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Ford's Global VP/Marketing and Sales, Jim Farley, said something both sinister and obvious during a panel discussion about data privacy today at CES, the big electronics trade show in Las Vegas. Because of the GPS units installed in Ford vehicles, Ford knows when its drivers are speeding, and where they are while they're doing it. Farley was trying to describe how much data Ford has on its customers, and illustrate the fact that the company uses very little of it in order to avoid raising privacy concerns: "We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you're doing it....

European leaders united in anger as they attended a summit overshadowed by reports of widespread U.S. spying on its allies.... Angela Merkel said had shattered trust in the Obama adminstration...

Wednesday, John Kerry told the Senate not to worry about the cost of an American war on Syria. The Saudis and Gulf Arabs, cash-fat on the $110-a-barrel oil they sell U.S. consumers, will pick up the tab for the Tomahawk missiles. Has it come to this – U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen as the mercenaries of sheikhs, sultans and emirs, Hessians of the New World Order, hired out to do the big-time killing for Saudi and Sunni royals? Yesterday, too, came a stunning report in the Washington Post. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has joined...

Kerry: Bush officials 'so discredited' they're not relevant to Syria debate By Julian Pecquet - 09/05/13 08:41 PM ET Bush administration officials are “so discredited” by the war in Iraq that their criticism of President Obama on Syria is irrelevant, Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday. Kerry's comments on MSNBC's “All in with Chris Hayes” come after former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday called Obama the nation's “so-called commander in chief.” And Bush's hawkish ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said Tuesday he'd vote “no” to avoid “taking sides.” “It just doesn't make a difference to...

"Administration Calculated It Had Little to Gain in Offering Concessions to Putin, Whose Motivations Have Been Confounding" President Barack Obama's 15 seconds of face time with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, while American and Russian warships patrolled the eastern Mediterranean, spoke to a deep chill that has created one of the biggest complications to the U.S.'s plan to strike Syria. Mr. Obama used the opening day of a Group of 20 meeting in St. Petersburg to press his Syria agenda, speaking for an hour with Japan's prime minister. With Mr. Putin, the summit's host, he simply shook hands and...

While stressing that Washington’s primary goal remained “limited and proportional” attacks, to degrade Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities and deter their future use, the president hinted at a broader long-term mission that may ultimately bring about a change of regime. “It also fits into a broader strategy that can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic, economic and political pressure required – so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability, not only to Syria but to the region,” he told senior members of Congress at a White House meeting...

Washington is weighing expanding support for Syrian rebels by having the Pentagon take charge of arming the opposition instead of a clandestine effort by the CIA, officials said Wednesday. "It's under consideration," said a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "If and how (it would be done) are both questions being discussed," the official told AFP.

Leading liberal Egyptian politician Mohamed ElBaradei is to be named prime minister, the BBC understands. Mena state news agency says he is meeting interim President Adly Mahmud Mansour, three days after the army removed Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi amid growing nationwide unrest. …

The NSA has a “brand new” technology that enables one billion cell phone calls a day to be redirected into its data hoards and stored, according to the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who said that a new leak of Snowden’s documents was ‘coming soon.’ Calling it part of a “globalized system to destroy all privacy,” and the enduring creation of a climate of fear, Greenwald outlined the capabilities of the NSA to store every single call while having“the capability to listen to them at any time,” while speaking via Skype to the Socialism Conference in Chicago, on Friday. Greenwald was the...

The WSJ is reporting that in addition to monitoring cell phone records, emails and web activity, the National Security Agency is monitoring credit card transactions. "NSA has established similar relationships with credit-card companies, three former officials said."

Analysts at the National Security Agency can now secretly access real-time user data provided by as many as 50 American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers, two government officials familiar with the arrangements said. Several of the companies have provided records continuously since 2006, while others have given the agency sporadic access, these officials said. These officials disclosed the number of participating companies in order to provide context for a series of disclosures about the NSA's domestic collection policies. The officials, contacted independently, repeatedly said that "domestic collection" does not mean that the target is based...

