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BulgarianMafia-InControl

Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings
Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Jan 30, 2013

Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you. Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars. As you will see later in this article, the ultra-wealthy have enough money sitting in offshore banks to buy all of the goods and services produced in the United States during the course of an entire year and still be able to pay off the entire U.S. national debt. That is an amount of money so large that it is almost incomprehensible. Under this ne0-feudalist system, all the rest of us are debt slaves, including our own governments. Just look around – everyone is drowning in debt, and all of that debt is making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier. But the ultra-wealthy don’t just sit on all of that wealth. They use some of it to dominate the affairs of the nations. The ultra-wealthy own virtually every major bank and every major corporation on the planet. They use a vast network of secret societies, think tanks and charitable organizations to advance their agendas and to keep their members in line. They control how we view the world through their ownership of the media and their dominance over our education system. They fund the campaigns of most of our politicians and they exert a tremendous amount of influence over international organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. When you step back and take a look at the big picture, there is little doubt about who runs the world. It is just that most people don’t want to admit the truth.

The ultra-wealthy don’t run down and put their money in the local bank like you and I do. Instead, they tend to stash their assets in places where they won’t be taxed such as the Cayman Islands. According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to 32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the globe.

U.S. GDP for 2011 was about 15 trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is sitting at about 16 trillion dollars, so you could add them both together and you still wouldn’t hit 32 trillion dollars.

And of course that does not even count the money that is stashed in other locations that the study did not account for, and it does not count all of the wealth that the global elite have in hard assets such as real estate, precious metals, art, yachts, etc.

The global elite have really hoarded an incredible amount of wealth in these troubled times. The following is from an article on the Huffington Post website…

Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.

The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts – excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses – puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.

The research was carried out for pressure group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.

He used data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and central banks.

But as I mentioned previously, the global elite just don’t have a lot of money. They also basically own just about every major bank and every major corporation on the entire planet.

Please read the full story on Who Really Runs the World further down this INLNews.com web page...
thank you for taking the time for reading this important information....

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Bulgarian students lead wave of protest

Young people occupying institutions all over the country amid growing anger over corruption and unemployment

Kit Gillet in Sofia
The Guardian, Tuesday 26 November 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/26/bulgaria-student-protest-corruption

Opinion polls suggest that around two-thirds of Bulgaria’s 7.3 million people support the student protests. Photograph: Rex Features

Just after 1am inside Sofia University, a handful of young people are spray painting protest banners in a dimly lit corridor. Upstairs in a lecture hall, and dotted around nearby classrooms, fellow students are curled up on the floor asleep. Volunteers in yellow jackets are standing guard at the university gates.

It is the fourth week of an occupation. Hundreds of students in a dozen institutions across Bulgaria have taken over all or parts of their universities, padlocking the gates and adding a new dimension to a movement that has rapidly escalated into the biggest rolling wave of demonstrations since the collapse of communism 24 years ago.

Something has snapped in Bulgaria this year. Fury at corruption and nepotism, youth unemployment at 28.7%, low wages and limited job opportunities that force qualified Bulgarians to find work overseas, and a sense that those in power have for too long put their own interests above those of the country, have coalesced this year into one long pulse of anger.

Public opinion polls suggest that around two-thirds of Bulgaria's 7.3 million people support the movement. "We have to try to get morals back into our political system," said Mina Hristova, a 23-year-old cultural anthropology student. "We are here because we need to show our politicians that there are consequences to their actions."

The state has resorted to bussing in supporters to confront the semi-permanent street demonstrations that have choked Sofia this year. "We've gone through difficult times in the last 23 years, but we've always found a solution," the foreign minister, Kristian Vigenin, told the Guardian on a recent march.

The fury spilled out on to the streets in June when tens of thousands marched through the capital in outrage over the appointment of Delyan Peevski, a well-connected media mogul, as head of the State Agency for National Security. Peevski had lost an earlier position as deputy minister of disaster management after allegations of corruption.

For many in Bulgaria this was painful proof of the nepotistic nature of their political system, which, according to Transparency International, is the second most corrupt among the 28 EU member states, beaten only by Greece.

Peevski's resignation less than 24 hours after his appointment did nothing to quell the anger. Instead, protesters demanded the resignation of the centre-left government of the prime minister, Plamen Oresharski, which had been in office for just six weeks.

Oresharski told the people that it was too soon to judge him, but every day since, protesters have gathered outside parliament to shout slogans and demand real political change. In late July, protesters clashed with riot police after a crowd of 2,000 trapped government officials inside the parliament building for eight hours. It was one of the few nights that saw bloodshed in an otherwise peaceful protest movement.

After five months of protesting, in recent weeks it has been Bulgarian students who have taken the lead, occupying their universities and organising the daily protests outside parliament.

"Every one of us had the feeling that something was wrong from when we were children," said Ivaylo Dinev, a 24-year-old history student and the informal leader of the student protests. "We've seen the influence of the mafia in politics all of our lives, no matter which party is in power. What we need is real change. Before I was 18, I was a rebel without a cause. Now I have a cause."

Inside Sofia University, handmade banners and signs ask students to "talk big" and imagine what they would do if they were in political office. Sleeping bags hang from nearby coat pegs.On a raised platform at the front of the lecture hall, protest leaders discuss plans and strategies.

According to Borislav Gavrilov, a professor of modern history at Sofia University, members of the former communist secret police remain in positions of power across Bulgarian society, wielding unfair influence and stunting the development of the nation. "They are all through the government, the economy, the media – especially the media," he explained. "People are sick and tired of fake change. We had protests in 1997, 2009 – hopefully this is third time lucky."

"Trust in the government has now eroded to an unprecedented degree," said Daniel Smilov, a professor of political science at Sofia University, adding that protesters have lost their faith in all the political parties. "The government complains that the protesters don't want dialogue, but it is unclear what the dialogue should be about, since the protesters' main demand is new elections and the government refuse to consider that," he said.

