Breaking News & Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Govt

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government

04 Aug 2013

Screenshot of Google rerouting CLG Newsletter to spam bin, overriding user's wishes by Lori Price, www.legitgov.org 03 Aug 2013 CLG reader Mark Graffis has a screen-shot of NSAssociate Google relegating the CLG Newsletter to the spam bin. Note that Mark has clg_news @ legitgov.org classified as a 'Friend,' but Google *overrides* that designation and marks the CLG Newsletter as spam. Mark passed this image along, as he has told me that Google continually routes the CLG Newsletter to the spam bin instead of to his inbox.

Breaking: 6.0-magnitude quake hits northern Japan, including Fukushima prefecture 04 Aug 2013 An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale has jolted northern Japan in the same region hit by a giant tsunami and temblor in 2011. The quake shook a wide region including Fukushima and Iwate prefectures. The focus of the quake, which took place at 12:29 p.m. local time (0329 GMT) was in the Pacific off Miyagi prefecture. [HAARP is a busy little bee!]

Huge leak of tritium feared in Fukushima 03 Aug 2013 Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday that an estimated 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of tritium from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant may have flowed into the Pacific Ocean since May 2011. The utility reported the estimate Friday to the Nuclear Regulation Authority after recently admitting that toxic radioactive water from the emergency cooling system set up after the nuclear crisis began on March 11, 2011, is leaking into the sea. The constant injection of water needed to keep the damaged reactors cool after the core meltdowns of March 2011 is generating a new radiation crisis at the plant that officials appear unable to solve without tainting the ocean and marine life.

Radioactive Fukushima groundwater rises above barrier-media 03 Aug 2013 Radioactive groundwater at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has risen to levels above a barrier being built to contain it, highlighting the risk of an increasing amount of contaminated water reaching the sea, Japanese media reported on Saturday. The Asahi newspaper, citing data from a Friday meeting of a task force working on the Fukushima clean-up at Japan's nuclear regulator, estimated that the contaminated radioactive water could swell to the ground surface within three weeks. One of Tepco's biggest challenges is trying to contain radioactive water that cools the reactors as it mixes with some 400 tonnes of fresh groundwater pouring into the plant daily.

Taliban backers, terrorist organisations win £100m in US contracts - Afghanistan 04 Aug 2013 The US government has awarded more than $150m (£98m) in contracts to companies and individuals in Afghanistan that are known to support the Taliban, according to a US spending watchdog. Multimillion dollar contracts have been given over the past five years to 43 companies working in construction, logistics, road building and IT that have links to the insurgents. The head of the US-based Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), John F Sopko, said: "Dating back to 2008, Sigar has identified more than $150m in reconstruction contracts and sub-contracts that have been awarded to companies known to be providing material support to insurgent and terrorist organisations in Afghanistan." [Start reading.]

Pentagon: Guantanamo tab $5.2 billion and counting 30 Jul 2013 New number-crunching by Democrats campaigning for Guantanamo's closure says the Pentagon spends nearly a half-billion dollars a year - a whopping $2.7 million per prisoner - to operate its offshore prison complex in southeast Cuba. The figure is by far the largest per-prisoner cost ever calculated and apparently, for the first time, includes troop costs. The ostensibly temporary Pentagon prison has, since it opened in 2002, been staffed largely by troops trained up on their way to Guantanamo for rotations of nine months to a year. The cost for this year - $454.1 million to operate, staff and build at the prison complex - comes from a report by the Defense Department's Office of the Comptroller.

US airstrike 'accidentally kills' 5 Afghan police 01 Aug 2013 The NATO-led force in Afghanistan has launched an investigation into the accidental killing of five Afghan policemen in a US air attack during an overnight operation. Two policemen were also wounded in the incident Wednesday night, Reuters reported. Afghan special forces called in for air support during a confrontation with a group of Taliban fighters at a police checkpoint, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar. 

CIA had dozens of operatives in Benghazi during consulate attack 02 Aug 2013 Dozens of CIA operatives were reportedly near the scene where US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed last September 11, and the agency has gone to great lengths to keep the operatives' actions a secret. In an exclusive report, CNN said there were as many as 35 Americans on the ground in Benghazi at the time of the attack, 21 of which were working in a building that is believed to be operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. What the operatives were doing there that day remains a mystery, and it appears that the agency is making an extensive effort to try to stop any more information leaks.

