The Elephant Bar: The Guardian and Greenwald deserve the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Manning and Snowden deserve the Freedom Medal. Some stories are more than stories…they can become vehicles for social change. For a decade we’ve been in a surreal limbo with a soundtrack that sounds like extra-judicial mumbling. The NSA and their master manipulators in DC are the problem.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The Guardian and Greenwald deserve the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Manning and Snowden deserve the Freedom Medal. Some stories are more than stories…they can become vehicles for social change. For a decade we’ve been in a surreal limbo with a soundtrack that sounds like extra-judicial mumbling. The NSA and their master manipulators in DC are the problem.

Revealed: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

XKeyscore gives 'widest-reaching' collection of online data

NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches

Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history

Glenn Greenwald

theguardian.com,

Wednesday 31 July 2013 08.56 EDT

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

"I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity.

Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst's ability to query the databases at any time.

You need to go here to see the graphics and charts to understand the Frankenstein creation of The War on Terror:

126 comments:

Deuce ☂Wed Jul 31, 09:29:00 AM EDT
Good Morning, NSA.

Go fuck yourself.
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Deuce ☂Wed Jul 31, 11:39:00 AM EDT
Mankind has been genetically altering plants since we took up farming -

You are confusing hybrids with genetics.
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Rufus IIWed Jul 31, 11:56:00 AM EDT

Triumph of the Doves

I mentioned this in my post on Janet Yellen, she-devil, but the WSJ article on the predictive success of the Fed’s doves deserves a post of its own.

When we first entered this crisis, economists and economic pundits quickly sorted themselves out into two camps. One camp — the “doves” — basically said, we’ve turned into Japan; we’re a liquidity-trap economy in which even large deficits won’t drive up interest rates and even huge expansion of the Fed balance sheet won’t cause inflation. The other camp said that we weren’t Japan, we were or soon would be Weimar, or maybe just the 1970s: high rates and high inflation were just around the corner.

These differing views reflected fundamental differences in economic models — differences that tended to be associated with political leanings, although there are a handful of politically conservative market monetarists out there.

And history has given us as decisive a test of rival economic theories as I’ve ever seen.

In the first couple of years, as the data kept coming in favoring the liquidity-trap view, I kept hearing accusations that those of us citing these data were “cherry-picking”, that the evidence was actually running the other way. I don’t hear that so much now — it’s just too obvious that the promised inflation and rate surge never materialized. Still, it’s good to have someone without a personal stake in this debate do a systematic analysis, and that’s what the WSJ did. Sure enough, doves rool. And Janet Yellen, among the most dovish of Fed officials, roolz especially.

If past experience is any guide, however, all of this will make no difference. Inflation phobia does not, it seems, require any actual inflation to persist. And being a gold bug — or, in general, being a right-winger — means never having to say you’re sorry.

Triumph of the Doves
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BobWed Jul 31, 12:01:00 PM EDT
Quirk's comment from the previous thread is apt -

>>>QuirkWed Jul 31, 09:57:00 AM EDT
.

I would have made the same comment about Roundup as you Deuce. My wife keeps me up on this stuff and has talked most of the neighbors out of using Roundup in their yards for weed control not only for health reasons (the stuff has a half-life of a billion years) but for the business practices the company uses worldwide. Perhaps, a billion years may be a bit hyperbolic. :)

Developed by Monsanto, it is part of the big scam pushed by Big Ag, in this case Monsanto, to monopolize first the genetically modified grain market and then the world wide grain market.

I am not sure that I would buy anything grown from ground sotted from a heavy hit of Roundup.

Neither would the EU, that's why the US/EU ag-trade agreement is in trouble right now. The EU refuses to accept GM grains from the US.

Monsanto may do the world a great deal of good but they are also, like the tobacco companies before them, dishonest in their business practices, misleading in their marketing, and deceitful in their defense. Also, we are creating the potential for a major food crisis by reducing the diversity of the various seeds used worldwide. Even the seed banks set up in various countries are pretty much controlled by a few seed companies. This doesn't even discuss the monopoly practices employed and the cost to farmers from using these seeds.

.

