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If you were to listen to President Obama you would think that he did not care about Edward Snowden. However, it looks like he is far from unconcerned. When the Bolivian President's plane was diverted because "Snowden was on the plane" it started an international diplomatic mess when the story turned out to be inaccurate.
There was no confirmation that it was the US government who passed along the bad information, however, who else would be so interested in getting Snowden. Should it turn out to be true (and we suspect it is), this is just another example of the current US Administration's ham handed handling of foreign affairs. It is embarrassing.
If we as a country can be made to look stupid by a young, inexperienced novice computer technician, what could an organized and skilled foreign nation do to us. This should scare all of us. What secrets have other countries obtained and what damage has been done that our government has not told us?
Also is a concern is the apparent deception, the lies to the American people and the immense pressure being placed on our allies. We are indeed a bully, pushing and intimidating the world to get what we want, unsuccessfully. Do we really think that this is the best way to get Snowden back?
The longer this goes on the more impotent we appear. Is Snowden really worth this effort?
Conservative Tom
Spain: We were told Snowden was on Bolivia plane
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Aymara women hold a posters of Bolivia's President Evo Morales during a welcome ceremony for presidents attending an extraordinary meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Thursday, July 4, 2013. Leaders of Uruguay, Ecuador, Surinam, Argentina and Venezuela are meeting in Bolivia Thursday in support of Morales, who said Thursday that the rerouting of his plane in Europe, over suspicions that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was on board was a plot by the U.S. to intimidate him and other Latin American leaders. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
MADRID (AP) — Spain on Friday said it had been warned along with other European countries that former U.S. intelligence worker Edward Snowden was aboard the Bolivian presidential plane this week, an acknowledgement that the manhunt for the fugitive leaker had something to do with the plane's unexpected diversion to Austria.
It is unclear whether the United States, which has told its European allies that it wants Snowden back, warned Madrid about the Bolivian president's plane. U.S. officials will not detail their conversations with European countries, except to say that they have stated the U.S.'s general position that it wants Snowden back.
President Barack Obama has publicly displayed a relaxed attitude toward Snowden's movements, saying last month that he wouldn't be "scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."
But the drama surrounding the flight of Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose plane was abruptly rerouted to Vienna after apparently being denied permission to fly over France, suggests that pressure is being applied behind the scenes.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told Spanish National Television that "they told us that the information was clear, that he was inside."
He did not identify who "they" were and declined to say whether he had been in contact with the U.S. But he said that European countries' decisions were based on the tip. France has since sent a letter of apology to the Bolivian government.
Meanwhile, secret-spilling website WikiLeaks said that Snowden, who is still believed to be stuck in a Moscow airport's transit area, had put in asylum applications to six new countries.
The organization said in a message posted to Twitter on Friday that it wouldn't be identifying the countries involved "due to attempted U.S. interference."
A number of countries have already rejected asylum applications from Snowden
Seventy-two killed resisting gun confiscation in Boston!
Boston – National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed by elements of a Para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.
Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement.
Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group’s organizers as “criminals,” issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government’s efforts to secure law and order.
The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed wide-spread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons.
Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting in early this month between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms.
One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that “none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily.”
Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily-armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government’s plans.
During a tense standoff in the Lexington town park, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right-wing extremists.
Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange.
Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces over matched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.
Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops.
Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as “ringleaders” of the extremist faction, remain at large.
And this fellow Americans, is how the American Revolution began, April 20, 1775.
On July 4th, 1776 these same extremists signed the Declaration of Independence, pledging to each other and their countrymen their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Many of them lost everything, including their families and their lives over the course of the next few years.
Jonathan S. Tobin - Commentary Magazine, July 3rd, 2013
There is bad news, good news and better news coming out of Egypt today. First let’s discuss the good news.
The end of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt is a blow to the cause of radical Islam. The rise of the Brotherhood and the now deposed President Mohamed Morsi was a disaster for Egypt as well as for the West. Had Morsi and his party been left in place to continue their drive to impose their Islamist vision on the world’s most populous Arab country it might have been impossible to depose them, thus locking Egypt into the same nightmare scenario of theocratic tyranny that we have seen unfold in Iran in the last generation.
