Os olhos (e ouvidos) do Imperio: NSA continua seu pequeno trabalho de escuta

House authorizes NSA mass surveillance program
By Robert Romano
Americans for a Limited Government, 14/05/2015

On May 13, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly, 338 to 88, to adopt H.R. 2048, the so-called "USA Freedom Act," that promises, in section 501, to include a "Prohibition on bulk collection" by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Ahead of the vote, the White House — a strong supporter of the agency's mass surveillance program it has said is vital to security — issued a statement in favor of the legislation, promising that it would "enhance privacy and better safeguard our civil liberties, while keeping our nation safe."

There is only one problem.

In truly Orwellian fashion, the bill does exactly the opposite, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) warned in a Facebook post to his constituents.

"H.R. 2048 actually expands the statutory basis for the large-scale collection of most data," Amash wrote in opposition to the bill hours before the vote.

Amash explained, "H.R. 2048 does this by authorizing the government to order the production of records based upon a "specific selection term" (i.e., like a search term used in a search engine)… A 'specific selection term' may be a specific person (including a corporation, such as Western Union), account, address, or personal device, but it also may be "any other specific identifier," and the bill expressly contemplates using geographic regions or communication service providers (such as Verizon) to define the records sought, so long as it's not the only identifier used as part of the specific selection term. In other words, the bill doesn't let the government require Verizon to turn over all its records without limitation, but nothing appears to prevent the government from requiring Verizon to turn over all its records for all its customers in the state of New York."

"Only a politician or bureaucrat wouldn't call that 'bulk,'" Amash added.

But it gets worse, as the legislation, if it becomes law, may undermine pending lawsuits against the agency, Amash warns, "H.R. 2048 gives our intelligence agencies, for the first time, statutory authority to collect Americans' data in bulk. In light of the Second Circuit's opinion that the NSA has been collecting our information in bulk without statutory authority for all this time, it would be a devastating misstep for Congress to pass a bill that codifies that bulk collection and likely ensures no future court will ever again be positioned to rule against the government for over-collecting on statutory grounds."

Meaning, the only remaining recourse would be to sue on constitutional grounds, leaving it to chance how courts might rule on the basis of the Fourth Amendment's protections against warrantless surveillance.

Congress would be better off doing nothing, since that would increase the odds of the warrantless surveillance being overturned in federal court. Instead, now members are giving their imprimatur to the program.

"The U.S. House is missing an historic opportunity to rein in the NSA mass surveillance program," Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning said, instead urging Congress to "return to real reform that protects Americans from government surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment."

The legislation now heads to the U.S. Senate, and in the meantime, almost everyone in the House will pretend they voted to end the program. But don't be fooled.

All they did was provide political cover and a legal basis to Big Brother to download and store your phone records. That's not called ending the program; it's called authorizing it.

Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.

Again: Greenwald on Snowden and the NSA - book review, Charlie Savage

Book Reveals Wider Net of U.S. Spying on Envoys

• 
  

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

The New York Times, May 12, 2014

WASHINGTON — In May 2010, when the United Nations Security Council was weighing sanctions against Iran over itsnuclear program, several members were undecided about how they would vote. The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, asked theNational Security Agency for help “so that she could develop a strategy,” a leaked agency document shows.

The N.S.A. swiftly went to work, developing the paperwork to obtain legal approval for spying on diplomats from four Security Council members — Bosnia, Gabon, Nigeria and Uganda — whose embassies and missions were not already under surveillance. The following month, 12 members of the 15-seat Security Council voted to approve new sanctions, with Lebanon abstaining and only Brazil and Turkey voting against.

Later that summer, Ms. Rice thanked the agency, saying its intelligence had helped her to know when diplomats from the other permanent representatives — China, England, France and Russia — “were telling the truth ... revealed their real position on sanctions ... gave us an upper hand in negotiations ... and provided information on various countries ‘red lines.’ ”

The two documents laying out that episode, both leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, are reproduced in a new book by Glenn Greenwald, “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the N.S.A., and the U.S. Surveillance State.” The book is being published Tuesday.

Elements of the N.S.A.’s role in helping aid American diplomatic negotiations leading up to the Iran sanctions vote had been previously reported, including in an October 2013 article in the French newspaper Le Monde that focused on the agency’s spying on French diplomats.

