for life and liberty

Is This Why Obama is So Desperate for a Nice Little War?

"Why the desperation to focus our attention externally, to monsters abroad in need of slaying? Could it be the mushrooming NSA scandal, that all of a sudden has grown exponentially more serious with today’s Guardian Snowden-leak sourced report that the 'NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans’ data with Israel.' According to Glenn Greenwald, the National Security Agency routinely sends raw intelligence information to Israeli intelligence without first removing information about American citizens. In effect, rather than serving to protect the safety of Americans and national security of the United States the NSA has seemingly become an agent of Israeli intelligence." Continue reading →

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NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans’ data with Israel

"Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis. The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacyof US citizens caught in the dragnet. The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum." Continue reading →

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NSA routinely spied on phone records unrelated to terrorism cases

"US intelligence officials declassified documents Tuesday revealing the National Security Agency violated privacy rules for three years when it sifted phone records of Americans with no suspected links to terrorists. The government was forced to disclose the documents by a judge’s order after a Freedom of Information lawsuit. The NSA had been permitted by the court to only search phone numbers that had 'reasonable articulable suspicion' of having links to terrorism. But out of more than 17,000 numbers on a NSA list in 2009, the agency only had reasonable suspicion for about 1,800 of the numbers, two senior intelligence officials told reporters on Tuesday." Continue reading →

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Documents Shed Light on Border Laptop Searches

"Today we are releasing new government documents that provide rare insight into how the government uses its powers at the border to search and seize Americans’ electronic devices. The government’s own records indicate that 4,957 passengers had their electronic devices searched between October 1, 2012 and August 31, 2013, and an additional 4,898 individuals were subject to electronic device searches the previous year. We have no way of knowing how many of those searches may have been carried out not to search for contraband—which is the reason ICE has been granted such broad search powers—but to exploit border search powers to evade the Constitution." Continue reading →

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Feds Abused Anti-Terrorism Database To Track Chelsea Manning Supporter

'Keeping our borders secure apparently means allowing federal agents to delve as deeply as they want into electronics that cross the border, even if it's someone who just went to Mexico on vacation. Presumably, David House wasn't a threat to national security when he left for Mexico, but by the time he landed at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, he was. House worked with the Bradley Manning Support Network and this was all the 'evidence' ICE needed to alert DHS agents that House would be returning from Mexico through Chicago -- and the wide-open policy on electronic searches was all the agents needed to seize and search House's phone and laptop." Continue reading →

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Syrian President Bashar al Assad Charlie Rose Interview (full)

"PBS' Charlie Rose interviews Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday, September 9, at 9 p.m. in a special presentation of CHARLIE ROSE. In this global television exclusive, Assad gives his only television interview since President Barack Obama asked Congress to approve the use of force against the Syrian regime for alleged use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people." Continue reading →

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What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria

"It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan 'you’re either with us or against us.' But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes." Continue reading →

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The U.S. Is Getting “Played” In Syria

"Even if the U.S./NATO is going to wage war, is this how you do it? Do you telegraph your moves days ahead of time? I must have missed that class when I studied at the Naval War College. By comparison, little E-1 Pvt. Bradley Manning (or is it Chelsea?) will rot for many decades in prison (the women’s wing?) after being convicted of releasing a pile of classified emails. And young Ed Snowden is a hunted man because he told the world that the National Security Agency sucks signals out of the ether. I’m shocked to know that! But Obama administration officials are holding press conferences — Press! Conferences! — to offer up the tactical details of any attack that’s set to hit Syria." Continue reading →

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Iran’s new U.N. nuclear envoy gets harsh reception

"Western envoys gave Iran’s new ambassador to the UN atomic agency a frosty welcome Wednesday, saying Tehran’s new government should waste no time proving to the world it does not want the bomb. Speaking at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, US envoy Joseph Macmanus said Iran was refusing to comply with UN Security Council and IAEA resolutions demanding it suspend key parts of its nuclear programme. Iran denies seeking or ever having sought nuclear weapons and argues that the six UN Security Council resolutions passed against it since 2006 — four with sanctions attached — are illegal." Continue reading →

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Misesians on 9/11, Then and Now

"I attended the Mises Institute’s Supporters Summit in 2001. Occurring shortly after 9/11, which was itself unsettling in its pointless bloodshed, we also knew that so much more bloodshed was to come, and that all the planned attacks on human liberty and decency, such as the USA-PATRIOT ACT, were all in the works. Libertarians were virtually alone in opposing the planned expansions of government power in the wake of 9/11, and we saw the attacks for what they were: criminal attacks on human persons and property which nonetheless have not been set right or rendered impossible by more than a decade of nearly untrammeled government theft, war, regulation, and spying." Continue reading →

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