tagged w/ National Security
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As bad as the $6 trillion national debt figure truly was back in 2001, the "conservative" administration of George W. Bush has managed to preside over debt increases that have boosted U.S. indebtedness to over $9 trillion. This enormous amount of red ink results in a weaker dollar and is a major cause of the lagging U.S. economy.
The dollar's value is steadily falling, now lower than the Canadian dollar. Measured against the Euro and the British pound, the dollar is weaker almost daily. Mr. Bernanke should have addressed this feature of America's slowdown. But he didn't.
For years, federal officials have made a habit of downplaying the accumulating debt by pointing to lower-than-predicted annual deficits. But the federal deficit and the accumulated national debt are two different animals. The deficit appears to be less than it really is because the administration continues to funnel receipts for Social Security, Medicare, and other so-called trust funds into the general revenue stream. These funds, as any realist knows, were collected for promises that must be kept. If Social Security has an IOU from the administration, it's still debt, and it still calls for interest payments. Those interest payments are already huge.
Also, a whopping 22 percent of the trillions owed by the U.S. government happens to be held by foreign lenders, mainly the Japanese and Chinese governments. Both are in a position to pull the plug and send the dollar into a virtual free fall.
Warnings from China this week that it might actually begin moving away from the dollar sent financial markets reeling. "The world's currency structure has changed," Chinese central banker Xu Jian said in Beijing according to the Washington Times. The dollar is "losing its status as the world currency," he said. His comments were echoed at the same meeting by Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the communist nation's National's People's Congress who warned: "We will favor stronger currencies over weaker ones, and will readjust accordingly."
Much of the recent debt increase has come as a result of the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But another huge chunk of the dollar's decline results from inflation, the thieving process of creating more of them. When lenders (China, Japan, even private citizens in the U.S. and elsewhere) begin to realize that they will eventually get paid off with dollars that are far less valuable than the ones they loaned, recession could easily morph into depression.
There are ways to stop the nation from committing fiscal suicide. They all amount to stopping the spending. Stop it for wars that were begun for reasons found to be false. Stop it for vote-buying socialistic schemes that always ruin a nation. Finally, stop it by returning the nation to some semblance of limited government under the Constitution as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
As bad as the $6 trillion national debt figure truly was back in 2001, the... more
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Generally misunderstood worldwide, inflation is no longer a mystery to the people in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe Currency
A Zimbabwean man holds an increasingly worthless $100,000 Zimbabwean note.
They know it’s an increase in the amount of currency that drives down its value as it steals wealth from powerless citizens. Over the past year, Zimbabweans have seen their country’s currency devalued over and over, so that the five-million note no longer has any value and has been replaced, step-by-step, with 25-million, 50-million, 100-million, 500-million, and now 50-billion Zimbabwe Dollar notes.
The country’s state-owned printing company that spits out this increasingly valueless paper money has just learned that the German firm supplying the needed bank note paper has stopped supplying it. The published reason for taking such action is widespread belief that the June 27th election won by President Robert Mugabe has been deemed fraudulent by international observers. It could also be that the Germans don’t want to be paid in Zimbabwe Dollars.
As prices for everything in the United States continue their upward climb, some Americans have begun to realize that the U.S. dollar, equally unbacked by anything of value, is losing value. No gold, no silver, nothing but political promises and misinformation stand behind today’s U.S. currency that not too many years ago was labeled “good as gold.” The flood of additional dollars pays for government’s deficits, and each newly created bill derives its value by underhandedly stealing the worth of all existing dollars.
Anyone who has ever received a sound explanation of this criminal activity has likely been told that governments can indeed run out of gold and silver, but they’ll never run out of paper. This is certainly true in the United States. But it’s no longer true in Zimbabwe where the primitive system of barter has returned as desperate people try to survive.
There’s a lesson here for anyone willing to absorb it. Money has to be either a valuable commodity unto itself, or the paper certificate issued in its stead must be immediately convertible to that valuable commodity. With sound money, a civilization grows and prospers. Without it, expect economic slowdown then collapse. Zimbabwe’s money is virtually worthless, possibly even more expensive to produce than the value printed on each of its bills. Americans had better force a return to sound money or we’ll soon be in the same predicament.
Generally misunderstood worldwide, inflation is no longer a mystery to the people in... more
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we need to blog raise awareness tell everyone this will make the depression of the thirties look like childs play
The consequences of a military attack on Iran to thwart its nuclear intentions could have a devastating economic impact.
NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel warned on the July 1 “NBC Nightly News” an attack by Israel could send oil prices soaring – sending gas prices into territories never imagined.
“I asked an oil analyst that very question,” Engel said. “He said, ‘The price of a barrel of oil: Name your price – $300-$400 a barrel.’”
What would oil at those levels mean? A June 11 Time magazine story by Robert Baer put the price of a gallon of gas at $12 if oil goes to $300 a barrel. In May, Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” the oil at those prices could mean $15-a-gallon gas.
“[T]he prices that we’re paying at the pump today are, I think, going to be ‘the good old days,’ because others who watch this very closely forecast that we’re going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon,” Hirsch said.
Engel maintained Iran could disrupt oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, induce Iranian-back militias to destabilize Iraq and Iran’s allies in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip could threaten Israel. That would create “a line of fire from Tehran all the way to Jerusalem” according to Engel.
Engel’s doom-and-gloom prognosis of “name your price” oil comes a nearly two months after White House Counselor Ed Gillespie sent a scathing letter to NBC admonishing Engel’s network for “deceptively editing” an interview Engel conducted with Bush. The White House claimed Engel mischaracterized Bush’s stance on the interview with its editing process.
“NBC’s selective editing of the President’s response is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that he agreed with Engel’s characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it,” Gillespie wrote in a letter dated May 19. “Furthermore, omitted the references to al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas and ignored the clarifying point in the President’s follow-up response that U.S. policy is to require Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program before coming to the table, not that ‘negotiating with Iran is pointless’ and amounts to ‘appeasement.’”
we need to blog raise awareness tell everyone this will make the depression of the... more
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An alleged al Qaida fighter accused of training the Sept. 11 hijackers sought access to classified evidence Thursday, reassuring the war court here that, once convicted, he'll take U.S. secrets to his grave.
''If I am going to receive the death sentence, this evidence will go with me,'' declared Waleed bin Attash, a one-legged Yemeni captive accused of running an al Qaida camp in Afghanistan.
After execution, he said, the secrets "will be better protected than in the hands of the FBI and CIA.''
Bin Attash made the remarks at a hearing before Judge Ralph Kohlmann, a Marine colonel who will preside at the war crimes trial of five Guantánamo captives accused of conspiring in the mass murder of 2,973 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
At least four of the men want to defend themselves. Kohlmann has been warning them that, even as their own lawyers, they can't see or challenge classified evidence until their trial.An alleged al Qaida fighter accused of training the Sept. 11 hijackers sought access... more
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Amid all the recent controversy over the presumptive presidential nominees' stances on the congressional bill regarding FISA regulations, the media appears to have forgotten the central issue, of the actual lawsuit itself, and possible consequences for the defendant, George W. Bush.
Late last week, a federal judge ruled against the legality of Bush's secret wiretapping campaign, rejecting certain aspects of his lawyers' argument that "the president has exclusive authority over matters of national security and may disregard laws like FISA that impose checks on presidential power." If successful, the lawsuit would hold Bush personally accountable for violating these laws, constituting a series of felonies.
"On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker… ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon."
Much of the story is still shrouded in secrecy, but due to the inventiveness of the plaintiff's legal team, who managed to argue against arguments they couldn't see, using documents they could only construct in secret (and shred immediately), flirting with treason simply by remembering certain aspects of the case, some of the proceedings are finally bubbling up from the gutter of 'national security' into the public eye.
Amazingly, the defendant's legal team seems to have made several key blunders, effectively invalidating some of the national security laws hampering other such lawsuits from establishing proof and cause. "Of the four dozen lawsuits challenging various aspects of Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program, the Al-Haramain case is unique because… we can show they were victims of the unlawful conduct for which they are suing. Nobody else has been able to produce such proof. Our proof is a top-secret classified document, which the government accidentally gave to Al-Haramain's lawyers in August of 2004."
In the protracted, seven year process of constructing a legal defense, "We [the plaintiffs' lawyers] went forward, drafting our secret appellate brief in a DOJ office, on a DOJ computer, under the watch of a DOJ security officer -- that is, under the auspices and control of our adversary in the legal case. We could print out drafts but couldn't take them from the room; instead, we were to leave the drafts on the table to be shredded by Hogarty [the government's defense lawyer] later… We would not be allowed to keep a copy of what we had written; the brief in Hogarty's safe was 'our' copy.