Mr. Greenwald’s book also reproduces a document listing embassies and missions that had been penetrated by the N.S.A., including those of Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, the European Union, France, Georgia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Venezuela and Vietnam. Aspects of that document were reported in June by The Guardian.

Revelations about N.S.A. spying abroad, including on officials of American allies, has fueled anger at the United States. But Caitlin Hayden, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, noted that President Obama sought to address those issues in January when he promised greater limits on spying aimed at allies and partners.

“While our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments — as opposed to ordinary citizens — around the world, in the same way that the intelligence services of every other nation do, we will not apologize because our services may be more effective,” she said.

Ms. Rice’s request for help in May 2010 was recounted in an internal report by the security agency’s Special Source Operations division, which works with telecommunications companies on the American network.

A legal team was called in on May 22 to begin drawing up the paperwork for the four court orders, one for each of the four countries on the Security Council whose embassies and missions were apparently not yet under surveillance. A judge signed them on May 26.

The internal report showing that the N.S.A. obtains country-specific orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on their diplomatic facilities may shed light on a murky document published in March by Der Spiegel. It showed that the court had issued an order authorizing spying on “Germany” on March 7, 2013, and listed several other countries whose orders were about to expire.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not authorize the court to issue orders for broad monitoring of specific countries. It does authorize orders of specific “foreign powers” operating on American soil, which expire after a year.

No Place to Hide: a book by Gleen Greenwald on Edward Snowden and the NSA surveillance

Book Reveals Wider Net of U.S. Spying on Envoys

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

The New York Times, MAY 12, 2014

WASHINGTON — In May 2010, when the United Nations Security Council was weighing sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, several members were undecided about how they would vote. The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, asked the National Security Agency for help “so that she could develop a strategy,” a leaked agency document shows.

The N.S.A. swiftly went to work, developing the paperwork to obtain legal approval for spying on diplomats from four Security Council members — Bosnia, Gabon, Nigeria and Uganda — whose embassies and missions were not already under surveillance. The following month, 12 members of the 15-seat Security Council voted to approve new sanctions, with Lebanon abstaining and only Brazil and Turkey voting against.

Later that summer, Ms. Rice thanked the agency, saying its intelligence had helped her to know when diplomats from the other permanent representatives — China, England, France and Russia — “were telling the truth ... revealed their real position on sanctions ... gave us an upper hand in negotiations ... and provided information on various countries ‘red lines.’ ”

The two documents laying out that episode, both leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, are reproduced in a new book by Glenn Greenwald, “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the N.S.A., and the U.S. Surveillance State.” The book is being published Tuesday.

Elements of the N.S.A.’s role in helping aid American diplomatic negotiations leading up to the Iran sanctions vote had been previously reported, including in an October 2013 article in the French newspaper Le Monde that focused on the agency’s spying on French diplomats.

Mr. Greenwald’s book also reproduces a document listing embassies and missions that had been penetrated by the N.S.A., including those of Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, the European Union, France, Georgia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Venezuela and Vietnam. Aspects of that document werereported in June by The Guardian.

Revelations about N.S.A. spying abroad, including on officials of American allies, has fueled anger at the United States. But Caitlin Hayden, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, noted that President Obama sought to address those issues in January when he promised greater limits on spying aimed at allies and partners.

“While our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments — as opposed to ordinary citizens — around the world, in the same way that the intelligence services of every other nation do, we will not apologize because our services may be more effective,” she said.

Ms. Rice’s request for help in May 2010 was recounted in an internal report by the security agency’s Special Source Operations division, which works with telecommunications companies on the American network.

A legal team was called in on May 22 to begin drawing up the paperwork for the four court orders, one for each of the four countries on the Security Council whose embassies and missions were apparently not yet under surveillance. A judge signed them on May 26.

The internal report showing that the N.S.A. obtains country-specific orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on their diplomatic facilities may shed light on a murky document published in March by Der Spiegel. It showed that the court had issued an order authorizing spying on Germany on March 7, 2013, and listed several other countries whose orders were about to expire.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not authorize the court to issue orders for broad monitoring of specific countries. It does authorize orders of specific “foreign powers” operating on American soil, which expire after a year.

