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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/15/2013 4:17:49 PM

Hong Kong rally backs Snowden, denounces allegations of U.S. spying


Reuters/Reuters - A protester supporting Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), holds a placard showing pictures of Snowden and Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan during a demonstration in Hong Kong June 15, 2013. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

A protester supporting Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), holds a poster showing U.S. President Barack Obama, with Chinese characters reading, "Say no to oppressor", as police officers guard outside the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong June 15, 2013. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo, supporting Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), speaks behind a placard with a defaced logo of NSA during a demonstration in Hong Kong June 15, 2013.REUTERS/Bobby Yip
By Grace Li and Venus Wu

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A few hundred rights advocates and political activists marched through Hong Kong on Saturday to demand protection for Edward Snowden, who leaked revelations of U.S. electronic surveillance and is now believed to be holed up in the former British colony.

Marchers gathered outside the U.S. consulate shouting slogans denouncing alleged spying operations aimed at China and Hong Kong, but the numbers were modest compared to rallies over other rights and political issues.

"Arrest Obama, free Snowden," protesters shouted outside the slate grey building as police looked on. Many waved banners that said: "Betray Snowden, betray freedom", "Big brother is watching you" and "Obama is checking your email".

Some blew whistles in support of Snowden, 29, the American former CIA contractor who has acknowledged being behind leaks of the surveillance programs by the National Security Agency.

The procession moved on to government headquarters in the city, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 but enjoys far more liberal laws on dissent and freedom of expression.

About a dozen groups organized two rallies, including the city's two largest political camps. Leaders of major political parties sought explanations for Snowden's allegations of spying.

Hong Kong's largest pro-Beijing political party, the DAB, demanded an apology from Washington, clarification of "illegal" espionage activities and an immediate halt to them.

"I think the Hong Kong government should protect him," the DAB's vice-chairwoman, Starry Lee, said outside the consulate.

Snowden reportedly flew to Hong Kong on May 20. He checked out of a luxury hotel on Monday and his whereabouts remain unknown. Snowden has said he intends to stay in Hong Kong to fight any potential U.S. moves to extradite him.

CHINA AVOIDS COMMENT ON CASE

China has avoided any explicit comment on its position towards Snowden. A senior source with ties to the Communist Party leadership said Beijing was reluctant to jeopardize recently improved ties with Washington.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post this week that Americans had spied extensively on targets including the Chinese University of Hong Kong that hosts an exchange which handles nearly all the city's domestic web traffic. Other alleged targets included government officials, businesses and students.

Snowden pledged not to "hide from justice" and said he would place his trust in Hong Kong's legal system. Some legal experts, however, say an extradition treaty between Hong Kong and the United States has functioned smoothly since 1998.

It is unclear whether Chinese authorities would intervene over any U.S. attempts to extradite Snowden, though lawyers say Beijing has rarely interfered with extradition cases.

His arrival comes at a sensitive time for Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying, whose popularity has sunk since taking office last year amid a series of scandals and corruption probes into prominent figures. Leung has offered no comment on Snowden.

Interest among residents into the case is growing and numbers could rise if extradition proceedings are launched.

Demonstrations on issues ranging from denunciations of pro-communist education policy imposed by Beijing, high property prices and a growing wealth gap have attracted large crowds.

A vigil marking the anniversary of China's June 1989 crackdown on democracy advocates drew tens of thousands this month and a record 180,000 last year.

Diplomats and opposition figures in the city have warned of growing behind-the-scenes meddling by Beijing in Hong Kong's affairs, as well as deep-rooted spying activities.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret and Anne-Marie Roantree; Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Ron Popeski)


"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?
6/15/2013 4:26:10 PM

Climate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting


Associated Press - FILE - This May 10, 2013 file photo shows view of the Manhattan Bridge, left, and Brooklyn Bridge as seen from the 105th floor of One World Trade Center, in New York. Seven months after Superstorm Sandy swamped New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a nearly $20 billion plan Tuesday, June 11, 2013, to protect the city from the effects of global warming and storms. (AP photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

This undated artist rendering provided by the NYC Mayor's Office shows the proposed "Seaport City" neighborhood to be built just south of the Brooklyn Bridge that could act as a buffer against flooding in lower Manhattan. It was part of a sweeping blueprint unveiled by Mayor Michael Bloomberg for protecting New York from rising seas, storms and other extreme weather and climate threats. (AP Photo/NYC Mayor's Office)
This undated artist rendering provided by the NYC Mayor's Office shows the proposed levee that would be installed at South Beach on the eastern shore of Staten Island as part of a sweeping blueprint unveiled by Mayor Michael Bloomberg for protecting New York from rising seas, storms and other extreme weather and climate threats. (AP Photo/NYC Mayor's Office)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise.

