Welinks
- K.A. Black Hat 2013 Keynote amid new allegations UK that the NSA tool "XKeyscore" collects nearly everything a user does on the internet - and alleges that NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches.
- [The Washington Times reported last month that during his 2012 re-election campaign, President Obama was being briefed that al Qaeda had metastasized, while he was telling voters it had been decimated.
- The administration filed court papers opposing a request from communications providers that they be allowed to tell the public how many and what types of government orders they received. The authority used by the NSA to compel phone companies to hand over domestic phone metadata, conferred by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, also gags the companies from even disclosing that they have received an order, and the Justice Department filing Wednesday cast into sharp relief officials’ claims at the hearing that the administration was aiming to be as transparent as possible.
- That changed on June 5 and 6. Using information leaked by Snowden, The Guardian and The Washington Post released the first in a series of stories that would highlight how the NSA collected metadata from phone companies on calls made by U.S. citizens. Included in the bulk data was who called whom, for how long and when. Subsequent stories showed that Internet data was being collected under different programs.
- Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the US military was waging a devastating covert campaign to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country. - The nearly 600,000 bombing runs delivered a staggering amount of explosives: The equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every person in the country—more than what American planes unloaded on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.
- In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech about Indochina and the threat of communism in the region. Pronouncing the countries name incorrectly, JFK said that “all we want in Laos is peace, not war.” Over the next 15 years, Laos became the most intensely bombed area in the entire world. Another civilization destroyed at the hands of America. Laos set the stage for how the US would conduct wars in the future. The tactics we saw during “Shock and Awe” in Iraq and during the US-supported overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, and also what we are seeing in Yemen and Pakistan all started with Laos. The practice that did not start there but continued and still continues today is that the US government lied about its intentions and its reasons. So let’s take a quick look at what happened in Laos from 1960-1975. And as I point out in all my blogs; don’t think for a second that these things are not happening today, because they are. The US has already started its operation in Syria and Iran is probably next.
- During the war, Allied forces dropped some 2.7 million tons of bombs on Germany. The bombs weighed between 100 and 4,000 pounds. Over 7 million tons of bombs were dropped by the US during the Vietnam War; over 2 million tons were dropped during WW2. NOTE: A US B-17 Flying Fortress over Germany in WW2 carried about 10 airmen and possibly 17 bombs. A US B-52 Stratofortess flying over North Vietnam carried 6 crewmen and could carry 108 750 pound bombs. ONE Vietnam War B-52 was equal to about SIX WW2 B-17s. One F-4 Phantom jet fighter bomber, manned by two crewmen, could carry as many bombs as a WW2 B-17 bomber (with a 10 man crew).
