http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/27/barack-obama-nsa-angela-merkel-germany

NSA denies Barack Obama was informed of Angela Merkel phone tapping

Keith Alexander did not inform Barack Obama that Angela Merkel's phone was tapped, NSA says

The National Security Agency has denied reports that President Barack Obama was personally informed of US phone tapping against German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phones.

NSA chief General Keith Alexander "did not discuss with President Obama in 2010 an alleged foreign intelligence operation involving German Chancellor Merkel, nor has he ever discussed alleged operations involving Chancellor Merkel," spokesman Vanee' Vines said.

Mr Obama was dragged into the trans-Atlantic spying row after it was claimed he personally authorised the monitoring of Angela Merkel’s phone three years ago.

The president allegedly allowed US intelligence to listen to calls from the German Chancellor’s mobile phone after he was briefed on the operation by Mr Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), in 2010.

full article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10407972/NSA-denies-Barack-Obama-was-informed-of-Angela-Merkel-phone-tapping.html

The NSA, not elected by the public AFAIK, did not tell the POTUS about this country spying on a foreign head of state...let alone consider the blowback it would cause?????!!!!


Either several people are lying their asses off, and if they are telling the truth they deserved to be sacked immediately for such a fucked up thing to do.


Now I guess it is the time for the lovely hawks to circle and tell me how "they all do it."

Dont get me wrong, I'm not saying what they were doing was ok but rather I question why you believe that the they should be informing a president about this when they already report such things (or should be reporting such things) to the varies oversight committees.
If you and others want to lash out at anyone shouldnt it be the people on those committees who decided it was ok?

POTUS ---->Director national Intelligence ----> NSA


I agree with you that anybody with their thumb on this should be severely screwn.

Just trying to point out that the president could very well not have known but even if he did why exactly is it so horrible that an agency like the NSA who is charged with collecting intelligence on foreigners is actually doing so?
I could completely with the outrage if say it was a case of the NSA tapping into Harry Reids office or say the headquarters of CNN but they havent been doing that or atleast they havent been caught doing that.

Actively spying and being caught doing it, unabashedly, on our allies is a severe breach of trust for starters.

This is tapping the phones of world leaders, and doing it as well as standing up for it is equally misguided and probably terribly illegal.

If the NSA is spying on you, me and Angela then it pretty much goes to follow that they are spying on Harry as well.

And what happens if we ever have another Bush/Cheney in office?


The NSA moves out of being a security apparatus when it sees us all as being guilty enough to eavesdrop on, and when that happens their name changes to the more recognizable: Stazi or KGB.


At what level does it take for one to be engaged in the fact that our government is woefully corrupt and not working for us any longer?

...and treaties are constitutional.

The 1%'s lust for lucrative trade with Germany might win out over their desire to manipulate political outcomes. If that happens, other trade partners could rapidly follow suit.

Maybe, for once, greed will lead to a better tomorrow?

This isn't the kind of act our country can be proud of.

What if The Idiot knew that Merkle liked a good massage?

What if the night before, somebody gave her a shoulder massage in private and Bush is letting her know that he knows all about it?

There was a bizarre statement Bush said one time in the presence of Tony Blair, saying that they had a lot in common and even used the same kind of toothpaste. I always wondered if that was Bush's way of letting Blair know Bush knew all about him.

If it's just put at the top, then it's consumed when it's delivered. Not like drugging an entire bottle of booze,
leaving evidence behind.

The NYT backs this scenario up.

"The Central Intelligence Agency began a top-secret program called MKUltra. It included exotic projects that decades later provided much critical fodder for commentators and comedians: exploding cigars, poison-laced toothpaste, hallucinogenic serums."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/arts/design/spy-secret-world-of-espionage-at-discovery-times-square.html?_r=0

Liberal intellectuals and activists understand the importance of protecting privacy and other civil liberties, but when they get elected to political office liberals seem to betray this core principle. I wonder if its a conceptual flaw or motivated by politics ?

If you think Obama is in the "liberal intellectuals and activists" category, they I'm afraid you haven't learned much from the last five years, my friend.

Liberal, no.

that I've argued from the beginnning that BHO has more responsibility for this sad state of affairs then many were willing to give him.

The intelligence community is its own self-policing nation state.

the same likely applies to the DoD, the umbrella the NSA is under.

Apparently dem presidents can't issue EOs like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13355 and BHO is powerless to prevent them from doing things like misusing, illegally/unconstitutionally, section 215 of the PA. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/17/whoa-watch-the-patriot-acts-author-warn-congress-might-cancel-the-spying-program/

if you say so

Last edited Mon Oct 28, 2013, 03:29 AM - Edit history (1)

These people kill people.

When we stop attacking people who are trying to push policies to help people, maybe the oligarchs will stop using us against ourselves.

I'm so tired of leftists and mouthpieces. Leftists are NOT liberals. Many of them are as doctrinaire and severe as any fascist.

In fact, after this posting, I've decided this whole board has been taken over by you people.

