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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/10/2013 10:38:50 AM

How the Washington Post Lost the PRISM Exclusive

By Abby Ohlheiser | The Atlantic Wire6 hrs ago

How the Washington Post Lost the PRISM Exclusive

After a series of stunning reports from the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald on the NSA's data collection programs, the paper will no doubt remain a central figure in the story of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked the PRISM slides in the first place. But, according to one of the reporters by-lined on the Washington Post's PRISM story, the exclusive was theirs to lose: it was offered to them first.

RELATED: What Did Tech Companies Know About the NSA and When Did they Know It?

Barton Gellman posted a story cobbled from his chat transcripts with Snowden late Sunday, which contained this exchange concerning the whistleblower's conditions to keep the story the Post's:

To effect his plan, Snowden asked for a guarantee that The Washington Post would publish — within 72 hours — the full text of a PowerPoint presentation describing PRISM, a top-secret surveillance program that gathered intelligence from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley giants. He also asked that The Post publish online a cryptographic key that he could use to prove to a foreign embassy that he was the document’s source.

I told him we would not make any guarantee about what we published or when. (The Post broke the story two weeks later, on Thursday. The Post sought the views of government officials about the potential harm to national security prior to publication and decided to reproduce only four of the 41 slides.)

Snowden replied succinctly, “I regret that we weren’t able to keep this project unilateral.” Shortly afterward he made contact with Glenn Greenwald of the British newspaper the Guardian.

Although the Guardian and the Post published nearly simultaneously on the PRISM story, it looks like the Post may have beaten the Guardian, only just, in getting the story live. But Snowden has apparently given everything else to the Guardian: They broke the Verizon data collection story. They were tasked with, at his request, revealing his identity. In the end, notably, neither paper published the slides in their entirety.

RELATED: China and Hong Kong Hold Edward Snowden's Fate

Gellman continued to chat with Snowden — codename "Verax," — after losing the exclusive, and his take on the conversation is worth a read. For one thing, it makes it clear that Snowden knew what he was getting in to, and that, arguably, his plan to reveal his identity after handing over the documents was as important to him as the leak itself.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/10/2013 10:42:39 AM

In nation's breadbasket, Latinos stuck in poverty


Associated Press/Gosia Wozniacka - This photo taken Saturday June 1, 2013, in Fresno, Calif. shows farmworker Cristina Melendez posing for a photo in front of her mother's apartment. A Mexico native who came to the U.S. at age 13, Melendez and her seven U.S. citizen children have for years struggled with poverty in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the richest agricultural regions in the world. (AP Photo/Gosia Wozniacka)

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — On a warm spring day, farmworker Cristina Melendez was bedridden and unable to make her way back into the asparagus fields of central California for the kind of backbreaking work she's done since childhood.

The 36-year-old mother of seven was desperate. Her bank account had been at zero for months, the refrigerator was nearly empty, and she didn't have enough to cover the rent. Lacking health insurance,Melendez couldn't see a doctor or afford medication, so her illness dragged on — and another day came and went without work or pay.

A native of Mexico who was smuggled into the United States as a child, Melendez had once dreamed big: to be a bilingual secretary, to own a house and a car, to become a U.S. citizen. Agriculture, she hoped, would be the springboard to a better life — for her and her U.S.-born children, the next generation of a family whose past and future are deeply rooted in the fertile earth of America's breadbasket.

California's San Joaquin Valley is one of the richest agricultural regions in the world, with Fresno County farmers receiving a record $6.8 billion in revenues last year. But the region also consistently ranks among the nation's most impoverished. Sometimes called "Appalachia of the West," it's where families, especially Hispanic immigrants and their children, live year after year in destitution.

This divide causes concern because of what it may foretell as the nation's Hispanic population explodes and the U.S. moves toward becoming a majority minority nation. Census data show that non-Hispanic whites will cease to be a majority somewhere about the year 2043. The shift is largely driven by high birth rates among Hispanics as well as by declines in the aging white population.

Already there are a record number of Hispanics living below the poverty line nationwide, and the number of Hispanic children in poverty exceeds that of any other racial or ethnic group. Largely less educated, Hispanic workers are concentrated in relatively low-skill occupations, earning less than the average for all U.S. workers.

