http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=james Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:46:18 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=james Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:54:09 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=263_1371595530 diakonos A must-watch... I'm a huge Heat fan. And a huge Lebron fan. AND I think he gets a worse rap for flopping than he deserves, because at the end of the day, if someone actually fouls you, sometimes you have to let their momentum carry you to the floor so you get the foul called, since refs are usually over the age of 50 - 60 and are too tired by the third quarter to pay attention ;) All that being said, make sure you watch this video twice. Once, for the flops. Twice, for the ESPN scrolling parodies. Funnier than the actual video, in my opinion. LET'S GO HEAT! Gonna win these last two games... http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=263_1371595530 diakonos Lebron <span class="highlight">James</span> parody Lebron James Miami Heat ESPN flop parody hilarious Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:11:23 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fb9_1371604030 Detroit Iron NEW YORK - Jackhammers are digging under a New York City house once occupied by a famous gangster who is said to have buried victims in familiar places. The digging started Monday in Queens' South Ozone neighborhood. It was home to James Burke, a Lucchese crime family associate known as "Jimmy the Gent." A character based on Burke was played by Robert De Niro in the movie "Goodfellas." Burke died behind bars in 1996, two decades after authorities say he masterminded a nearly $6 million robbery at New York's Kennedy Airport. The Queens house is still owned by the Burke family, but others now live there. An FBI spokesman confirmed agents were investigating but gave no details. Burke owned a Queens saloon that fellow mobster Henry Hill described as Burke's private cemetery. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/18/fbi-digging-for-remains-at-former-home-ny-mobster-who-inspired-robert-de-niro/#ixzz2WcVYX19D http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fb9_1371604030 Detroit Iron FBI digging for remains at former home of NY mobster who inspired Robert De Niro character James Burke, Robert De Niro, &quot;Goodfellas.&quot; Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:45:23 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e15_1371613243 fsunoles10 pretty funny. go heat, with that being said what a fucking game. yalls thoughts? http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e15_1371613243 fsunoles10 lebrons flopping coach miami heat, flopping, coach, lebron, james Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:11:16 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fb1_1371610797 Emir-Khattab The Taliban opened an office in Doha, the Qatari capital, on Tuesday to help restart talks and said it wanted a political solution that would bring about a just government and end foreign occupation of Afghanistan. A senior U.S. official said the talks would start in Doha on Thursday, but President Barack Obama cautioned against expectations of quick progress, saying the peace process would not be easy or quick. U.S. officials said the process could take many years and be subject to reversals. "This is an important first step towards reconciliation; although it's a very early step," Obama said after a G8 meeting in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland . "We anticipate there will be a lot of bumps in the road." U.S. officials say they hope the meeting will open the way for the first-ever official peace talks between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban, which has waged a 12-year campaign to oust him and foreign troops. The Taliban have until now said they would not countenance talks with the government, which they consider a stooge of the United States and other Western states in the NATO coalition fighting in Afghanistan. News of the planned talks comes as the United States and its allies in NATO seek to meet a deadline of December 2014 for an end to foreign combat operations in Afghanistan. This would allow them to withdraw the majority of their troops and wind down an engagement launched after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. A senior Afghan official said the Taliban was now willing to consider peace talks with the government, having held secret discussions with government representatives. In opening the Qatar office, the Taliban said it sought a political solution, but said no dates had been agreed for talks. Taliban representative Mohammed Naeem told a news briefing the group wanted good relations with "all of the world countries." "But the Islamic emirate (Taliban) sees the independence of the nation from the current occupation as a national and religious obligation," he said. U.S. officials said that in the talks in Doha, the United States would stick to its insistence that the Taliban break ties with al Qaeda, end violence, and accept the Afghan constitution, including protection for women and minorities. For its part, the Taliban is expected to demand the return of prisoners now at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - a move many in the U.S. Congress oppose - as well as the departure of all foreign troops. The United States says it hopes to keep a force, of as yet undetermined size, in the country after the end of the NATO combat mission. The talks will be the first U.S. meeting with the Taliban in several years. U.S. officials said the initial meeting was expected to involve an exchange of agendas, followed by another meeting a week or two later to discuss next steps. A U.S. official said he expected the initial meeting would be followed within days by another between the Taliban and the High Peace Council, a structure set up by Karzai to represent Afghanistan in such talks. 