Talking Heads with no Credibility; U.S. Government forces businesses to close; Why the 4th Amendment must be protected; and Municipalities going Bankrupt in the United States; Why are our troops “over there?”

There’s been a lot of stories surrounding Edward Snowden’s release of materials showing how the U.S.
Government has been “Over the Top” on gathering information on ALL citizens of the world, not just
us in the U.S. Here’s a few stories and links to the full story that may be of interest to you.

1. How NSA surveillance endangers the Fourth Amendment, by Jonathan Hafetz, read it here

…The Times story, however, makes clear that the NSA is also acquiring—without a warrant—the communications of any foreigner “about the target,” once a target has been identified, thus sweeping in an even wider range of communications by U.S. citizens than previously believed.

The Fourth Amendment provides a bulwark against this type of dragnet surveillance. Before searching Americans’ private communications, the Fourth Amendment requires that the government demonstrate probable cause or individualized suspicion.

2. Glenn Greenwald has two great articles. This one, “Michael Hayden, Bob Schieffer and the media’s reverence of national security officials” is a must read. A General and a former U.S. Homeland Security Chief start their own security company that makes many millions off of keeping us in FEAR. And when interviewed by softball pitcher Bob Schieffer, he puppets the Government’s Talking Points. Please read the full story.

3. Glenn’s second article: “Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies”
tells us about how the U.S. Government is abusing its power once again.

A Texas-based encrypted email service recently revealed to be used by Edward Snowden – Lavabit – announced yesterday it was shutting itself down in order to avoid complying with what it perceives as unjust secret US court orders to provide government access to its users’ content. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations,” the company’s founder, Ladar Levinson, wrote in a statement to users posted on the front page of its website. He said the US directive forced on his company “a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.” He chose the latter.Read the full story here.

Ed. Note: Are we to live in FEAR of “terrorist attacks”, that could happen any minute? Something we can not prevent forever. We must fight to maintain the Freedoms that were fought for during the American Revolution. Our U.S. Constitution and all Amendments must not be taken away from U.S. citizens in the name of “National Security”. And finally, do we need 960 U.S. Military bases in 150 Countries in the world? Do we need 52,000 Troops in JAPAN? Do we need 45,000 troops in GERMANY? Do we need 28,000 in SOUTH KOREA? Do we need 10,000 in ITALY? Do we need 9,000 in the UNITED KINGDOM? Do we need 15,000 in KUWAIT?Do we need 68,000 in a combat zone of AFGHANISTAN?

And finally, with budget cuts at the Federal level, and State and Local levels, less money means less in circulation. We can’t keep stores open, restaurants open, many businesses are closing, so all those people lose their jobs and don’t have the money to spend to keep others employed. Now here’s a story you should read: List of Bankruptcy Filings Since January 2010

All Municipal Bankruptcy Filings: 36

General-Purpose Local Government Bankruptcy Filings (8):
— City of Detroit
— City of San Bernardino, Calif.
— Town of Mammoth Lakes, Calf. (Dismissed)
— City of Stockton, Calif.
— Jefferson County, Ala.
— City of Harrisburg, Pa. (Dismissed)
— City of Central Falls, R.I.
— Boise County, Idaho (Dismissed)

U.S. spent over 1.4 Trillion in the aftermath of 9/11; U.S. Soldiers Pay the Price; Food Stamps Cut out of Budget by House Republicans

Feeding the poor in America through “Food Stamps” has been cut out of the Agricultural bill just passed by Congress. We’ve spent 90 Billion dollars in aid to Afghanistan since 2002. Over 40 Million Americans receive food stamps.They rely on this program for a little food to feed themselves and their family members. And a total war cost in Afghanistan at 644,347,384,000 since the beginning. The war with Iraq and Afghanistan has cost over 1.4 Trillion Dollars.
Over 6,717 U.S.soldiers have lost their lives, and over 50,000 were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 25,000 soldiers suffer from Traumatic Brain Injuries. More than 624,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have filed disability claims, Military Times reported in January. More than two-thirds of all applications for benefits take the VA more than 125 days to process.These costs can not be measured. Their families have and are suffering now and long into the future. There has never been a “Declaration of War” on either Iraq or Afghanistan by Congress. How many Iraqi citizens and Afghani citizens have been killed or wounded, no one knows. They suffer because of where they live. For no other reason.