The new drugs are synthetic versions of resveratrol which is found in red wine and is believed to have an anti-ageing effect as it boosts activity of a protein called SIRT1. Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has been testing the medications on patients suffering with medical conditions including cancer, diabetes and heart disease. The work proves that a single anti-ageing enzyme in the body can be targeted, with the potential to prevent age-related diseases and extend lifespans. The most common naturally-occurring activator is resveratrol, which is found in small quantities in red wine, but synthetic activators with much stronger activity are already...

JOE SCARBOROUGH: What's wrong with a political party that Michele Bachmann takes the lead and Herman Cain takes the lead and we could go through all the other people that have taken the lead? ... I don't mean to insult anybody here, but it's very obvious watching Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann-- not Michele Bachmann quite as much as Sarah Palin-- and others that have gone to the top of this race. They don't even understand basic policy, basic economics, basic foreign policy. You watch them in the debate and you can figure that out. But, they're in first place....

The major difference between Hitler and the Communist genocidal murderers –Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot –was what groups they chose for extermination. For Hitler, first Jews and ultimately Slavs and other "non-Aryans" were declared the enemy and unworthy of life. For the Communists, the rich –the bourgeoisie, landowners and capitalists –were labeled the enemy and regarded as unworthy of life. Hitler mass-murdered on the basis of race, the Communists on the basis of class. Because the Holocaust was unique in its industrialization of death and in its targeting of every Jew, including babies, for death, the post-World War II world...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

How hopelessly at odds with America’s best interests is Barack Obama? Less than two weeks ago he declared his support for “political and economic reform in the Middle East,” warmly endorsing the “Arab Spring” uprisings there. Then Sunday, Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail announced his candidacy for the presidency of Egypt, promising to transform Egypt into an Islamic state and go to war with Israel. Reform that would indeed be, but not the kind any American president should be applauding. Maybe Obama is still listening to his ruinously incompetent Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who at the height...

CAIRO —Islamists hurled stones and shoes at Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace laureate and a secular contender for Egypt's presidency, as he tried to vote Saturday in a referendum on constitutional amendments. ElBaradei was hit in the back by a stone thrown from the crowd of hundreds but managed to escape unhurt and slammed as "irresponsible" the holding of a referendum without adequate law and order. "We don't want you," the mob shouted, throwing stones, shoes and water at the former UN nuclear watchdog chief as he turned up at a Cairo polling station, five weeks after president Hosni Mubarak was...

... What needs to happen instead is a peaceful and orderly transition of power, to channel the revolutionary fervor into concrete steps for a new Egypt based on freedom and social justice. The new leaders will have to guarantee the rights of all Egyptians. They will need to dissolve the current Parliament, no longer remotely representative of the people. They will also need to abolish the Constitution, which has become an instrument of repression, and replace it with a provisional Constitution, a three-person presidential council and a transitional government of national unity. The presidential council should include a representative of...

It would be a "major setback" if the United States were to support either Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak or Vice President Omar Suleiman to lead a transitional government, Mohamed ElBaradei said on Saturday. ElBaradei, a veteran diplomat and leading opposition activist, was asked about reports that Washington could support Suleiman or Mubarak to lead a transitional government. "If that were true ... that would be a major setback, I can tell you that," he told Reuters in a telephone interview from Cairo. "If things that I hear today (are true), that would come down like lead on the people who...

Two key senators offered and passed a resolution on Thursday that calls for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to hand over power to a caretaker government. The resolution offered by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also call for elections and urges that Egypt’s military demonstrate “maximum professionalism and restraint” in working to restore order. In a floor speech, McCain warned that the situation in Egypt could turn into a “genuine massacre.” “We cannot afford that, and we must do everything in our power to see that it stops,” McCain said. “This is a...