Fed court revives KBR electrocution suit 01 Aug 2013 A federal appeals court revived a lawsuit Thursday against a military contractor in the death of a Pittsburgh-area soldier who was electrocuted in his barracks shower at an Army base in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth died in 2008 when an improperly grounded water pump electrified his shower water. In the lawsuit, Maseth's parents say Houston-based contractor [terrorist group] Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc. was legally responsible for the shoddy electrical work that was common in Iraqi-built structures taken over by the U.S. military.

Source: Terrorists behind embassy threat in place 03 Aug 2013 The terror threat prompting the U.S. government to close nearly two dozen embassies and consulates Sunday is the most specific, credible threat information in years, CBS News reports. Intelligence officers have reporting from a reliable source that a major plot is under way and that the team to carry it out has been selected and is in place, CBS News reports. The threat information has been described as the most specific and credible since the foiled plot to blow up British planes en route to the United States in 2006, CBS News reports. The specificity ends there. [Heads up! A big, fat false flag is surely on the way, so USociopaths can get the sheeple to support illegal NSA surveillance, and provide a reason to continue to fork over billions to private contractors--violating our privacy at our expense. --LRP]

Terror warning shuts more embassies in Yemen 04 Aug 2013 France and Germany will join Britain in closing their embassies in Yemen today in response to a threat believed to be linked to the al-Qaeda [al-CIAduh] terrorist network. Yesterday, Interpol issued a global security alert, warning countries to be on their guard following prison breaks thought to involve members of al-Qaeda. Britain stopped short of ­releasing a region-wide alert but added that some embassy staff in Yemen had been withdrawn "due to security concerns". The embassy in Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, will be closed today and tomorrow.

Terror Threat Prompts U.S. to Close Diplomatic Missions 02 Aug 2013 A terrorism threat has prompted the United States to close dozens of American diplomatic missions in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere through the weekend, American officials said Thursday. Officials gave few details about what prompted the move to close an unusually large number of American missions, but said there was "credible" information that an Al Qaeda [al-CIAduh] regional affiliate might be plotting an attack sometime in the coming days. "It's not often that we close a bunch of embassies at once," said one official, adding that the threat was being taken particularly seriously by American intelligence agencies.

Interpol issues global security alert after prison breaks 03 Aug 2013 With the world on heightened alert for Islamist terror attacks in August, Canada's embassy in the capital of Bangladesh will be closed Sunday. The move comes after the U.S. warned Americans to be on alert throughout the month, and announced it would shut down 21 embassies and consulates in mostly Muslim countries Sunday. Britain will shut down its embassy in Yemen on Sunday and Monday. Interpol also sounded the alarm Saturday about a series of recent prison escapes by hundreds of terrorists in Libya, Iraq and Pakistan with 'al-Qaida' connections.

Kevin Rudd names Sept 7 as Australian election date 04 Aug 2013 Kevin Rudd, the newly-returned Australian prime minister, has announced that the nation will go to the ballot box on Sept 7, firing the starting gun on what is expected to be one of the most hotly-contested federal elections in memory. After flying from Brisbane to Canberra to ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament, Mr Rudd issued a statement to his supporters saying "It's on." The issues had been top of his agenda since he wrested back control of the Labor Party, and the country, from his former deputy Julia Gillard in a brazen party room coup on June 27.

Manning's Afghan massacre video that WikiLeaks never released 03 Aug 2013 ...A May 2009 airstrike near the village of Garani, in Farah province, figured prominently in Bradley Manning's trial. He was charged with having leaked a video of the raid, which, according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, "documented a massacre, a war crime." The Garani airstrike allegedly killed as many as 147 villagers, making it the worst civilian casualty incident up to that time. The US military never acknowledged the full scale of the tragedy, insisting that 20 to 30 civilians had died, along with 60 to 65 militants. They did, however, issue a report documenting procedural errors that could have led to the deaths.

