So long as Congress allows the law to expire.

US intelligence agencies will stop bulk collection of data documenting calls by US telephone subscribers in June, unless Congress extends a law authorising the spying, US officials said on Monday.

The disclosure that the National Security Agency was collecting metadata generated by domestic telephone users was one of the most controversial revelations made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden nearly two years ago.

A spokesman for President Barack Obama's National Security Council said abandoning the mass collection of domestic telephone data would deprive the country of a "critical national security tool."

The current law, due to expire on June 1, allows the NSA to collect bulk data on numbers called and the time and length of calls, but not their content.

Efforts by Congress to extend the law so far have proved fruitless, and Congressional aides said that little work on the issue was being done on Capitol Hill.

There are deeply divergent views among the Republicans who control Congress. Some object to bulk data collection as violating individual freedoms, while others consider it a vital tool for preventing terrorist attacks against America.

Ned Price, a national security council spokesman, told Reuters the administration had decided to stop bulk collection of domestic telephone call metadata unless Congress explicitly re-authorises it.

Some legal experts have suggested that even if Congress does not extend the law the administration might be able to convince the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorise collection under other legal authorities.

But Price made clear the administration now has no intention of doing so, and that the future of metadata collection after June 1 was up to Congress.

Price said the administration was encouraging Congress to enact legislation in the coming weeks that would allow the collection to continue.

But Price said: "If Section 215 (of the law which covers the collection) sunsets, we will not continue the bulk telephony metadata program."

"Allowing Section 215 to sunset would result in the loss, going forward, of a critical national security tool that is used in a variety of additional contexts that do not involve the collection of bulk data," he said.

Last year the Administration proposed that if collection does continue, the data should be stored by telephone companies rather than NSA itself, but that approach was rejected by the phone companies.

US officials have said metadata collection had helped important counter-terrorism investigations.

However, a review panel appointed by Obama to examine the effectiveness of surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden found that not a single counter-terrorism breakthrough could be attributed to the practice.

This image flashed on yesterday's Sunday Politics show, just as an interview with Tommy Robinson was beginning. Why the fuck is it even there? It's completely irrelevant, and seems highly unlikely that it was put in accidentally?

Scotland Yard is under investigation for protecting paedophiles.

LONDON — Scotland Yard is being investigated over extraordinary claims that police officers were guilty of suppressing evidence, halting investigations, and colluding with politicians to cover up a pedophile network operating at the heart of the British government.

At last, the spotlight will fall on senior officers who have been accused of turning a blind eye to allegations of murder and child abuse because the men were considered too powerful to touch.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), Britain’s version of the internal affairs division, announced on Monday that they were investigating 14 alleged incidents of corruption between 1970 and 2005. The alleged breaches were uncovered by detectives who are probing the existence of a VIP pedophile ring that was allegedly protected by the Thatcher government.

“These allegations are of historic, high level corruption of the most serious nature,” said Sarah Green, the IPCC deputy chair. “Allegations of this nature are of grave concern and I would like to reassure people of our absolute commitment to ensuring that the investigations are thorough and robust.”

The hunt for officers who protected child abusers comes after a growing body of evidence emerged to suggest that some of the most powerful people in Britain were aware of the systematic abuse of children and did nothing to stop it. The investigation into police collusion in the cover-up promises to be one of the most explosive in Scotland Yard’s history.

One of the incidents centers on a luxury apartment block near Westminster where boys were allegedly taken to regular sex abuse parties attended by Members of Parliament. The IPCC will investigate claims that a police operation at Dolphin Square “was stopped because officers were too near prominent people.” The building, on the banks of the River Thames, is popular with MPs who need second homes in London close to parliament. One survivor claimed boys aged to 16 were raped and even murdered by politicians inside the complex.

Investigators say they will also probe an allegation that Special Branch, a now defunct intelligence and national security unit of the police, snatched an incriminating file of evidence from a newspaper editor. Papers given to the journalist by a Labour politician showed that a network of pedophile-friendly MPs were operating within the Houses of Parliament, and that senior law enforcement officials knew about it. Don Hale, the editor concerned, told The Daily Beast earlier this month that he had been stunned when officers barged into his office and seized the papers: “These bully boys come storming in, they said, ‘We’re not here to negotiate. Hand them over or we’ll arrest you now.’”
The IPCC have published a list of the 14 claims they have decided are worthy of investigation. Detectives from Scotland Yard passed on a further two which the independent investigators said they were still assessing.

One of the allegations concerns “an investigation into a pedophile ring, in which a number of people were convicted, [but officers] did not take action in relation to other more prominent individuals.” In 1978, an envelope of obscene images was discovered on a London bus that belonged to Sir Peter Hayman. After a subsequent investigation, a number of the people he was sharing such correspondence with were prosecuted. Hayman, who was one of the top officials in MI6, not only escaped prosecution but his name was withheld from the court.