A version of this article appears in print on May 13, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Book Reveals Wider Net Of U.S. Spying on Envoys. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

Big Brother and its challengers: Snowden case, encore...

Journalists Who Broke News on N.S.A. Surveillance Return to the U.S.

By RAVI SOMAIYA and NOAM COHEN The New York Times, APRIL 11, 2014

The journalists had been threatened, cajoled and condemned by the British and American governments. Their work together had set off a hunt for their source and a debate on both sides of the Atlantic about government surveillance.

But they had never met — until Friday.

That was when Glenn Greenwald, the journalist, lawyer and civil liberties crusader, and Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian newspaper, finally shook hands after months of working remotely on articles based on material from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. The two were in New York for the prestigious Polk Award presented to Mr. Greenwald and his colleagues, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, and the Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, for national security reporting.

Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Poitras returned to the United States for the first time since their articles broke in June. They arrived at Kennedy Airport in New York from Berlin, where Mr. Greenwald had given a speech on Thursday and where Ms. Poitras lives and is making a documentary on surveillance.

Mr. Gellman, who revealed the Snowden findings alongside The Guardian, has lived in the United States since their publication beginning last June. But there were fears among Mr. Greenwald’s supporters that he and Ms. Poitras might be detained upon returning to the United States. Federal prosecutors have charged Mr. Snowden with violating the Espionage Act. He has been given asylum in Russia.

The crowd of journalists at the Polk ceremony at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan cheered and applauded when it was announced that Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Poitras had cleared customs and were en route. They arrived just after 1 p.m., trailed by flashing cameras. With the ceremony already underway, Guardian editors, including Mr. Rusbridger, welcomed the two.

“I am finally really happy to see a table full of Guardian editors and journalists, whose role in this story is much more integral than the publicity generally recognizes,” Mr. Greenwald said, as he accepted the award for national security reporting.

It speaks to the increasingly wired and global news-gathering ecosystem that two of the journalists who collaborated on the complex and politically charged revelations from Mr. Snowden about global surveillance had never met. Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, a veteran Guardian reporter, flew to Hong Kong to meet with Mr. Snowden, someone they had only known via the Internet until they met in person at a hotel. Mr. Snowden identified himself by carrying a Rubik’s cube.

“New York, Rio, London, Berlin, Hong Kong at one point — it was just a very logistically, ethically complicated story,” Mr. Rusbridger said after the ceremony Friday. His colleagues, including the editor of Guardian U.S., Janine Gibson, her deputy, Stuart Millar, knew Mr. Greenwald well and had hired him to be a columnist the year before.

“It is much more complicated — being dispersed,” Mr. Rusbridger said. “It would have been much easier to all have been in one room — particularly a story of this nature where you assume that every conventional means of communication is suspect in some way.”

On another occasion The Guardian was forced to destroy computer equipment containing material from Mr. Snowden with power tools, under the observation of British government officials.

Despite a trouble-free entry into the United States, Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Poitras had traveled with a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, and a German journalist to document any unpleasant surprises. “The risks of subpoena are very real,” Ms. Poitras said. “We know there is a threat.”

The Guardian and The Washington Post are considered contenders for the Pulitzer Prizes, which will be announced on Monday.

A version of this article appears in print on April 12, 2014, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Journalists Who Broke News on N.S.A. Surveillance Return to the U.S..

Espionagem eletronica: a paranoia gigantesca da NSA (Washington Post, Edward Snowden)

Comment la NSA a mis sur écoute un pays entier

Le Monde.fr | 18.03.2014 à 18h56 • Mis à jour le 19.03.2014 à 07h02

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Jusqu'ici, on savait la NSA capable d'intercepter ou de collecter des métadonnées (qui appelle qui, quand, où) téléphoniques. Mais le Washington Post révèle, mardi 18 mars, que l'agence américaine est également dotée de gigantesques capacités d'interception du contenu de ces appels téléphoniques.

Selon le quotidien américain, qui s'appuie à nouveau sur des documents d'Edward Snowden, la NSA a même, à partir de 2011, mis sur écoute un pays entier à l'aided'un programme appelé Mystic, testé dès 2009. En concertation avec de hauts responsables américains, le quotidien a décidé de ne pas nommer ce pays.