The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It's becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet's wild weather.

It was Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement last week of an ambitious plan to stave off New York City's rising seas with flood gates, levees and more that brought this transition into full focus.

After years of losing the fight against rising global emissions of heat-trapping gases, governments around the world are emphasizing what a U.N. Foundation scientific report calls "managing the unavoidable."

It's called adaptation and it's about as sexy but as necessary as insurance, experts say.

It's also a message that once was taboo among climate activists such as former Vice President Al Gore.

In his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," Gore compared talk of adapting to climate change to laziness that would distract from necessary efforts.

But in his 2013 book "The Future," Gore writes bluntly: "I was wrong." He talks about how coping with rising seas and temperatures is just as important as trying to prevent global warming by cutting emissions.

Like Gore, governmental officials across the globe aren't saying everyone should just give up on efforts to reduce pollution. They're saying that as they work on curbing carbon, they also have to deal with a reality that's already here.

In March, President Barack Obama's science advisers sent him a list of recommendations on climate change. No. 1 on the list: "Focus on national preparedness for climate change."

"Whether you believe climate change is real or not is beside the point," New York's Bloomberg said in announcing his $20 billion adaptation plans. "The bottom line is: We can't run the risk."

On Monday, more than three dozen other municipal officials from across the country will go public with a nationwide effort to make their cities more resilient to natural disasters and the effects of man-made global warming.

"It's an insurance policy, which is investing in the future," Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif., who is chairing the mayors' efforts, said in an interview Friday. "This is public safety. It's the long-term hazards that could impact a community."

Discussions about global warming are happening more often in mayors' offices than in Congress. The Obama administration and local governments are coming up with thousands of eye-glazing pages ofclimate change adaptation plans and talking about zoning, elevation, water system infrastructure, and most of all, risk.

"They can sit up there and not make any policies or changes, but we know we have to," Broward County, Fla., Mayor Kristin Jacobs said. "We know that we're going to be that first line of defense."

University of Michigan professor Rosina Bierbaum is a presidential science adviser who headed the adaptation section of the administration's new National Climate Assessment. "It's quite striking how much is going on at the municipal level," Bierbaum said. "Communities have to operate in real time. Everybody is struggling with a climate that is no longer the climate of the past."

Still, Bierbaum said, "Many of the other developed countries have gone way ahead of us in preparing for climate change. In many ways, the U.S. may be playing catch-up."

Hurricanes, smaller storms and floods have been a harsh teacher for South Florida, Jacobs said.

"Each time you get walloped, you stop and scratch your head ... and learn from it and make change," she said. "It helps if you've been walloped once or twice. I think it's easier to take action when everybody sees" the effect of climate change and are willing to talk about being prepared.

What Bloomberg announced for New York is reasonable for a wealthy city with lots of people and lots of expensive property and infrastructure to protect, said S. Jeffress Williams, a University of Hawaii geophysicist who used to be the expert on sea level rise for the U.S. Geological Survey. But for other coasts in the United States and especially elsewhere in the poorer world, he said, "it's not so easy to adapt."

Rich nations have pledged, but not yet provided, $100 billion a year to help poor nations adapt to global warming and cut their emissions. But the $20 billion cost for New York City's efforts shows the money won't go far in helping poorer cities adapt, said Brandon Wu of the nonprofit ActionAid.

At U.N. climate talks in Germany this past week, Ronald Jumeau, a delegate from the Seychelles, said developing countries have noted the more than $50 billion in relief that U.S. states in the Northeast got for Superstorm Sandy.

That's a large amount "for one storm in three states. At the same time, the Philippines was hit by its 15th storm in the same year," Jumeau said. "It puts things in context."

For poorer cities in the U.S., what makes sense is to buy out property owners, relocate homes and businesses and convert vulnerable sea shores to parks so that when storms hit "it's not a big deal," Williams said. "I think we'll see more and more communities make that decision largely because of the cost involved in trying to adapt to what's coming."