The even better news is that the Egyptian Army didn’t listen to the Obama administration when it asked them not to launch what is, for all intents and purposes, a military coup that toppled a democratically elected government. The embrace of Morsi and the Brotherhood by President Obama and his foreign policy over the last year has further poisoned Egyptian public opinion against the United States as well as strengthened the confidence of Islamists that America will not oppose their efforts to transform the region. After having been intimidated by U.S. pressure aimed at ensuring that the military would not prevent Morsi’s election, the military ran the risk that this time Obama meant what he said about using the billions in aid Egypt gets from the United States to prevent them from stopping the Brotherhood’s push for power. The willingness of the Egyptian army to step in and stop the confrontation in the streets not only avoided clashes that might have produced unimaginable casualties but also kept open the possibility that a new government could emerge in Cairo without having to fight a civil war in order to survive.
However, the bad news is twofold. First, the series of events leading up to the ouster illustrates the utter bankruptcy of American foreign policy under Barack Obama. The second is that there should be no blind confidence that what will follow will make Egypt more stable or prosperous, let alone free. The United States should oppose the rise of Islamists, but none of the possible outcomes of the conflict playing out between them and the military and secular Egyptians is likely to produce a liberal democracy or a nation that is likely to be a force for peace in the region.
It should be specified that events in Egypt could never be controlled from Washington. But the Obama administration bears a heavy share of the blame for a chain of decisions that first undermined an authoritarian ally in Mubarak and then paved the way for the rise of an equally authoritarian and far more hostile government led by Morsi and the Brotherhood. The identification of the United States with the Brotherhood over the last year was an unforced error on the part of Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her successor John Kerry. The willingness of the administration to buy into the myth that regimes like that of the Brotherhood and their increasingly despotic Islamic allies in Turkey are good allies made a mockery of American values as well as hindering its ability to protect U.S. interests.
Let’s also dispense with the crocodile tears being shed for Egyptian democracy by some Brotherhood apologists today. What has happened in Egypt the past two years has, despite the hopes of many there and in the West, had little to do with democracy. The fall of the Mubarak regime and its replacement by an Islamist movement determined to consolidate power may have involved elections, but democracy requires more than a trip to the ballot box in which a highly organized movement that is actually opposed to freedom wins a vote. While the debate in the United States about the advisability of Americans advocating democracy abroad will continue, the power struggle in Cairo merely illustrates the fact that this cause cannot triumph in a country where the debate is largely conducted between Islamists and secular authoritarians. While we should encourage (as President Bush tried to do) liberal Egyptians to build democratic institutions, in the absence of any national consensus in favor of democracy (as exists in countries like the United States, Israel and the West), freedom doesn’t really have a chance.
It may be that what will happen now in Egypt will be a prolonged struggle involving the Brotherhood that will turn a country that is already a basket case into a place that is an even bigger mess. Nor is there any assurance that the new government backed by the military or the one that will be elected in new elections will be able to govern effectively. While Morsi did not abandon the peace treaty with Israel and the military has no interest in conflict with the Jewish state, there is no telling whether the chaos in the Sinai will grow or whether Hamas, the Brotherhood’s ideological godchild, will seek to heat up the border or make mischief inside Egypt.
Finally, in the last two years Egypt has been an outstanding example of how U.S. foreign aid is not always dispensed in a manner that furthers American interests. The decision of the Obama administration to threaten the military with an aid cutoff if it opposed the Brotherhood before it took power was absurd. But if President Obama doesn’t see his way to continuing the aid now that the military has ignored his advice about not toppling Morsi, then what he will be doing is to completely alienate the Egyptian people for a generation. Congress, which has rightly been skeptical about allowing billions to flow to an Islamist government, should step back now and not further hamstring Obama and Kerry’s efforts to undo the damage they have done in the last 12 months. Whether any policy reversal on the part of the U.S. that will back the military against the Brotherhood can retrieve America’s tattered reputation remains to be seen. But it is to be hoped that even at this late date, Obama will realize just how wrong he has been about the Brotherhood and start trying to repair the damage.
UPDATE:
Late Wednesday afternoon, the silence from the White House about events in Egypt finally ended. In a statement, President Obama claimed that he is neutral on the question of who controls Egypt but wishes to uphold certain principles. The text contains anodyne proclamations about democracy and the participation of all groups in the government of Egypt that are unexceptionable. But it also clearly states that the president is “deeply concerned” about the ouster of Morsi and the suspension of the Egyptian constitution that brought him to power, calls upon the military not to arrest the deposed leader or other Muslim Brotherhood officials and then pointedly says that he has “directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt.”
In other words, you don’t have to read too closely between the lines to understand that Obama is angrier about regime change in Cairo than he ever was about the Islamist attempt to remake Egypt in their own image.