BobWed Jul 31, 11:53:00 AM EDT
"the stuff has a half-life of a billion years) but for the business practices the company uses worldwide. Perhaps, a billion years may be a bit hyperbolic"

Only just a little off, maybe a billion years.

Perfect Quirk, what 'facts' are given are wrong by magnitudes, killing weeds and genetically modified foods are confused, a blanket attack is made on big business, and a total mess is made of the whole discussion.

Pure Quirk.<<<

Notice how it is Q's wife, not Q himself, who "keeps me up on this stuff".

One's wife might believe in chem trails, or Sasquatch, or The Lake Ness Monster, but really one ought to do one's own research.
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BobWed Jul 31, 12:14:00 PM EDT
"Good Morning, NSA.

Go fuck yourself."

Concur.

I often these days put that or something similar in at the beginning of e-mails to folks.

Since it is short, pithy and to the point I will use that from now on.
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Rufus IIWed Jul 31, 12:56:00 PM EDT
From the "Everything You Think is True, isn't True" dept:

This isn’t to say that the Affordable Care Act is causing restaurants to increase their hours; there wouldn’t be much of a reason for that. Instead, this graph makes the case that we haven’t seen widespread cutting of worker hours at restaurants in anticipation of the Affordable Care Act.

This chart also doesn’t predict the future: It’s possible that, come 2015, employers could scale back hours when the employer mandate hits. But at this point, restaurants aren’t taking widespread steps in that direction.

Ain't true
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Rufus IIWed Jul 31, 01:58:00 PM EDT
INEOS Bio’s biorefinery, Indian River BioEnergy Center, is now producing cellulosic ethanol at commercial scale. The first ethanol shipments will be released in August. According to the company, this is the first commercial-scale production in the world using their gasification and fermentation technology for conversion of biomass waste into bioethanol and renewable power.

“We are delighted with the progress made by our team at Vero Beach,” said Peter Williams, CEO of INEOS Bio and Chairman of INEOS New Planet BioEnergy. “They have successfully addressed the challenges of moving a new technology to large production INEOS BIO BIOETHANOL FIRST FACILITYscale for the very first time. Consequently, we are now pleased to announce that we are producing commercial quantities of bioethanol from vegetative and wood waste, and at the same time exporting power to the local community – a world first. We expect to . . . .

Up and Running
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Deuce ☂Wed Jul 31, 02:01:00 PM EDT
Despite all the warnings about the dangers of talking or texting while driving, transportation experts say the situation is only getting worse.

The driver of the train that derailed in Spain, killing 79 people and injuring many others, was talking on his cellphone to an employee of the state-run train company, Renfe, according to court statements released Tuesday. Francisco José Garzón Amo reportedly picked up his cellphone to receive directions on his route before the derailment, the official statement said. The train was moving 119 mph at the time—more than twice the recommended speed on that stretch, according to the court. This kind of cellphone distraction in all modes of transport is a growing problem in the U.S. too. “It’s on our most-wanted list of transportation-safety improvements,” says Terry Williams, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.

Some 25% of car crashes are likely caused by cellphone use, according to a May 2013 report from the National Safety Council. Drivers using cellphones fail to see up to 50% of the information in their environment, says David Teater, senior director at the NSC.
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Rufus IIWed Jul 31, 02:27:00 PM EDT
As the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote recently about the reasons inequality is impeding an economic recovery:

The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth. While the top 1 percent of income earners took home 93 percent of the growth in incomes in 2010, the households in the middle – who are most likely to spend their incomes rather than save them and who are, in a sense, the true job creators – have lower household incomes, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1996.

This is not complicated. All you have to believe is the following:

¶There are people who want to work more but can’t find either jobs or the hours of work they seek; in fact, there are more than 20 million people (over 14 percent) in the current work force who are involuntarily un- or underemployed.

¶Many of them are income-constrained; as per Professor Stiglitz, if they had more income they would spend it. Though the economy has expanded since the second half of 2009, real median household income is down 4.4 percent.The inflation-adjusted stock market is up 60 percent and corporate profits are at a record high relative to national income, so there’s your inequality: the economy’s growing but it’s not reaching the middle on down.