"America's communities have become divided between economic winners and losers," said Daniel Lichter, a Cornell University sociologist and past president of the Population Association of America. "Increasingly, Hispanics begin life's race at a decided disadvantage, raising the specter of new Hispanic ghettos and increasing isolation."

As poor working Latinos settle across the country, fueling local economies in industries such as manufacturing, construction and agriculture, some are left with little room to climb the job ladder.

That holding pattern leads to a cycle of poverty that shows up in the next generation of U.S. citizens. With poverty stunting childhood development and stymieing educational attainment, experts say many Latino children are on track to remain stuck in low-skilled, underpaid jobs.

Harvard economist George Borjas projects that the children of today's immigrants will earn on average 10 percent to 15 percent less than non-immigrant Americans, with Latinos in particular struggling. The trend could have broad repercussions.

"Much of the nation's labor force growth, its future growth, will come from the Hispanic community," said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, pointing to research showing that childhood poverty affects education and jobs. "This not only has implications for Latino families, but for the nation as a whole."

The cycle is especially evident in the fields, vineyards, orchards and groves of the San Joaquin Valley, which stretches about 250 miles between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Thousand-acre farms dominate, thriving on a system of dammed rivers, drained lakes, advanced fertilizers and pesticides. Despite agriculture's modernization and its steadily growing revenues, surprisingly little has changed for the workers themselves.

Farmers have always relied on hiring racial or ethnic minorities ranked at the bottom of society. Valley crops once were harvested by Chinese, Japanese, Punjabis, Filipinos, Mexican braceros, southern Europeans, African-Americans and the white American Dust Bowl arrivals that were an exception to the immigrant mold. Today's crops are picked primarily by Hispanic immigrants like Melendez or their American-born children.

Hispanics account for half the population in Fresno County, and one-third of them live in poverty. Nationally, 1 in 4 Latinos lives below the poverty line, the second-highest percentage of all ethnic and racial groups, after blacks. That compares with an overall national rate of 15 percent and a rate for whites of about 10 percent.

Nowhere are these differences more apparent than in Fresno, California's fifth-largest city and the state's unofficial agricultural capital.

Fresno's north side — home to bankers, doctors and teachers — is dotted with gated communities and McMansions with manicured lawns. It boasts newly paved streets, bike lanes, generous sidewalks, a popular mall and parks.

Melendez's neighborhood in southeast Fresno is a world away. Children on bikes crisscross cracked streets, their gutters strewn with trash. Shabby apartment complexes stretch for blocks. Melendez's three-bedroom home sits on the bottom floor of one such complex, shared by Latino immigrants and Hmong refugees.

Melendez's journey here began with her father, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in the late 1970s to pick oranges. He returned to Mexico within a year, but Melendez's mother, Maria Rosales, then came to pick grapes, almonds and peaches.

"People told me I would be sweeping dollars with a broom in California, but what I swept were only pennies," said Rosales, 60, who is now a U.S. citizen and still lives in Fresno.

At 13, Melendez, along with two of her sisters, joined her mother in California, having trekked with a smuggler across the border. The family settled in a small farmworker town in Fresno County. After school and on weekends, Melendez and her sisters picked the grapes that surrounded them.

"It was loneliness. It was sadness," Melendez said. "I hated grapes."

Melendez dropped out of high school to get married and to get away from working the vineyards, but she and her husband soon separated. Though she spoke good English, she still lived in the country illegally and lacked a high school diploma, barring most employment. She again turned to the fields.

When Melendez can work, she picks every type of crop, from asparagus and grapes to chili peppers. In the offseason, she ties vines and trims branches.

Paid by the hour, Melendez generally receives California's minimum wage of $8. But whenever possible she works "piece rate," getting paid a set amount per box or bucket picked. Running through the fields to pick as much as she can, she once grossed about $3,000 for a few weeks of work.

But lean months with no work inevitably follow such windfalls. Without legal status, Melendez can't file for unemployment. She obtains food stamps for her U.S.-citizen children, but otherwise receives little government help. To make ends meet, she sometimes peddles barbecued beef, tamales and beauty products door to door and rents a room to a friend.

