Truth Suppression

To be wrong ain't good.
Suppressing truth is much worse.

Japan's leadership is accused of actively suppressing data-collection around the Fukushima nuclear disaster (link).

Looking at official statements, it's fair to declare coverup
-- Two nuclear reactor containment buildings exploded dramatically; Japanese officials claimed, no worries!
-- Nuclear meltdowns: Official admissions years too slow

Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.
                  -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

People have busy lives, but life-and-death issues are important. Japan's nuclear industry, political leadership, and bureaucracy are criminal.

Many take hints from American bravado. Militarist Bush was reelected, and now honorably retired. Lance Armstrong brazenly defrauded the world, yet is still richly celebrated. Stupidity brings fame as funny media entertainment. We cannot allow deceit to flourish, and devious people to feel there are no consequences...

Ruled By Scumpany Ltd?

Volkswagen has admitted irregularities; their doctored automotive emissions add unknown hazards & poisons to our environment.

Don't allow secret corporate trade pacts to further corrupt our governments and poison worldwide lives for private profit.

Never accept TTP, TTIP, or TISA

Inc. Crime

This week's Volkswagen emissions scandal draws attention to dangers in the major secret trade agreements being hatched by global corporations, the USA, and foolish governments elsewhere.

Individual nations are to give-up most ability to monitor & license multinational businesses. The cases of Enron, Worldcom, Toshiba, Olympus, Volkswagen and countless others show the dangers of a corporate-managed world. Remember thalidomide babies and Chisso-Minamata mercury poisoning? Greed plus poor oversight led to many thousands of horrific injuries.

Say NO to TTIP, TTP & TISA

PS - The above scandalous stories are merely the tip of a polluted frozen block of waste, as discharged from passenger plane toilets. Corporate scum such as Lance Armstrong & Bernie Madoff ride free for many years -- most weasels never unmasked. We commoners pay!

Fair Share of Refugees

BBC reports:
"US President Barack Obama said all European states should accept their "fair share" of asylum seekers"

"Fairness" would put millions of displaced people in places that elected George W. Bush and FuckYou Dick Cheney.

Texas should get a few million Iraqi refugees thanks to Pres. Bush.

Wyoming can receive millions of Afghan refugees; thank Cheney.

Other Americans who foolishly supported imperialist aggression can partly repay error by hosting a refugee family. America's militarist "solution" crippled huge populations & now hobbles Europe.

As the asylum seekers are not European, but simply terrified displaced humans, support should come from many directions.

Japan last year accepted 11 asylum sufferers

see:

Japan: No No NO Refugees

Corporate Reamed

I like big business for economies-of-scale and efficiency. Big corporations also provide wealth & can counter public sector corruption when they choose to do so.

But there's no good reason mega-corporations should create and fine-tune major global trade agreements which will tie our hands and change our lives. Our governments are corrupted to communicate with corporations but not the citizenry.

Discussions have been kept secret from public scrutiny.

The projects should be trashed.

NO to TPP
Trans-Pacific Partnership

NO to TTIP
Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership

NO to TISA
Trade in Services Agreement
(abandoned already by Singapore & Uruguay)

More info at: Our World is Not For Sale

Japan's PM a War Criminal?

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe is being labeled a "War Criminal" (戦犯 - link) for his belligerent efforts to re-militarize Japan.

Why do local and international news reports feature one instance of disrespectful streetside graffiti from a rural Gifu parking lot?
「こいつは平成のＡ級戦犯」  (link)

Should PM Abe be lumped as a Class A War Criminal with his infamous maternal grandfather, the Monster of Manchukuo Nobusuke Kishi? (Prime Minister Abe, 安倍晋三, is no known relation to Japanese convicted war criminal Hiroshi Abe - link).

Both Kishi & Abe have ultimately served the interests of America's military -- (more than assisting Japan)?

How Many Bureaucrats Fit on Your Bike?

I feel continuing pain from Japanese bureaucracy's presumption: backed by law, it's essential we satisfy their demands. They extract huge energies... imagine swimming with a backpack heavy with regulations & administrative documents.  Or a competitive cyclist towing two administrators.

Officials are doing their jobs to gather information, data, license fees, receipts, etc., but huge bureaucracy has great cost. It's wrong when public servants stop being support staff. It's wrong when government employees become self-serving parasites forcing the public to work for them. It's dangerous when bureaucrats operate secretly, controlling the public "for our own good"... (Big players in Japan, China, and Korea learn how money can navigate the bureaucracy, which by definition invites corruption).





















Productive activities become bogged-down by bureaucratic reporting. Of course, too few officials examine officialdom cost / benefits.