'Russia is not a colony, US has no legal basis to claim Snowden' - lawyer 03 Aug 2013 The US government stance on Edward Snowden causes more harm than good to the USA, lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said, calling the US officials' claims of filing "lawfully" grounded requests for his extradition "cynical". According to Kucherena, Russia is "fulfilling its humanitarian mission," and threats of sanctions against Russia if the country does not extradite the whistleblower are groundless. There was absolutely no legal basis provided to back US demands to extradite Snowden, Kucherena reiterated in response to White House press secretary Jay Carney's claims of "very clear and lawful requests in public and private."

NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ --Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden --Weaker regulation of British spies 'a selling point' for NSA 01 Aug 2013 The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes. The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. "GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight," a GCHQ strategy briefing said. The funding underlines the closeness of the relationship between GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency. But it will raise fears about the hold Washington has over the UK's biggest and most important intelligence agency, and whether Britain's dependency on the NSA has become too great.

Brit spies GCHQ harvest all undersea cable comms, all UK calls and data, share with 850,000+ NSA spooks and contractors 21 Jun 2013 The Guardian has published information from another Edward Snowden leak, this one detailing a British wiretapping program by the UK spy agency GCHQ that puts Prism to shame. The GCHQ program, called Tempora, stores all submarine cable traffic and all domestic traffic (Internet packets and recordings of phone-calls) for 30 days, using NSA tools to sort and search it; the quid-pro-quo being that the NSA gets to access this data, too. The program is reportedly staffed by 300 GCHQ spies and 250 NSA spies, and the data produced by the taps is made available to 850,000 NSA employees and contractors. This is all carried out under the rubric of RIPA, the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, a UK electronic spying law passed by Tony Blair's Labour government.

Canada, Mexico become part of U.S. 'homeland' during NSA Senate briefing 01 Aug 2013 American reporters appropriately had a 'wait, what? moment' on Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary committee meeting. Senator Diane Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was defending the National Security Agency's top secret spying when she brought out a prop identifying North America -- the United States, Canada and Mexico -- as the "Homeland". "You may also be surprised to learn that our homeland now includes both Mexico and Canada, two areas that we understood to be autonomous nations that are not part of the United States," noted the Atlantic Wire, the publication which first reported the unorthodox map.

FBI Taps Hacker Tactics to Spy on Suspects --Law Enforcement Officials Expand Use of Tools Such as Spyware as People Under Investigation 'Go Dark,' Evading Wiretaps 04 Aug 2013 Law-enforcement officials in the U.S. are expanding the use of tools routinely used by computer hackers to gather information on suspects, bringing the criminal wiretap into the cyber age. Federal agencies have largely kept quiet about these capabilities, but court documents and interviews with people involved in the programs provide new details about the hacking tools, including spyware delivered to computers and phones through email or Web links--techniques more commonly associated with attacks by criminals. People familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's programs say that the use of hacking tools under court orders has grown as agents seek to keep up with suspects who use new communications technology, including some types of online chat and encryption tools.

Holy fascist police state, Batman! Man questioned by police for Google search history 01 Aug 2013 A former employee of a New York computer company was questioned after his workplace computer search history revealed inquires for "pressure cooker bombs" and "backpacks," but no criminality was determined, the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement Thursday. Authorities have said the bombs used at the Boston Marathon [by authorities] in April, which killed three people and wounded more than 260, involved pressure cookers placed in backpacks. The man was questioned after detectives from the department's intelligence unit received a tip from a Long Island-based computer company claiming the recently released employee's computer had suspicious searches, the police said.

New York woman visited by police after researching pressure cookers online --'What the hell is quinoa?' police asked when Catalano's husband told them what pressure cookers were used for in their household 01 Aug 2013 A New York woman says her family's interest in the purchase of pressure cookers and backpacks led to a home visit by six police investigators demanding information about her job, her husband's ancestry and the preparation of quinoa. Michele Catalano, who lives in Long Island, New York, said her web searches for pressure cookers, her husband's hunt for backpacks and her "news junkie" son's craving for information on the Boston bombings had combined somewhere in the internet ether to create a "perfect storm of terrorism profiling". Members of what she described as a "joint terrorism task force" descended on Catalano's home on Wednesday.