"That's what I have, and that's what I make do with," she said, "because the process of doing something else is difficult."

Her children know this, too. Her eldest sons, age 18 and 21, have high school diplomas but no jobs. The oldest, Cristian, started attending Fresno City College's automotive technician program with the help of a loan but then dropped out. Last winter, with help from a local employment program, he got a two-month job at a bakery. He's also filled temporary positions in maintenance and at a vacuum cleaner company.

Now a parent himself, with a 3-year-old son to support, Cristian said he's desperate to find something permanent. He worked as a farmworker in high school and last year picked peaches, nectarines and grapes. He eventually hopes to get a business degree and open a tattoo parlor and smoke shop, but still fears following in his mother's footsteps — never finding a way out of the fields.

"I don't want to work in the fields, busting my ass for low pay. That doesn't make sense," he said. "But if I don't find work soon, we're low on income, so I'm going to have to go to the fields."

In Fresno, advocates and experts for years have noticed the inextricable relationship between agriculture, the Hispanic community and poverty, and sounded the alarm. But little has been done to tackle the root of the problem.

"The number of working people in poverty is increasing, and we're falling further behind in education and health. We need to reverse that trend. Otherwise we'll continue to be seen as a poor area with bad statistics," said Caroline Farrell, executive director of the Valley-based Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. "And it will get worse. ... We won't have a sustainable community."

Fresno's mayor, Ashley Swearengin, hopes to reverse the trend and last year led a citywide program called Learn2Earn, which helps residents earn their high school diplomas and encourages them to pursue higher education and job training.

"We're talking about changing the mindset of people who think this is their lot in life, this is all they are ever going to do," said Linda Gleason, who leads Learn2Earn. "It's about tapping into people's internal motivation — and showing them education and a better job are not impossible dreams."

___

Associated Press writer Hope Yen in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Gosia Wozniacka on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GosiaWozniacka

EDITOR'S NOTE _ "America at the Tipping Point: The Changing Face of a Nation" is an occasional series examining the cultural mosaic of the U.S. and its historic shift to a majority-minority nation.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/10/2013 10:44:58 AM

In Hong Kong, ex-CIA man may not escape U.S. reach


Reuters - An illustration picture shows the logo of the U.S. National Security Agency on the display of an iPhone in Berlin, June 7, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

By David Ingram and James Pomfret

WASHINGTON/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Edward Snowden's decision to flee to Hong Kong as he prepared to expose the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs may not save him from prosecution due to an extradition treaty in force since 1998.

A 29-year-old former CIA employee, Snowden has identified himself as the person who gave the Guardian and the Washington Post classified documents about how the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) obtained data from U.S. telecom and Internet companies.

While preparing his leaks, Snowden left Hawaii for Hong Kong on May 20 so he would be in a place that might be able to resist U.S. prosecution attempts, he told the Guardian.

"Mainland China does have significant restrictions on free speech but the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting in the streets, making their views known," Snowden, a U.S. citizen, said in a video interview posted on the Guardian's website.

The NSA has requested a criminal probe into the leaks and, on Sunday, the U.S. Justice Department said it was in the initial stages of a criminal investigation.

The United States and Hong Kong signed their extradition treaty in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China. It allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that may also involve the Chinese government.

The treaty went into force in 1998 and provides that Hong Kong authorities can hold Snowden for 60 days, following a U.S. request that includes probable cause, while Washington prepares a formal extradition request. Some lawyers with expertise in extraditions said it would be a challenge for Snowden to circumvent the treaty if the U.S. government decides to prosecute him.

"They're not going to put at risk their relationship with the U.S. over Mr. Snowden, and very few people have found that they have the clout to persuade another country to go out of their way for them," said Robert Anello, a New York lawyer who has handled extradition cases.

However, under Hong Kong's Fugitives Offenders Ordinance, Beijing can issue an "instruction" to the city's leader to take or not take action on extraditions where the interests of China "in matters of defence or foreign affairs would be significantly affected."

Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule amid constitutional guarantees for a high degree of autonomy. China, however, has responsibility over defence and foreign affairs and has exerted considerable behind-the-scenes influence over the financial hub's political, financial, legal and academic spheres.