REMONTER DANS LE TEMPS

Les conversations interceptées sont dans un premier temps stockés sur une période de 30 jours. Mystic se double ainsi d'un autre programme, Retro, qui permet de fouiller dans cette masse de données et, éventuellement, de remonterdans le temps en retrouvant des conversations interceptées précédemment.

En 2013, des documents évoquaient la possibilité de mettre sur écoute d'autres pays. Le détail du budget du renseignement américain, précédemment publié par le quotidien, évoque quant à lui cinq à six pays dont tout ou partie des conversations téléphoniques sont collectées par la NSA.

Lire tous nos articles consacrés aux révélations des documents d'Edward Snowden

Même si les analystes de l'agence n'écoutent pas l'intégralité de ce qui est intercepté par l'agence, le Post précise que chaque mois, des millions de ces écoutes sont extraites du stock de 30 jours pour une conservation de plus long terme.

INTERCEPTION DE MASSE

Un porte-parole de l'administration américaine a défendu ce type d'interception de masse, où tout est englouti par l'agence sans aucune forme de ciblage, expliquant que certaines menaces sont « souvent cachées dans le vaste et complexe ensemble des communications mondiales ».

Comme le note le Washington Post, cette révélation bat en brèche ce qu'avait affirmé le président Obama lors de son discours de janvier. « Les Etats-Unis n'espionnent pas les gens ordinaires qui ne menaçent pas la sécurité nationale », avait-il dit.

Voir ci-dessous nos explications : « Comment la NSA vous surveille »

Edward Snowden: entre o Estado e o povo americano, escolheu este - entrevista ao Washington Post

WorldViews

Edward Snowden, American nationalist

• BY MAX FISHER

• December 24 at 11:25 am

Edward Snowden (Guardian/Glenn Greenwald/Laura Poitras)

"If I defected at all," former NSA contractor Edward Snowden told The Washington Post's Barton Gellman in an interview in Moscow, "I defected from the government to the public."

Snowden returned several times to this distinction, between the U.S. government and its public, to argue that if he had worked against the former, it was only in service of the latter and the higher ideals it represents. On its face, this is a reasonable position and certainly consistent with how Snowden has framed his decision to leak U.S. secrets to the world.

At a deeper level, though, Snowden's language and his description of his mission echo a worldview that is unique neither to him nor even to Americans. These ideas, that the government has strayed far enough from the public interest that it must be brought back into check, and more fundamentally that a person can and perhaps should be loyal to the nation over its government, is a worldview that in any other national context we would call nationalism.

Leaks of the NSA's surveillance programs by Snowden, which the Obama administration has at times portrayed as traitorous, were actually, in Snowden's telling, acts of patriotic loyalty -- something that he suggests administration officials can't see because they themselves have lost that sense of loyalty.

He said of his nondisclosure agreement with the NSA: "The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy.... That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that [NSA chief] Keith Alexander and [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper did not."

For a nationalist, loyalty to the abstract ideal of the nation -- personified by "the people" or "the public," or in the U.S. context by the Constitution -- transcends all else. Snowden's worldview seems to fit this idea perfectly. In working against U.S. government programs, he seems to argue, he is both serving a higher fealty to the nation and helping its government to return to the path from which it's strayed.

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he told Gellman. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

In the nationalist's worldview, when a government strays from its primary duty of serving the nation, it becomes not just justifiable but near compulsory to challenge that government on behalf of the nation. Working against the government, in this view, isn't an act of treachery, but is in fact the highest level of patriotism, for it demonstrates an allegiance to the nation itself and calls attention to the enemies within.

Nationalist movements like these are typically right-wing, such as in the streets and the social networks of contemporary China or in much of 1980s Latin America. But not always. The Egyptian protesters who toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, for example, could be called left-wing nationalists, having decried Mubarak for failing both liberal values and the national ideal of the Egyptian nation. So it would not be outlandish for Snowden to be both a left-leaning libertarian and a nationalist.

Snowden positions himself, in this interview, as working on behalf of the nation rather than on behalf of -- and, perhaps, in opposition to -- the government. This is a defining feature of many a nationalist movement, this idea that the government no longer truly represents the nation (used interchangeably in the United States with "the people") and must thus be challenged from the outside.