Sen. Obama warned about Patriot Act abuses. President Obama proved him right. 02 Aug 2013 In recent months, Barack Obama has forcefully defended the use of the Patriot Act to gather the phone records of every American. But before he was elected president, he had a very different perspective on the issue. In December 2005, Congress was debating the first re-authorization of the Patriot Act, a controversial 2001 law that gave the federal government expanded power to spy on Americans. And Barack Obama was one of nine senators who signed a letter criticizing the then-current version of the legislation for providing insufficient protections for civil liberties... Congress eventually re-authorized the Patriot Act, including Section 215. A few years later, Obama was elected president of the United States. And under President Obama's watch, the NSA engaged in surveillance suspiciously similar to the broad "fishing expeditions" Sen. Obama warned about.

Balcombe fracking protesters vow to fight on as drilling begins 02 Aug 2013 Drilling for oil started on Friday just outside the small village of Balcombe, in West Sussex, as oil and gas company Cuadrilla completed tests of its equipment and protesters chanted outside, surrounded by police. This is the first time Cuadrilla, which is pioneering the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" in the UK, has been able to start its exploratory drilling. More than 30 people had been arrested by Sussex police as of Friday night, with the prospect of more arrests if the protests intensify now that drilling has begun. About 75 police officers have been deployed on the site.

Mauritius airport on high alert after discovery of H1N1 flu case 02 Aug 2013 Mauritius on Friday put its international airport on high alert after this week's confirmation of the first case of H1N1 flu. Unconfirmed reports indicated that two other H1N1 flu cases had been diagnosed after the first hospitalization, while the Indian Ocean island country's Health Ministry said 30 other cases had been reported. Employees of Mauritius Duty Free Paradise Co. Ltd, where the infected person was working, are very worried after the first hospitalization and accused the authorities of lack of communication.

French court rejects govt ban on Monsanto GM corn 01 Aug 2013 France's top administrative court on Thursday threw out a government ban on US agro-chemicals [agri-terrorists] giant Monsanto from growing a type of genetically modified corn. A moratorium on MON810 corn -- one of just two types of genetically altered food crops whose cultivation is approved by the European Union -- has been in place in France since March 2012. The Council of State court noted in a statement that the moratorium had little legal basis. But France's Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll countered that the government "is not in favour of GM, especially MON810 which is a corn that is resistant to herbicides."

Food Stamp Cuts Twice as Deep in New GOP Proposal 02 Aug 2013 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are considering a new food stamp bill that would cut nutrition assistance by twice as much as a previous bill that died on the House floor last month. The previous measure would have reduced spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $20.5 billion over 10 years, or roughly 2 percent of the program's $800 billion cost in that time frame... A GOP aide confirmed the House [mal]nutrition working group was nearing a proposal that could cut as much as $40 billion from SNAP, but said the framework had not been finalized.

Alison Lundergan Grimes: 'The goal is to win' vs. Mitch McConnell 02 Aug 2013 Alison Lundergan Grimes was 6 years old when Mitch McConnell started his Senate career, and she's held elected office for not even two years. But the fresh Democratic face could give the Senate minority leader the fight of his political life. The Kentucky secretary of state's stump speech focused heavily on McConnell -- she roused supporters with a stampede of attacks against the GOP leader's nearly three-decade tenure in Washington. And Grimes's campaign comes as McConnell's poll numbers are weak, he faces a primary challenge from a deep-pocketed businessman and he's leading a group of Senate Republicans increasingly at war with itself.

Bear Steals Bin at Colorado Springs Restaurant --The bear enjoyed the meal so much that it showed up again early Thursday. 02 Aug 2013 A brazen bear has been caught on camera serving itself a takeaway - by pushing a bin full of leftover German food from car park of a US restaurant. The animal has made repeat visits to the Edelweiss restaurant in Colorado Springs, where security cameras have caught it tucking into waste food. During a Wednesday morning visit to the back door of the restaurant the bear pulled a bin about 15 metres, flipped the container over and opened the lid to eat food tossed out the night before. The Edelweiss signature dish is rouladen - steak pounded and rolled, stuffed with bacon, mustard, onions and pickle, covered in a dark gravy and accompanied by red cabbage and fried potatoes.

ENDS

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