Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama

"It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won’t be used.  This is the nature of secret government organizations. The only way to protect the people’s privacy is not to allow the government to collect their information in the first place.”

Even Schmidt

Former Commander, East German Stasi

Communist Secret Police

 

In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.

The German chancellor also told the US president that America's National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times.

Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: "This is like the Stasi," reports the Guardian.

The Communist Secret Police
of East Germany.

The newspaper also reported that Merkel was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, "the NSA clearly couldn't be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out."

Snowden is to testify on the NSA scandal to a European parliament inquiry next month, to the anger of Washington which is pressuring the EU to stop the testimony.

Of special interest is Big Brother boot-licker "Conservative" Republican Congressman Mike Rogers who never met a person he did not want to unconstitutionally spy on.

In Brussels, the chairman of the US House select committee on intelligence, Mike Rogers said his views on the invitation to Snowden were "not fit to print" and that it was "not a great idea".

Inviting someone "who is wanted in the US and has jeopardized the lives of US soldiers" was beneath the dignity of the European parliament, he said.

TRANSLATION  -  Cover everything up as fast as possible.  Don't let the Plebs know we are spying on them.

The a-hole Rogers declined to comment on Merkel's alleged remarks to Obama. In comments to the Guardian, he referred to the exchange as "a conversation that may or may not have occurred".

A draft report by a European parliament inquiry into the affair, being presented on Wednesday and obtained by the Guardian, says there has to be a discussion about the legality of the NSA's operations and also of the activities of European intelligence agencies.

The report drafted by Claude Moraes, the British Labour MEP heading the inquiry, says "we have received substantial evidence that the operations by intelligence services in the US, UK, France and Germany are in breach of international law and European law".

The Germans have received assurances that the chancellor's phone was not being monitored and that the US spy agency is not conducting industrial espionage.

"We Germans have had to experience the
abuse of state power with secret services
twice in our history."

President Joachim Gauck

The NSA's New Spy Facilities are 7 Times Bigger Than the Pentagon.
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Move along.  Nothing to see here.
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The $1.2 billion surveillance data center in Utah that is 15 times the size of MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets.  In May, crews broke ground on a $792 million computing center at the agency’s headquarters near Baltimore that will complement the Utah site. Together the Utah center and Maryland’s 28-acre computer farm span 228 acres—more than seven times the size of the Pentagon.
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Four years ago, the stated purpose of the megaplex near Salt Lake City was to amass foreign intelligence and warnings about hackers. Officials described it as an extension of President George W. Bush’s 2008 Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a largely classified, cross-agency program to protect U.S. computer networks against adversaries.
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Today, it is evident the data plantation will not be linked to any one program. Instead, the systems inside will warehouse counterterrorism information collected in aggregate, including millions of Americans’ phone logs for five years and certain foreigners’ online messages, NSA officials confirm.
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See more at:  Defense One.com

German Scientists Warn Of Coming Cooling Period

Is a new Ice Age coming?

• Some believe with low sunspot activity the planet could be on the brink of another period of global cooling.
• One the flip side, man is furiously pumping millions of tons of warming gasses from under the ground into the atmosphere.
• Will these two activities simply cancel each other out?  And with more warming gasses in the atmosphere what happens to temperatures when the sunspots start up again?

The Germans say Global Cooling is coming.  One thing I do know is that even here in the Golden State it is friggin cold outside.

As always, I’ll stay skeptical, and say that I will believe it when I see it.  But there is no doubt that the activities of man have an impact on our environment be it air pollution, deforestation or warming gasses.

(Daily Caller)  -  Better start investing in some warm clothes because German scientists are predicting that the Earth will cool over the next century. 

German scientists found that two naturally occurring cycles will combine to lower global temperatures during the 21st century, eventually dropping to levels corresponding with the “little ice age” of 1870.

“Due to the de Vries cycle, the global temperature will drop until 2100 to a value corresponding to the ‘little ice age’ of 1870,” write German scientists Horst-Joachim Luedecke and Carl-Otto Weiss of the European Institute for Climate and Energy. 

Researchers used historical temperature data and data from cave stalagmites to show a 200-year solar cycle, called the de Vries cycle. 

They also factored into their work a well-established 65-year Atlantic and Pacific Ocean oscillation cycle. Global warming that has occurred since 1870 can be attributed almost entirely to both these factors, the scientists argue. 

According to the scientists, the oft-cited “stagnation” in rising global temperatures over the last 15 years is due to the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean oscillation cycle, which lasts about 65 years. Ocean oscillation is past its “maximum,” leading to small decreases in global temperature.

Fortunately, if they’re talking 1870, the earth was rebounding from the Little Ice Age at that time, so it won’t be like the true depth of the Little Ice Age, or previous cool periods during the Holocene.

(Daily Caller)

BBC - New Little Ice Age is Coming

Snow in Australia's 2013 Summer
Perisher ski resort in NSW during the summer blizzard.
See more at News.com.au
( Source: NewsComAu)

It is not Magic Gas.

Socialists want to use man made warming gasses to advance Marxism and centralized control of the economy.  Conservatives want to pretend that the warming gasses man is pumping into the air do not exist.  That it is "magic" gas that has no impact.  Both are wrong.

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Climate is a complex mix of gasses, volcanism and sunspots.  Some people have speculated that the Little Ice Age (1350 to about 1850) ended because of the warming gasses released by the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

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The Little Ice Age brought colder winters to parts of Europe and North America. Farms and villages in the Swiss Alps were destroyed by encroaching glaciers during the mid-seventeenth century. Canals and rivers in Great Britain and the Netherlands were frequently frozen deeply enough to support ice skating and winter festivals. The first River Thames frost fair was in 1607 and the last in 1814.

Also see Little Ice Age.

Beard Team USA wins big at 2013 worlds!

Why a Beard?

Because when you shave you deliberately want
to look like a 12 year old boy. 

Hundreds of competitors from 20 countries gathered in Germany for the World Beard and Moustache Championships.

Entrants from around the globe travelled to the southern town of Leinfelden-Echterdingen, outside Stuttgart, to compete for the best facial hair in a range of four categories and 18 sub-categories, including moustaches, chin beards, whiskers, full beards and trendy bears.

The championships were officially watched by the German Association of Beard Clubs and all entrants were subject to a pre-screening to determine their beard category by a separate jury.

American contestants proved to be the biggest beard fans as Beard Team USA scooped nine trophies.

Organiser Juergen Burkhardt  said the turnout was much better than expected.

See more at Spiegel.de - international. and also at World Beard Championships.com

Bart-Weltmeisterschaft Leinfelden-Echterdingen

World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013

America’s team 2013
Bassist Burke Kenny flaunts his intimidating facial display. Kenny's victory in the
"Full Beard Styled Moustache" category brought his tally to three world titles.

America’s team 2013
Dennis Dickerson

America’s team 2013
Jeffrey Moustache

America’s team 2013
Andy Longtine

Dieter Besuch's combination of small and large curls wowed the judges,
allowing him to clinch victory in the "Freestyle Sideburns" category.

Three hundred men and 13 women from 20 countries took part in this
year's competition, which was organized by the Beard and Culture Club
"Belle Moustache," a group of beard enthusiasts. Shown here,
German Karl-Heinz Hille, who won this year's "Imperial Partial Beard" category.