American cities are going bankrupt. One in four bridges in America need repair, total cost estimated to be over 140 Billion. 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States shut down since 2001.Read more:

U.S. rankings:

1. Health Care: Number 38 in the World. Iraq is Number 104, Afghanistan is Number 173 out of a total of 190 countries.
2. Mother’s Index: U.S. ranks 30th. Iraq is Number 113, and Afghanistan is Number 145.
3. Elder Care: The U.S. is not even ranked in the top 20 nations of the world.

The U.S. response to 9/11 by bombing Afghanistan, then invading Iraq (a preemptive strike due to the U.S. faking that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction) has led to the financial collapse of the U.S. economy (but not the “War Economy”, that is going strong with profits for corporations that build war weapons). The U.S. has lost its “Moral Compass”. A land built on “Laws” now determines what laws it follows, and declares that their actions abide by the laws when in fact they are breaking the laws.
Torturing people that were kidnapped from their homeland and take to Guantanamo prison; killing innocent civilians through the use of Drone missiles; and Edward Snowden brings out the World gathering of all communication through NSA’s Metadata collections. War crimes for sure. But who’s to bring charges? Dr. Francis Boyle did and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others were found GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES (posted on this site).

How do we save America? That is the question.

“It was the Right Thing to Do”

Read Edward Snowden’s letter below, posted at Reader Supported News SUPPORT EDWARD SNOWDEN’S RIGHT TO ASYLUM.

It Was the Right Thing to Do

By Edward Snowden, Reader Supported News

13 July 13

NSA Whistleblower asks for support from international community and human rights campaigners.

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.

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Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News

Lying to Congress isn’t the story, the story is Snowden’s seeking Asylum

Today, Glenn Greenwald reports in The Guardian, this story, click here for full story: Thank you Glenn Greenwald for your continuing coverage of this story.Also in this story is how the European Union is just a tool of U.S. policy and demands.They stop Bolivian President’s plane from flying over their airspace, thinking Snowden is on the airplane, but they allowed the U.S. to fly over their territory and even land in their country when the U.S. airplane was carrying individuals that were kidnapped “Rendition”.
Read the whole story at the link above.

The first NSA story to be reported was our June 6 article which exposed the bulk, indiscriminate collection by the US Government of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Ever since then, it has been undeniably clear that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, outright lied to the US Senate – specifically to the Intelligence Committee, the body charged with oversight over surveillance programs – when he said “no, sir” in response to this question from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

That Clapper fundamentally misled Congress is beyond dispute. The DNI himself has now been forced by our stories to admit that his statement was, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and to apologize. But he did this only once our front-page revelations forced him to do so: in other words, what he’s sorry about is that he got caught lying to the Senate. And as Salon’s David Sirota adeptly documented on Friday, Clapper is still spouting falsehoods as he apologizes and attempts to explain why he did it.

How is this not a huge scandal? Intentionally deceiving Congress is a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison for each offense. Reagan administration officials were convicted of misleading Congress as part of the Iran-contra scandal and other controversies, and sports stars have been prosecuted by the Obama DOJ based on allegations they have done so.

ED NOTE: So the press stories should be about what has been exposed, not who exposed it. This is done to hide the truth from the readers. Demand that Congress restore OVERSIGHT, and that they prosecute those who lied to them during sworn testimony. Do it NOW.

Shoot the Messenger, keep what was revealed buried in Smear Campaign

Today, Glenn Greenwald’s story in The Guardian can be read in full here.
The personal side of taking on the NSA: emerging smears. Distractions about my past and personal life have emerged – an inevitable side effect for those who challenge the US government

Glenn says: When I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably be the target of all sorts of personal attacks and smears. You don’t challenge the most powerful state on earth and expect to do so without being attacked. As a superb Guardian editorial noted today: “Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. The more serious the leak, the fiercer the pursuit and the greater the punishment.

“….Legal, but Unconstitutional…”

Laura K. Donohue is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and director of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law.

Today, in The Washington Post (read whole article, click this link) Professor Donohue states:

As for Section 702 of FISA, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect foreigners from searches conducted abroad. But it has never recognized a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement when foreign-targeted searches result in the collection of vast stores of citizens’ communications.