Jacobs, the mayor from South Florida, says that either people will move "or they will rehab their homes so that they can have a higher elevation. Already, in the Keys, you see houses that are up on stilts. So is that where we're going? At some point, we're going to have to start looking at real changes."

It's not just rising seas.

Sacramento has to deal with devastating droughts as well as the threat of flooding. It has a levee system so delicate that only New Orleans has it worse, said Johnson, the California capital's mayor.

The temperature in Sacramento was 110 this past week. After previous heat waves, cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have come up with cooling centers and green roofs that reduce the urban heat island affect.

Jacobs said cities from Miami to Virginia Beach, Va., are coping with mundane efforts: changes in zoning and building codes, raising the elevation of roads and runways, moving and hardening infrastructure. None of it grabs headlines, but "the sexiness is ... in the results," she said.

For decades, scientists referenced average temperatures when they talked about global warming. Only recently have they focused intensely on extreme and costly weather, encouraged by the insurance industry which has suffered high losses, Bierbaum said.

In 2012, weather disasters — not necessarily all tied to climate change — caused $110 billion in damage to the United States, which was the second highest total since 1980, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week.

Now officials are merging efforts by emergency managers to prepare for natural disasters with those of officials focused on climate change. That greatly lessens the political debate about human-caused global warming, said University of Colorado science and disaster policy professor Roger Pielke Jr.

It also makes the issue more local than national or international.

"If you keep the discussion focused on impacts ... I think it's pretty easy to get people from all political persuasions," said Pielke, who often has clashed with environmentalists over global warming. "It's insurance. The good news is that we know insurance is going to pay off again."

Describing these measures as resiliency and changing the way people talk about it make it more palatable than calling it climate change, said Hadi Dowlatabadi, a University of British Columbia climate scientist.

"It's called a no-regrets strategy," Dowlatabadi said. "It's all branding."

All that, experts say, is essentially taking some of the heat out of the global warming debate.

___

Associated Press writers Karl A. Ritter in Bonn, Germany, Jennifer Peltz in New York and Tony Winton in Miami contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Federal government's National Climate Assessment chapter on adaptation: http://1.usa.gov/154qUGs

The national mayors' efforts to promote adaptation: http://www.resilientamerica.org

Georgetown University's Climate Center primer on adaptation: http://www.georgetownclimate.org/adaptation

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

First of a two-part package on adapting to climate change. Tomorrow: Snapshots of what cities are doing around the world.


While cutting carbon emissions is critical, preparing for the planet’s increasingly wild weather is also a matter of survival. 'Each time you get walloped ...'

"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?
6/15/2013 4:34:20 PM

In Syria, do Americans hear echoes of Vietnam and Iraq?

Polls consistently show most Americans oppose direct military involvement in the Syrian civil war. But that changes with the presumption that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons.


In deciding to provide weapons to rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – too late, in the view of many critics –President Obama correctly senses the reluctance of most Americans to engage in foreign wars not clearly tied to national security.

Older Americans remember the sketchy basis for escalating the war in Vietnam (the now-discredited Tonkin Gulf Resolution). Younger people remember the questionable Bush administration argument for the US-led invasion and then occupation of Iraq (those elusive “weapons of mass destruction”).

There are other reasons for Obama’s caution in providing military aid to the Syrian rebels – even light arms and not the heavy weapons they want. For one thing, some of those insurgents have ties to al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups.

RECOMMENDED: Briefing Chemical weapons 101: Six facts about sarin and Syria’s stockpile

Obama feels the political pressure to act now that the “red line” he set – government forces in Libyausing chemical weapons against rebels and civilians – has been crossed. Britain, France, and Israel already had already cited the use of chemical weapons. Obama is to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this coming week, and Libya surely will be discussed.

Plus, there’s his philosophical and political disinclination to approach what could be a slippery slope. (Remember the talk about “leading from behind” in Libya – a phrase never uttered by Obama but attributed to an advisor?)

Want your top political issues explained? Get customized DC Decoder updates.

So how do Americans feel about this announced escalation of US involvement in Syria – including, according to a Reuters report, consideration of a no-fly zone to limit the regime’s air power.

(Reuters also reports that “Washington has quietly taken steps that would make it easier, moving Patriot surface-to-air missiles, war planes and more than 4,000 troops into Jordan, officially as part of an annual exercise in the past week but making clear that the assets could stay on when the wargames are over.”)

Until now, the pattern in public opinion has been clear.