¶If less inequality – or stimulative fiscal or monetary policy – steered more growth to lower-income households, they’d be more likely to spend the extra dollar than a non-income-constrained rich family (see the statistics on this in my earlier post). That’s certainly what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office believes (see Table 2) as it applies a G.D.P. growth multiplier that’s more than three times larger for transfer payments to those with lower incomes than tax cuts for the wealthy.

Most economists would consider that logic and evidence a slam dunk linking . . . . .

Chicken or Egg?
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QuirkWed Jul 31, 02:40:00 PM EDT
.

Only die-hard supply siders would deny it.

Currently, US fiscal, monetary, regulatory, and tax policy are all geared towards supporting the 1%.

The message for the rest of us, pound sand.

.
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BobWed Jul 31, 02:55:00 PM EDT
CNN: We interviewed a lead Benghazi suspect, whom the feds apparently can’t find, for two hours

POSTED AT 1:41 PM ON JULY 31, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

A nice catch from the Standard. Actually, John King never says that the FBI can’t find the Benghazi suspects, only that they’ve never contacted the guy whom CNN interviewed. Why? According to an AP story published in May, the feds are keeping their distance because they’re surveilling them electronically. (Them and everyone else in the world, right?) As of two months ago, they supposedly had enough evidence on the suspects to justify sending in troops to grab them but not enough to support either a drone strike or a trial in federal district court. A C-in-C who’s willing to authorize attacks from the air in Pakistan on targets whose identities he doesn’t even know is apparently a stickler for due process when it comes to Benghazi. Go figure.

That was two months ago, though. Two months later, they … still don’t have the evidence they need? My theory at the time, which I see no reason to revisit, is that O’s determined not to make any sudden moves militarily towards Libya while the new central government there is unstable. If he sends in the Marines to grab the suspects, it’ll give the local jihadis a pretext to rally Libyans against the new government for being “puppets of America” or whatever. (The Libyan government already released one Benghazi suspect whom they had in custody, in fact.) If anything, that logic is truer today than it was in May: Just look at what happened last week. Maybe O thinks that it’s fine to hold off on capturing them for now so long as America’s eye in the sky knows where they are; maybe he’s planning a big operation for around September 11, the one-year anniversary of the attack, to trump the inevitable headlines that nothing’s been done to get the bad guys if he fails to act. Or maybe Obama would prefer not to dredge up a political liability like Benghazi by grabbing these guys and bringing them back to America, where they’ll remind the world through their lawyers just how little security there was at the consulate. When the time is right, he’ll drone a few of them. Some of the others might solve his problem for him by decamping to Libya to fight against Assad, where they’ll be ostensible U.S., ahem, “allies.” We need able-bodied “freedom fighters” on the ground there and some of these degenerates would surely be both willing and able. See? He knows what he’s doing.
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Rufus IIWed Jul 31, 02:58:00 PM EDT
ACE hailed “ACE” yesterday in Galva, Iowa during an event where Quad County Corn Processors broke ground on its Adding Cellulosic Ethanol “ACE” project a bolt-on technology innovation that will specialize in converting corn fiber into cellulosic ethanol. On hand for the groundbreaking ceremony was American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) Executive . . . .

Breaking Ground
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BobWed Jul 31, 03:26:00 PM EDT

Topics: Energy and Environment Washington Secrets

Photo - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, apparently has plans to launch an EMP attack against the United States, say experts. (AP Photo) North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, apparently has plans to launch an EMP attack against the...
The earth barely missed taking a massive solar punch in the teeth two weeks ago, an "electromagnetic pulse" so big that it could have knocked out power, cars and iPhones throughout the United States.

Two EMP experts told Secrets that the EMP flashed through earth's typical orbit around the sun about two weeks before the planet got there.

"The world escaped an EMP catastrophe," said Henry Cooper, who lead strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and who now heads High Frontier, a group pushing for missile defense.

"There had been a near-miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.

"Basically this is a Russian roulette thing," added Pry. "We narrowly escape from a Carrington-class disaster."