"We've never seen the Chinese government interfere in these sorts of decisions before," said Patricia Ho, a lawyer with Daly & Associates in Hong Kong, who has dealt extensively with refugees and asylum claims in the city.

The U.S. consulate in Hong Kong wouldn't comment when asked if an extradition claim would be made for Snowden. Nor would it confirm if he was still in the city. Hong Kong's Security Bureau and Justice Department also gave no immediate comment.

PAST CASES

In March, a former equities research analyst, Trent Martin, was extradited from Hong Kong to New York to face charges of insider trading. He had been arrested in Hong Kong in December and has pleaded not guilty.

Other suspects were extradited for smuggling charges, suspicion of violating controls on military exports, investment fraud charges and the alleged sale of illegal prescription drugs, according to U.S. prosecutor statements at the time.

But Hong Kong has not agreed to every U.S. request for a prisoner transfer. In 2008, Hong Kong released without explanation an Iranian operative whom Washington had accused of trying to obtain embargoed airplane parts. Yousef Boushvash was in custody with a criminal complaint on file in New York, so his release angered U.S. officials.

Douglas McNabb, a Houston lawyer who specializes in extradition, said he was surprised to hear that Snowden had chosen Hong Kong as a safe haven given the existing treaty.

"Probable cause won't be hard," McNabb said. "This guy came out and said, 'I did it.' His best defense would probably be that this is a political case instead of a criminal one." The treaty prohibits extradition for political cases.

Another defense for Snowden, lawyers said, would be to argue a lack of "dual-criminality" - for a person to be extradited, the alleged act must be a crime in both countries. While that will be for a Hong Kong court to decide, it might be a long shot, Anello said. "My guess is they will be able to find a law in Hong Kong that is very similar" to the U.S. Espionage Act, he said.

It was not immediately clear whether Snowden had a lawyer.

Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department lawyer who represents whistleblowers, said she expected prosecutors would "try to indict him as soon as possible" with "voluminous" Espionage Act charges followed by Interpol warrants for his arrest. But she said Snowden fit the profile and legal definition of a whistleblower and should be entitled to protection under a federal law passed to protect people who reveal waste and abuse.

"He said very clearly in statements that he's given that he was doing this to serve a public purpose," Radack said.

Asked if he had a plan in place, Snowden told the Guardian: "The only thing I can do is sit here and hope the Hong Kong government does not deport me ... My predisposition is to seek asylum in a country with shared values. The nation that most encompasses this is Iceland. They stood up for people over Internet freedom. I have no idea what my future is going to be." (Additional reporting by David Ingram, Mark Hosenball, John Shiffman, Joseph Ax, Andrew Longstreth and Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Ian Geoghegan)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/10/2013 4:35:23 PM

America's Outsourced Spy Force, By the Numbers


America's Outsourced Spy Force, By the Numbers

Edward Snowden wasn't your traditional spy. He was, however, a very modern one, a guy who worked from a computer terminal in an office, similar to how a modern bomber pilot might control his drone. The weekend's big revelations about the NSA's biggestrevealer prompt a natural question: How many Snowden-type spies with top secret security clearance are there?

RELATED: Every Version of the Infamous Benghazi Talking Points, Revealed

There's another way in which Snowden was a modern spy. He didn't work for the government, but for a government contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden's emergence has drawn a great deal of attention to the company, about which it is almost certainly not excited. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have stories detailing the growth of contractor dependency in the federal government, looking at Booz in particular. As does our sister publication National Journal, which quotes former NSA head Michael Hayden: "There isn't a phone or computer at [NSA headquarters] that the government owns."

RELATED: The Benghazi Conspiracy Isn't Surviving D.C.'s Scandal Week

That's primarily because of shifts in how the government operates. Right now, federal employees make up less than one percent of the American population.

RELATED: How Petraeus Turned the CIA into the Good Guys in Benghazi

Since 2000, the number of people employed by the federal government has stayed generally flat.

RELATED: Should the CIA Share Some of the Blame for Benghazi?

As the Journal notes in its article, that number is dwarfed by those holding security clearance.