日の丸蛭
Hinomaru hiru
Japanese leech

This book calls out a protest:

シロアリ公務員を駆除せよ！

Atomic Sushi

Today's heavy rain around the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactor led to drainage pump failure, leaking radioactivity into the ocean & wider environment (11-12 Sept. 2015 & ongoing: Tokyo Electric Power TEPCO; further link here).

Effect on Pacific Ocean fish & sea life is unknown...

Is TEPCO irresponsible?  Are they criminal?

Japan: No No NO Refugees

Over 5000 foreign people applied in Japan for refugee status in 2014 (link), and 11 were approved.

Evidence of institutionalized racism?

Prof. Sadako Ogata served 10 years as U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (and another nine years as Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA President) doing huge good around the globe. But Prof. Ogata totally failed making much political impression at home in Japan -- where foreigners are devils.

Marginalized People

The United Nations General Assembly yesterday voted overwhelmingly to support flying the flag of Palestine at the United Nations. The State of Palestine has been a UN non-member observer State since 29 November 2012. The Vatican flag will now also be flown at the UN as the only other non-member observer State.

UN Resolution 120A/69/L.87 needed majority support to pass, with final vote 119-8; the eight nations opposed were Australia, Canada, Israel, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu, USA.

Marginalization & demonization of Palestine, Israel, and their neighbors nonetheless continues. The people of Palestine have suffered encroachment for many decades by state-sponsored settlers from the State of Israel. This extra-territorial "settlement process" has become highly controversial. Many inside Israel don't support the long-term strategy seeking to enlarge the Israeli state, as the often violent processes have led to assorted forms of global isolation. Israeli right-wing political leaders have sought to keep state borders nebulous, though this keeps Israel's "recognized territory" in an odd status, distinct from conquered lands and annexed regions.


Remaining marginalized people include those in Taiwan. Are they properly represented at the UN by the PRC government of Beijing?

Bureaucratic Japan - Bad Hospitality

Japan's bureaucracy is very costly. It creates jobs, and survives for its self-reinforcing audit functions. But bureaucracy is typically inhospitable.

First experience of Japan for most visitors is the rat maze at Narita airport, briskly processed by dutiful officials. Arriving visitors to Japan must fill-in by hand multiple immigration and customs forms, although traveler details are already within electronic databases (in contrast, when traveling to Sweden there's no such paperwork). Travelers arriving in Japan have photo & fingerprints taken after passport scan --  for many, this is their first fingerprinting experience (uncomfortably, data is then shared among global intelligence agencies). The overall experience is bureaucratic and not welcoming!

But this is only the first affront of Japan's costly bureaucracy. Huge corruption at Olympus and Toshiba was ignored, as was criminal food mislabeling by high-end restaurants in Japan over many decades. Corrupt persons flow between sectors, so overviews are often best available from foreign sources.

Bureaucracy maintains the right to assert itself into every transaction under the rubric of either audit or security ("protecting taxpayer money" for public-funded expenses). We expect consistency, so discourage public officials from being individually imaginative; most have little time and no investigation budgets. They attack low-hanging fruit lacking defenses. Tiny operations are crucified and closed, while monsters roam free. This happens everywhere. The US Justice Department found huge big business corruption fueling the 2008 financial crisis: but failed to prosecute individual major criminals. Government levied billions of dollars in corporate penalties, but while the amounts collected seem large, the bureaucracy recruited to protect us costs more.

Japan's army of officials looks at other nations such as the USA or South Korea and judges Japan not highly unusual or demanding, but they typically misread the situation. Operations should be compared to best practices, not merely aspiring to average-level annoyance. And someone must ask if the project and data collected are truly important, rather than simply confirming data is entered in each & every question box.

Tourists have many options, and places such as Sweden & Singapore offering an excellent welcome, smooth entry & warmer hospitality understandably draw resources steadily away from Japan...

Welcome to Japan!  (島根県警察本部)

Brady's Balls

Tom Brady's opponents might describe him as "arrogant & powerful"-- but Brady's a minor punk to the mighty National Football League's dozens of megarich owners & their league bureaucracy, while all pale before the global media machine. Here's link to a great article by Robert Parry in Consortium News, "A Deflategate Slapdown of NFL and MSM"

Summary justice by media can be costly & deadly as the public is played for chumps in the same way Saddam Hussein's Iraq directly threatened the USA with (bullshit) "weapons of mass destruction"... Those who see New England Patriots football quarterback Tom Brady only as a hated competitor should recognize that big mouth right-wing Fox kangaroo courts are an American menace.

Some top excerpts from Parry:
"it's increasingly rare when a powerful institution protects an individual from unfair and abusive treatment by another powerful institution"

"Considering how much ink and time were devoted to this overblown Deflategate "scandal" there was almost no serious examination of the actual evidence. Yet, here was the NFL, an institution with arguably as much integrity as the tobacco industry in how they deal with facts. The NFL has covered up the risks of concussions much as the cigarette makers hid the cancer implications of smoking. Why would anyone trust the NFL about anything?"