Hayman had been High Commissioner in Canada and reportedly Britain’s top liaison with the CIA. Thatcher later told aides to make sure that his crime was not disclosed.
The Daily Beast has been told on numerous occasions that police investigations into pedophile rings were halted by unnamed senior officials. Some of the survivors of abuse in the 1980s have refused to come forward again after their trust in the authorities was destroyed when they reported crimes at the time.  Scotland Yard hopes this independent investigation will convince potential witnesses that current detectives are worthy of their trust.

If the allegations are examined thoroughly, however, it seems more likely that the reputation of the police is set to suffer even further. Simon Danczuk, one of the Labour MPs who have led the charge to hold police officers and politicians to account, said: "I think we are on the cusp of finding out exactly what went on in the ‘70s and 1980s."

He's an old boy now, getting on 11 years. The dog was a bit smaller than him (bearing in mind mine is a cocker spaniel), and was snapping at his nose. My dog, on the other hand, is deaf and has somewhat poor eyesight. Poor bugger started crying and shivering.

This is why you keep dogs on a fucking leash.

Several months old, yet nobody seems aware of it.

Enter former Green Party councillor Mr Duncan:

And on 28 June, he tweeted: "Armed Forces Day has certainly brought the hired killers onto the streets of #Brighton today. Hard to explain to my son."

In July, he apologised but was thrown out of the local Green Party.

[...]

In May 2012 he apologised after he tweeted: "I only smoke weed when I'm murdering, raping and looting."

And then, of course, there's the Liberal Democrat councillor who was charged for racially aggravated assault. Let's not forget the one who planted bombs too.

And then there are former Nazis serving in Labour, and BNPers changing allegiance.

Can we stop the circus.

oh my fucking god

dead

beautiful

As in, just how much I hate people. Not even in an edge way either.

It's just odd. Misanthropy is odd.

Holy shit.

The European Union needs its own army to help address the problem that it is not “taken entirely seriously” as an international force, the president of the European commission has said.

Jean-Claude Juncker said such a move would help the EU to persuade Russia that it was serious about defending its values in the face of the threat posed by Moscow.

However, his proposal was immediately rejected by the British government, which said that there was “no prospect” of the UK agreeing to the creation of an EU army.

“You would not create a European army to use it immediately,” Juncker told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in Germany in an interview published on Sunday.

“But a common army among the Europeans would convey to Russia that we are serious about defending the values of the European Union.”

Juncker, who has been a longstanding advocate of an EU army, said getting member states to combine militarily would make spending more efficient and would encourage further European integration.

“Such an army would help us design a common foreign and security policy,” the former prime minister of Luxembourg said.

“Europe’s image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don’t seem to be taken entirely seriously.”

Juncker also said he did not want a new force to challenge the role of Nato. In Germany some political figures expressed support for Juncker’s idea, but in Britain the government insisted that the idea was unacceptable.

A UK government spokesman said: “Our position is crystal clear that defence is a national – not an EU – responsibility and that there is no prospect of that position changing and no prospect of a European army.”

In the past David Cameron, the British prime minister, has blocked moves to create EU-controlled military forces saying that, although defence cooperation between member states is desirable, “it isn’t right for the European Union to have capabilities, armies, air forces and all the rest of it”.

Geoffrey Van Orden, a Conservative MEP and a party spokesman on defence and security, said: “This relentless drive towards a European army must stop. For Eurocrats every crisis is seen as an opportunity to further the EU’s centralising objectives.

“However the EU’s defence ambitions are detrimental to our national interest, to Nato, and to the close alliances that Britain has with many countries outside the EU – not least the United States, Gulf allies, and many Commonwealth countries.”

Van Orden also accused Juncker of living in a “fantasy world”. “If our nations faced a serious security threat, who would we want to rely on – Nato or the EU? The question answers itself,” he said.

Labour said that it did not support a standing European army, navy or air force and that Nato was and should remain the cornerstone of Europe’s collective defence.

A Lib Dem spokesman said: “Having an EU army is not our position. We have never called for one.”

Mike Hookem, a defence spokesman for Ukip, said Juncker’s comments vindicated warnings that his party had been giving about the direction of EU policy for years. He pointed out that when Ukip’s leader, Nigel Farage, warned about the EU wanting its own army in his debate with Nick Clegg last year, the Lib Dem deputy prime minister dismissed this as a “dangerous fantasy”.

Hookem went on: “Ukip [has] been ridiculed for years and branded scaremongers for suggesting that the UK’s traditional parties were slowly relinquishing control of our defence and moving toward a European army. However, yet again, Ukip’s predictions have been proved correct.”

“A European army would be a tragedy for the UK. We have all seen the utter mess the EU has made of the eurozone economy, so how can we even think of trusting them with this island’s defence.”