It's also potentially dangerous, as Snowden himself acknowledges when he admits he couldn't be sure if people would support his decisions. When one person can pick up the mantle of "the nation" to go outside or actively challenge democratic institutions, it risks undermining them. This doesn't mean that American democracy is going to collapse because Snowden broke protocol, of course. But it allows anyone to see actions against the government, against democratic institutions, as serving the nation; it allows anyone to see their beliefs and concerns as representing the greater interests of the country.

Snowden had an answer for this. “That whole question -- who elected you? -- inverts the model,” he said in the interview. “They elected me. The overseers.... [Congressman] Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden.... The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

Nationalist movements have long used similar arguments: My actions against the state are compelled by the failures of the state to properly serve the nation. In far, far more extreme forms -- iterations so different from Snowden's case that I raise them only to illustrate the underlying ideological commonalities -- they've underpinned rebellions, or movements such as the 1930s Japanese military officers who would storm government offices with swords to protest their supposed failures to serve the higher national interests. Again, to be clear, Snowden has not gone anywhere near these lengths. But the parallels may help explain why some Americans, particularly those who serve in government, can seem so rankled by Snowden's claim to serve the national interest.

"No one has the right to usurp the constitutional system -- not the NSA in the name of 'national security,' and not Edward Snowden," Andrew Exum, who's worked in a defense-oriented think tank and previously in the Pentagon, wrote on Twitter in response to Snowden's interview. "History will remember Edward Snowden fondly because of the way he forced changes in the relationship between the state & its citizenry. But we can't have a country in which any Tom, Dick or Harry believes he can usurp the democratic system when he feels like it."

The question of who can claim to serve the nation is a particularly tricky one in this case because so much of the debate revolves around secret programs; Snowden had to first act against the government by releasing classified NSA documents before he could even begin to position those leaks as serving the nation.

On the one hand, as critics such as Exum note, we have a democratic system precisely to implement the national will. While Snowden's revelations have turned out to be generally popular among Americans, he didn't leak NSA secrets because he'd run a Gallup poll and determined that Americans would support him; he just decided that they probably would or should. And anybody could decide that. But, on the other hand, as Snowden's supporters would correctly note, Americans couldn't express a popular desire to rein in NSA bulk data collection because they didn't know it existed. It's a bit of a catch-22.

Snowden's nationalist flavor may be what makes him so polarizing, what makes him so admired by supporters and loathed by detractors. For Americans who share Snowden's view that he is acting on behalf of the nation, he's a nationalist hero -- and even if nobody calls him that, that's something that has always inspired great passion in people, particularly Americans.

But for Americans who disagree with this, who see Snowden as falsely claiming to represent the nation when he represents only his particular viewpoint, his actions are an insult and an ideological imposition. And that dichotomy speaks to the power and the danger of taking up the nationalist cause.

Max Fisher is the Post's foreign affairs blogger. He has a master's degree in security studies from Johns Hopkins University. Sign up for his daily newsletter here. Also, follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

O que alguns querem receber de presente de Natal: cartas secretas ao Papai Noel (NSA)

Cartinhas secretas ao Papai Noel (agora reveladas):

o que alguns querem receber em suas meias de Natal

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Agente bibliográfico da NSA

Nossos poderosos meios de interceptação eletrônica, escondidos em algum canto do Império, detectaram algumas mensagens especiais, mandadas por e-mail para o Papai Noel, que se esconde em seu bunker em algum outro canto gelado acima do círculo polar. Segundo nossos computadores e tradutores automáticos, estes foram alguns dos mais estranhos pedidos encaminhados ao endereço do bom e simpático velhinho (santaclaus@rovaniemi.fi), que mesmo tendo códigos especiais só disponíveis aos verdadeiros crentes (menores de 10 anos), ainda assim não escaparam à nossa criptografia reversa, implacável com gregos e goianos.