Americans reasonably expect that their movements, communications and decisions will not be recorded and analyzed by the government. A majority of the Supreme Court seems to agree. Last year, the court considered a case involving 28-day GPS surveillance. Justice Samuel Alito suggested that in most criminal investigations, long-term monitoring “impinges on expectations of privacy.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized that following a person’s movements “reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”

The FISC is supposed to operate as a check. But it is a secret court, notorious for its low rate of denial. From 1979 to 2002, it did not reject a single application. Over the past five years, out of nearly 8,600 applications, only two have been denied.

Congress has an opportunity to create more effective checks on executive power. It could withdraw Sections 215 and 702 and introduce new measures to regulate intelligence collection and analysis. There are many options.

James Madison put it best: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Also, read from The Guardian Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson’s story ” The NSA’s metastasised intelligence-industrial complex is ripe for abuse”

And more from The Guardian, “Edward Snowden ‘arrives in Moscow” on his way to Cuba, then Venezuela?

And from yesterday’s The Guardian article by Glenn Greeenwald “On the Espionage Act charges against Edward Snowden”

Friends, we need to gain control of Congress to do what is in the best interest of the citizens they represent. We are the government and they are our elected representatives. They represent us. If your member of Congress does not do what is right, then don’t re-elect them.

Demand that FISA law be changed, and the Un-Patriot Act must be rescinded.

“It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden told the Guardian. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”

This is a MUST READ Friends. In today’s the Guardian, guardian.co.uk. Thank you for releasing this to the public. The U.S. Congress must act to regain the freedoms lost by the American Citizens due to The Patriot Act, and other laws passed as the population was in fear of more 9/11’s/

By Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball
guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 June 2013

Secret document detailing GCHQ’s ambition to ‘master the internet’ READ THE FULL STORY BY HITING THIS LINK

Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

[Ed. Note: Friends, call your member of Congress today if you live in the U.S. Demand that this intrusion into our lives stops now. Are we in the U.S. living in a free country?]

“I won’t take it anymore” Last Blog Dec. 2010 “Where’s the “Change”?

UPDATE: Today, Glenn Greenwald published an article in The Guardian (guardian.co.uk) entitled “On PRISM, Partisanship and Propaganda” It is A MUST READ. Link is here:

From Greenwald’s article:

“I don’t have to listen to your phone calls to know what you’re doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I’m able to determine every single person you talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. . . . If it’s true that 200 million Americans’ phone calls were monitored – in terms of not listening to what they said, but to whom they spoke and who spoke to them – I don’t know, the Congress should investigative this.”

That was a quote from JOE BIDEN, 2006 commenting on Bush Adm. “not passing the 4th Amendment Test” So Joe, what do you say now? Here’s Biden in 2006 debates Obama in 2013 over NSA spying program

In the article, Greenwald points us to an interview with Chris Hayes, View it here

Greenwald also points us to a story by the Daily Beast writer Kirsten Powers “The Sickening Snowden Backlash” View it here

(END OF UPDATE)

Dear Friends: I became so wrapped up in what governments were doing in the name of “Protecting our Citizens”, that I could no longer do a daily blog on these events. It was making me a very bitter U.S. Citizen.

Since then, I’ve been avoiding Nightly News on TV. Getting most news from the web. Now I have a few bones to pick.

There are 41 Guantanamo “prisoners” on a hunger strike right now. Taken from Washington Post link below.

The hunger strike began in early February and grew steadily, as more and more detainees joined the protest. The initial catalyst was a decision by the guard force at Guantanamo Bay to search detainees’ Korans. The military said that detainees have used Korans to hide contraband, and that the searches were conducted by Muslim cultural advisers, not ordinary guards.

The prisoners objected and said the searches amounted to desecration.

Obama: Nobel Peace Prize Winner Becomes Drone Warrior-in-Chief, taken from ABC News

Since January 2009, the U.S. has launched at least 281 drone strikes in Pakistan alone, according to the New America Foundation, which has tracked them based on news reports and other sources. During the last five years of George W. Bush’s presidency — 2004-2008 — the group counted just 49. The government has not put out its own totals, which are also said to include strikes in Yemen and Somalia, other known havens for suspected terrorists.

And the last for today:

”

“NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things'”> Thank you Glenn Greewald for your reporting and interviewing Mr. Snowden. Follow the story at guardian.co.uk