Last Tuesday, students clashed with riot police as they tried to form human chains around the exits from parliament. Twenty-three protesters were arrested, and the following day a further 25 were rounded up in their homes in an early-morning operation. "We were just sitting on the ground in front of the police singing protest songs when they tried to pull us apart," said Nona Keranova, a 20-year-old law student, who was with some of the group who were arrested.

Keranova was not arrested, but she says she was dragged along the ground by a policeman and pushed up against a wall. It was unknown people later in the evening, she added, and not the students, who clashed with the police and threw bottles at them. "We are trying to change things peacefully," she said.

Not all the students are happy with the occupation, which has shut down many of the university's faculties, including law and languages. Every evening the students gather in one of the lecture halls to discuss the day's activities and vote on important measures.

Students who are not part of the occupation are invited to come to talk and debate. "We try to explain why this occupation is needed, that it is up to us to keep these protests going," said 19-year-old Teodora Shalvardjieva, who began her studies in international relations weeks before the occupation began. "We can't stop this until the government resigns."

Some are persuaded, but many others just want to get back to their studies, fearful that the whole academic year will be forfeit if the occupation continues for much longer. On Monday it was announced that classes would resume shortly, but that the student occupation would remain in place.

Rise of the far right

Almost 10,000 refugees have arrived in Bulgaria this year, most of them Syrians fleeing the civil war. The surge has fuelled xenophobic tensions and concerns over violent attacks and the growth of rightwing parties.

Last week the new Nationalist party was formed, combining football hooligans, ultranationalists and skinheads, while another faction announced the creation of vigilante groups.

Bulgaria is the poorest member of the EU and many say it cannot support a wave of refugees. In a recent poll, 15% said they approved of violence against foreigners, while 20% wanted the border with Turkey closed.

November has seen a spate of attacks and protests against asylum seekers, and Amnesty has warned that "recent government statements risk inflaming the situation".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/3463957/Inside-Europes-corruption-capital-how-Bulgarias-crime-mafia-plunders-EU-grant-money.html

Inside Europe's corruption capital: how Bulgaria's crime mafia plunders EU grant money

Tilled to this day by horse-drawn ploughs, the rolling pastures of rural Bulgaria have long been known for their cheap wines, strong tobaccos, sweet honey and juicy apricots.

Assen Droumev, former director of the state agriculture fund, appears in court on fraud charges Photo: Linus Moran

By Colin Freeman in Sofia

2:47PM GMT 15 Nov 2008

Yet just a year after this former corner of the Soviet empire became part of the European Union, its country lanes roar to the sound of brand new four-wheel drives, while alongside tumbledown peasant cottages have sprung up smart new villas.

Among the locals sipping brandy in the village bars, there is little doubt what the most lucrative annual harvest is these days. It comes not from the soil or the vine, but from piles of grant application forms marked "Sapard".

Officially the "Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development", Sapard is the multi-billion pound Brussels fund set up to help former Eastern Bloc countries drag their backward farming sectors into the modern world. But in Bulgaria and neighbouring Romania, farm workers are already proving quick to spot what their colleagues in France, Italy and Spain first noticed 30 years ago - that as with any generous subsidies administered from afar, it is ripe for fraud.

"I went last month to a farming town where the locals asked me 'Do you know how to recognise somebody round here who has got a Sapard grant?'" said Bulgarian MP Atanas Atanasov, an outpoken critic of his country's corruption record, which is the worst of all 27 EU nations.

"They said, 'Just look for the people driving the most expensive SUVs.' It isn't accidental that these people have suddenly got so much money, and it isn't just in that one town either. It's everywhere."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/3463957/Inside-Europes-corruption-capital-how-Bulgarias-crime-mafia-plunders-EU-grant-money.html

Inside Europe's corruption capital: how Bulgaria's crime mafia plunders EU grant money

Tilled to this day by horse-drawn ploughs, the rolling pastures of rural Bulgaria have long been known for their cheap wines, strong tobaccos, sweet honey and juicy apricots.

Assen Droumev, former director of the state agriculture fund, appears in court on fraud charges Photo: Linus Moran

By Colin Freeman in Sofia

15 Nov 2008

EU anti-fraud watchdog under investigation

15 Nov 2008

The plundering of the scheme, which handed over more than £2 billion to Bulgaria between 2000 and 2006, is just one of the many murky tales surrounding what has really happened to the vast quantities of taxpayers' cash poured by Brussels bureaucrats into Europe's poorest nation, which is earmarked for another £7 billion between now and 2013.

The funds, a cornerstone of the EU's expansion plan, were originally designed to woo Bulgaria's eight million mainly-Slavic-speaking people away from Moscow's sphere of influence - courting favour by rebuilding crumbling roads and railways and replacing drab-Soviet-style schools and town halls.

But that effort largely overlooked the fact that in Bulgaria, the corrupt, gangster-ridden political class that emerged in the vacuum of communism's collapse already owed far more to Russia than it did to Europe.

Throughout the 1990s, its government became infiltrated by ex-communists, former secret agents and organised criminals known as "thick necks", who to this day cruise the boulevards of Sofia accompanied by bodyguards, and who settle business feuds through contract killings rather than the courts. For many of their number, the EU grants are a once-in-a-lifetime chance not to rebuild their countr, but to line their own pockets.

"The former communists that rule Bulgaria are fond of European money, but not European regulations," said Mr Atanasov. "The wolf will change its fur, but not its temper. I hate to say it as a Bulgarian, but corruption is rife here. It is not so much under the table, as on the table."

Only in July, the European Commission suspended payments of £350 million to Bulgaria, accusing it of mismanagement of European funds through corruption and inefficiency, and failing to prosecute offenders, who are often thought to be shielded through political connections.

Yet although much of the corruption goes undetected, there is little doubt that the whispers Mr Atanasov picks up during his countryside tours are more than mere village gossip. That much has been made clear by a string of cases that opened in Bulgarian courts in the past month, the first in what Brussels says is a litmus test of Sofia's willingness to clean up its act.