As of last October, nearly five million people held government security clearances. Of that, 1.4 million held top-secret clearances. More than a third of those with top-secret clearances are contractors, which would appear to include Mr. Snowden.

Or:

RELATED: Pakistani Court 'Acquits' CIA Contractor of Two Murders

The number of people holding security clearance is equal to about 1.6 percent of the population of the country.

One does not have to be an American citizen to hold clearance, however. The State Departmentexplains the process for receiving such clearance, which comes in three types: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret, the highest level. To receive clearance, one must fill out Standard Form 86, which includes questions for those who are not citizens.

According to the Journal, those five million clearances break down like this.

Snowden, a contract employee, had that highest level of clearance — as do a third of the people who hold it. Again, from the Journal's data:

In its look at Booz, the Times indicates how closely the company is tied to the government.

As evidence of the company’s close relationship with government, the Obama administration’s chief intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., is a former Booz executive. The official who held that post in the Bush administration, John M. McConnell, now works for Booz.

But of those contractors who hold top secret clearance, only a small fraction work for Booz. The Times reports that it employs 25,000 people, half of whom have the highest level of access. The breakdown of just top secret clearances, then, looks like this.

That means that there are an estimated 450,000 people beyond those that work for Booz who have top secret clearance. Again, the Times:

“The national security apparatus has been more and more privatized and turned over to contractors,” said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that studies federal government contracting. “This is something the public is largely unaware of, how more than a million private contractors are cleared to handle highly sensitive matters.”

Many — or most — of whom, like Snowden, spend their days analyzing the reams of data that Snowden so suddenly brought to public attention. John Schindler, a former NSA officer, tweeted his opinion on such employees. ("CI" stands for "counter-intelligence.")

Been telling my CI peeps for years that NSA & IC only 1 disgruntled, maladjusted IT dork away from disaster (esp IT contractor)...oh well.

— John Schindler (@20committee) June 9, 2013

Remember, folks, IT weenies are the code-clerks of the 21st century: although low-ranking, they see everything, hence the huge CI risk

— John Schindler (@20committee) June 9, 2013

Nor is the way in which those "IT weenies" got clearance beyond critique. In February, John Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense, wrote a column for The Washington Post expressing his frustration with how poorly constructed the State Department's clearance renewal process is. It concludes:

I have dedicated 38 years of my life to America’s national security. I know there are spies in our midst. We can improve security and save money simultaneously. But our country needs a system built for the 21st century. The current system is pathetic.

It is now safe to expect some reforms. But the trend will probably continue: more Edward Snowden spies, working for private companies, scanning highly confidential information.

Photo: NSA headquarters. (AP)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/10/2013 4:38:51 PM

The World Is Getting Warmer Faster Than Expected


The World Is Getting Warmer Faster Than Expected
The world is getting warmer faster than anticipated. A new report from the International Energy Agency says global temperatureswill rise twice as fast as projected if countries don't act to slash their admissions soon. Released this morning, the IEA report shows carbon diaoxide from energy emissions rose 1.4 percent globally last year, a new record, and puts the world on pace for a 5.3 degree Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in global temperatures by 2020. In 2010, a UN summit agreed the goal would be to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees by 2020.

RELATED: Donald Trump and Nick Denton

"This puts us on a difficult and dangerous trajectory," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said in her statement. "If we don’t do anything between now and 2020, it will be very difficult because there will be a lot of carbon already in the atmosphere and the energy infrastructure will be locked in."

RELATED: Gore: Obama Has 'Failed to Stand Up' on Global Warming

So, who are the culprits most responsible for the world's bad record so far? China and Japan are two big culprits. They saw 3.8 and 5.8 percent rises in emissions, respectively. Countries in the Middle East were also singled out. Amazingly, the U.S. earned a gold star for their work, per The Washington Post:

The United States was one of the few relatively bright spots in the report. Switches from coal to shale gas accounted for about half the nation’s 3.8 percent drop in energy-related emissions, which fell for the fourth time in the past five years, dipping to a level last seen in the 1990s. The other factors were a mild winter, declining demand for gasoline and diesel, and the increasing use of renewable energy.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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