1) De uma candidata reincidente:

Caro Papai Noel,

Eu acho uma coisa extraordinária ter chegado até aqui, mesmo que coisas ainda mais extraordinárias ainda possam acontecer, e isso eu só posso agradecer aos meus amigos, aos meus protetores, ao meu pessoal. Eu queria pedir ao Senhor, se não for pedir muito, uma taxa de crescimento um pouquinho maior, se der acima de 3%, pois as coisas aqui começam a ficar sem graça com essas coisinhas abaixo de 2%. De preferência já no primeiro semestre, que é para deixar o pessoal otimista para a Copa. Também peço menos manifestações este ano, pois as do ano que está acabando já deram o que falar; esse pessoal do Bad block, ou seja lá como se chamam, são uns chatos, para não dizer outra coisa. Espero, e o Senhor pode ajudar, que nenhum dos médicos importados faça alguma bobagem com algum paciente brasileiro, já que eles falam um dialeto que nem a Cristina entende. Sim, para mim eu quero um iPad-mini novo...

2) De um candidato inédito:

Salve São Nicolau,

Estamos aqui nos preparando para um gigantesco esforço de melhorias em nosso país, que merece mais, e melhor, apesar do muito que já foi feito. Não pretendo me indispor com ninguém, mas se não lhe for pedir muito, gostaria ter sua ajuda especial no sentido de tentar convencer nossa nova companheira a ser mais pelo desenvolvimento e menos sustentável, que isso anda deixando preocupados nossas classes produtoras. Não sei se o escritório do Papai Noel tem metodologia estatística, mas eu ando desconfiado dessas pesquisas de opinião: daria para ter uma pesquisa independente, feita aí no Polo Norte, só para tirar minhas dúvidas? Se ainda for possível, eu queria mais algum tempinho no horário gratuito, pois fica difícil com 3 minutos por dia. Eu mesmo vou querer só um desses celulares israelenses, que já vem com codificação de fábrica.

3) De um candidato esperado:

Meu bom parceiro de longas caminhadas,

Estamos no mesmo diapasão de valores e princípios, e por isso me julgo merecedor da sua atenção. Desejo empreender um sério esforço de recuperação deste nosso país tão sofrido, tão enganado em suas legítimas aspirações, e por isso carente de um novo caminho. Quero lhe propor um pacto: empreender a retomada do projeto cristão que sempre foi o desta Nação abençoada por Deus desde sua descoberta. Não lhe peço que prejudique meus competidores, mas que convença alguns dos meus aliados a de verdade se engajar no meu projeto. Sua ajuda vai ser inestimável, pois sem unidade, dificilmente conseguiremos ir muito longe, ao Polo Norte nem pensar. Eu também quero lhe pedir, para mim mesmo, lucidez e fortaleza da alma, pois vou precisar de confiança em mim mesmo. Sim, aguardo sugestão de nome para o meu herdeiro...

4) De um candidato possível:

Ô companheiro vermelho,

 Eu já tive muito na vida, e acho que sou eu quem pode fazer a felicidade de alguns, por isso não peço nada de especial. Só gostaria que a imprensa me deixasse em paz com essas velhas histórias que só servem para ajudar meus adversários. Dá para dar um jeito nesses chatos? Não precisa fulminar os caras com um raio, mas vocês não têm aí na sua oficina aqueles escudos protetores que a gente vê nos filmes?

5) De um interno:

Eu só queria movimentar meu blog livremente, pois estou cada vez mais convencido da minha inocência...

Hartford, 24 de Dezembro de 2013

Historiadores do futuro: confiem nos arquivos da NSA: sao fiaveis... - Augusto Nunes

Os papeis confidenciais americanos -- e isto é a constatação de quem já pesquisou em arquivos americanos, inclusive em papéis da CIA -- são extremamente objetivos e profissionais: descrevem meticulosamente o que acontece em cada país, desde os mais altos escalões de certos governos (hummm...) até os mais baixos escalões de certos movimentos "sociais" (que também podem ser sindicais, de juízes, professores, etc).
Ou seja, não tenho nenhuma dúvida de que se os historiadores quiserem reconstituir certos episódios de nossa diplomacia dentro de 10, 15 ou 25 anos (dependendo do grau de sigilo dos documentos), melhor fariam, ou farão, se confiarem mais nos documentos americanos -- que serão inevitavelmente liberados, em prazos certos -- do que em eventuais documentos da região.
Pelo que eu conheço da história do Mercosul, por exemplo, afirmo com todas as letras que seria impossível refazer a história dos processos decisórios que levaram a certos atos do bloco -- a Tarifa Externa Comum, entre outras -- com base em papéis argentinos, brasileiros, uruguaios ou paraguaios. E não porque eles estivessem contaminados pelo zelo conspiratório dos amigos do Foro de S.Paulo, pelo secretismo doentio dos stalinistas de Havana, ou por quaisquer outras deformações institucionais que passaram a ocorrer na república do nunca antes, mas pela bagunça mesmo, pela falta de registros, atas, minutas de reuniões, que possam ajudar na reconstituição de certos processos.
Confio mais nos papéis americanos, que cobrem tudo com um zelo missionário, informando tudo o que é relevante para seus patrões de Washington.
Quem quer tenha trabalhado em arquivos americanos, sabe do que estou falando.
Contentes, historiadores?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Os ianques sabem o que Patriota e Maduro fizeram em Assunção no inverno passado

