WATCH | The Obama administration distributed thousands of intelligence reports with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the 2016 election.
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President Obama’s team sought NSA intel on thousands of Americans during the 2016 election
The revelations are particularly sensitive since the NSA is legally forbidden from directly spying on Americans and its authority to conduct warrantless searches on foreigners is up for renewal in Congress later this year. And it comes as lawmakers investigate President Trump’s own claims that his privacy was violated by his predecessor during the 2016 election.
In all, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata, which include telephone numbers and email addresses. The activity amounted to a 27.5 percent increase over the prior year and more than triple the 9,500 such searches that occurred in 2013, the first year such data was kept.
The government in 2016 also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive spike from the 198 names searched in 2013.
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The Smoking Gun: “Document 17” Links Saudi Embassy In Washington To Sept 11
The Smoking Gun: “Document 17” Links Saudi Embassy In Washington To Sept 11
With the topic of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the Sept 11 attack on everyone’s lips, if certainly not those of president Obama who is currently in Riyadh where he is meeting with members of Saudi royalty in what may be his last trip to the Saudi nation as US president, many have been clamoring for the information in the suddenly notorious “28-pages” (following the recent 60 Minutes episode) to be released to the public so the US population can finally relegate all those “conspiracy theories” surrounding the real perpetrator behind the Sept 11 terrorist attack to the “conspiracy fact” pile.
It won’t have to wait that long.
As The Times writes today, new evidence has come to light of a definitive link between Saudi Arabian officials and the 9/11 terrorist attacks “further raising tensions as President Obama travels to the kingdom.”
According to the report, Ghassan Al-Sharbi, a Saudi who became an al-Qa’ida bomb maker, is believed to have taken flying lessons with some of the 9/11 hijackers in Arizona but did not take part in the attacks on New York and the Pentagon that killed 3,000 people in 2001.
He was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and has since been held at Guantanamo Bay. According to a US memo, known as document 17, written in 2003 and quietly declassified last year, the FBI learnt that he had buried a cache of papers shortly before he was captured.
Think of “Document 17” as a mini version of the “28 pages” whose content has yet to be revealed. The document was written by two US investigators examining the possible roles of foreign governments in the attacks.
One detail leapt out at the FBI agents from the papers that Sharbi had tried to hide: his US flight certificate was in an envelope from the Saudi embassy in Washington.
A car pulls into the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, AP Photo
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Saudis Retaliate To “Oil Freeze” Fallout: Ban Transport Of Iranian Crude In Territorial Waters
Saudis Retaliate To “Oil Freeze” Fallout: Ban Transport Of Iranian Crude In Territorial Waters
At first, when it announced the terms of its “oil freeze” agreement with Russia one month ago, Saudi Arabia seemed willing to grant Iran a temporary exemption from the supply freeze, at least until it recovers its pre-embargo production levels. That however changed on Friday when the country’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, shocked Saudi Arabia’s Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, telling Bloomberg his country would only join the freeze curbe Iran – and all other OPEC member nations – also joined.
Following the Friday announcement, yesterday Iran’s oil minister Zangadeh made it clear that the country rejects Saudi demands, and would continue ramping up production at will, in the process making the April 17 Doha meeting meaningless.
And then, in a new and unexpected retaliation by Saudi Arabia for Iran’s intransigence, moments ago the FT reported that Saudi Arabia has taken steps to slow Iran’s efforts at increasing oil exports, banning vessels that transport Iranian crude from entering their waters, according to traders and shipbrokers.
More details from FT:
Iranian vessels carrying the country’s crude are restricted from entering ports in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, according to a circular sent by a shipping insurance company to its members in February.The notice said ships that have called to Iran as one of its last three ports of entry will also require approval from the Saudi and Bahraini authorities before entering their waters. Shipbrokers and traders have relayed the same messages since.
Iranian oil executives have expressed their concern about the message circulating in the market, saying it is only adding to problems they face in selling their crude.
Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, and The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) did not respond to requests for comment.
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What Could Go Wrong? Saudis Want To Give Surface-To-Air Missiles To Syrian Rebels
What Could Go Wrong? Saudis Want To Give Surface-To-Air Missiles To Syrian Rebels
When the Russians started flying from Latakia on September 30 it put the Syrian opposition in a decisively precarious situation.
Whereas the Syrian air force was largely out of date and relied on replacement parts and continual maintenance to remain viable, Moscow brought one of the most formidable sky attacks on the planet to a fight against rebels with zero air capability and exceptionally limited capacity to defend themselves against an aerial assault.
Starting in October, the Russian Defense Ministry began posting video clips (hundreds of them) depicting strikes on a variety of rebel and militant targets and The Kremlin also went out of its way to capture full color, HD footage of Su-34s and long-range bombers in action over Syria where the opposition was quite simply powerless to defend itself.
For about a month (sometime between mid-November and mid-December) it appeared that President Obama was right. The fanfare around the initial wave of Russian airstrikes had subsided and the push north to Aleppo appeared to have stalled. The “quagmire” it seemed, was real. Then, suddenly, Hezbollah surrounded Aleppo and reports indicated the Russian air force had implemented what amounts to a scorched earth policy when it comes to the militants battling Iranian forces.
Once it became apparent that the country’s largest city would soon be recaptured by forces loyal to Assad, both Turkey and Saudi Arabia began to weigh their options. A ground assault by Ankara and Riyadh would be a veritable nightmare for the US and the West. It would invariably devolve into a direct conflict with Iranian forces and the first time a Russian jet hit Saudi or Turkish troops the world would be plunged into a global conflict with the potential to drag every nation in the developed world to war.