He also claimed that having British soldiers serve as part of an EU army would leave Britain unable to defend Gibraltar from the Spanish or the Falkland Islands from the Argentinians. And it could see British troops dragged into military action in eastern Ukraine, he claimed.

Hookem said that Ukip, unlike the other parties, was firmly committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence and returning the armed forces to the size they were before the 2010 defence cuts.

But in Germany, Ursula von der Leyen, the defence minister, said in a statement that “our future as Europeans will one day be a European army”, although she added “not in the short term”. She said such a move would “strengthen Europe’s security” and “strengthen a European pillar in the transatlantic alliance”.

Norbert Röttgen, head of the German parliament’s foreign policy committee, said having an EU army was “a European vision whose time has come”.

A report by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), published on Monday, has warned that thousands more soldiers, sailors and airmen will face the axe in the next parliament regardless of which party wins the general election.

Rusi said it was inevitable that Britain’s defence spending would drop below the Nato target of 2% of GDP in the face of continuing austerity cuts and warned that up to 30,000 service personnel could go – with the army likely to bear the heaviest cuts – leaving the armed forces with a combined strength of just 115,000 by the end of the decade.

Even if defence spending is given the same level of protection being promised to health and schools, it said the forces are still likely to shed 15,000 personnel during the next parliament.

That's it, I want out.

topspook

Get shrekt.

Despite Ukip’s nationalist stance and Nigel Farage’s recent comments on abolishing anti-discrimination laws, many people would expect the anti-EU party to have the worst record on diversity. But it doesn’t.

According to a new study, it is in fact Natalie Bennett’s Green party that has the lowest percentage of black and minority ethnic (BME) candidates of the main national parties.

The Greek government is angry that the EU released a statement without its consent.

The new Greek government has spoken out against the EU partners over the statement that lays the blame for Saturday’s fatal attack on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Russia. Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria voiced similar objections earlier.

The government, headed by Prime Minister Alexis Tripras, said in a press release on Tuesday that “the aforementioned statement was released without the prescribed procedure to obtain consent by the member states, and particularly without ensuring the consent of Greece."

“In this context, it is underlined that Greece does not consent to this statement,” Tsipras added.

He voiced his “discontent” in a phone call to EU foreign relations chief Federica Mogherini.

The EU statement was published on Tuesday morning, saying that all 28 EU leaders had agreed that Russia bears “responsibility” for a rocket attack on the city of Mariupol that left 30 people dead on Saturday.

Brussels objected that the Greek government had been informed about the statement on Russia and Ukraine, but no one had contradicted it until Tuesday.

European Council President Donald Tusk initiated the EU statement, and claimed he had called Tsipras and the “sherpas” - top officials taking care of EU issues in each leader's office.

One EU diplomat reportedly said that Greece had attempted to remove the line blaming Russia for the Mariupol killing. Also, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia tried, and failed, to “water down” the communiqué, the EU Observer website stated.

It’s the first time that such a situation - a retroactive abjuration of an EU line - has happened, EU Council official stressed.

Foreign affairs analyst Serja Trifkovich told RT that other countries might follow suit and oppose Brussels’ policies on the Ukrainian crisis.

“It’s very difficult in the EU to break the ranks. Now that Greece has made a move, I confidently expect that the Hungarians in particular, but perhaps also Slovakia and Cyprus, will [find] the courage to say no to the dictate from Brussels.”

The EU statement on Russia and Ukraine also urged for more sanctions, for considering “any appropriate action” against Moscow.

One of the measures being mulled is to block Russia from the global interbank SWIFT payment system.

Economist Max Fraad Wolff told RT that this would be a drastic measure.

“Let’s be fair and honest here: if you’re cut off from SWIFT, your ability to have any kind of normal business flow with the global commerce community is hampered.”

However, what he envisages is that “cooler heads will prevail” and that “we won’t see Russia cut off from the SWIFT system,” as it is “in very few parties’ long-term interests.”

If it is indeed true that the European Union initiated such a statement without the consent of the Greek government, Tripras is absolutely right to be furious. It is worrying, in one respect, however in that Greece has broken ranks knowing the geopolitical threat and the ground this could give to Russia. If the EU is good for anything at the moment, then it's acting as a buffer and power bloc to combat Putin's aspirations. Although, like I say, the EU should take responsibility for failing to follow the proper procedure.

However, the claims of Brussels and Tusk could well be true, also. If it is the case that the Greek government waited this long to contradict the statement, it highlights a worrying degree of wilful manipulation on their part in undermining the Union's governance. It also underlines a worrying trend which could be developing of closer relations between Russia and Greece, which wouldn't be good for the overall situation in Ukraine, or for relations between the EU and Russia--as well as the power bloc it is trying to establish around the Eurasian Economic Union.

happened back in early 2014

they're gonna be gone by 2016

what the fuck man

i smoke menthol

fucking european faggots