How so?...You don't believe the conversation took place?

Staff from the National Security Agency got more than they bargained for when they attempted to recruit students to their organisation earlier this week …




On Tuesday, the National Security Agency called at the University of Wisconsin on a recruitment drive.

Attending the session was Madiha R Tahir, a journalist studying a language course at the university. She asked the squirming recruiters a few uncomfortable questions about the activities of NSA: which countries the agency considers to be "adversaries", and if being a good liar is a qualification for getting a job at the NSA.

She has posted a recording of the session on Soundcloud, which you can hear above, and posted a rough transcript on her blog, The Mob and the Multitude. Here are some highlights.

The session begins ...

Tahir: "Do you consider Germany and the countries that the NSA has been spying upon to be adversaries, or are you, right now, not speaking the truth?"

Recruiter 1: "You can define adversary as 'enemy' and, clearly, Germany is not our enemy. But would we have foreign national interests from an intelligence perspective on what's going on across the globe? Yeah, we do."

Tahir: "So by 'adversaries', you actually mean anybody and everybody. There is nobody, then, by your definition that is not an adversary. Is that correct?"

Recruiter 1: "That is not correct."

Recruiter 2: "… for us, our business is apolitical, OK? We do not generate the intelligence requirements. They are levied on us ... We might use the word 'target'."

Tahir: "I'm just surprised that for language analysts, you're incredibly imprecise with your language. And it just doesn't seem to be clear."

Later ...

Tahir: "... this is a recruiting session and you are telling us things that aren't true. And we also know that the NSA took down brochures and factsheets after the Snowden revelations because those factsheets also had severe inaccuracies and untruths in them, right? So how are we supposed to believe what you're saying?"

Even later ...

Tahir: "I think the question here is do you actually think about the ramifications of the work that you do, which is deeply problematic, or do you just dress up in costumes and get drunk?" [A reference to an earlier comment the recruiter made about NSA employees working hard and going to the bar to do karaoke.]

Recruiter 2: "... reporting the info in the right context is so important because the consequences of bad political decisions by our policymakers is something we all suffer from."

Unnamed female student: "And people suffer from the misinformation that you pass along so you should take responsibility as well."

Later still ...

Male student: "General Alexander [head of the NSA] also lied in front of Congress."

Recruiter 1: "I don't believe that he did."

Male student: "Probably because access to the Guardian is restricted on the Department of Defence's computers. I am sure they don't encourage people like you to actually think about these things. Thank God for a man like Edward Snowden who your organisation is now part of a manhunt trying to track down, trying to put him in a little hole somewhere for the rest of his life. Thank God they exist."

And finally ...

Recruiter 2: "This job isn't for everybody, you know ..."

Tahir: "So is this job for liars? Is this what you're saying? Because, clearly, you're not able to give us forthright answers. I mean, given the way the NSA has behaved, given the fact that we've been lied to as Americans, given the fact that factsheets have been pulled down because they clearly had untruths in them, given the fact that Clapper and Alexander lied to Congress – is that a qualification for being in the NSA? Do you have to be a good liar?"

Recruiter 1: I don't believe the NSA is telling complete lies. And I do believe that you know, I mean people can, you can read a lot of different things that are, um, portrayed as fact and that doesn't make them fact just because they're in newspapers."

Unnamed female student: "Or intelligence reports."

Recruiter 1: "That's not really our purpose here today and I think if you're not interested in that ... there are people here who are probably interested in a language career."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/shortcuts/2013/jul/05/national-security-agency-recruitment-drive

He may have well been an innocent kid. You don't know that.

Yeah, who cares if the law says "innocent till proven guilty"

The Medici produced four Popes of the Catholic Church—Pope Leo X (1513–1521), Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), Pope Pius IV (1559–1565), and Pope Leo XI

What do you think your fictional hero John Gault would say about every american having every thing they do online and on cell phone being recorded?

The Mediccis are alive, well, and still ruling the Vatican.

The checkpoint fake-out has nothing to do with President Obama, and any appellate court decision on the case is just a matter of law. The Constitution merely forbids unlawful searches, or those without cause. Clearly, if a driver wildly avoids driving into an area that might have a drug check-point, then that looks like probable cause. You might interpret the law differently, and I respect that, but again, it has NOTHING to do with President Obama. It leaves me scratching my head, sometimes, to read how Cons get things so mixed up.

If We’re “Fighting for
Democracy”, than Why Are We Arming and Financially Supporting
Dictatorships throughout the Middle East?

The 9/11 conspiracy theorist who changed his mind
Charlie Veitch was once one of Britain’s leading conspiracy theorists, a friend of David Icke and Alex Jones and a 9/11 'truther'. But when he had a change of heart, the threats began. He talks to Will Storr.

'The poster boy for a mad movement': Charlie Veitch Photo: Will Storr
By Will Storr7:00AM BST 29 May 201359 Comments
On a June afternoon in the middle of New York’s Times Square, Charlie Veitch took out his phone, turned on the camera and began recording a statement about the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center.
“I was a real firm believer in the conspiracy that it was a controlled demolition,” he started. “That it was not in any way as the official story explained. But, this universe is truly one of smoke screens, illusions and wrong paths. If you are presented with new evidence, take it on, even if it contradicts what you or your group want to believe. You have to give the truth the greatest respect, and I do.”
To most people, it doesn’t sound like a particularly outrageous statement to make. In fact, the rest of the video was almost banal in its observations; that the destruction of the towers may actually have been caused by the two 767 passenger jets that flew into them. But to those who subscribed to Veitch’s YouTube channel, a channel he set up to promulgate conspiracy theories like the one he was now rejecting, it was tantamount to heresy.
“You sell out piece of s---. Rot in hell, Veitch,” ran one comment beneath the video. “This man is a pawn,” said another. “Your [sic] a f---ing pathetic slave,” shrilled a third. “What got ya? Money?” So runs what passes for debate on the internet. Veitch had expected a few spiteful comments from the so-called “Truth Movement”. What he had not expected was the size or the sheer force of the attack.
In the days after he uploaded his video, entitled No Emotional Attachment to 9/11 Theories, Veitch was disowned by his friends, issued with death threats and falsely accused of child abuse in an email sent to 15,000 of his followers. “I went from being Jesus to the devil,” he says now. “Or maybe Judas. I thought the term ‘Truth Movement’ meant that there’d be some search for truth. I was wrong. I was the new Stalin. The poster boy for a mad movement.”
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ_8IIIOaBo

I do not believe your self proclaimed education level.