Hogarty explained that anything we wrote down that contained classified information, then or later, would instantly become 'derivatively classified' and thus unlawful for us to possess. I wondered whether this meant that the portion of my brain that remembers the Document is also 'derivatively classified,' making its presence in my skull unlawful."
This is but one moment in a baffling, twisted tale of modern constitutional law colliding with Congressional regulation and post-9/11 Bush administration fear tactics. Follow the jump to read the lawyer's actual first-person account, Involving impossibly Byzantine legal semantics, a 'who's on first' style courtroom scene, a banana peel which may (or may not) have been shredded for its implication in state secrets, and a pervasive, Orwellian level of privelaged secrecy. It is an intricate network of checks and balances, almost beyond belief.
Although this ruling will not end the case,
"Judge Walker's decision last week was a major victory for us. Walker concluded that FISA does indeed preempt the state secrets privilege. More broadly, he addressed the key issue raised by our lawsuit -- the validity of the 'unitary executive' theory -- and said what we've been long awaiting: that the president does not have unbridled power to disregard federal statutory law in the name of national security."
With this ruling, handed down on the day before Independence Day, the federal judge's decision suggests that freedom may still reign in America.
Amid all the recent controversy over the presumptive presidential nominees'... more
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AVtime
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The J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, cannot satisfy government standards for storage and use of classified intelligence records.
“The Hoover Building does not meet the Interagency Security Committee’s criteria for a secure Federal facility capable of handling intelligence and other sensitive information,” the Senate Appropriations Committee observed in a new report on the 2009 Commerce, Justice and State Appropriations bill.
“The Committee finds these conditions unacceptable and directs the Government Accountability Office [GAO] to review the Hoover Building and associated off-site locations, and provide a analysis of the FBI’s ability to fulfill its mission and security requirements under the present circumstances,” the report said.
The FBI is in the process of constructing a Central Records Complex outside of Washington, DC. When completed, it will provide secure, centralized storage for classified intelligence, consistent with the security requirements of Director of Central Intelligence Directive (DCID) 6/9 and related guidelines.The J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, cannot satisfy... more
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Well i guess maybe we did need the star wars defense system, but is there really any country that can say they are prepared for a asteroid?Well i guess maybe we did need the star wars defense system, but is there really any... more
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Turkish hackers broke into two of the most established international Websites that oversee and regulate the Internet in order to reroute visitors to a rogue domain, the New York Times reported Friday.
Two of the domains under attack include the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, icann.org) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA (iana.org) -- two organizations that that have dominion over numerous critical functions regarding Internet regulation.
(More at link above)Turkish hackers broke into two of the most established international Websites that... more
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A U.S. military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities could set Tehran's program back years but would raise the risk of retaliation against American troops in the region and of driving Iran to work even harder to make atomic weapons, U.S. experts and officials say.
Any U.S. attack -- something the Pentagon insists is not planned but is subject of frequent speculation as Iran defies calls to rein in its nuclear program -- could involve thousands of sorties and missile launches against hundreds of targets.It would be limited to air strikes, rather than a full-scale attack requiring U.S. ground forces, who are now tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts said.
But the strike would be hampered by a lack of intelligence on the number and location of the nuclear facilities dispersed throughout Iran, according to nuclear security experts.
At best, many experts say a U.S. strike could delay Iran's nuclear weapons capability by three to five years. Parts of the program would likely survive, perhaps even critical technologies and certainly know-how.
"We could set it back probably at least several months maybe a few years but then we run the risk of stimulating them to work even harder next time, burying facilities even deeper, putting in more air defence batteries," said Charles Ferguson, nuclear expert at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.facilities are scattered throughout the country and could be included as targets, experts speculated. Satellite pictures suggest Iran has dug tunnels around Natanz, for example, which could contain uranium enrichment equipment.
Nuclear research facilities in Iran's capital might be targeted as well, but such strikes raise the risk of civilian casualties and the attendant risk of international uproar, said U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.The military risks, however, are high, according to both defense analysts and officials.
Primary among them is the possibility of retaliation against U.S. troops by Islamist militant groups Washington says Tehran supports. The U.S. military accuses Iran of training and equipping the Shi'ite militias in Iraq, which are seen by U.S. commanders as one of the largest threats in that country.
But particularly frightening to officials inside the Pentagon is the possibility Iran would use suicide boats to attack U.S. ships in the Gulf or to disrupt crude oil trade.