In one, eight members of what EU anti-fraud investigators describe as a "criminal company network composed of more than 50 Bulgarian enterprises" face trial for allegedly defrauding Sapard of £4 million in a scam involving grants to replace old meat processing equipment.

Rusting and worn after years of churning out stodgy Soviet fare, the old East German-built meat processors should have been destined for the scrap heap. Instead, they ended up as virtual money machines, after being shipped to an accomplice in East Germany and "bought" back as new for 24 times the original price. A leaked copy of a report by the European Anti-Fraud Office seen by the Sunday Telegraph also accuses the group of committing tax fraud, illegally importing Chinese rabbit meat into the EU with fake health certificates and buying rolling stock from Bulgaria's dilapidated Communist-era railways. The report said that one figure, Mario Nikolov, had "close links to the Bulgarian government", and accused him of passing around 200,000 leva (£90,000) to the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev in 2005.

Further crony capitalism is detailed in allegations that another group member was a business partner of a former government minister who, the report says, tried to "influence an ongoing investigation" against him. The whiff of corruption around Bulgaria's elite grew even stronger last Thursday, when Assen Droumev, the former director of the Bulgarian state agriculture fund, appeared in court on charges that he had misappropriated money from the Sapard fund that he himself was responsible for disbursing.

Both Mr Droumev and Mr Nikolov deny any impropriety, claiming they have been made scapegoats so Sofia can persuade Brussels to reinstate its funding. "I am not guilty, I am proud of my department's work," protested a bemused-looking Mr Droumev on Thursday, as he was brought handcuffed into court by two paramilitary policemen.

The EU says it will watch the two cases closely and will review the funding situation in the spring, ahead of Bulgaria's general elections. "The situation is still problematic," said a spokesman for the European Anti-Fraud Office. "We appreciate that the authorities are going in the right direction and we await the results."

But while Brussels says all it wants is for the Bulgarian courts to start applying the law evenly, the likely role of these two cases in determining whether the purse strings are re-opened means few people believe the defendants will walk free. Seasoned observers of Bulgarian political intrigue already claim to detect a crude political hand in the timing of both the Nikolov and Droumev court appearances, as well as last week's arrest of Bulgarian banking and football tycoon, Hristo Kovachki on tax charges. All three cases, they point out, took place ahead of a scheduled visit from Franz-Hermann Bruener, director-general of the anti-fraud office, to see how things are progressing.

The Bulgarian government says it is doing its best to end what is mainly a legacy from the chaotic post-Soviet years, and that opposition politicians are simply making worse by exaggerating the scale of the problems. As in parts of the Third World, corruption allegations have become so common that they are now part of routine political score-settling, which makes investigating them even more difficult. Many, though, believe that it is still business - corrupt or otherwise - as usual. "All that is happening is that a few people are being nominated as fall guys so that the system can carry on as normal," said one British executive based in Bulgaria. "Things have not been cleaned up since EU accession. If anything, it's got worse."

http://www.euinside.eu/en/analyses/the-mafia-states-according-to-foreign-affairs-magazine

Mafia-States, According to Foreign Affairs Magazine

Published on 16 May 2012 09:58, Adelina Marini, Sofia

"In mafia states such as Bulgaria, Guinea-Bissau, Montenegro, Myanmar (also called Burma), Ukraine, and Venezuela, the national interest and the interests of organised crime are now inextricably intertwined", writes in an article for the influential American magazine Foreign Affairs Moises Naim, in its May/June edition. Mr Naim is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy. In his text the expert points out that the global economic crisis has proved a powerful boost for transnational crime. "Thanks to the weak economy, cash-rich criminal organisations can acquire financially distressed but potentially valuable companies at bargain prices. Fiscal austerity is forcing governments everywhere to cut the budgets of law enforcement agencies and court systems. Millions of people have been laid of and are thus more easily tempted to break the law".

But the bigger problem, according to the author, is, though, that up to now international crime was broadly underestimated as a factor and was viewed more in a national context. Alas, this is no longer the case and it is necessary to pay serious attention to the problem, as well as to internationalise the efforts for its tackling.

According to the definition, which Moises Naim provides for mafia-states, those are statal subjects, where government officials enrich themselves and their families and friends while exploiting the money, muscle, political influence, and global connections of criminal syndicates to cement and expand their own power. Moreover, the highest positions in some of the most profitable illicit enterprises are no longer filled only by professional criminals; they now include senior government officials, legislators, spy chiefs, heads of police departments, military officers, and, in some extreme cases, even heads of state or their family members.

Very often in mafia-states high government officials become integral players in, if not the leaders of, criminal enterprises. The scale, according to the author, is huge and could be compared to the biggest multinational corporations in the world.

The mafia has a state

In his text, the author describes each of the mentioned above 6 mafia-states and quotes the famous remark of General Atanas Atanassov, a member of Bulgaria's parliament and former chief of the counterintelligence of Bulgaria: "Other countries have a mafia, in Bulgaria the mafia has a state". The edition points out that Russia is definitely not the only country where the line between government agencies and criminal gangs is blurred. Last year's Council of Europe report is quoted, in which it is claimed that Kosovo PM Hashim Thaçi and his political allies exert "violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics" and that they occupy important positions in “Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organised crime.”

"The state-crime nexus is perhaps even stronger in Bulgaria", the author writes. "A 2005 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks last year is worth quoting at length, given the disturbing portrait it paints of Bulgaria’s descent into mafia statehood. The cable read, in part: 'Organised crime has a corrupting influence on all Bulgarian institutions, including the government, parliament and judiciary. In an attempt to maintain their influence regardless of who is in power, oc [organised crime] figures donate to all the major political parties. As these figures have expanded into legitimate businesses, they have attempted—with some success—to buy their way into the corridors of power. ... Below the level of the national government and the leadership of the major political parties, oc “owns” a number of municipalities and individual members of parliament. This direct participation in politics—as opposed to bribery—is a relatively new development for Bulgarian oc. Similarly in the regional centre of Velingrad, oc figures control the municipal council and the mayor’s office. Nearly identical scenarios have played out in half a dozen smaller towns and villages across Bulgaria'."