'PEACE IS NOT AT HAND' The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the level of trust between the Afghan government and the Taliban remained low, and played down expectations that the talks would quickly lead to peace. "We need to be realistic," said one official. "This is a new development, a potentially significant development. But peace is not at hand." Obama said peace would only come through an Afghanistan-led process, and commended Karzai for taking a courageous step toward peace. He stressed that the U.S. military effort would continue in spite of the peace efforts. "We don't anticipate this process will be easy or quick but we must pursue it in parallel with our military approach. And we in the meantime remain fully committed to our military efforts to defeat al Qaeda and to support the Afghan national security forces," Obama said. Despite the accompanying words of caution, the announcement of the planned talks represents a significant step forward in the peace process, which has struggled to achieve results despite years of attempts. A team of envoys from the Taliban flew to Qatar in early 2012 to open talks with the U.S. government. But the Taliban suspended the talks in March 2012, saying Washington was giving mixed signals on the nascent Afghan reconciliation process. Tiny, gas-rich Qatar has been an enthusiastic supporter of reconciliation efforts in a number of crises affecting the Muslim world including those in Afghanistan, Yemen , Somalia, Lebanon and Darfur, often hosting peace talks on its own soil to try to prove it can punch above its weight in diplomacy. Karzai, speaking on Tuesday as the U.S.-led NATO coalition launched a final phase of transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces, said his government would send a team to Qatar. But he said the talks should quickly be moved to Afghanistan. "We hope that our brothers the Taliban also understand that the process will move to our country soon," he said. U.S. officials said the goal was to ensure that Afghanistan did not remain a haven for terrorist groups and to defeat al Qaeda, which was given sanctuary by the Taliban in Afghanistan. "One of the things we will want to talk about from the very beginning is how they're going to cut ties with al Qaeda," a U.S. official said. "How quickly, exactly how they're going to do it, how quickly." A senior U.S. official said Pakistan , which has provided sanctuary to the Taliban despite its professed support for the battle against Islamist militancy, had recently been supportive of the peace process. "There has in the past been skepticism about their support, but in recent months I think we've seen evidence that there is genuine support and that they've employed their influence such as it is to encourage the Taliban to engage," he said. A U.S. official said the talks would be conducted on the Taliban side by its political commission, with the authorization of Mullah Omar, and also represent the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network. James Dobbins, the new special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, will lead the U.S. side. The Haqqanis are considered the United States' deadliest foe in Afghanistan and the top U.S. and NATO commander in the country cast doubt on Tuesday over whether it could make peace. "All I've seen of the Haqqani would make it hard for me to believe they were reconcilable," U.S. General Joseph Dunford told Pentagon reporters by phone from Kabul. U.S. officials said they expected detainee exchanges to be discussed in the talks. The United States will ask for the safe return of U.S. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who has been a prisoner since June 2009, the officials said. He is thought to be being held by Taliban militants in northwestern Pakistan. Give up America, you have no experience in guerrilla warfare. You failed twice in this mission, you can't even fight in the jungles against the Vietnamese and the mountains with the Taliban. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fb1_1371610797 Emir-Khattab US desperately wants to seek peace with Taliban America, Talibans, Afghanistan Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:09:08 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c32_1371592684 socialism-rocks I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery "Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." It has also been translated as, "I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude." Here is the sentence in context: "Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it's evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." - Jefferson to James Madison , January 30, 1787 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c32_1371592684 socialism-rocks thomas jefferson on governments native american aristocractic and republicanism thomas jefferson Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:26:16 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=259_1371481497 Donegal http://www.vietnamgraffiti.com/vietnam-graffiti-messages The story of the Gen. Nelson M. Walker troopship began in 1997, when military artifact historian Art Beltrone first visited the "Ghost Fleet" on the James River in Virginia to assist with research for the World War II movie, The Thin Red Line. Once aboard the aging vessel, Beltrone found crowded troop compartments littered with hundreds of graffiti-marked bunk canvases, bulletin boards, and other historic artifacts left not by WWII troops headed for war in the Pacific, but by soldiers going to war in Southeast Asia a generation later. Beltrone's discovery led to extensive research about the Walker, which was first commissioned in 1945 and saw service in WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Many of the artifacts, thanks to the work of the Beltrones, have been rescued from the ship and are now relocated in museums throughout the U.S., including the new National Museum of the United States Army, the Oakland Museum of California, and the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=259_1371481497 Donegal Vietnam Graffiti: Messages from a forgotten Troopship - Ghost Fleet: <span class="highlight">James</span> River - Virginia USA, Vietnam, James River, Ghost Fleet, Virginia, G.I, Marines, Military, Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:03:51 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1e0_1371059593 Rebel_Radius An outstanding report from James Corbett. He uses a scene out of the Andy Griffith Show which highlights an over-whelming level of moral retardation of American ideals and the utter corruption of government. (This will give you goose bumps) James states that "The US government has been violating the constituion and trampling on the bill of rights since virtually the inception of the country. The history of the US, like the history of every other country, is littered with the corpses of nice-sounding ideals, from false flag frame-ups to lead the nation into war to the persecution and even execution of political dissidents. But the point is that 50 years ago, America wanted to believe it was a nation of ideals, and many people did believe that. So what changed?..." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1e0_1371059593 Rebel_Radius The Transformation of Society James Corbett, transformation, society, government, violating, violate, ideals, corruption Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:43:49 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=561_1371558828 gemini 18 June 2013 Last updated at 13:13 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22953531 The King of Jordan has endorsed a treaty with the UK, paving the way for the extradition of radical cleric Abu Qatada. The treaty will become law once the document is published in the Jordanian government's official gazette. In the UK, the treaty is expected to be passed by MPs and become law on Friday. The cleric has already indicated he will not challenge deportation if the treaty is passed because the document guarantees him a fair trial. Once the treaty passes all of its legal hurdles in both countries, the cleric's deportation is expected to resume. UK Home Secretary Theresa May would be able to issue a fresh deportation order. The cleric would have time to respond if he wished to, but that is expected to be only a few days. Britain has been trying to deport Abu Qatada since 2005, and he has been detained and released several times during the legal battle. The Home Office has revealed the eight-year legal fight to deport the cleric has cost taxpayers more than lb1.7m so far. Terrorism charges If Abu Qatada keeps to an assurance given in court that he will leave the UK because the treaty guarantees a fair trial, he would be put on a plane in a matter of weeks, not months. Security minister James Brokenshire said: "The government remains committed to securing Abu Qatada's deportment as quickly as possible." Abu Qatada arrived in Britain and claimed asylum in 1993, but became notorious for preaching radical views such as support for the killing of Jews and people who leave Islam. In 1999, the cleric was convicted of terrorism charges in his absence in Jordan and sentenced to life in prison. He now faces a retrial on those charges, but his lawyers have said some of the evidence may have come from people who were tortured to make them implicate him. The European Court of Human Rights and senior British judges have ruled that before Abu Qatada can be deported, Jordan must show he would not face a trial that relied on evidence obtained by torturing others. The UK-Jordan Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance, signed in March, states that anyone deported from the UK must be treated humanely and be given a fair trial. It includes specific guarantees designed to ban the use of torture evidence. Abu Qatada is currently in London's Belmarsh Prison after breaching a bail condition which restricted the use of mobile phones and other communication devices. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=561_1371558828 gemini Abu Qatada treaty endorsed by King of Jordan abu qatada Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:03:07 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a4a_1371516648 Detroit Iron By JAMES HOLMES AND TOSHI YOSHIHARA Posted 06:14 PM ET U.S. Navy Must Compete for Maritime Supremacy Writing recently in the Los Angeles Times, Gordon Chang and retired Adm. James Lyons pointed with alarm to China's naval expansion. That sea power represents the path to national greatness is now axiomatic for the Chinese state and society. China is bolting together a great navy with aplomb, and the United States had better take notice. Beijing is thinking hard about how to use this new implement to advance national power and purposes. This poses a challenge of the first order. America and its allies must brace themselves for a permanent Chinese presence in maritime Asia - or beyond. Their first step: jettison the decades-old assumption that American sea power is an unchallengeable arbiter of Asian affairs. No longer does the U.S. Navy rule the Asian seas by virtual birthright. Our navy must compete for what it has long taken for granted. Sure, that means rebuilding the material component of sea power, manifest in ships, weaponry and bases. Gadgetry obsesses Western pundits. But the service must also think. It must relearn the habits of mind needed to compete and win. Rediscovering musty old books from America's seagoing past is a good place to start rebuilding its strategic literacy. Reacquainting itself with its own traditions can help the U.S. Navy navigate today's discomfiting new normal. Beijing views seaborne might as a prerequisite for its ascent to great power. At the Chinese Communist Party congress late last year, outgoing President Hu Jintao vowed to "build China into a maritime power." Hu's words marked the first time officialdom had used such a high-profile public forum to promote China's seafaring project. His directive, since reaffirmed by successor Xi Jinping, signifies a radical break with China's historic preoccupation with continental affairs. The People's Liberation Army Navy is way ahead of Hu's and Xi's policy pronouncements. The fleet is already making its presence felt across the region. It recently commissioned its first aircraft carrier, dubbed Liaoning. It has mounted shows of force in the farthest reaches of the South China Sea, putting steel behind Beijing's territorial claims. And on and on. The PLA Navy is clearly a service on the make. History's Lessons But the story doesn't end there. Sea power is about more than navies. It also incorporates land-based missiles and aircraft capable of striking at sea. Moreover, nonmilitary law-enforcement agencies have dispatched vessels to confront Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Fishing fleets - even cruise ships - have gotten into the act, daring rival claimants to evict them from contested expanses. China could prevail in maritime disputes without ever sending the navy. In fact, it would prefer to. Sea power is also about more than physical brawn. It demands intellect. It demands vigor and resolve, qualities the Chinese boast in abundance. Accordingly, Beijing has invested lavish intellectual capital in shaping its seaward turn. For over a decade now, the leadership has nurtured a freewheeling academic environment, encouraging officials and scholars of various stripes to hold forth on China's seaborne future. The discourse has been impressive. But China remains a closed society. Why would the leadership fan raucous debate over marine affairs while crushing political dissent? Probably out of expediency. It takes a clash of ideas among fearless minds to yield creative thinking of sufficient quality to inform policy and strategy. And by grooming a cohort of (relative) freethinkers, China solidifies the popular and elite consensus that sea power is a natural if not inevitable choice for the nation. Furthermore, the Chinese are acutely conscious that mindless pursuit of sea power - shipbuilding unmoored from rational strategy - could abort China's rise. It's happened before. History reminds Beijing that Imperial Germany staged an imprudent naval challenge to Great Britain during the age of Pax Britannica. Imperial Japan undertook an illusory quest of its own, seeking a cataclysmic battleship duel against the U.S. Navy. Whimsy helped bring down great empires. Only through careful study can China avoid similar blunders. Letting a hundred flowers bloom, then, has let intellectual curiosity flourish, to the benefit of China's nautical cause. Chinese strategists commonly consult Western sea-power theorists - most prominently Alfred Thayer Mahan, the second president of the Naval War College - to school their thinking. Multiple translations of Mahan's celebrated treatise "The Influence of Sea Power upon History" (1890) now festoon Chinese bookshelves. The Chinese are avid consumers of ideas, merging concepts from foreign thinkers into a distinctive brand of maritime strategy. Their voracity stands in sharp contrast to the apathy many American naval officers, strategists and academics exhibit toward sea-power history and theory, the fields that furnish the raw material for strategy-making. To cope with China's march to the sea, the U.S. Navy must not just outpace PLA hardware development. It must match the industry and acumen of Chinese thinkers. It's tough for a long-time champ to stay hungry. Complacency is easier. But our navy must rekindle its determination to learn and compete - or risk losing its title to Asia's No. 1 contender. o Holmes and Yoshihara are professors of strategy at the Naval War College, where Yoshihara occupies the John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies. They're also co-authors of "Red Star Over the Pacific" (in paperback this summer). Their views here are theirs alone. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/061713-660277-china-growth-means-us-has-to-compete-to-dominate-the-seas.htm#ixzz2WWdIVUE6 Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a4a_1371516648 Detroit Iron Growth Of Chinese Navy Means U.S. Must Compete For Maritime Supremacy U.S. Navy, China Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:34:25 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c84_1371500234 Bucephalus A live-feed chat taken with Edward Snowden on 06/17/2013. The interview proceeds from the bottom to the top. Questions were asked by The Guardian staff, The Guardian readers and twitter users at #AskSnowden 12.43pm ET Final question from Glenn Greenwald: Anything else you'd like to add? Answer: Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance. 12.41pm ET Question: So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate? - tikkamasala Answer: Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history. 