“Polling conducted in recent months suggests that President Barack Obama is bucking public opinion in opting to authorize military aid to the Syrian rebels,” write Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy in the Huffington Post.

“Polls have typically shown that as many as two-thirds of Americans oppose military action in Syria, even when questions that specify the aid come in the form of ‘weapons’ rather than more direct military intervention,” they write, citing polls by CBS/NYT, Gallup, NBC/WSJ, Fox News, and HuffPost/YouGov.

For example, Gallup reported two weeks ago that “68 percent of Americans say the United States should not use military action in Syria to attempt to end the civil war there if diplomatic and economic efforts fail, while 24 percent would favor US military involvement.”

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey had just 15 percent of respondents favoring “military action to help stop the killing,” and even fewer (11 percent) agreeing that the US should “provide arms to the opposition.”

“The hesitation for US involvement in Syria closely matches twenty-five years of past data showing the reluctance Americans have about intervening between two conflicting factions within a foreign country, especially when there is no perceived threat to US national security,” writes Paul Donaldson of Public Opinion Strategies, a national Republican political and public affairs research firm. “Looking at other civil-wars/foreign conflicts, we see similar opposition to sending in our military.”

Is the Syrian regime’s “red line” use of nerve gas changing attitudes? Perhaps.

An April Pew Research survey found plurality support (45 to 31 percent) for military action, "if it is confirmed that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against anti-government groups," the HuffPost writers note. Similarly, a CNN/ORC survey in May found 68 percent thought military action justified "if the United States were able to present evidence that convinced you that the Syrian government has chemical weapons and has used them to kill civilians in that country."

Whether or not evidence of the use of nerve gas in Syria is “convincing” is an open question.

Writing on the New York Times FiveThirtyEight polling aggregation web site, Micah Cohen finds that when questions about US military involvement in Syria include the presumption that the Assad regime used chemical weapons, “support for intervention increased substantially.”

“According to an average of the three surveys in the PollingReport.com database that asked, 58 percent of adults said they would support military intervention if it were confirmed that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons either on antigovernment forces or on civilians,” Mr. Cohen writes.

That’s the tenuous political ground on which Obama stands as he decides the next US steps on Syria.

RECOMMENDED: Briefing Chemical weapons 101: Six facts about sarin and Syria’s stockpile

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"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?
6/15/2013 9:01:42 PM

Riot police disperse protesters in Istanbul park


Associated Press/Vadim Ghirda - Protesters try to resist the advance of riot police in Gezi park in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, June 15, 2013. Protesters will press on with their sit-in at an Istanbul park, an activist said Saturday, defying government appeals and a warning from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the two-week standoff that has fanned nationwide demonstrations to end. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

ISTANBUL (AP) — Riot police fired water cannons and tear gas as they drove protesters out of Istanbul's Taksim Square and neighboring Gezi Park on Saturday, an intervention that came shortly after the prime minister warned that security forces "know how to clear" the area, which had become a symbol of the biggest anti-government protests in decades.

Within a half-hour, the sweep by white-helmeted riot police had emptied the park, leaving a series of colorful, abandoned tents behind. Bulldozers moved in afterward, scooping up debris as crews of workmen in hard hats and fluorescent yellow vests tore down the tents. Protesters put up little physical resistance, even as plain-clothes police shoved many of them to drive them from the park.

White smoke billowed skyward as a phalanx of riot police marched inside the park on Saturday. They tore down protesters' banners, toppled a communal food stall, and sprayed tear gas over the tents and urging those inside to get out.

Images on Turkish TV showed activists carrying one woman on a stretcher through a rank of riot police and into an ambulance, and a man splayed out, motionless, on the ground before a few others picked him up barehanded and hauled him away. For over two weeks, protesters had defied Erdogan's warnings to vacate the area.

Tayfun Kahraman, a member of Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest movements, said an untold number of people in the park had been injured — some from rubber bullets.

"Let them keep the park, we don't care anymore. Let it all be theirs. This crackdown has to stop. The people are in a terrible state," he told The Associated Press by phone.

A brutal police intervention on May 31 against those protesting plans to redevelop the square and the park had sparked the biggest anti-government protests in Turkey in decades and dented Erdogan's international reputation.

The protests, which at one point spread to dozens of Turkish cities and towns, turned into a much broader expression of discontent about Erdogan's government, and what many say is his increasingly authoritarian decision-making.