Pry, Cooper, and former CIA Director James Woolsey have been recently demanding that Washington prepare the nation's electric grid for an EMP, either from the sun or an enemy's nuclear bomb. They want the 2,000-3,000 transformers in the grid protected with a high-tech metal box and spares ready to rebuild the system. Woolsey said knocking out just 20 would shut down electricity to parts of the nation "for a long time."

But Washington is giving them the cold shoulder, especially the administration. Woolsey told Secrets that some in Congress are interested in the issue, but the administration is just in the "beginnings" of paying attention.

Woolsey said that Air Force One and aircraft used by the Strategic Air Command to control nuclear-tipped missiles are hardened against an EMP.

The EMP effect is not rare. One occurred in Canada in 1989, knocking out Quebec's electric transmission system. And North Korea is reportedly testing a device to attack the U.S. with an EMP attack.

The trio appeared at an event in Washington this week, but Pry said getting the nation's leaders interested in the issue is difficult and educating the public about EMP hard too. "The education curve isn't going up fast enough," he said.

At the event, Cooper suggested that North Korea might already have the capability to launch an EMP against the United States. He said in December, North Korea tested its so-called Space Launch Vehicle which could deliver a stealthy nuclear attack on the United States by orbiting a nuclear weapon over the South Pole where the U.S. has no radar or missile interceptors facing south. North Korea, he said, apparently orbited a satellite over the south polar region on a trajectory and altitude consistent with making a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the United States.

Woolsey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are the honorary co-chairs of a new EMP Coalition pushing for protections to the electric grid, national security, and civilian infrastructures.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/25337

video interview
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desert ratWed Jul 31, 07:34:00 PM EDT
Here's the story, boobie

CNN Interviews Accused Benghazi Attack Perpetrator: Not In Hiding, Claims FBI Not Looking For Him

CNN reporter Arwa Damon recently sat down with Ahmed Abdu Khattala who has been accused of playing a role in the Benghazi attack.

“He seemed to be confident,” Damon said. “His demeanor most certainly not that of a man who believed he was going to be detained or targeted any time soon.”

RELATED: Obama Administration Reportedly Deliberately Edited and Whitewashed Benghazi Talking Points

Khattala told Damon that no one from either the Libyan or American governments has contacted him asking for his take on the events of that deadly night in 2012. “Even the investigative team did not try to contact me,” he said of the FBI team that traveled to Libya in the wake of the attack.

Damon said that Khattala told her that he would be happy to speak with American investigators about what happened on the night of the Benghazi attack. She stressed, however, that he would not voluntarily submit to interrogation.

They have the video at this site
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-interviews-accused-benghazi-attack-perpetrator-not-in-hiding-claims-fbi-not-looking-for-him/
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samWed Jul 31, 08:06:00 PM EDT
The U.S. economy registered subpar growth and low inflation in the first half of the year, factors that led the Federal Reserve on Wednesday to keep its easy-money policies in place.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the economy grew at a 1.7% annual rate in the second quarter, enough to ease fears of a full-on summertime economic stall but still a sluggish pace by historic standards. Economists had feared tepid global growth and the budget cuts known as the "sequester" would lead to an even worse result of growth below 1% in the second quarter.
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samWed Jul 31, 08:08:00 PM EDT
On this day last year, American Michael Phelps set the record for the greatest number of medals earned at the Olympics. He has a total of 22 medals, including a record 18 gold medals, which is double the second-highest holder.
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desert ratWed Jul 31, 10:27:00 PM EDT
Funny stuff.

For years our AIPAC contingent has told us that the Judaic claim to the Israeli portion of Palestine is biblical. That God granted them that portion of the Middle East.

The cultural heart of Judaism is Middle Eastern, it is in Jerusalem, iin the Middle East.

So culturally and geographically Israel and its peoples are Middle Eastern.

No matter where in the world the folks that qualify for "Right of Return" to the Israeli portion of Palestine go, or were born, their roots are in Arabia. They are Middle Eastern no matter where they were born.

Yet that same AIPAC crowd would have you believe that they are "Western", not Middle Eastern in culture and breeding.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

As in most things Israeli, they want it both ways.
To have their cake and eat it, too.