A U.S. military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities could set Tehran's... more
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"US lawmakers have passed a bill to shield telephone companies who helped in the White House's controversial warrantless wiretaps programme.
The bill also grants the US government the power to continue with its warrantless surveillance scheme.
The Bush administration faced criticism when details emerged of its programme to monitor the phone calls of foreign targets in the US without warrants.
President Bush said the scheme was needed to prevent attacks on the US.
Telephone companies were facing as many as 40 lawsuits for their involvement in the scheme."
--BBC World News
It is also said that this bill is likely to pass in the Senate as well."US lawmakers have passed a bill to shield telephone companies who helped in the... more
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Sweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic.
The country's intelligence bureau will be able to scan international calls, faxes and e-mails.
The measure was passed by a narrow majority after a heated debate in the Stockholm parliament.
Critics say it threatens civil liberties and represents Europe's most far-reaching eavesdropping plan.
(End of excerpt)
Full story at link by BBC NEWS | EuropeSweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to... more
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The key statement here is when George Bush said "I would never take intervention off the table or any policy tool off the table. I just can't speculate about what we will or won't do."
Do you think that things could get so bad as to necessitate a Currency Change what with gas prices predicted to rise to as much as $6.00 per gallon by August 2008 and even higher with oil futures predicted to reach $300 per barrel of crude. What will that do to gasoline prices?
The economy and the amount of cash that is in circulation with interest rates at record lows could have a devastating effect on world markets should the currency become invalidated as it has in other countries experiencing hyperinflation and devaluation of their currencies.
One example is Ecuador that switched over to using American Dollars in their country because their inflation had taken them to the point where one dollar could purchase $30K in Sucres, at that point $30K in Sucres was enough money for a small family of 4 to live modestly for a month.
Is the Federal Reserve setting the stage for such an event? What are your thoughts?
Jubal
Full Story Below
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By MARTIN CRUTSINGER | AP Economics Writer
6:10 PM EDT, June 9, 2008
WASHINGTON - President Bush's forceful call on Monday for a stronger U.S. dollar in the world economy may be coming a little late for Americans fed up with gas prices topping $4 a gallon and steadily rising costs of other imported goods.
As he left for Europe, the president said the U.S. is committed to keeping its currency strong, a point he clearly felt needed to be made after the dollar's long slide against the euro and other international currencies.
Bush's words signaled his administration's concerns about the economy. The sinking greenback is one reason that fuel prices are at record levels, and the run-up in energy prices is battering consumers and worsening the risk of recession.
"A strong dollar is in our nation's interests. It is in the interests of the global economy," Bush said outside the White House.
Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appear to be easing away from their hands-off approach to managing the value of the dollar. While a strong dollar has long been stated U.S. policy, that usually has amounted to no more than rhetoric unbacked by specific steps.
The government has limited options for propping up the greenback, especially in an election year with rising unemployment, slumping consumer confidence and the worst housing market in decades.
Paulson declined to rule out direct intervention -- the buying by the government of dollars in currency markets -- as a way to influence the currency's value. Another way to shore up the dollar is for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates -- seen as an unlikely prospect given the current state of the economy.
For seven years, the administration has refused to intervene in currency markets, even though the dollar has been sliding in value for most of the time Bush has been in office. The administration has insisted that currency levels should be set by free-market forces.
Bush, in an interview with the Times of London as he flew across the Atlantic, added to his earlier comments, saying, "We want the dollar to strengthen."
A weakening dollar has some economic advantages. It reduces the cost of U.S. goods sold overseas for instance, helping American manufacturers who depend on foreign markets. But it's also been a major factor in the rising gasoline prices.
European allies have urged the Bush administration to speak up more aggressively in defense of the dollar. And the president's unusual comments on Monday seemed to be an attempt to ease their concerns.
Since oil worldwide is priced in dollars, Europeans blame some of their own inflation on the weakening dollar.The key statement here is when George Bush said "I would never take intervention... more
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jubal
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Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, describes how the Veep blocked an offer from Iran for negotiations.Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin... more
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The nuclear industry is hoping that concern over climate change will result in support for nuclear power. However, even solely on the grounds of economic criteria it offers poor value for money in displacing fossil fuel plant. Further, with its high cost, long construction time, high environmental risk and problems resulting from waste management, it is clear that nuclear power does not offer a viable solution to climate change. Rather a mixture of energy efficiency and renewable energy offers a quicker, more realistic and sustainable approach to reducing CO2 emissions.