12.37pm ET Follow-up from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman : Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no? Answer: No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists. 12.34pm ET Question: Given the enormity of what you are facing now in terms of repercussions, can you describe the exact moment when you knew you absolutely were going to do this, no matter the fallout, and what it now feels like to be living in a post-revelation world? Or was it a series of moments that culminated in action? I think it might help other people contemplating becoming whistleblowers if they knew what the ah-ha moment was like. Again, thanks for your courage and heroism. Answer: I imagine everyone's experience is different, but for me, there was no single moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress - and therefore the American people - and the realization that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed. 12.28pm ET Question: What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties? What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order from FISC? Answer: This country is worth dying for. 12.24pm ET Question: Do you believe that the treatment of Binney, Drake and others influenced your path? Do you feel the "system works" so to speak? Answer: Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response. This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency. 12.12pm ET Question: Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my data protected by standard encryption? Answer: Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it. 12.10pm ET Question: US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs because of your leaks, &amp; calling you traitor. Respond? Answer: US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM. Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it. Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school. 12.04pm ET Question: Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you? Answer: This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now. 11.55am ET Question: Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country. Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this: I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email. Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate? Answer: Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with. More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal." 11.41am ET Question: What are your thoughts on Google's and Facebook's denials? Do you think that they're honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they're compelled to lie? Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you're presented with a secret order that you're forbidding to reveal the existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the order)? Answer: Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception. They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down? 11.40am ET Question: 1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means. 2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant? Answer: 2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans' communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp. Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content? Answer: Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants. 11.27am ET Question: 1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means. 2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant? Answer: 1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed. 11.23am ET Question: Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president? Answer: Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge. 11.20am ET Question: Did you lie about your salary? What is the issue there? Why did you tell Glenn Greenwald that your salary was $200,000 a year, when it was only $122,000 (according to the firm that fired you.) Answer: I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid. 11.17am ET Question: You have said HERE that you admire both Ellsberg and Manning, but have argued that there is one important distinction between yourself and the army private... "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is." Are you suggesting that Manning indiscriminately dumped secrets into the hands of Wikileaks and that he intended to harm people? Answer: No, I'm not. Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that "documents were dumped" to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here. 11.13am ET Question: Guardian staff: I should have asked you this when I saw you but never got round to it........Why did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum? Answer: Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration. 11.07am ET Question: Guardian staff: Let's begin with these: 1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities? 2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist? Answer: 1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it. Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless. 2) All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped. Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c84_1371500234 Bucephalus Edward Snowden online and Twitter-fed Q&amp;A with The Guardian Snowden, NSA, Constitution, Politics, Justice, FBI, NDAA, patriot, U.S. Government, CIA, Secrecy, Privacy, Crime Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:57:11 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f3e_1371480554 Brockk U.S. Seizes 14 7-Eleven Stores in Immigration By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and MOSI SECRET Federal authorities seized 14 7-Eleven stores on Long Island and in Virginia early Monday, arresting nine owners and managers and charging them with harboring and hiring illegal immigrants and paying them using sham Social Security numbers, people briefed on the case said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn were also investigating 40 other 7-Eleven franchises in New York City and elsewhere, the person said, and the prosecutors were seeking $30 million in forfeiture from the stores and their corporate parent. The franchises split their profits with