Comical, they are.
Selling their thread worn propaganda themes and finding willing takers, like boobie, the camp follower.
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samWed Jul 31, 10:33:00 PM EDT
THE STATE has filed a lawsuit against a Montgomery County official for issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

...

"Compliance with Pennsylvania law by its public officials is a mandatory obligation," the suit states. "Ours is a government of laws, not one of public officials exercising their will as they believe the law should be or will be."
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QuirkWed Jul 31, 11:15:00 PM EDT
.

Ron Paul is soundly defeated in his attempt to cut off aid to Egypt.

John McCain was the leading force opposing him.

This is interesting. In a debate over a bill to cut off aid to Egypt, the other GOP douche bag, Linny Graham, read aloud a letter from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee opposing Paul’s amendment.

Then the MSM offered their opinion of Paul,

Paul responded to all this with rambling speeches and wild gestures, refusing to yield when colleagues asked him to and accusing his opponents of “empty thoughts and empty promises.” He called the AIPAC letter “a canard” and he wandered into an account of a Paris shopping spree by the wife of Mobutu Sese Seko, the late Congolese dictator.

McCain needled Paul. “The question here is whether the senator from Kentucky knows what’s better for Israel, or Israel.”

Paul shook his head, reclaimed the floor and challenged the “so-called leadership” of AIPAC.

When the clerk called the roll, McCain whipped his colleagues aggressively: arguing with Dean Heller (R-Nev.) after the new senator took Paul’s side, applauding when John Hoeven (R-N.D.) voted against Paul and working over Tim Scott (R-S.C.) until the senator cried uncle. “I’m with you,” Scott said.

For the Republican internationalists, this wasn’t about winning but dominating.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-rand-paul-rebuked-by-fellow-republicans-on-foreign-aid/2013/07/31/8b2ec348-fa24-11e2-9bde-7ddaa186b751_story.html?hpid=z2

Well, we know at least two people AIPAC has in its pocket.

.
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allenWed Jul 31, 11:19:00 PM EDT
Re: Liberty

anecdotal agitprop...not a single source, attribution, or link (not even Wiki!)...five inmates making the same silly statements year-in, year-out...

Every official investigation has yielded the same finding. Live with it.

Try something new, say, today's story about a Secret Service agent's accident discharge that hit Kennedy in the back of the head. No Jews were involved, but juicy, comedic paranoia doesn't require Jewish participation.
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QuirkWed Jul 31, 11:29:00 PM EDT
.

You know Assad must be doing pretty good in Syria.

Syrian rebel fatwa bans croissants as a symbol of Western colonial oppression .

.
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samWed Jul 31, 11:57:00 PM EDT
Voters also appreciate a redemption story that they're familiar with. It's easier to accept Spitzer's flaws than to research his opponent's indiscretions or wait for them to appear after that person is elected.

...

Weiner and Spitzer betrayed the public's trust when they were in power. Weiner continues to betray such trust, launching his latest campaign knowing that he continued his electronic sexual liasions long after he resigned from office.
Isn't it time we give other fresh candidates a try? After all, we won't know what they can accomplish until we do.
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BobThu Aug 01, 01:27:00 AM EDT
Poor rat is having another bad day. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for him, he struggles so, but only briefly, and it passes.
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BobThu Aug 01, 02:04:00 AM EDT
And by the way, it wasn't WiO who talked me into joining AIPAC. He never ever mentioned it to me. It was rather Deuce and rat with their continual daily attacks on Israel the prompted me to join AIPAC. It is to be expected of rat, because he is truly nasty, and really not very bright. But Deuce is usually a Gentleman, and is very bright and accomplished, so it has been something of a surprise to me to hear some of the things he has said recently about Israel. I do not know what to make of it. So much of what he says about Israel is simply preposterous.

So I decided to join AIPAC to show a little solidarity with those arch- enemies of Deuce and rat, the Israelis.

WiO had nothing to do with it.

out for the night
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allenThu Aug 01, 12:05:00 PM EDT
...ibid...

:-)
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Add comment

COLLECTIVE MADNESS

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

126 comments: