Syrian Forces May Have Used Gas Without Assad’s Permission

English: Brasilia – The president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar Al-Assad during a visit to Congress Português do Brasil: Brasília – O presidente da República Árabe Síria, Bashar Al-Assad, em visita ao Congresso Nacional (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Reuters | Reader Supported News | September 8, 2013

Syrian government forces may have carried out a chemical weapons attack close to Damascus without the personal permission of President Bashar al-Assad, Germany’s Bild am Sonntag paper reported on Sunday, citing German intelligence.

Syrian brigade and division commanders had been asking the Presidential Palace to allow them to use chemical weapons for the last four-and-a-half months, according to radio messages intercepted by German spies, but permission had always been denied, the paper said.

This could mean Assad may not have personally approved the attack close to Damascus on August 21 in which more than 1,400 are estimated to have been killed, intelligence officers suggested.

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency (BND) could not be reached for comment.

Bild said the radio traffic was intercepted by a German naval reconnaissance vessel, the Oker, sailing close to the Syrian coast.

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Global Surveillance: Will Germany Say Nein?

The seal of the U.S. National Security Agency. The first use was in September 1966, replacing an older seal which was used briefly. For more information, see here and here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Steve Weissman | Reader Supported News | July 24, 2013

German Chancellor Angela Merkel must harbor terrible thoughts about Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed the global spying of America’s National Security Agency (NSA). Facing what seemed an easy re-election on September 22, Frau Merkel now suffers an endless barrage of embarrassing questions and home-grown details about Germany’s messy relationship with the American spy-masters.

When the victorious Americans taught the post-war Germans to be “democratic,” I do not think this is what they had in mind. The increasingly authoritarian Obamanistas will hardly enjoy being shamed by a model of working democracy in the land of Hitler’s grandchildren. Nor will self-righteous liberals like Nancy Pelosi who cheer their chosen one for doing what they opposed George W. Bush for even thinking.

The irony is delicious. At the end of April, some three weeks before Snowden flew to Hong Kong with the down and dirty, twelve high-ranking German officials from the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, the country’s foreign intelligence service, visited NSA headquarters in Maryland to be trained in how best to collect public and private data.

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Jimmy Carter: US “Has No Functioning Democracy”

English: US President Jimmy Carter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Alberto Riva | International Business Times | Reader Supported News | July 19, 2013

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is so concerned about the NSA spying scandal that he thinks it has essentially resulted in a suspension of American democracy.

“America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy,” he said at an event in Atlanta on Tuesday sponsored by the Atlantik Bruecke, a private nonprofit association working to further the German-U.S. relationship. The association’s name is German for “Atlantic bridge.”

Carter’s remarks didn’t appear in the American mainstream press but were reported from Atlanta by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, whose Washington correspondent Gregor Peter Schmitz said on Twitter he was present at the event. The story doesn’t appear in the English-language section of the Spiegel website and is only available in German.

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