Erdogan, who was elected with 50 percent of the vote for his third term in 2011, vehemently rejects the accusations by protesters and points to his strong support base

As they entered the park on Saturday police shouted to the protesters: "This is an illegal act, this is our last warning to you — Evacuate."

Shortly before the police launched their operation, Erdogan had threatened protesters in a boisterous speech in Sincan, a suburb of the capital Ankara, that is a stronghold of his Justice and Development Party.

"I say this very clearly: either Taksim Square is cleared, or if it isn't cleared then the security forces of this country will know how to clear it," Erdogan said.

A second pro-government rally is planned for Sunday in Istanbul, though Erdogan has previously said that the rallies were not designed as "an alternative" to the demonstrations at Gezi Park, but part of early campaigning for local elections next March.

On Saturday, Erdogan lashed out at what he called the "plot" behind the biggest street protests in his 10-year tenure.

"Over the last 17 days, I know that in all corners of Turkey, millions and billions have prayed for us," Erdogan said, as he moved about the stage. "You saw the plot that was being carried out, the trap being set." He said his supporters represented the "silent masses."

"You are here, and you are spoiling the treacherous plot, the treacherous attack!" he said, insisting unspecified groups both inside and outside Turkey had conspired to mount the protests centered on Istanbul — and that he had the documents to prove it.

The crowd chanted in response: "Stand straight, don't bow, the people are with you!"

In his speech, he focused on some protesters who have clashed with police — at time by throwing stones and firebombs.

"There is no breaking and burning here, we are people of love," Erdogan said. "If people want to see the real Turkey, they should come here to Sincan,"

Erdogan already has offered to defer to a court ruling on the legality of the government's contested park redevelopment plan, and floated the possibility of a referendum on it. But concessions over the park seemed not to be enough.

Earlier this week, Erdogan ordered Taksim Square to be cleared of protesters. Police moved past improvised barricades on Tuesday, firing tear gas and rubber bullets and using water cannons to fend off small groups of demonstrators throwing stones, bottles and firebombs. Tear gas was also fired through the trees into the park, although the protesters were not removed.

Taksim Square itself returned to normal right after the end of the police operation early Wednesday. Traffic returned, the protest banners and flags were taken down, and cafes set up their chairs and tables outside again. At night, demonstrators still spill out from the park down the steps, while riot police kept watch from the edges.

Kahraman, the member of the Taksim Solidarity group who met with Erdogan in last-ditch talks that lasted until the pre-dawn hours Friday, said the protesters had agreed to continue their sit-in at Gezi Park after holding a series of discussions.

"We shall remain in the park until all of our democratic rights are recognized," he told The Associated Press earlier Saturday, insisting that four key demands laid out by protesters in the talks had not been met.

The group has demanded that the park be left intact, anyone responsible for excessive police force resign or be fired, all activists detained in the protests be released, and the police use of tear gas and other non-lethal weapons be banned.

According to the government's redevelopment plan for Taksim Square that caused the sit-in, the park would be replaced with a replica Ottoman-era barracks. Under initial plans, the construction would have housed a shopping mall, though that has since been amended to the possibility of an opera house, a theater and a museum with cafes.

Earlier Saturday, President Abdullah Gul wrote on Twitter that "everyone should now return home," insisting that "the channels for discussion and dialogue" have opened — an apparent reference to the talks between Erdogan and a small group of delegates from the protest.

___

Keaten reported from Ankara, Turkey. Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

"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?
6/15/2013 9:07:08 PM

AP IMPACT: Snowden's life surrounded by spycraft


Associated Press/The Guardian - FILE - This Sunday, June 9, 2013 photo provided by The Guardian newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the U.S. National Security Agency, in Hong Kong. Posts to online blogs and forums, public records and interviews with Snowden’s neighbors, teachers and acquaintances reveal someone who prized the American ideal of personal freedom but became disenchanted with the way government secretly operates in the name of national security. (AP Photo/The Guardian)

FILE - This Sept. 19, 2007 file photo shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md. When Edward Snowden joined friends in his late teens to edit a website built around a shared interest in Japanese animation, they chartered the venture from an apartment in military housing at Fort George G. Meade, the 8-square-mile installation that houses the NSA center dubbed the Puzzle Palace and calls itself the "nation's pre-eminent center for information, intelligence and cyber." (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
A real estate sign stands in front of a home in Waipahu, Hawaii on Sunday, June 9, 2013 where Edward Snowden, source of disclosures about the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs, lived with his girlfriend. A Hawaii real estate agent says Snowden and his girlfriend moved out of the home near Honolulu on May 1, 2013 leaving nothing behind. (AP Photo/Anita Hofschneider)
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — In the suburbs edged by woods midway between Baltimore and the nation's capital, residents long joked that the government spy shop next door was so ultra-secretive its initials stood for "No Such Agency." But when Edward Snowden grew up here, the National Security Agency's looming presence was both a very visible and accepted part of everyday life.

