Texas Pro-Abortion Protesters Chant 'Hail Satan!'

Texas Pro-Abortion Protesters Chant 'Hail Satan!'

Pro-choice protesters shouted, “Hail Satan!” as an attempt to drown out pro-lifers’ rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/3/texas-abortion-battle-heats-activists-hail-satan/#ixzz2YxUxzPWP
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Prepare for System Failure...

Transatlantic Danger: U.S.-EU Merger Talks Underway in D.C.

Transatlantic Danger: U.S.-EU Merger Talks Underway in D.C.

Written by  William F. Jasper

    

   

Email this page to a friend

• Your name:
  
  Your email:
  
  Friends name:
  
  Friends email:
  
  

  module by Spiral

The first round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations has been proceeding this week (July 8 through 12) in Washington, D.C. largely under the radar. Although there has been relatively little coverage of the confab thus far, European and American officials and privileged “stakeholders” are busily negotiating agreements on a host of issues that would, if adopted, radically transform America.
The TTIP is being billed as a trade agreement and marketed by the Obama administration and corporate sponsors as an initiative that will almost magically create millions of jobs and usher in wave after wave of innovation and prosperity. But as we have reported in our in-depth look at TTIP, “Secretly Trading Away Our Independence,” there is a stealth agenda behind this “trade” agreement; the ultimate aim of the TTIP promoters is the economic and political merger of the United States with the European Union. They say so in their own words, though usually not in forums for the general public.
“In TTIP, we have the opportunity to accomplish something very significant for our economies, for our relationship, and for the global trading system as a whole,” said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman at the opening plenary session on July 8. Froman continued:

We have an opportunity to spur growth and to generate significant increases in the already substantial number of jobs supported by transatlantic trade and investment.

We have the opportunity to complement one of the greatest alliances of all time with an equally compelling economic relationship.

And we have the opportunity to work together to establish and enforce international norms and standards that will help inform and strengthen the multilateral, rules-based trading system.

 

In the last sentence above, we catch a glimpse of the real purpose of the current negotiations: “to establish and enforce international norms and standards” and “strengthen the multilateral, rules-based trading system.” International rules, with international enforcement.
As we have reported previously, the clear goal of the architects of the TTIP is to ensnare the United States in the same ever-tightening process of economic and political integration and convergence that has transformed Europe from a continent of independent nation-states into a supranational federation ruled by unelected and unaccountable oligarchs in Brussels, unrestrained by any constitutional impediments. When this process began in Europe decades ago, following World War II, wise observers warned that the promised trade benefits were a ruse to hide the real fact that every step forward along this path was a step for centralizing and concentrating power, while simultaneously stripping away local autonomy and national sovereignty. (See “United States of Europe.”)
Now the nations of the European Union are trapped, and many of its citizens are trying desperately to extricate their countries from the tightening EU noose. They are being forced to pay for bailouts for the big banks, corporations, unions, and government boondoggles. They are being forced to accept regulations dictated by Brussels bureaucrats over all areas of their lives.
The same kind of micro-managing-by-bureaucracy is being planned for the EU-U.S. “partnership.” Here is a list of the areas that are being negotiated in the current round of TTIP talks, as listed by the U.S. Trade Representative’s website:

• Agricultural Market Access
• Competition
• Cross-Border Services
• Customs and Trade Facilitation
• Electronic Commerce and Telecommunications
• Energy and Raw Materials
• Environment Financial Services
• Government Procurement
• Intellectual Property Rights
• Investment
• Labor
• Legal/Institutional Issues
• Localization Barriers
• Market Access and Industrial Goods Tariffs
• Regulatory Coherence and Transparency
• Rules of Origin
• Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures
• Sectoral Annexes/Regulatory Cooperation
• Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises
• State-Owned Enterprises
• Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT)
• Textiles
• Trade Remedies 

As sweepingly broad as this list may seem, we can be sure that it is merely a start, as the EU experience has plainly shown; if allowed to be established, it would soon mushroom to cover virtually every aspect of life.

Privileged “Stakeholders”: Phony “Transparency” and “Consensus”
Who are the folks crafting this new transatlantic “relationship”? In addition to government officials (led, for the United , by the U.S. Trade Representative and the State, Treasury and Commerce Departments), an assortment of corporate, industry, trade association, and NGO activist
“stakeholders” have been assigned special rights at the negotiating table.