The nuclear industry is hoping that concern over climate change will result in support... more
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From the article:
Brewster Kahle, who runs an online library in San Francisco, was appalled when his volunteer lawyers told him in November that the FBI was demanding records of all communications with one of his patrons as part of an investigation of "international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."
The FBI document, called a national security letter, told Kahle he could be prosecuted if he discussed the subject with anyone but his lawyers, and allowed him to speak with his attorneys only in person. Kahle said his Internet Archive, which has 500,000 card-holders, doesn't even keep the records the FBI was seeking.
He was allowed to speak publicly Wednesday under a rare settlement in which the FBI agreed to withdraw its letter and lift the gag order. That should show other librarians, and members of the public who receive any of the nearly 50,000 national security letters the government issues each year, that "you can push back on these," Kahle said.
National security letters are subpoenas issued by federal agencies to require businesses and other institutions to produce records of their customers. The agencies do not need court approval for the letters. ...
The archive, established in 1996 and based at the Presidio, allows users to browse through electronic versions of 200,000 books and 85 billion Web pages. It includes a "Wayback Machine" that offers access to archived versions of Web sites - a feature that federal prosecutors have often used with no restrictions from the library, Kahle said.
Users can browse anonymously, and must register and provide e-mail addresses only if they want to add information or comment in a message board.
So when the FBI demanded the name, address and records of all transactions with a specific patron - whose identity is blacked out in the newly unsealed legal documents - Kahle's lawyers replied by furnishing information already posted on the archive's Web site, and said they were withholding only a few items that were not already public. They declined to describe those items Wednesday.
They also sued in federal court, arguing that national security letters are unconstitutional for the reasons cited by the New York judge, and that the Internet Archive is exempt because California classifies it as a library. The lawyers said they negotiated for four months before the FBI agreed to back off.
Kahle said the settlement is a victory, but not a happy occasion.
Although his lawyers worked for free, he said, the fact that they had to invest tens of thousands of dollars' worth of their time "just so we can be a library is downright depressing."From the article:
Brewster Kahle, who runs an online library in San Francisco, was... more
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sajh
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Maude Barlow is co-founder of the Blue Planet Project and a very vocal advocate for clean water for all. Her new book (The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water) lays out three main plans that must be instituted in order for our planet to avert a catastrophe regarding this crisis that according to the UN should be our top priority which include: Water conservation, water justice, and water democracy. We must as a global community see beyond the borders to the moral courage necessary to conserve and share this precious resource, as well as working on a treaty like the one we hope to see regarding the climate crisis that sets goals for conservation, sharing of resources, providing technology necessary to developing countries that helps them with conserving through agriculture, infrastructure, and basic education. And most importantly, declaring access to clean water a human right.This along with the climate crisis is the most crucial environmental issue we will face in this century. For me it is the most crucial because without water there is no life.Maude Barlow is co-founder of the Blue Planet Project and a very vocal advocate for... more
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These two 18 year old college students say they were BANNED FOR LIFE from Southwest Airlines simply because they are too hot! It's true, say Nisreen Swedberg and Sarah Williams.
Apparently Ms. Williams did exchange some profanities with another passenger in an altercation over the bathroom, but the girls maintain that they were mistreated by flight attendants the minute they stepped their their too-hot selves aboard that plane.
Video report at CNN after the jump...These two 18 year old college students say they were BANNED FOR LIFE from Southwest... more
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"The Iraq war has strained U.S. forces to the point where they could not fight another large-scale war, according to a survey of military officers.""The Iraq war has strained U.S. forces to the point where they could not fight... more
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It's the government's idea of a really bad day: Washington's Metro trains shut down. Seaport computers in New York go dark. Bloggers reveal locations of railcars with hazardous materials. Airport control towers are disrupted in Philadelphia and Chicago. Overseas, a mysterious liquid is found on London's subway.
And that's just for starters.
The $3 million, invitation-only war game simulated what the U.S. described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers.It's the government's idea of a really bad day: Washington's Metro... more
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Once an FBI suspect, Hasan Elahi now does the FBI a favor by monitoring himself every minute of the day.
This guy really shows how messed up our system has become.Once an FBI suspect, Hasan Elahi now does the FBI a favor by monitoring himself every... more
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Frobot
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