When Snowden —the 29-year-old intelligence contractor whose leak of top-secret documents has exposed sweeping government surveillance programs — went to Arundel High School, the agency regularly sent employees from its nearby black-glass headquarters to tutor struggling math students.

When Snowden went on to Anne Arundel Community College in the spring of 1999 after leaving high school halfway through his sophomore year, he arrived on a campus developing a specialty in cybersecurity training for future employees of the NSA and Department of Defense, though, according to the records, he never took such a class.

And when Snowden joined friends in his late teens to edit a website built around a shared interest in Japanese animation, they chartered the venture from an apartment in military housing at Fort George G. Meade, the 8-square-mile installation that houses the NSA center dubbed the Puzzle Palace and calls itself the "nation's pre-eminent center for information, intelligence and cyber."

In this setting, it's easy to see how the young Snowden was exposed to the notion of spycraft as a career, first with the Central Intelligence Agency and later as a systems analyst for two companies under contract to the NSA. But details of his early life — in the agency's shadows and with both parents working for other branches of the federal government — only magnify the contradictions inherent in Snowden's decision to become a leaker.

What, after all, did he think he was getting into when he signed up to work for the nation's espionage agencies? And what specifically triggered a "crisis of conscience" — as described by a friend who knew him when he worked for the CIA — so profound that it convinced him to betray the secrets he was sworn to keep?

The latter is a question that even Snowden, in interviews since his disclosures, has answered piecemeal, describing his decisions as the same ones any thoughtful person would make if put in his position.

"I'm no different from anybody else," he said in a video interview with The Guardian, seated with his back to a mirror in what appears to be a Hong Kong hotel room, the tropical sunlight filtering through a curtained window. "I don't have special skills. I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what's happening and goes: This is not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong."

Posts to online blogs and forums, public records and interviews with Snowden's neighbors, teachers and acquaintances reveal someone who prized the American ideal of personal freedom but became disenchanted with the way government secretly operates in the name of national security.

Those who knew him describe him as introspective, but seem puzzled by where the mindset led him.

"He's very nice, shy, reserved," Jonathan Mills, the father of Snowden's longtime girlfriend, told The Associated Press outside his home in Laurel, Md. "He's always had strong convictions of right and wrong, and it kind of makes sense, but still, a shock."

Snowden, who was born in 1983, spent his early years in Elizabeth City, N.C., before his family moved to the Maryland suburbs when he was 9. His father, Lonnie, was a warrant officer for the U.S. Coast Guard, since retired. His mother, Elizabeth, who goes by Wendy, went to work for the U.S. District Court in Maryland in 1998 and is now its chief deputy of administration and information technology. An older sister, Jessica, is a lawyer working as a research associate for the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, according to LinkedIn.

In the suburbs south of Baltimore, the younger Snowden attended public elementary and middle schools in Crofton. In the fall of 1997, he enrolled at Arundel High School, a four-year school with about 2,000 students.

At all three schools, many parents worked for the military, nearby federal agencies and the contractors serving them. But those employed at the NSA were tight-lipped, said Jerud Ryker, a math teacher who retired from Arundel in 1998. He recounted conversations over the years with people who mentioned they worked for the spy agency.

"Oh, what do you do?" Ryker says he asked. The answer was always the same: "Nothing that I can talk about."

At Arundel, Snowden stayed only through the first half of his sophomore year, a school district spokesman said. Former teachers and classmates interviewed in the days since he surfaced as the leaker said they had no recollection of him.

It's not clear why he left. Four years later, in a post Snowden wrote for the anime website jokingly explaining his irritation with cartoon convention volunteers, he wrote: "I really am a nice guy, though. You see, I act arrogant and cruel because I was not hugged enough as a child, and because the public education system turned its wretched, spiked back on me."

Years later, he "made a big deal of it (failing to finish high school), just in our everyday conversations,"Mavanee Anderson, who met Snowden when they worked together in Switzerland in 2007, said in an interview with MSNBC. "I think he was slightly embarrassed by it."