These include:

• Sierra Club
• Friends of the Earth
• Humane Society of the U.S./ Humane Society International
• Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
• AFL-CIO
• Consumer Federation of America
• Public Citizen's Global Access to Medicines Program
• Center for Science in the Public Interest 

 

These and other left-tilting groups are supposedly balanced by the following stakeholder organizations, which are usually described as “pro-market”:

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• National Manufacturing Association
• American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers
• Grocery Manufacturers Association
• Computer & Communications Industry Association
• American Association of Exporters & Importers 

 

While many of the players in this supposedly diverse cast will hold clashing opinions on a multitude of issues, they tend to agree on one fundamental issue: global governance, which is merely a euphemism for global government. The one side wants to see a global regime that would enforce global environmental and social policy, while the other seeks the alleged benefits of a global regime that would make regulations uniform and easier for businesses to navigate. Both are willing to sacrifice national sovereignty and all that goes with it — the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, checks and balances, states' rights —to obtain their Holy Grails. It does not appear that there is a single organization among the assembled TTIP stakeholders to represent the interests of national sovereignty and independence as bonafide goods worthy of contending for.
Some of the stakeholder organizations give the appearance of championing national sovereignty while actually pushing for even greater global controls. Regular readers of The New American will not be surprised to find Lori Wallach among the TTIP’s controlled opposition. As we pointed out more than a decade ago (“Organized Anarchy”), when Wallach was put forward as the leading opponent of the World Trade Organization, her main problem with the WTO is that she wants it to have more power over more areas of our lives! Wallach represents Global Trade Watch, a subsidiary of Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen. The Ford Foundation, a primary source of funding for numerous radical groups, has been one of the principal funders for Global Trade Watch.

Interdependence vs. Independence
On June 19, just two weeks before America’s Independence Day this year, and three weeks before the start of the current TTIP round, The National Interest, a neoconservative journal appealing to a wide array of Beltway policy elites, published an article entitled “A New Declaration of Interdependence” arguing for quick passage of TTIP. The article was co-authored by Aart De Geus, chairman and CEO of the Bertelsmann Foundation, and Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council. Both organizations are major boosters of the EU, TTIP, and most other globalist projects. Kempe is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which has been the principal brain trust in the United States pushing for world government for most of the past century.
The highly influential CFR journal Foreign Affairs has likewise been busy lobbying for TTIP support among public policy and business elites. A July 10 Foreign Affairs article, “Getting to Yes on Transatlantic Trade,” and earlier articles such as “For Transatlantic Trade, This Time Is Different” and “Reviving the West: For an Atlantic Union”, are an integral part of the massive CFR lobbying offensive now underway to marshal support for TTIP, building toward votes in Congress on the matter next year.


Related articles:
Secretly Trading Away Our Independence
United States of Europe (A prophetic warning from nearly a quarter century ago)
Obama Administration Warns U.K. of Economic Loss if it Exits EU
Obama, Cameron, Barroso Push EU-U.S. Merger at G8 Ireland Summit
CFR Applauds European Union’s “Real Subversion of Sovereignty”
Organized Anarchy

OBAMA ORDERS FED WORKERS: SPY ON EACH OTHER

Watch lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors...

Odd working hours, unexplained travel...

Monitor co-workers stress, divorce, financial problems...

Track online activities...

 

Those failing to report face penalties, criminal charges...

WASHINGTON — In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.
The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.
Obama mandated the program in an October 2011 executive order after Army Pfc. Bradley Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified computer network and gave them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group. The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in national security.

Under the program, which is being implemented with little public attention, security investigations can be launched when government employees showing “indicators of insider threat behavior” are reported by co-workers, according to previously undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. Investigations also can be triggered when “suspicious user behavior” is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to “insider threat personnel.”
Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do “harm to the United States.” Managers of special insider threat offices will have “regular, timely, and, if possible, electronic, access” to employees’ personnel, payroll, disciplinary and “personal contact” files, as well as records of their use of classified and unclassified computer networks, polygraph results, travel reports and financial disclosure forms.
Over the years, numerous studies of public and private workers who’ve been caught spying, leaking classified information, stealing corporate secrets or engaging in sabotage have identified psychological profiles that could offer clues to possible threats. Administration officials want government workers trained to look for such indicators and report them so the next violation can be stopped before it happens.
“In past espionage cases, we find people saw things that may have helped identify a spy, but never reported it,” said Gene Barlow, a spokesman for the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, which oversees government efforts to detect threats like spies and computer hackers and is helping implement the Insider Threat Program. “That is why the awareness effort of the program is to teach people not only what types of activity to report, but how to report it and why it is so important to report it.”
But even the government’s top scientific advisers have questioned these techniques. Those experts say that trying to predict future acts through behavioral monitoring is unproven and could result in illegal ethnic and racial profiling and privacy violations.
“There is no consensus in the relevant scientific community nor on the committee regarding whether any behavioral surveillance or physiological monitoring techniques are ready for use at all,” concluded a 2008 National Research Council report on detecting terrorists.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html#.UdyoKL0SVPw#storylink=cpy