President Obama stood by passively for a year as Morsi and the Brotherhood began to seize total power, repress critics and pave the way for a complete transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state without threatening a cutoff of U.S. aid. Now Obama has finally found the guts to use America’s leverage over the country but only to register his protest against the downfall of the Brotherhood.
This will do nothing to help Morsi and the rest of his authoritarian crew that had already topped the excesses of the Mubarak regime in only a year. The Egyptian military knows despite the attempt of the Brotherhood to sell the West on the myth that a fascist-style movement like theses Islamists is democratic in nature, the only way to prevent it from fomenting violence is to use the same tactics it wanted to employ against Morsi’s critics.
But by doing so in this manner, the president has made it clear again to the Egyptian people that his sympathies are not with those who want a government that doesn’t wish to impose Islamism on the country or the minority that actually want democracy but with Morsi and the Brotherhood. Rather than repair the damage he has done in the last three years, it looks like the president sounds as if he is determined to double down on his mistakes.
Egypt is exploding. The pro-Morsi forces are saying they will blow up Egypt. This could get very bad quickly. Now we can add Egypt to the countries in turmoil in the Middle East. So much for the Arab Spring! Conservative Tom
‘FRIDAY OF RAGE’: FURIOUS EGYPTIAN ISLAMISTS MAKE TERRIFYING THREATS AFTER MORSI’S REMOVAL
CAIRO (TheBlaze/AP) — Egypt’s military moved swiftly Thursday against senior figures of the Muslim Brotherhood, targeting the backbone of support for ousted President Mohammed Morsi. In the most dramatic step, authorities arrested the group’s revered leader from a seaside villa and flew him by helicopter to detention in the capital.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood, furious over what it calls a military coup against democracy, said it would not work with the new leadership. It and harder-line Islamist allies called for a wave of protests Friday, dubbing it the “Friday of Rage,” vowing to escalate if the military does not back down.
Egyptian people cheer and wave national flags as airplanes fly past Egypt’s landmark Tahrir Square, trailing smoke in the colours of the national flag on July 4, 2013 in Cairo. Egypt’s army rounded up the leadership of ousted president Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood as a top judge took office after an abrupt end to the Islamist’s first year in power. Credit: AFP/Getty Images
With a top judge newly sworn in as interim president to replace Morsi, the crackdown poses an immediate test to the new army-backed leadership’s promises to guide Egypt to democracy: The question of how to include the 83-year-old fundamentalist group.
That question has long been at the heart of democracy efforts in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak and previous authoritarian regimes banned the group, raising cries even from pro-reform Brotherhood critics that it must be allowed to participate if Egypt was to be free. After Mubarak’s fall, the newly legalized group vaulted to power in elections, with its veteran member Morsi becoming the country’s first freely elected president.
Now the group is reeling under a huge backlash from a public that says the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies abused their electoral mandate. The military forced Morsi out Wednesday after millions of Egyptians nationwide turned out in four days of protests demanding he be removed.
Adly Mansour, the head of the Supreme Constititonal Court, with which Morsi had repeated confrontations, was sworn in as interim president.
In his inaugural speech, broadcast nationwide, he said the anti-Morsi protests that began June 30 had “corrected the path of the glorious revolution of Jan. 25,” referring to the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak.
To cheers from his audience, he also praised the army, police, media and judiciary for standing against the Brotherhood. Islamists saw those institutions as full of Mubarak loyalists trying to thwart their rule.
There are widespread fears of Islamist violence in retaliation for Morsi’s ouster, and already some former militant extremists have vowed to fight.
Supporters of Egypt’s ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi chant slogans during a rally near the University of Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, July 4, 2013. Credit: AP
Egyptian soldiers secure the area around Nasser City, where Muslim Brotherhood supporters have gathered to support ousted president Mohammed Morsi, in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, July 4, 2013. Credit: AP
Suspected militants opened fire at four sites in northern Sinai, targeting two military checkpoints, a police station and el-Arish airport, where military aircraft are stationed, security officials said. The military and security responded to the attacks but there was no word on casualities in the ongoing clashes.
A pro-Morsi protester reportedly told a camera crew: “Beware! Know that you have created a new Taliban and a new al-Qaeda in Egypt.”
“All this crowd will split into ‘martyrdom’ groups. They will destroy you and destroy Egypt. You destroyed Egypt!” he reportedly said.
Multiple officials of the Brotherhood firmly urged their followers to keep their protests peaceful. Thousands of Morsi supporters remained massed in front of a Cairo mosque where they have camped for days, with line of military armored vehicles across the road keeping watch.