Goodbye, Skinner and DU. I've been here from the beginning. It has been a good run.

if the "oligarchs" are pitting anyone against the other, I'd say it was due to their counting on more on the "left" circling the wagons around BHO in all of this, as opposed to what the NSA revelations were greeted with. And so what if some leftists are as dostrinaire as fascists. That's no test for the legitimacy or efficacy of their respective policy pursuits and subsequent products or the alleviation of human misery they might produce. You could say the same thing about xtians and devil worshippers.

Leftists is an umbrella term, that has both "liberals" and socialists under it. The dictionary is your friend. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/leftist

If society ever adopts your "let's forget about the bad otherwise good people do" rationale then we'll be in more trouble than we already are. The good certainly has some mitigation value when passing judgement on the totality of someones work, but it ain't no free pass. The good cop and the bad cop after all, have the same interests in mind serving the same interests that they do.

You're not reading the right dictionary. Liberal is properly an adjective. It describes what it is referring to. It is only used as a noun. The minute you call something a liberal OR a conservative, you contradict yourself. People cannot define themselves by labels -- the reverse is the case.

Most of the modern leftists I've met are not liberals -- they are far from it. Most so-called conservatives are not conservative. Conservative is an adjective, too.

left·ism also Left·ism (lftzm)
n.
1. The ideology of the political left.
2. Belief in or support of the tenets of the political left.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

leftist adj. & n.

and so on

I'm not gonna engage in any quibbling over such. It's all beside the point. "Leftist" is used in only two ways that I'm aware of, to describe those who have political povs that fall on the left side of the ideological spectrum as defined by the dictionary, or to differentiate generally speaking, between liberals and "leftists" of the kind that don't support capitalism, e.g. marxists, etc, as "liberals" all do. In that respect, "liberals" are cousins of the "conservatives", whose entire existence is all about protecting the riches of the aristocracy. You must really, really hate the OWSers, no?

If the latter is who you are referring to, then you're still all wet. There's nary a criticizer here of BHO on various issues that is even close to wanting to abandon the capitalist system -- and it's doubtful you know many if any outside this board that want that -- though many might certainly prefer a hybrid like social capitalism. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSocial_capitalism&ei=JhNvUtmpNIbwyAHg6oGYAg&usg=AFQjCNE2BxQBBFAcUXpOwB0BAyn73KZHWg&bvm=bv.55123115,d.aWc

The "leftist" label as you're using it is little more than an intended smear/insult with the goal of silencing those who'd dare object to any of BHO's political choices/policies, and nothing more. It doesn't accurately describe anyone here, anymore than "far left" does. This is mostly a war between liberals and neoliberals, and largely started in the Clinton admin -- who was our first "New Dem"/Third Way/DLC/corporate friendly neoliberal your kind learned to love and blindly follow. If anyone is being too "doctrinaire" and "illiberal", it would be those who are insulting those of us who lived and remember when dems/liberals were more about diminishing the various inequalities that capitalism inevitably results in, than perpetuating and increasing them as has been the case since Raygun ruled the roost.

That's exactly why BHO putting SS/Medicare on the cutting table has recieved the criticism it has, as well as the issue this OP covered. Neither does anything about our collective betterment or a reduction in human misery, and really quite the opposite.

But by all means, you stay satisfied with it, simply because it isn't total rightwingnut. That seems to be the only "practical consideration" to be found in the defenses of the criticisms BHO has received around here from you neoliberals.

You're either purposefully ignoring my point or missing it entirely for your own purposes. You can dress up the truth however you like, but the reality is there are many "leftists" who aren't liberal ... just as there are many "conservatives" who are not conservative. In fact, the very concept of "leftist" is itself an illiberal concept.

Now have your last word and I'm place you on ignore.

"Goodbye, Skinner and DU. I've been here from the beginning. It has been a good run."

Which reminds me ...

indefensible garbage from you, I'm all for it.

Of course there are many "leftists" who aren't "liberals" due to the distinction I cited, not ignored, but there are no "marxists" etc that qualify for that designation here or that you know elsewhere.

leftists in your rather small world are simply those like me that criticize BHO, which is clearly and unmistakably an extremely stupid and indefensible position to take on your part.

so run away forrest

The President gave her a Medal of Freedom even. Wow talk about ingrates.
In his comments before presenting the award, Obama described Merkel as a symbol of freedom, given her childhood in communist East Germany.
“She remembers when the Wall went up and how everyone in her church was crying. … Asked to spy for the secret police, she refused. And the night the Wall came down, she crossed over, like so many others, and finally experienced what she calls the ‘incredible gift of freedom,’” Obama said.
“Tonight, we honor Angela Merkel not for being denied her freedom, or even for attaining her freedom, but for what she achieved when she gained her freedom,” the president said.

I mean she should be used to being spied on by the Stasi duh!

We would have been screaming our heads off (and we did) if these proofs of our government's illegal actions had
occurred under the Bush administration.

Instead, now I just feel sickened and defeated.

Even on local levels, the whole system in sick and infested.