The German foreign intelligence service knew more about the activities of the NSA in Germany than previously known. "They're in bed together," ...Snowden

Snowden Claims: NSA Ties Put German Intelligence in Tight Spot

DPA

Democracy activists in Berlin hold signs demanding asylumn for whistleblower Edward Snowden in Germany.

The German foreign intelligence service knew more about the activities of the NSA in Germany than previously known. "They're in bed together," Edward Snowden claims in an interview in SPIEGEL. The whistleblower also lodges fresh allegations against the British.

For weeks now, officials at intelligence services around the world have been in suspense as one leak after another from whistleblower Edward Snowden has been published. Be it America's National Security Agency, Britain's GCHQ or systems like Prism or Tempora, he has been leaking scandalous information about international spying agencies. In an interview published by SPIEGEL in its latest issue, Snowden provides additional details, describing the closeness between the US and German intelligence services as well as Britain's acquisitiveness when it comes to collecting data.

ANZEIGE

In Germany, reports of the United States' vast espionage activities have surprised and upset many, including politicians. But Snowden isn't buying the innocence of leading German politicians and government figures, who say that they were entirely unaware of the spying programs. On the contrary, the NSA people are "in bed together with the Germans," the whistleblower told American cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in an interview conducted with the help of encrypted emails shortly before Snowden became a globally recognized name.
Snowden describes the intelligence services partnerships in detail. The NSA even has a special department for such cooperation, the Foreign Affairs Directorate, he says. He also exposes a noteworthy detail about how government decision-makers are protected by these programs. The partnerships are organized in a way so that authorities in other countries can "insulate their political leaders from the backlash" in the event it becomes public "how grievously they're violating global privacy," the former NSA employee says.
Intensive Cooperation with Germany
SPIEGEL reporting also indicates that cooperation between the NSA and Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, is more intensive than previously known. The NSA, for example, provides "analysis tools" for the BND to monitor signals from foreign data streams that travel through Germany. Among the BND's focuses are the Middle East route through which data packets from crisis regions travel.
BND head Gerhard Schindler confirmed the partnership during a recent meeting with members of the German parliament's control committee for intelligence issues.
But it's not just the BND's activities that are the focus of the interview with Snowden.
The 30-year-old also provides new details about Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He says that Britain's Tempora system is the signal intelligence community's first "full-take Internet buffer," meaning that it saves all of the data passing through the country.
Data Remains Buffered for Three Days
The scope of this "full take" system is vast. According to Snowden and Britain's Guardian newspaper, Tempora stores communications data for up to 30 days and saves all content for up to three days in a so-called Internet buffer. "It snarfs everything in a rolling buffer to allow retroactive investigation without missing a single bit," Snowden says.
Asked if it is possible to get around this total surveillance of all Internet communication, he says: "As a general rule, so long as you have any choice at all, you should never route through or peer with the UK under any circumstances."
In other words, Snowden says, one can only prevent GCHQ from accessing their data if they do not send any information through British Internet lines or servers. However, German Internet experts believe this would be almost impossible in practice.
Metadata Provide Orientation in Sea of Data

The attempt to conduct total data retention is noteworthy because most of the leaks so far in the spying scandal have pertained to so-called metadata. In the interview, Snowden reiterates just how important metadata -- which can include telephone numbers, IP addresses and connection times, for example -- really are. "In most cases, content isn't as valuable as metadata," Snowden says.
Those in possession of metadata can determine who has communicated with whom. And using the metadata, they can determine which data sets and communications content they would like to take a closer look at. "The metadata tells you what out of their data stream you actually want," Snowden says.
It is becoming increasingly clear to recognize the way in which surveillance programs from the NSA and GCHQ -- including Prism, Tempora and Boundless Informant -- cooperate. The metadata provides analysts with tips on which communications and content might be interesting. Then, Snowden says, with the touch of a button they can then retrieve or permanently collect the full content of communications that have already been stored for a specific person or group, or they can collect future communications. But a person can also be "selected for targeting based on, for example, your Facebook or webmail content."