“We declare our complete rejection of the military coup staged against the elected president and the will of the nation,” the Brotherhood said in a statement, read by senior cleric Abdel-Rahman el-Barr to the crowd outside the Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo.
“We refuse to participate in any activities with the usurping authorities,” the statement said, urging Morsi supporters to remain peaceful. The Rabia al-Adawiya protesters planned to march Friday to the Ministry of Defense.
The Brotherhood denounced the crackdown, including the shutdown Wednesday night of its television channel, Misr25, its newspaper and three pro-Morsi Islamist TV stations. The military, it said, is returning Egypt to the practices of “the dark, repressive, dictatorial and corrupt ages.”
A military statement late Thursday appeared to signal a wider wave of arrests was not in the offing. A spokesman, Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali, said in a Facebook posting that that the army and security forces will not take “any exceptional or arbitrary measures” against any political group.
The military has a “strong will to ensure national reconciliation, constructive justice and tolerance,” he wrote. He spoke against “gloating” and vengeance, saying only peaceful protests will be tolerated and urging Egyptians not to attack Brotherhood offices to avert an “endless cycle of revenge.”
The army’s removal of Morsi sparked massive celebrations Wednesday night among the crowds of protesters around the country, with fireworks, dancing and blaring car horns lasting close to dawn.
The constitution, which Islamists drafted and Morsi praised as the greatest in the world, has been suspended. Also, Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, the Mubarak-era top prosecutor whom Morsi removed to much controversy, was reinstated to his post and immediately announced investigations against Brotherhood officials.
Many of the Brotherhood’s opponents want them prosecuted for what they say were crimes committed during Morsi’s rule, just as Mubarak was prosecuted for protester deaths during the 2011 uprising. In the past year, dozens were killed in clashes with Brotherhood supporters and with security forces.
But the swift moves raise perceptions of a revenge campaign against the Brotherhood.
The National Salvation Front, the top opposition political group during Morsi’s presidency and a key member of the coalition that worked with the military in his removal, criticized the moves, saying, “We totally reject excluding any party, particularly political Islamic groups.”
The Front has proposed one of its top leaders, Mohammed ElBaradei, to become prime minister of the interim Cabinet, a post that will hold strong powers since Mansour’s presidency post is considered symbolic. ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate who once headed the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, is considered Egypt’s top reform advocate.
“Reconciliation is the name of the game, including the Muslim Brotherhood. We need to be inclusive,” Munir Fakhry Abdel-Nour, a leading member of the group, told The Associated Press. “The detentions are a mistake.”
He said the arrests appeared to be prompted by security officials’ fears over possible calls for violence by Brotherhood leaders. There may be complaints against certain individuals in the Brotherhood “but they don’t justify the detention,” he said, predicting they will be released in the coming days.
Abdel-Nour said the Front intends to ensure the military has no role in politics. He added that the Front is hoping for the backing of ultraconservative Salafis for ElBaradei’s bid for prime minister. Some Salafi factions have sided with the new leadership. He noted that the constitution was not outright canceled, in a gesture to Salafis.
Morsi has been under detention in an unknown location since Wednesday night, and at least a dozen of his top aides and advisers have been under what is described as “house arrest,” though their locations are also unknown.
Besides the Brotherhood’s top leader, General Guide Mohammed Badie, security officials have also arrested his predecessor, Mahdi Akef, and one of his two deputies, Rashad Bayoumi, as well as Saad el-Katatni, head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, and ultraconservative Salafi figure Hazem Abu Ismail, who has a considerable street following.
Authorities have also issued a wanted list for more than 200 Brotherhood members and leaders of other Islamist groups. Among them is Khairat el-Shater, another deputy of the general guide who is widely considered the most powerful figure in the Brotherhood.
The arrest of Badie was a dramatic step, since even Mubarak and his predecessors had been reluctant to move against the group’s top leader. The ranks of Brotherhood members across the country swear a strict oath of unquestioning allegiance to the general guide, vowing to “hear and obey.” It has been decades since any Brotherhood general guide was put in a prison.
Badie and el-Shater were widely believed by the opposition to be the real power in Egypt during Morsi’s tenure. Badie was arrested late Wednesday from a villa where he had been staying in the Mediterranean coastal city of Marsa Matrouh and flown by helicopter to Cairo, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk the press.