The consequences for foreign policy

But in fact the bigger problem, which can be seen in the text of Moises Naim, is that the foreign policy of mafia-states is directly dependent on the interests of crime syndicates, which is no longer a problem of the country in question or its neighbours. It is a problem of the entire international community. Mr Naim recalls that until very recently foreign policy experts believed that international crime was not such a significant problem as, for instance, the threat of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction and that this problem could be tackled by the domestic legal systems. This is refuted by itself because it is known that in mafia-states these structures are infected too.

The danger hides not just in the fact that governments in a mafia-state can participate in illicit trade with nuclear weapons or technologies for the development of nuclear weapons, as was the case of the Pakistani scientist, considered to be the father of the nuclear bomb of Pakistan and who was thought to have been hired by a crime syndicate, dealing with delivery of nuclear technology for North Korea and Iran. The author quotes also the example of the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia for the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. According to Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment’s expert on the Caucasus, and quoted by Moises Naim, before the conflict criminal organisations operated highly profitable operations in South Ossetia, where illicit trade accounted for a significant part of the economy - a situation described in details in the book of Misha Glenny, a British journalist, McMafia.

Moises Naim admits that it is difficult to find evidence in support of the direct link in this case, but the scale of illicit activities suggests for an active participation of high level Russian officials, who acted as bosses of criminals and as their partners. It is mentioned that the conflict was fuelled by many other factors, among which ethnic strife, domestic Georgian politics, and Russia’s desire to assert its hegemony in its near abroad, but it it obvious that interested parties were pushing the Kremlin toward war. The author thinks that, in fact, governments involved in illicit activities are much more prone to use force when their access to profitable markets is threatened.

The rise of mafia-states requires urgency in the search for ways to internationalise the fight against crime, writes in conclusion the author. A promising approach could be the creation of "coalitions of the honest" among law enforcement agencies that are less likely to have been penetrated or captured by criminal groups. Some countries, he writes, already experiment with relations outside the usual cooperation in the area of the fight against crime by involving not only the law enforcement agencies but also representatives of intelligence bodies and the armed forces.

Additional step could be to develop multinational networks of magistrates, judges, police officials, intelligence analysts, and policymakers to encourage a greater degree of cooperation than Interpol affords by building on the trust that exists among senior law enforcement officers who have fought transnational criminal networks together for decades.

"Unfortunately, despite the near-universal recognition that combating international crime requires international action, most anti crime initiatives remain primarily domestic. And although mafia states have transformed international crime into a national security issue, the responsibility for combating it still rests almost exclusively with law enforcement agencies", concludes Moises Naim in his article for the Foreign Affairs magazine, entitled "Mafia-States. Organised Crime Takes Office".

Another problem he points out in his article is that it is hard to gather evidence about the links between organised crime
and governments, especially in mafia-states, where more investigative journalists are needed and higher activity of the civil society.
By the way, in the past two years the European Commission especially emphasises on the role of civil society in its reports
under the Control and Verification Mechanism in the area of the judiciary, with which Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the very existence of this mechanism is an evidence of the fact that there
is a systemic problem with organised crime in Bulgaria but it is insufficient to show the scale.

Who Runs The World?
Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists .....
Is Pulling The Strings

http://www.infowars.com/who-runs-the-world-solid-proof-that-a-core-group-of-wealthy-elitists-is-pulling-the-strings/

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Jan 30, 2013

Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you. Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars. As you will see later in this article, the ultra-wealthy have enough money sitting in offshore banks to buy all of the goods and services produced in the United States during the course of an entire year and still be able to pay off the entire U.S. national debt. That is an amount of money so large that it is almost incomprehensible. Under this ne0-feudalist system, all the rest of us are debt slaves, including our own governments. Just look around – everyone is drowning in debt, and all of that debt is making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier. But the ultra-wealthy don’t just sit on all of that wealth. They use some of it to dominate the affairs of the nations. The ultra-wealthy own virtually every major bank and every major corporation on the planet. They use a vast network of secret societies, think tanks and charitable organizations to advance their agendas and to keep their members in line. They control how we view the world through their ownership of the media and their dominance over our education system. They fund the campaigns of most of our politicians and they exert a tremendous amount of influence over international organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. When you step back and take a look at the big picture, there is little doubt about who runs the world. It is just that most people don’t want to admit the truth.

The ultra-wealthy don’t run down and put their money in the local bank like you and I do. Instead, they tend to stash their assets in places where they won’t be taxed such as the Cayman Islands. According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to 32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the globe.

U.S. GDP for 2011 was about 15 trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is sitting at about 16 trillion dollars, so you could add them both together and you still wouldn’t hit 32 trillion dollars.

And of course that does not even count the money that is stashed in other locations that the study did not account for, and it does not count all of the wealth that the global elite have in hard assets such as real estate, precious metals, art, yachts, etc.

The global elite have really hoarded an incredible amount of wealth in these troubled times. The following is from an article on the Huffington Post website…

Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.

The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts – excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses – puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.

The research was carried out for pressure group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.

He used data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and central banks.

But as I mentioned previously, the global elite just don’t have a lot of money. They also basically own just about every major bank and every major corporation on the entire planet.

According to an outstanding NewScientist article, a study of more than 40,000 transnational corporations conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich discovered that a very small core group of huge banks and giant predator corporations dominate the entire global economic system…

An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The researchers found that this core group consists of just 147 very tightly knit companies…

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

The following are the top 25 banks and corporations at the heart of this “super-entity”. You will recognize many of the names on the list…

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation

The ultra-wealthy elite often hide behind layers and layers of ownership, but the truth is that thanks to interlocking corporate relationships, the elite basically control almost every Fortune 500 corporation.

The amount of power and control that this gives them is hard to describe.

Unfortunately, this same group of people have been running things for a very long time. For example, New York City Mayor John F. Hylan said the following during a speech all the way back in 1922…

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.

They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business.

These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.