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John Kerry Makes Last Ditch Effort To Avert World War III As Saudis, Turks Prepare For Syria Invasion
John Kerry Makes Last Ditch Effort To Avert World War III As Saudis, Turks Prepare For Syria Invasion
Tomorrow, John Kerry will meet Sergei Lavrov and several of his other counterparts from Europe and the Mid-East in Munich in a last ditch effort to revive Syrian peace talks, which fell apart amid an intense Russian air assault on rebel positions in Aleppo.
For all intents and purposes, the rebels are surrounded. Initially, it appeared that the “moderate” opposition might be able to persist and bog down the Russians and the Iranians with the help of supplies from the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Those hopes faded over the past two weeks when Hezbollah advanced on Aleppo and ultimately encircled the city, cutting the rebels off from key supply lines and triggering a mass civilian exodus.
The talks in the Bavarian capital come at what is perhaps the most crucial point in the conflict to date. With the opposition on the ropes, it’s do or die time for Riyadh, Ankara, Doha, and the UAE. Either the Gulf monarchies send in ground troops to shore up the rebels or Hezbollah and the IRGC will overrun them in a matter of weeks – or perhaps even days.
Of course the opposition’s Sunni benefactors can’t exactly say they’re going into Syria to fight Iran and the Russians. Any ground incursion will be justified by the need to “fight ISIS” even though the Islamic State presence in Aleppo is markedly less pronounced than in other besieged urban centers like Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. Indeed, the effort is so transparent that even the mainstream media has been forced to acknowledge it. Here’s FT, for instance:
Saudi Arabia is discussing plans to deploy ground troops with regional allies, including Turkey, for a safe zone in Syria, in a last-ditch effort to keep alive a rebellion at risk of collapse as a Russian-backed offensive by Syrian regime forces encroaches on the northern province of Aleppo.
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Toxic ‘Reform’ Law Will Gut State Rules on Dangerous Chemicals
The Senate’s version has some significant differences from the House bill — the TSCA Modernization Act, which passed in June — and the reconciliation process is now underway. If the worst provisions from both bills wind up in the final law, which could reach the president’s desk as soon as February, the new legislation will gut laws that have put Oregon, California, Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, and Washington state at the forefront of chemical regulation.
Plastic baby bottles, sippy cups, and bowls. Photo: Getty Images
Toxic Sippy Cups and Baby Bottles
For Mike Belliveau the passage of Maine’s chemical law in 2008 felt like the crowning moment in his career. The environmental advocate had spent years working on the Kid Safe Product Act, which is one of the strongest protections against dangerous chemicals in the country. Since it was passed, Maine has used the law to come up with a list of more than 1,700 “chemicals of concern.” The state has also required manufactures to report the use of a handful of those chemicals, and has banned them altogether when there are no safer alternatives.
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The Godfather Of Climate Change Calls Obama’s Deal “A Fraud, It’s Bullshit”
The Godfather Of Climate Change Calls Obama’s Deal “A Fraud, It’s Bullshit”
Amid all the self-congratulatory mutual masturbation that has effused since the “historic” signing of a climate ‘deal’ with no enforcement mechanism, few are better qualified (or more outspoken) to describe the utter farce that COP21 is than former NASA scientist James Hansen, who as The Guardian notes, is considered the father of global awareness of climate change…
“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”The talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, have spent much time and energy on two major issues: whether the world should aim to contain the temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above preindustrial levels, and how much funding should be doled out by wealthy countries to developing nations that risk being swamped by rising seas and bashed by escalating extreme weather events.
But, according to Hansen, the international jamboree is pointless unless greenhouse gas emissions aren’t taxed across the board. He argues that only this will force down emissions quickly enough to avoid the worst ravages of climate change.
Hansen has been a nagging yet respected voice on climate change since he shot to prominence in the summer of 1988.
The Nasa scientists, who had been analyzing changes in the Earth’s climate since the 1970s, told a congressional committee that something called the “greenhouse effect” where heat-trapped gases are released into the atmosphere was causing global warming with a 99% certainty.
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Sounding The Alarm On The Country’s Vulnerability To An EMP
Sounding The Alarm On The Country’s Vulnerability To An EMP
Establishment insiders are worried we’re too vulnerable
In the past here at Peak Prosperity, we’ve written extensively on the threat posed by a sustained loss of electrical grid power. More specifically, we’ve warned that the most damaging threat to our grid would come from either a manmade or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
A good friend of mine, Jen Bawden, is currently sitting on a committee of notable political, security and defense experts — which includes past and present members of Congress, ambassadors, CIA directors, and others — who are equally concerned about this same threat and have recently sent a letter to Obama pleading for action to protect the US grid.
Before we get to that letter, here’s a snippet from what we wrote on the matter roughly a year ago:
We talk a lot about Peak Cheap Oil as the Achilles’ heel of the exponential monetary model, but the real threat to the quality of our daily lives, if not our lives themselves, would be a sustained loss of electrical power. Anything over a week without power for any modern nation would be a serious problem. A month would lead to chaos and many deaths.
When the power goes out, everything just stops. For residential users, even a few hours begins to intrude heavily as melting freezers, dying cell phones, and the awkward realization that we don’t remember how to play board games nudge us out of our comfort zone.
However, those are just small inconveniences.
For industrial and other heavy users, the impact of even a relatively short outage can be expensive or even ghastly. Hospitals and people on life-assisting machinery are especially vulnerable. Without power, aluminum smelters face the prospect of the molten ore solidifying in the channels from which it must be laboriously removed before operations can be restarted.
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