the corporation, which handles the store payrolls, the people said. The owners and managers - eight men and a woman - were charged in an indictment to be unsealed Monday morning, the people said. It included accusations of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft stemming from payment of employees who were illegal immigrants using the Social Security numbers of children and the dead, the people said. One of the people said the owners and managers had abused and taken advantage of the illegal immigrant workers. Many of those charged were of Pakistani descent and it was believed that most, if not all, of the illegal immigrants were also from Pakistan, one of the people said. In one instance, an employee of one franchise was paid using the Social Security number of a former 7-Eleven employee, a person who had not worked for the store for 10 years and who had been the target of collection efforts by the Internal Revenue Service for much of that time because of the reported payments to the illegal immigrant, the people said. The conduct charged in the indictment, the people said, had been going on for more than a decade. Twenty-five of the 40 additional 7-Eleven franchises under scrutiny were to be inspected on Monday as part of the ongoing investigation, the people said. Several of those stores were in New York City. One of the people briefed on the matter, noting that the parent company handled the store payrolls, said there were no internal controls to prevent the same Social Security numbers from being used to pay more than one store employee, which happened in more than one instance. Scott Matter, a spokesman for the parent company, said it was aware of the arrests and seizures and "has been cooperating with federal authorities during their investigation." Mr. Matter said the company would have no comment until it learned more about the case. By about 9 a.m., eight of the nine who had been indicted were in custody, five of them in New York and three in Virginia, one of the people said. The last individual was being sought. One of the raids took place about 6 a.m., at a 7-Eleven on Carleton Avenue in Islip, on Long Island, according to a law enforcement agent at the scene who declined to give his name or reveal the agency he worked for. One person, he said, was taken into custody from the store and two people were taken away from a house across the street. It was unclear what connection the house had to the investigation. The store remained closed through the early morning, with law enforcement agents turning away customers who ordinarily stop in for coffee. A worker for the Town of Islip said he had seen similar law enforcement activity at several other nearby 7-Elevens. The United States attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta E. Lynch, and James T. Hayes, who is in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office of investigations in New York City, were expected to announce the charges later Monday morning, along with officials from the New York State Police and the Suffolk County Police Department. Randy Leonard contributed reporting. Surprise surprise the government doing its job http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f3e_1371480554 Brockk U.S. Seizes 14 7-Eleven Stores in Immigration Raids 7-Eleven, Stores, Immigration, Raids Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:03:03 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4fd_1371477466 Ruptly Over 20 protesters from the Republican Network for Unity (Phoblacht'aigh don 'Aonti'u) protested outside Belfast City Hall as US president Barack Obama spoke at a nearby conference centre on Monday. The hooded protesters oppose the UK-led G8 summit to be held on June 17 and 18 at the Lough Erne golf resort in County Fermanagh. Around 100 police, including armed officers, chased the protesters before surrounding the group outside a Nationwide Building Society branch. The police said they were not notified of the protest, and checked all protesters for identification, with several being handcuffed and arrested. The RNU has previously protested the heavy security measures put in place ahead of the G8 summit, referring to President Obama a 'US warlord' and 'sponsor of torture' in a press release about the June 13 protest. Identifying themselves as Irish revolutionary Republicans, anti-imperialists, Socialists and Internationalists, the RNU say they are campaigning for Northern Ireland to attain independence from Britain, and cite Irish republican figure James Connolloy as a major influence. Preparation for the G8 summit launched the largest security operation Northern Ireland has ever seen, with some 8,000 police from across the United Kingdom deployed. Hundreds of garda'i, the police force from the neighbouring Irish Republic, have also been stationed on the Fermanagh county border. A 6 mile wide (9.6 kilometre) exclusion zone surrounds the luxurious Lough Erne golf resort, with razor wire, roadblocks and several checkpoints put in place to stop the public and potential protesters from entering close range of the resort. The G8 summit brings together many of the world's leading economies, excluding China and Brazil, with membership currently consisting of Germany, Britain, Russia, France, the United States, Japan, Italy, and Canada. The European Union also has representation at the G8, currently Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission and Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, although the EU cannot chair summits. G8 presidency runs for one calendar year, with leadership to be handed over to Russia for the 2014 presidency. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4fd_1371477466 Ruptly UK: Irish anti-imperialists protest 'warlord' Obama UK, Belfast, Obama, protest, G8, summit, police, security