Mahmoud, the top prosecutor, said he was opening investigations into the killings of protesters during Morsi’s rule. He ordered el-Katatni and Bayoumi questioned on allegations of instigating violence and killings, and put travel bans on 36 others, a sign they too could face prosecution. He also took steps toward releasing a prominent activist detained for insulting Morsi.
Mansour, the 67-year-old interim president, is a Mubarak appointee like nearly every judge. He had been the deputy head of the court for more than 20 years.
He was elevated to the chief justice position only three days ago, when his predecessor reached mandatory retirement age.
Mansour was among the judges who ruled against a political isolation law in 2012 that would have barred many Mubarak-era officials from politics. As a result, Mubarak’s last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, was able to run against Morsi.
In his speech, Mansour said the massive street demonstrations “brought together everyone without discrimination or division,” and were an “expression of the nation’s conscience and an embodiment of its hopes and ambitions.”
But he made no sign of outreach to the Brotherhood in his address. He suggested Morsi’s election had been tainted, saying, “I look forward to parliamentary and presidential elections held with the genuine and authentic will of the people.”
The revolution, he said, must continue so “we stop producing tyrants.”
This article might be a little stale, however, the conditions to which the author speaks are still very real and maybe more pressing today than when the article was published in February. Could something like this occur?
We believe there is a possibility. At present the government is monitoring everything in your life from your mail to your Facebook account. It knows your shopping habits and with whom you do business. You cannot transfer large amounts (over $10,000) without filling out reams of paperwork. All of your income is followed and even if you are a small handyman, the people with whom you do business must give you a 1099.
The government already knows how much you have in your 401(k) and other investments as those numbers are reported to the government annually. How hard would it be to create an agency to "manage" your investments for you. It would be in your best interest, right? And who could manage your money better than the government as they have done such a stellar job of handling their own money!
For those who think that it would not happen, you would be wrong. As there have already been hearings in Washington to do this very subject. Yes, it was a few years ago, but ideas (even horrendous, outrageous ones) in the nation's capital never die.
The author does present a potential rationale for the confiscation, that being China. If their economy continues to slow as it has been, this could be the rationale the US government would use to grab your savings as a way to pay off Peking.
We will keep monitoring developments, however, we expect that it will take a fiscal "crisis" to have your 401(k) grabbed. When that time is, is anyone's guess but we feel it will be sooner rather than later.
WASHINGTON, February 3, 2013 ― The $19.4 trillion sitting in personal retirement accounts like the 401K may be too tempting an apple for a government that is quite broke, both monetarily and morally. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray recently mentioned these accounts in a recent interview, stating “That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring and are interested in, in terms of whether and what authority we have.”
This agency, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank-Act, is very concerned about how safe your retirement savings are. They are apparently concerned that retiring baby boomers may become victims of financial scams.
If the government takes control of retirement accounts, it will not be called “nationalization.” There will most likely be an indecipherable document that provides an opt-out option (initially), but why would you want to do that? The US government only wants to ensure the safety of your retirement funds; they did after all create a new bureaucracy for that specific purpose. And what could be a safer investment than US bonds?
China’s premier Wen Jiabao recently made a very polite, but very pointed statement to the US concerning its continued policy of debt monetization (printing money to pay the bills).
“We have made a huge amount of loans to the United States. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried. I would like to call on the United States to honor its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”
It is estimated that of the roughly $2 trillion China holds in currency reserves, about half is in U.S. Treasuries. While that may not seem significant, you would not want to know what would happen should they put even half of those treasuries on the open market. While that is certainly not expected, an escalation of Japan-China tensions in their ongoing (and worsening) argument over East and South China Sea islands, with the U.S. firmly behind Japan, means anything is possible.
Assuming that the island dispute does not turn into open warfare, there is still the matter of addressing the very serious concerns that China has voiced, and many other countries echo: We are devaluing our currency, which they are heavily invested in, at a rapid pace and with no indication of ever stopping.
This brings us back to that juicy apple hanging from the tree of our life’s work. Nationalizing the personal retirement accounts would allow our government to borrow even more from its largest debtor (U.S. citizens) without further devaluing the currency. While this may seem far-fetched, as international pressure mounts to maintain the value of the dollar, you will hear more about this.
If at some date we find ourselves at a tipping point in international relations, it may very well come down to nationalizing our 401K’s or going to war. Many Americans are choosing to take their penalties and withdraw their 401K funds while they still can.
On July 4th, 1776 these same extremists signed the Declaration of Independence, pledging to each other and their countrymen their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Many of them lost everything, including their families and their lives over the course of the next few years.