These international bankers created the central banks of the world (including the Federal Reserve), and they use those central banks to get the governments of the world ensnared in endless cycles of debtfrom which there is no escape. Government debt is a way to “legitimately” take money from all of us, transfer it to the government, and then transfer it into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy.

Today, Barack Obama and almost all members of Congress absolutely refuse to criticize the Fed, but in the past there have been some brave members of Congress that have been willing to take a stand. For example, the following quote is from a speech that Congressman Louis T. McFadden delivered to the U.S. House of Representatives on June 10, 1932…

Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board has cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.

Sadly, most Americans still believe that the Federal Reserve is a “federal agency”, but that is simply not correct. The following comes from factcheck.org…

The stockholders in the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation’s more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed banks.

According to researchers that have looked into the ownership of the big Wall Street banks that dominate the Fed, the same names keep coming up over and over: the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the Lazards, the Schiffs and the royal families of Europe.

But ultra-wealthy international bankers have not just done this kind of thing in the United States. Their goal was to create a global financial system that they would dominate and control. Just check out what Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley once wrote…

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Sadly, most Americans have never even heard of the Bank for International Settlements, but it is at the very heart of the global financial system. The following is from Wikipedia…

As an organization of central banks, the BIS seeks to make monetary policy more predictable and transparent among its 58 member central banks. While monetary policy is determined by each sovereign nation, it is subject to central and private banking scrutiny and potentially to speculation that affects foreign exchange rates and especially the fate of export economies. Failures to keep monetary policy in line with reality and make monetary reforms in time, preferably as a simultaneous policy among all 58 member banks and also involving the International Monetary Fund, have historically led to losses in the billions as banks try to maintain a policy using open market methods that have proven to be based on unrealistic assumptions.

The ultra-wealthy have also played a major role in establishing other important international institutions such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. In fact, the land for the United Nations headquarters in New York City was purchased and donated by John D. Rockefeller.

The international bankers are “internationalists” and they are very proud of that fact.

The elite also dominate the education system in the United States. Over the years, the Rockefeller Foundation and other elitist organizations have poured massive amounts of money into Ivy League schools. Today, Ivy League schools are considered to be the standard against which all other colleges and universities in America are measured, and the last four U.S. presidents were educated at Ivy League schools.

The elite also exert a tremendous amount of influence through various secret societies (Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, etc.), through some very powerful think tanks and social clubs (the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Bohemian Grove, Chatham House, etc.), and through a vast network of charities and non-governmental organizations (the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, etc.).

But for a moment, I want to focus on the power the elite have over the media. In a previous article, I detailed how just six monolithic corporate giants control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. These giant corporations own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.

Considering the fact that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month, the influence of these six giant corporations should not be underestimated. The following are just some of the media companies that these corporate giants own…

Time Warner

Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine

Walt Disney

ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books

Viacom

Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1

News Corporation

Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
DIRECTV
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan

CBS Corporation

CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network

NBC Universal

Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Trio
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video

And of course the elite own most of our politicians as well. The following is a quote from journalist Lewis Lapham…

“The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country’s equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas.”

Have you ever wondered why things never seem to change in Washington D.C. no matter who we vote for?

Well, it is because both parties are owned by the establishment.

It would be nice to think that the American people are in control of who runs things in the U.S., but that is not how it works in the real world.

In the real world, the politician that raises more money wins more than 80 percent of the time in national races.

Our politicians are not stupid – they are going to be very good to the people that can give them the giant piles of money that they need for their campaigns. And the people that can do that are the ultra-wealthy and the giant corporations that the ultra-wealthy control.

Are you starting to get the picture?

There is a reason why the ultra-wealthy are referred to as “the establishment”. They have set up a system that greatly benefits them and that allows them to pull the strings.

So who runs the world?

They do. In fact, they even admit as much.

David Rockefeller wrote the following in his 2003 book entitled “Memoirs”…

“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

There is so much more that could be said about all of this. In fact, an entire library of books could be written about the power and the influence of the ultra-wealthy international bankers that run the world.

But hopefully this is enough to at least get some conversations started.

So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…

This article was posted: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 5:41 am

Tags: business, economics, financial, money

Secret to Prism success: Even bigger data seizure

What makes Prism shine? National Security Agency's megadata collection from Internet pipeline

By Stephen Braun, Anne Flaherty, Jack Gillum and Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press | Associated Press

FILE - In this Jan. 31, 2008, file photo President Bush waves after signing a 15-day extension of the Protect America Act after a speech in Las Vegas. Sternly prodding Congress, Bush told lawmakers they were jeopardizing the nation's safety by failing to lock in the government eavesdropping law. When the Protect America Act made warrantless wiretapping legal, lawyers and executives at major technology companies knew what was about to happen. They didn't know that its passage gave birth to a top-secret NSA program, officially labeled US-98XN. It was known as Prism. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)" src="http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/qoiw6NYvNvd.hOcyTj6XDQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MjQ2Mjtjcj0xO2N3PTM2MDA7ZHg9MDtkeT0wO2ZpPXVsY3JvcDtoPTQzMTtxPTg1O3c9NjMw/http://globalfinance.zenfs.com/images/US_AHTTP_AP_HEADLINES_BUSINESS/d2a9eaf40bfdd414340f6a706700bd69_original.jpg" width="630" height="431"

Associated Press -Viewo

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.

Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.

The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.

Often there was no easy way to tell if the information belonged to foreigners or Americans. So much data was changing hands that one former Microsoft employee recalls that the engineers were anxious about whether the company should cooperate.

Inside Microsoft, some called it "Hoovering" — not after the vacuum cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered dirt on countless Americans.

This frenetic, manual process was the forerunner to Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies. As laws changed and technology improved, the government and industry moved toward a streamlined, electronic process, which required less time from the companies and provided the government data in a more standard format.

The revelation of Prism this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe.

But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.

Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

Whether by clever choice or coincidence, Prism appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, Prism takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information.

The fact that it is productive is not surprising; documents show it is one of the major sources for what ends up in the president's daily briefing. Prism makes sense of the cacophony of the Internet's raw feed. It provides the government with names, addresses, conversation histories and entire archives of email inboxes.