Augusto Nunes, 10/09/2013

No fim da tarde de 22 de junho de 2012, uma sexta-feira, o Senado paraguaio aprovou por 39 votos a 4 o afastamento do presidente Fernando Lugo. Graças a informações repassadas pela Agência de Segurança Nacional (NSA, na sigla em inglês), a Casa Branca não se surpreendeu com o desfecho da crise política, escancarada por 23 tentativas de impeachment. Surpresos ficaram os governos do Brasil e da Venezuela, constataram os agentes da NSA incumbidos de vigiar também a movimentação dos vizinhos decididos a mandar às favas a soberania do Paraguai.

Inconformados com o despejo do reprodutor de batina, Dilma Rousseff e Hugo Chávez resolveram por telefone que o companheiro Lugo merecia continuar no emprego, que a ofensiva deveria começar de imediato e que seria conduzida pelos chanceleres dos dois países. Despachados para Assunção no meio da noite, o brasileiro Antonio Patriota apareceu sem aviso prévio no Senado paraguaio e o venezuelano Nicolás Maduro baixou sem ser convidado na sede do Poder Executivo.

O emissário de Dilma tentou anular a decisão quase unânime do Senado e reinstalar Fernando Lugo na presidência da República. O enviado de Chávez fez o que pôde para convencer os chefes das Forças Armadas a desfazer com um golpe de Estado o que fizera o Poder Legislativo. Ambos fracassaram miseravelmente. O vice-presidente Federico Franco assumiu sem sobressaltos o lugar do ex-bispo, que voltou a ter tempo de sobra para cuidar das ovelhas do rebanho.

A vingança dos parceiros trapalhões foi tramada com a ajuda da Argentina e do Uruguai: 150 anos depois da Guerra do Paraguai, a Tríplice Aliança reeditada por Dilma, Cristina Kirchner e Jose Mujica suspendeu do Mercosul o vizinho insubordinado e oficializou o ingresso da Venezuela, obstruído havia anos pelo mesmo Senado que afastara Fernando Lugo. Sorte do Paraguai: alheio ao assédio dos quatro patetas, que hoje imploram pela volta do país ao mais anêmico bloco econômico do planeta, o novo governo de Assunção prefere noivar com a Aliança do Pacífico e costurar acordos bilaterais muito mais vantajosos.

“Um dia, talvez, se conheça o histórico, as reflexões, os motivos e a atuação de cada um dos protagonistas brasileiros nesses episódios”, registrou o jornalista José Casado no artigo publicado pelo Globo em que divulgou essas informações. “Até lá, continuarão como segredos enterrados nos arquivos de um anexo virtual da Casa Branca: NSA”. O governo lulopetista não costuma deixar provas materiais das safadezas acumuladas pela política externa da cafajestagem (veja o post na seção Vale Reprise). Mas a documentação produzida pela espionagem ianque deixará de ser sigilosa daqui a alguns anos.

O pouco que vazou sobre o caso é suficiente para atestar que os americanos sabem detalhadamente o que Patriota e Maduro andaram fazendo em Assunção no inverno passado. E sabem muito sobre muitas outras coisas. Ainda bem. Deve-se sempre ressalvar que, em matéria de espionagem, o governo dos EUA tem ultrapassado com frequência os limites do tolerável. Mas certos efeitos colaterais são extraordinariamente positivos. Um deles: os documentos que pioraram o permanente mau humor de Dilma  ajudarão a contar a verdadeira história do Brasil.