With high school behind him, Snowden registered at the community college, taking for-credit classes from 1999 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005, as well as some non-credit classes in between, spokeswoman Laurie Farrell said. Snowden told friends and reporters that he later earned a high school GED certificate.

In 2001, Snowden's parents divorced and his father moved to Pennsylvania. The next year his mother bought a gray clapboard-sided condominium in nearby Ellicott City, Md., and her son, then 19, moved in by himself. His mother dropped by with groceries from time to time and a girlfriend visited on weekends, said Joyce Kinsey, a neighbor who lives across the street from the unit, where Snowden's mother now resides.

Otherwise, Snowden appeared most often by himself, said Kinsey, who recalled seeing him working on a computer through the open blinds "at all times of the day and night," a period that coincided with his work on the anime venture, Ryuhana Press.

During this same time, it appears Snowden became a prolific participant in a technology blog, Arstechnica, under the pseudonym TheTrueHOOHA, posting more than 750 comments between late 2001 and mid-2012. In 2002, he posted a query asking for advice about getting an information technology job in Japan and mentioned he was studying Japanese. Later he argued that by pirating poorly made software he was justly punishing companies for their ineptitude.

But he also touched on questions of security and privacy.

In one October 2003 thread, he asked so many questions about how to hide the identity of his computer server that another discussion participant asked why he was being so paranoid.

Snowden's answer: "Patriot Act. If they misinterpret that actions I perform, I could be a cyb4r terrorist and that would be very ... bad."

In another post that fall, he mulled the politics of personal identity.

"This is entirely dependent on the individual -- as is the definition of freedom. Freedom isn't a word the can be (pardon) freely defined," he wrote. "The saying goes, 'Live free or die,' I believe. That seems to intimate a conditional dependence on freedom as a requirement for happiness."

In that discussion, Snowden mentioned that he had identified himself as a Buddhist in paperwork he filled out for the Army. And in May 2004, he enlisted, with aspirations of becoming a Green Beret.

"I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression," he told The Guardian. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone."

Snowden reported to Fort Benning, Ga., in June 2004, where "he attempted to qualify to become a special forces soldier but did not complete the requisite training and was administratively discharged," said an Army spokesman, Col. David H. Patterson Jr.

Snowden left the Army at the end of that September. He mentioned on the tech forum that he was discharged after breaking both legs in accident, a detail the Army could not confirm.

He returned home, enrolling again in classes at the community college and working through most of 2005 as a security guard at the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language, a mile off campus. The center, affiliated with the Department of Defense, says on its LinkedIn page that it was founded after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to help the intelligence community improve language preparedness. But a university spokesman said the center's work is not classified.

When he went public with his decision to leak the NSA's documents, Snowden told interviewers that he studied at Maryland, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Liverpool.

A Maryland spokesman, Crystal Brown, said Snowden did not take classes at the school's flagship campus. However, Robert Ludwig, a spokesman for the University of Maryland University College, which offers classes online and at military bases, said Snowden registered for one term in its Asia Division in the summer of 2009, but did not earn a certificate or degree.

Johns Hopkins said it had no record of Snowden taking classes. The only possibility, the school said, is that he might have enrolled at a private, for-profit entity that offered career training under the name Computer Career Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The university said it ended its relationship with the training school in 2009 and it had since shut down, making it impossible to check any records.

Liverpool said in a statement that Snowden had registered for an online masters' program in computer security in 2011, but never completed it.

Snowden has said that he was hired by the CIA to work on information technology security and in 2007 was assigned by the agency to work in Geneva, Switzerland. Anderson, Snowden's friend at the time, made the same assertion.

The Swiss foreign ministry confirmed that Snowden lived and worked in Geneva, where it says he was accredited to the United Nations as a U.S. Mission employee from March 2007 to February 2009.

Snowden appears to have been well-known among U.S. staff in Geneva, though none of those contacted by the AP would comment about him. But Anderson, who met Snowden when she spent part of 2007 as a legal intern at the mission, said many others can't speak out in his defense, for fear of losing their jobs. In both the cable TV interview and an op-ed piece for Tennessee's Chattanooga Times Free Press, she recalled him fondly as very intelligent — and increasingly troubled about his work.

"During that time period he did quit the CIA, so I knew that he was having a crisis of conscience of sorts," Anderson said in the TV interview. "But I am still surprised, even shocked. He never gave me any indication that he would reveal anything that was top secret." She could not be reached for additional comment.