Many of the people interviewed for this report insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a classified, continuing effort. But those interviews, along with public statements and the few public documents available, show there are two vital components to Prism's success.

The first is how the government works closely with the companies that keep people perpetually connected to each other and the world. That story line has attracted the most attention so far.

The second and far murkier one is how Prism fits into a larger U.S. wiretapping program in place for years.

___

Deep in the oceans, hundreds of cables carry much of the world's phone and Internet traffic. Since at least the early 1970s, the NSA has been tapping foreign cables. It doesn't need permission. That's its job.

But Internet data doesn't care about borders. Send an email from Pakistan to Afghanistan and it might pass through a mail server in the United States, the same computer that handles messages to and from Americans. The NSA is prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That's the FBI's job and it requires a warrant.

Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans' private conversations.

Tapping into those cables allows the NSA access to monitor emails, telephone calls, video chats, websites, bank transactions and more. It takes powerful computers to decrypt, store and analyze all this information, but the information is all there, zipping by at the speed of light.

"You have to assume everything is being collected," said Bruce Schneier, who has been studying and writing about cryptography and computer security for two decades.

The New York Times disclosed the existence of this effort in 2005. In 2006, former AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the company had allowed the NSA to install a computer at its San Francisco switching center, a spot where fiber optic cables enter the U.S.

What followed was the most significant debate over domestic surveillance since the 1975 Church Committee, a special Senate committee led by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, reined in the CIA and FBI for spying on Americans.

Unlike the recent debate over Prism, however, there were no visual aids, no easy-to-follow charts explaining that the government was sweeping up millions of emails and listening to phone calls of people accused of no wrongdoing.

The Bush administration called it the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and said it was keeping the United States safe.

"This program has produced intelligence for us that has been very valuable in the global war on terror, both in terms of saving lives and breaking up plots directed at the United States," Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time.

The government has said it minimizes all conversations and emails involving Americans. Exactly what that means remains classified. But former U.S. officials familiar with the process say it allows the government to keep the information as long as it is labeled as belonging to an American and stored in a special, restricted part of a computer.

That means Americans' personal emails can live in government computers, but analysts can't access, read or listen to them unless the emails become relevant to a national security investigation.

The government doesn't automatically delete the data, officials said, because an email or phone conversation that seems innocuous today might be significant a year from now.

What's unclear to the public is how long the government keeps the data. That is significant because the U.S. someday will have a new enemy. Two decades from now, the government could have a trove of American emails and phone records it can tap to investigative whatever Congress declares a threat to national security.

The Bush administration shut down its warrantless wiretapping program in 2007 but endorsed a new law, the Protect America Act, which allowed the wiretapping to continue with changes: The NSAgenerally would have to explain its techniques and targets to a secret court in Washington, but individual warrants would not be required.

Congress approved it, with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the midst of a campaign for president, voting against it.

"This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide," Obama said in a speech two days before that vote. "I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom."

___

When the Protect America Act made warrantless wiretapping legal, lawyers and executives at major technology companies knew what was about to happen.

One expert in national security law, who is directly familiar with how Internet companies dealt with the government during that period, recalls conversations in which technology officials worried aloud that the government would trample on Americans' constitutional right against unlawful searches, and that the companies would be called on to help.

The logistics were about to get daunting, too.

For years, the companies had been handling requests from the FBI. Now Congress had given the NSA the authority to take information without warrants. Though the companies didn't know it, the passage of the Protect America Act gave birth to a top-secret NSA program, officially called US-98XN.

It was known as Prism. Though many details are still unknown, it worked like this:

Every year, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence spell out in a classified document how the government plans to gather intelligence on foreigners overseas.

By law, the certification can be broad. The government isn't required to identify specific targets or places.

A federal judge, in a secret order, approves the plan.

With that, the government can issue "directives" to Internet companies to turn over information.

While the court provides the government with broad authority to seize records, the directives themselves typically are specific, said one former associate general counsel at a major Internet company. They identify a specific target or groups of targets. Other company officials recall similar experiences.

All adamantly denied turning over the kind of broad swaths of data that many people believed when the Prism documents were first released.

"We only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers," Microsoft said in a statement.

Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 demands requests for data from all government agencies in the second half of last year. The social media company said fewer than 19,000 users were targeted.

How many of those were related to national security is unclear, and likely classified. The numbers suggest each request typically related to one or two people, not a vast range of users.

Tech company officials were unaware there was a program named Prism. Even former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials who were on the job when the program went live and were aware of its capabilities said this past week that they didn't know what it was called.

What the NSA called Prism, the companies knew as a streamlined system that automated and simplified the "Hoovering" from years earlier, the former assistant general counsel said. The companies, he said, wanted to reduce their workload. The government wanted the data in a structured, consistent format that was easy to search.

Any company in the communications business can expect a visit, said Mike Janke, CEO of Silent Circle, a company that advertises software for secure, encrypted conversations. The government is eager to find easy ways around security.

"They do this every two to three years," said Janke, who said government agents have approached his company but left empty-handed because his computer servers store little information. "They ask for the moon."

That often creates tension between the government and a technology industry with a reputation for having a civil libertarian bent. Companies occasionally argue to limit what the government takes. Yahoo even went to court and lost in a classified ruling in 2008, The New York Times reported Friday.

"The notion that Yahoo gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users' records is categorically false," Ron Bell, the company's general counsel, said recently.

Under Prism, the delivery process varied by company.

Google, for instance, says it makes secure file transfers. Others use contractors or have set up stand-alone systems. Some have set up user interfaces making it easier for the government, according to a security expert familiar with the process.

Every company involved denied the most sensational assertion in the Prism documents: that the NSA pulled data "directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL and more.

Technology experts and a former government official say that phrasing, taken from a PowerPoint slide describing the program, was likely meant to differentiate Prism's neatly organized, company-provided data from the unstructured information snatched out of the Internet's major pipelines.

