The National Security Agency will get to keep secret documents that may, or may not, show a working relationship with Google.
In a decision made public Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon denied a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the curious souls at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. EPIC sought documents relating to NSA's possible relationship with Google following news of an alleged cyber attack by hackers in China and of a subsequent cooperation agreement between Google and NSA.
(Reuters) – Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, Web experts said this week.
North Dakota is debt free with a surplus of cash that can only be spent with 66% of the legislature approving. Integrity seems to be plentiful there, but not in Washington, where Obama refuses to free up access to oil in our ground, at the same time that he is blowing taxpayer money on fraudulent green schemes.
How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia
Harold Hamm, discoverer of the Bakken fields of the northern Great Plains, on America's oil future and why OPEC's days are numbered.
Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be “completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century.”
“President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy,” he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into “green energy” sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas.
Phi Beta Iota: The difference between North Dakota reserves and the Canadian oil tar scam is that the latter requires vast amounts of aquifer water to flush, a trade-off that no honest person would ever make. The Governor of North Dakota has every right to nullify federal interference with his state's natural resources.
This is an ICSR Insight written by Research Fellow, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens
On the ten year anniversary of 9/11 earlier this month ICSR published an authoritative report on Anwar al-Awlaki, As American as Apple Pie: How Anwar al-Awlaki became the Face of Western Jihad.
The demise of Anwar al-Awlaki, if reports of his death are accurate, represents a significant milestone in the fight against al-Qaeda. Despite his involvement with a number of both successful and abortive terrorist attacks against the West, it is Awlaki’s ability to project Salafi-jihadi ideology
. . . . . .
The story of Anwar al-Awlaki, and in particular his intellectual progression to jihad, reveals a unique
trajectory of jihadism in the West. This movement is not just confined to Muslim majority countries,
and through arguments he and others have provided, its message now resonates with a small section of
Western Muslims. The movement has achieved this level of resonance through a process which
includes the appropriation of contemporary Western political discourse about human rights, injustice
and foreign policy, interwoven with the history of Islam and the fostering a of global Islamic
consciousness which demands violent action in order to survive and expand.
As American as Apple Pie: How Anwar al-Awlaki Became the Face of Western Jihad PDF 96 Pages
This week, I will begin with the scandal of Operation Gladio that climaxed in the murder of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, who on the day of his kidnapping, was to announce a coalition government that would include the Italian Communist Party. Leader of the Christian Democratic Party at that time, Francesco Cossiga, admits in the 1992 BBC Timewatch documentary about Operation Gladio, that he chose to “sacrifice” Moro “for the good of the Republic.” Not unlike the targeted assassinations that our government engages in around the world, where someone extrajudicially makes decisions on who lives and who dies. In the three-part documentary, Cossiga states that the decision caused his hair to turn white.
Operation Gladio is the ugly real-life tale of the U.S. government's decision to hire members of the state security apparatus of various European countries, and in collaboration with recruited community allies, wreak terror on innocent citizens by blowing up train stations, shooting up customers in grocery stores, even killing police officers in order to convince populations in Europe to give up their rights in exchange for certain security measures and enhanced state power. Yes, Operation Gladio, along with Operation Northwoods and U.S. policy toward Libya, show us that the United States is willing to create terror groups in order to justify a fight against terrorists! Sadly, this has become the modus operandi of our government in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Europe and Africa. And the U.S. government, after 9/11/01 has become like a “Gladio laboratory” of state policies that rip the Bill of Rights to shreds and lie to the public.
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The beginning of the end of Operation Gladio occurred when the existence of the U.S. program was revealed. Characteristically, instead of stopping such insanity, the Europeans joined in creating multiple other “Operations Gladio.” Placed in this context, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's second installment in a 4-part series reveals how U.S. policy in Libya falls right in line with U.S. actions in the past. In my opinion, Libya will not be the last location for such illegal activities unless we stop our government.
Along with French videographer Julien Teil, Nazemroaya weaves the incredible-but-true scenario of U.S. finance of alleged terrorists, wanted by Interpol, who became the chief protagonists in the NATO genocide currently unfolding in Libya.
Mahdi, Don Debar, and I will discuss this piece and more tonight on KPFK's Freedom Now starting at PACIFIC time 5:00 pm. Tune in to KPFK.org and listen live or I'll send you the link for listening at another time at your convenience.
Here is the Teil/Nazemroaya piece:
Click on Image to Enlarge
Washington is Conquering Africa using France, Human Rights, Terrorism, and the National Endowment for Democracy
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Julien Teil
A repeat of the disorder and pandemonium generated inside Afghanistan is in the works for the continent of Africa. The United States, with the help of Britain, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, created the brutal Taliban and then eventually waged war on its Taliban allies. Similarly, across Africa, the United States and its allies are creating a new series of future enemies to fight, but after initially working with them or using them to sow the seeds of chaos in Africa.
Washington has literally been helping fund insurgencies and regime change projects in Africa. “Human rights” and “democratization” are also being used as a smokescreen for colonialism and war. So-called human rights and humanitarian organizations are now partners in this imperialist project against Africa
France and Israel: Is Washington Outsourcing its Dirty Work in Africa?
I know you’ve been waiting for this one — here you go! Enjoy all 196 pages of it, and let me know what you find: Matthew Goldstein has already found a Goldman conflict of interest on page 71 (page 77 of the PDF) — the “Initial Collateral Security that is a CLO Security” turns out to be another Goldman product. Which is not obvious from the prospectus at all, since it isn’t even named.
“The Protection Buyer or its affiliates and/or the Portfolio Selection Agent or its affiliates may have information, including material, non-public information, regarding the Reference Obligations and the Reference Entities.”
Looks like a lot of subprime shorts knew exactly what these servicers were up to. In terms of CDS payouts, default is a default…doesn’t matter how you come by it. Was this reference collateral selected on the basis of complicit servicers’ expertise in fabricating defaults?
If these reference obligations were selected and shorted with knowledge of subsidiary servicer complicity, this will turn out to be the largest insider trading scheme the world has ever seen.
Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added. “But enough eyeballs on it, no crime is invisible.” We are entering an era where Goldman Sachs and others are going to be subject to both enormous amounts of individual public scrutiny, and scorched earth legal campaigns by governments as well as Main Street corporations to extract compensation from Goldman Sachs and others for their many deliberate crimes that some call financial terrorism.
In 1919, immediately after World War One but still during the United States' military occupations of Russia and China, Hiram Johnson, the former reform governor of California who served in the Senate, spoke for many who feared American involvement in the Great War might continue to generate obscene profits for armaments makers. To ensure that corporate interests and their futuristic manufactured wars did not reap unfair gains from the war taxes imposed on citizens, Johnson proposed that the government make the defense industry contribute toward the expenses of war.
The Obama administration has demonstrated once again, as it did in Libya and as it’s done in a variety of surveillance cases, that its view of executive power in the arena of national security is hardly any less expansive than Dick Cheney’s was. The fact that this was predictable makes it no less alarming.