Snowden told The Guardian he was discouraged by an incident in which he claimed CIA agents tried to recruit a Swiss banker to provide secret information. They purposely got him drunk, Snowden said, and when he was arrested for driving while intoxicated, an agent offered to help as a way to forge a bond.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he said.

Snowden has said he left the embassy to take a job with private contractors for the NSA — first with Dell, the computer company.

That work appears to have taken him to multiple locations. Public records show Snowden had a mailing address with the U.S. military in Asia, and he has said that he worked at an NSA installation on a U.S. military base in Japan. His girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, wrote on her blog that the two had fallen in love with Japanese street festivals.

By then, Snowden and Mills — who was raised in Laurel, Md., on the opposite side of Fort Meade from where Snowden grew up — had long been a couple, albeit a study in contrasts. The 28-year-old Mills, who earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, styles herself a performer, frequently posting carefully composed photos to a blog and Facebook page, many of them showing her scantily clad, pole dancing and doing acrobatics.

A friend of Mills from Laurel High School, Erin Shaw, said that back then Mills was a creative spirit, notable in the photography work they did together on the school newspaper, The Shield. But she also was relatively quiet, making it a surprise that she ended up comfortable as a performer, rather than in an arts-related job behind the camera or backstage, Shaw said.

"Lindsay is a wonderful, sweet, caring person who is artistic and beautiful," Shaw said, speaking in the midst of a move from Texas to California. "The idea of caring about state secrets does not occur to me that is anything she would be part of or care about."

After Japan, Snowden's work took him back to Maryland. In March 2012, he listed an address in Columbia when he made a donation to Rep. Ron Paul's campaign for president. But when he made another contribution to the campaign two months later, Snowden listed an address in Hawaii. Mills, his girlfriend, joined him in Hawaii in June of last year, and they settled into a rented blue house on a corner lot fringed with palmettos.

Neighbors said the couple were pleasant, quiet and kept to themselves.

Angel Cunanan, a 79-year-old doctor who lives next door, said he would wave to them and say hello in the morning.

"Sometimes I said, 'Why don't you come in for a cup of coffee?' But they never did," Cunanan said. Cunanan says Snowden said he worked for the military.

Another neighbor, Carolyn Tijing, said the couple always left the blinds closed and stacked the garage from floor to ceiling with moving boxes, so high they blocked any view inside.

Mills' online posts hint at a happy home life in Hawaii together: pictures of sunsets, time on the beach and his-and-hers cups of Japanese shaved ice.

But by January of this year, Snowden secretly was edging forward with a plan to leak NSA documents, contacting documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras with an anonymous offer to share information on U.S. intelligence. The following month he contacted Glenn Greenwald, an American living in Brazil who writes on surveillance issues for The Guardian, as well as Barton Gellman, a reporter for The Washington Post.

In March, Snowden switched employers, moving to contractor Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii. The company confirmed he was employee for less than three months, at an annual salary of $122,000.

Snowden and Mills prepared for a May 1 move a couple of blocks away, because the owner of the rental wanted to put it up for sale.

"E and I received the keys to our next abode yesterday," Mills wrote on her blog on April 15. "We took time to envision what each room could look like once we crammed our things in them. And even discussed hanging silks in the two-story main room."

Mills headed back to the East Coast for a visit and when she returned to Hawaii, she wrote, Snowden unexpectedly told her he, too, needed to get away; he told his employer that he needed some time off for medical treatment. On May 20, Snowden flew to Hong Kong.

Three weeks later, as intelligence officials raced to control the damage from the NSA leaks, Snowden revealed himself as the person responsible.

"When you're in positions of privileged access," Snowden told The Guardian, "you see things that may be disturbing...until eventually you realize that these things need to be determined by the public — not by somebody who is simply hired by the government."

___

Geller reported from New York. AP writers Oskar Garcia and Anita Hofschneider in Hawaii; John Heilprin in Geneva; Kimberly Dozier, Jack Gillum and Jessica Gresko in Washington, D.C.; Emery Dalesio in Raleigh, N.C.; Brock Vergakis in Elizabeth City, N.C.; Sylvia Hui in London; and AP researchers Judith Ausuebel, Rhonda Shafner and Monika Mathur in New York contributed to this story. Geller can be reached at features @ ap.org. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AdGeller

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org


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

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