In slide made public by the newspapers, NSA analysts were encouraged to use data coming from both Prism and from the fiber-optic cables.

Prism, as its name suggests, helps narrow and focus the stream. If eavesdroppers spot a suspicious email among the torrent of data pouring into the United States, analysts can use information from Internet companies to pinpoint the user.

With Prism, the government gets a user's entire email inbox. Every email, including contacts with American citizens, becomes government property.

Once the NSA has an inbox, it can search its huge archives for information about everyone with whom the target communicated. All those people can be investigated, too.

That's one example of how emails belonging to Americans can become swept up in the hunt.

In that way, Prism helps justify specific, potentially personal searches. But it's the broader operation on the Internet fiber optics cables that actually captures the data, experts agree.

"I'm much more frightened and concerned about real-time monitoring on the Internet backbone," said Wolf Ruzicka, CEO of EastBanc Technologies, a Washington software company. "I cannot think of anything, outside of a face-to-face conversation, that they could not have access to."

One unanswered question, according to a former technology executive at one of the companies involved, is whether the government can use the data from Prism to work backward.

For example, not every company archives instant message conversations, chat room exchanges or videoconferences. But if Prism provided general details, known as metadata, about when a user began chatting, could the government "rewind" its copy of the global Internet stream, find the conversation and replay it in full?

That would take enormous computing, storage and code-breaking power. It's possible the NSA could use supercomputers to decrypt some transmissions, but it's unlikely it would have the ability to do that in volume. In other words, it would help to know what messages to zero in on.

Whether the government has that power and whether it uses Prism this way remains a closely guarded secret.

___

A few months after Obama took office in 2009, the surveillance debate reignited in Congress because the NSA had crossed the line. Eavesdroppers, it turned out, had been using their warrantless wiretap authority to intercept far more emails and phone calls of Americans than they were supposed to.

Obama, no longer opposed to the wiretapping, made unspecified changes to the process. The government said the problems were fixed.

"I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs," Obama explained recently. "My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards."

Years after decrying Bush for it, Obama said Americans did have to make tough choices in the name of safety.

"You can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," the president said.

Obama's administration, echoing his predecessor's, credited the surveillance with disrupting several terrorist attacks. Leading figures from the Bush administration who endured criticism during Obama's candidacy have applauded the president for keeping the surveillance intact.

Jason Weinstein, who recently left the Justice Department as head of its cybercrime and intellectual property section, said it's no surprise Obama continued the eavesdropping.

"You can't expect a president to not use a legal tool that Congress has given him to protect the country," he said. "So, Congress has given him the tool. The president's using it. And the courts are saying 'The way you're using it is OK.' That's checks and balances at work."

Schneier, the author and security expert, said it doesn't really matter how Prism works, technically. Just assume the government collects everything, he said.

He said it doesn't matter what the government and the companies say, either. It's spycraft, after all.

"Everyone is playing word games," he said. "No one is telling the truth."

Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Peter Svensonn, Adam Goldman, Michael Liedtke and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.

___

Contact the AP's Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations@ap.org

US whistleblower Edward Snowden 'will fight extradition'

Edward Snowden (picture courtesy of the Guardian) says he wants Hong Kong to decide his fate

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22850901

How surveillance came to light

5 June: The Guardian reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon under a top secret court order
6 June: The Guardian and The Washington Post report that the NSA and the FBI are tapping into US Internet companies to track online communication in a programme known as Prism
7 June: The Guardian reports President Obama has asked intelligence agencies to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks
7 June: President Obama defends the programmes, saying they are closely overseen by Congress and the courts
8 June: US director of national intelligence James Clapper calls the leaks "literally gut-wrenching"
9 June: The Guardian names former CIA technical worker Edward Snowden as the source of the leaks

Continue reading the main story

Related Stories

The ex-CIA employee who leaked secret US surveillance details has vowed in an interview to fight any attempt to extradite him from Hong Kong.

Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post: "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."

It is the first interview he has given since disappearing from his hotel room in Hong Kong on Monday.

His leaks led to revelations that the US is systematically seizing vast amounts of phone and web data.

Mr Snowden left Hawaii for Hong Kong shortly before the highly sensitive leaks surfaced.

Continue reading the main story

“

Start Quote

I do not currently feel safe due to the pressure the US government is applying to Hong Kong”

Edward Snowden

"I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality," Mr Snowden told the Post, which said the interview was carried out in a secret location in Hong Kong.

"My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate."

US 'bullying'

The information leaked by Mr Snowden has undoubtedly angered the US government, but so far he has not been charged by the authorities, nor is he the subject of an extradition request.

Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US, although analysts say any attempts to bring Mr Snowden to America may take months and could be blocked by Beijing.

The Post quoted Mr Snowden as saying that he had several opportunities to leave Hong Kong, but that he "would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law."

He also accused Washington of "bullying the Hong Kong government".

"I do not currently feel safe due to the pressure the US government is applying to Hong Kong, but I feel that Hong Kong itself has a strong civil tradition that whistleblowers should not fear," he said.

And when asked whether he had been offered asylum by Russia, he replied: "My only comment is that I am glad there are governments that refuse to be intimidated by great power".

After Mr Snowden's leaks, which led to a series of articles in the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers, US officials confirmed the existence of a secret programme to draw data from the internet, codenamed Prism.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave details of the programme last week.

According to the office's statement, Prism is simply an internal computer system, and not a data-mining programme.

But Washington is coming under increasing pressure from many different quarters to end the practice.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, challenging the legality of the programme.

Separately, a coalition of more than 80 rights groups and internet companies have launched a website, StopWatching.Us, which has called on Congress to launch a full investigation.

And the EU's justice commissioner has written to the US attorney general, questioning him about Prism, and saying she was concerned America's efforts "could have grave adverse consequences for the fundamental rights of EU citizens".

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11 JUNE 2013, US & CANADA
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10 JUNE 2013, US & CANADA

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Rory Cellan-Jones reports on what is known about Prism

It is believed the US is pursuing a criminal investigation, but no extradition request has yet been filed.

