-up along the border was creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine and was not helpful.

He called for Russia to pull back its forces and said talks on the country's future must include Kiev's leaders. "We will not accept a path forward where the legitimate government of Ukraine is not at the table. This principle is clear. No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine."
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Arrow Down

Italian politicians 'wasted €2m' on fine wine and caviar


The Local, Italy
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 15:25 UTC
Caviar
© Shutterstock

Sixty-four politicians from the regional council of Lombardy, one of Italy's wealthiest regions, have been accused of squandering almost €2.14 million worth of public funds on everything from premium wine and caviar to jars of Nutella and placing bets.

In the latest expenses scandal to hit Italian politics, prosecutors in Milan discovered that between 2008 and 2011, the politicians, mainly from Silvio Berlusconi's former party, the People of Freedom (Pdl), claimed reimbursements worth 70 percent of their wining and dining costs.

The expenses included eating out in the priciest restaurants, hosting banquets for hundreds of people and quaffing wine worth €1,094 a bottle.

The investigation wrapped up in early March, with the politicians now accused of embezzlement. Among those accused, 31 are from the Pdl, 23 from the Northern League, five from the Democratic Party, two from the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (Udc) and one each from Left Ecology Freedom (Sel), Italy of Values (Idv) and the Pensioners Party.

Prosecutors named and shamed some of the culprits, including Gianmarco Quadrini, the regional leader of the Udc, who allegedly splurged €2,190.29 on a Christmas feast of "caviar and a variety of fish" in 2008.
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Chess

The Kerry-Lavrov Eurasian chess match

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 14:43 UTC
Global Chess board
© Unknown
It's hardly a match between equals - as one is playing Monopoly while the other plays chess. It's as if Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been postponing his checkmate, while US Secretary of State John Kerry increasingly realizes he's facing the inevitable.

Lavrov has explained over and over again, a loose federation is the only possible solution for Ukraine, as part of a "deep constitutional reform". That would imply ethnic - and even sentimentally - Russian eastern and southern Ukraine would be largely autonomous. Kerry gave signs of agreeing around two weeks ago that Ukrainian regions need more decision power; but then the White House recharged its moral blitzkrieg - coinciding with President Barack Obama's trip to The Hague and Brussels. Still, even after an inconclusive four-hour Kerry-Lavrov chess match in Paris, there will be a checkmate.

The Russian solution is the same plan proposed by Moscow already a few weeks ago, and again discussed on the phone by Obama and President Vladimir Putin on Friday - which prompted Kerry to redirect his flight to Paris. Each Ukrainian region, according to Lavrov, would be able to control its economy, taxes, culture, language, education and "external economic and cultural connections with neighboring countries or regions". That's such a sound plan that even former - or perennial, depending on spin - cold warriors such as Henry Kissinger and Zbig Brzezinski reasonably agree.
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Arrow Down

Getting ready to microchip the entire Human Race

Christina Sarich
Natural Society
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:54 UTC

Former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director and now Google Executive, Regina E. Duncan, has unveiled a super small, ingestible microchip that we can all be expected to swallow by 2017. "A means of authentication," she calls it, also called an electronic tattoo, which takes NSA spying to whole new levels. She talks of the 'mechanical mismatch problem between machines and humans,' and specifically targets 10 - 20 year olds in her rant about the wonderful qualities of this new technology that can stretch in the human body and still be functional.

Hailed as a 'critical shift for research and medicine, ' these biochips would not only allow full access to insurance companies and government agencies to our pharmaceutical med-taking compliancy (or lack thereof), but also a host of other aspects of our lives which are truly none of their business, and certainly an extension of the removal of our freedoms and rights.
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USA

'Just salute and follow orders': When secrecy and surveillance trump the rule of law

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:38 UTC
"The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government.
Presidents have turned to them when they can't win the support of the Congress or the people, creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our Constitution..." - Journalist Bill Moyers and White House press secretary under President Johnson (1988)
Question: How can you tell when a politician is lying? Answer: When he's moving his lips.

If that didn't generate a chuckle, how about:
Q: Why is honesty in politics like oxygen?

A: The higher you go, the scarcer it gets.
Secret Government
© Wawa Conspi
Then there's President Obama's gaffe on the Tonight Show: "We don't have a domestic spying program," which is downright laughable in light of this past year's revelations about domestic spying by the National Security Agency. But if that still doesn't push you over the edge into near hysterics, here's one guaranteed to get the biggest laugh of all, at least from those clear-sighted enough to grasp the irony of a politician talking about "trust":
"If people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress, and don't trust federal judges, to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law," declared President Obama in June 2013, in response to questions about the government's domestic spying program, "then we're going to have some problems here."
What's not at all amusing, of course, is the fact that our nation is riddled with all manner of problems, and it's because we have government officials in the executive branch, Congress, and the courts incapable of abiding by the Constitution. These people have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted to do what they say, and they certainly can't be trusted to abide by their oaths of office to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Indeed, the American people have been cheated and lied to for so long that we've arrived at a stage of disbelief and skepticism. So when the Obama administration announces that it will be rolling out proposals to rein in the NSA bulk collection of data about Americans' private communications, you'd be perfectly justified in wondering what other far-fetched schemes they plan to sell you next.
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Arrow Down

Sebelius speechless after reporter tells her how unpopular Obamacare is in Oklahoma

Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:01 UTC
Image
© People Pundit Daily
An Oklahoma reporter told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius how unpopular Obamacare is, rendering the cabinet secretary speechless:

"At last check, 64 percent of Oklahomans aren't buying into the health care plan, they don't like Obamacare, and they've been pretty vocal about it," said the reporter. "Now that's going to be -- still continue to be -- a tough sell, but we'll see how that plays out over the coming months."

Then he waited for Sebelius to reply. And waited.
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