The Chinese territory has an extradition treaty with the US, although analysts say any attempts to bring Mr Snowden to America may take months and could be blocked by Beijing.

A petition posted on the White House website calling for Mr Snowden's immediate pardon has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

However, an opinion poll commissioned by the Washington Post suggests a majority of Americans think government monitoring of phone records is acceptable if the aim is to fight terrorism.

Mr Snowden's revelations have led to allegations that the UK's electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, used the US system to spy on British citizens.

US spy leaker Edward Snowden leaves Hong Kong hotel

“ ...I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded.....” Edward Snowden

Major US security leaks

Pentagon papers, 1971: Daniel Ellsberg leaks study showing the government had knowledge it was unlikely to win Vietnam war
Watergate, 1972: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reveal extent of cover-up over burglary at Democrat National Committee HQ
Iran-Contra affair, 1986: Iranian cleric reveals illegal US arms sales to Iran, the proceeds of which are later used to fund Nicaraguan Contras
Valerie Plame, 2003: Ms Plame is revealed to be an undercover CIA agent, ending her covert career
Abu Ghraib, 2004: Publication of pictures showing abuse of detainees at Iraq prison by US officials turns initial media reports of abuse into full-blown scandal
Bradley Manning, 2010: The soldier downloads thousands of classified documents from military servers and hands them over to Wikileaks

Beijing correspondent Damian Grammaticus says China would not want to deal with any extradition of Snowden to the US

11 June 2013

An ex-CIA employee who leaked details of US top-secret phone and internet surveillance has disappeared from his hotel in Hong Kong.

World media reaction

The Liberation Daily in China has harsh words for President Obama: "Five years ago, Obama came to power waving an anti-George W Bush banner. Five years later, he is still exactly the same as George W Bush on invasion of privacy issues."
Russia's Izvestiya compares the revelations to a dystopian novel: "The frightening reality of the 21st Century is that the world has become a house with glass walls, notions of 'personal secrets' and 'confidential information' are turning into fiction before our very eyes."
India's Tribune is more forgiving: "The 9/11 terrorist attacks have changed the environment where cyber snooping is now defendable, even acceptable."

Related Stories

Major US security leaks

Pentagon papers, 1971: Daniel Ellsberg leaks study showing the government had knowledge it was unlikely to win Vietnam war
Watergate, 1972: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reveal extent of cover-up over burglary at Democrat National Committee HQ
Iran-Contra affair, 1986: Iranian cleric reveals illegal US arms sales to Iran, the proceeds of which are later used to fund Nicaraguan Contras
Valerie Plame, 2003: Ms Plame is revealed to be an undercover CIA agent, ending her covert career
Abu Ghraib, 2004: Publication of pictures showing abuse of detainees at Iraq prison by US officials turns initial media reports of abuse into full-blown scandal
Bradley Manning, 2010: The soldier downloads thousands of classified documents from military servers and hands them over to Wikileaks

Edward Snowden, 29, checked out from his hotel on Monday and his whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be still in Hong Kong.

Earlier, he said he had an "obligation to help free people from oppression".

His leaks led to revelations that the US is systematically seizing vast amounts of phone and web data.

The programme, known as Prism, is run by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave details of the programme last week after Mr Snowden's leaks led to a series of articles in the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers.

According to the office's statement, Prism is simply an internal computer system, and not a data-mining programme.

However, such data seizures could break the laws of other countries, and could also break US law if they accidentally capture communications of US citizens.

Transatlantic fallout

Hong Kong's broadcaster RTHK said Mr Snowden checked out of the Mira hotel in Kowloon on Monday, and Reuters news agency quoted hotel staff as saying that he had left at noon.

Ewen MacAskill, one of the Guardian journalists who broke the story, told the BBC he believed Mr Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

Rory Cellan-Jones reports on what is known about Prism

It is believed the US is pursuing a criminal investigation, but no extradition request has yet been filed.

The Chinese territory has an extradition treaty with the US, although analysts say any attempts to bring Mr Snowden to America may take months and could be blocked by Beijing.

A petition posted on the White House website calling for Mr Snowden's immediate pardon has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

However, an opinion poll commissioned by the Washington Post suggests a majority of Americans think government monitoring of phone records is acceptable if the aim is to fight terrorism.

Mr Snowden's revelations have led to allegations that the UK's electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, used the US system to spy on British citizens.

Foreign Secretary William Hague cancelled a trip to Washington to address the UK parliament on Monday and deny the claims.

The journalists involved in the story were first contacted by Mr Snowden at the start of the year.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras told Salon Magazine how Mr Snowden sent her an email saying: "I want to get your encryption key and let's get on a secure channel.

"I have some information in the intelligence community, and it won't be a waste of your time."

Ms Poitras ultimately filmed the interview with two Guardian reporters.

Mr Snowden told the journalists: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed in a statement Mr Snowden had been an employee for less than three months.

"If accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the statement said.

The first of the leaks came out on Wednesday night, when the Guardian reported a US secret court had ordered phone company Verizon to hand over to the NSA millions of records on telephone call "metadata".

The metadata include the numbers of both phones on a call, its duration, time, date and location (for mobiles, determined by which mobile signal towers relayed the call or text).

Under the Prism system, officials apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (Fisa) to gain access to communications.

Officials are obliged to show the Fisa court that any "target" is outside of the US, and there is a "foreign intelligence purpose" for the seizure, such as terrorism or nuclear proliferation.

However, details of such targets and subsequent requests made to US technology companies are secret.

On Thursday, the Washington Post and Guardian said the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a programme known as Prism.

All the internet companies denied giving the US government "direct access" to their servers, and said they had never heard of the Prism programme.

But in separate statements the firms variously said they complied with lawful requests to supply information on an individual basis.

Prism was authorised under changes to US surveillance laws passed under President George W Bush, and renewed last year under Barack Obama.

Mr Obama has defended the surveillance programmes, saying that nobody was listening to calls between American citizens.

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