"Over the years, again and again, I have seen not only large institutions lie but the media side with those powers-that-be even when the institutions have a long record of dishonesty and high-handedness."

"in this rare case – at least rare in my recent experience – Judge Berman looked at the NFL’s accusations and evidence with an objective eye – and sided with an individual against an arrogant and powerful institution."

Read Parry's full article here (link)

Refugee Pain

Refugees from the Middle East & Africa continue to leave their war-torn homelands and pour into Europe.

Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron sees refugees merely as "a swarm of people" (link) rather than war-displaced, desperate families -- rousted from their homes by his own nation's imperialist interventions and overseas military operations.

Blame arms makers & Bush, Cheney, Blair, Obama, & Netanyahu.

Militarists threaten and attack governments they don't like, seeking to "bomb them back to the Stone Age"...

Our violence doesn't work. We continue to pay for our Big Nasty Imperial military and its destabilizing aftermath and consequences. We created hugely expensive suffering. Don't forget the USA at some time was funding Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the mujaheddin and Taliban, ISIL / ISIS fighters, the Khmer Rouge, etc. We've poured money into the military-led oppression of Egypt's General el Sisi and other brutal regimes. Our meddling and our continuing military occupations destabilize nations and harm uncounted innocent people.

Military aggression causes too much human misery, and cripples the world with millions of refugees. We need investment in strategy & diplomacy. Bring our troops home now!

Radiant Seafood from Japan

Troubled nuclear operator TEPCO is planning to dump radioactive water into the sea outside Fukushima, Japan (link).

Nobody imagines this is good, but those who care most have died or been compensated; others want to believe the fable that "almost all" radioactivity will be removed before dumping.

But TEPCO & the Japanese Government are proved incompetent; they continue to poison land & sea.

The 2020 Olympics should be hosted elsewhere, not in radioactive Tokyo - hot as a furnace & promising to get much worse.

Military Industry USA

America embraces threat & use of force as means of settling international disputes. The results have been poor.

Have we only been arrogant & meddling? Or are we more deeply dangerous?

US overseas operations only serve citizen interests as we feel tough & stronger hearing military stories of USA kicking foreign butt -- we're individually poor & powerless.

America's happiest soldiers are home in the USA. Those deployed serve and risk, but is their sacrificing essential? Politicians and US industry sent more than 2.7 million Americans to serve in Vietnam; many didn't return.  For what? Why? 

The same politicos put our military forces under threat today, in a tragic system supporting the ruthless arms dealing industry. Direct costs of US overseas forces are huge and unbearable, with inevitable blowback when poorly-chosen targets fight back, long-term care for injuries, the costs of refugees, etc.

Stop being suckered.   Say No to Militarism.

Let's invest in more peaceful solutions...

Nuclear Japan

August is when Japan and the world remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Most people now pray for peace and safety.

This August, 70 years after the end of WWII, the industrialist-supported LDP rammed through the restart of Japan's only operating nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture (川内原子力発電所) after all nuclear plants were closed in response to the Fukushima disaster.

The nuclear industry pushed unrelentingly for restart: achieved 11 Aug. 2015. The nuclear plant is as far from Tokyo as you can get on Japan's main islands -- about 1400 km (900 miles). Worryingly, this Kagoshima Sendai Nuclear Plant is only some 30 miles from highly-active Sakurajima volcano -- where today the local government issued regional evacuation warnings. Kagoshima City (pop. 600,000) sits between these two threats - exposed within minutes of eruption to the disastrous dangers of a pyroclastic flow.

Industry boffins claim there's no grounds for worry (link) -- but of course there is danger, and when trouble happens (as with Fukushima & TEPCO) the profiteers quickly run away claiming "who coulda known?" ...

If Japan suffers nuclear disaster again, the 2020 Olympics will need new hosting ... Tokyo bureaucrats can't handle the responsibility...

Warring Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush is an asshole.

Jeb claims Pres. Obama & Sec. of State Hilary Clinton pulled U.S. troops from Iraq too early. But clearly his fool brother should never have wasted American lives there.

Dubya Bush was forced to begin withdrawal from Iraq -- we were beaten by bad policy, bleeding money & lives in an impossible situation.

Jeb would waste further American life.

Dear Mr. Jeb:  "Grab a gun & go Yourself !"

Help the World + Earn €100,000

The TTIP scandal is a secret, corporate-friendly treaty being pushed by American trade negotiators. It parallels the TPP and TISA, and future generations will be shackled - unless it's stopped.

But how to argue or debate without detail? The text is kept secret and under guard.

Crowdfunding's raising money to Liberate the TTIP text.

Help Stop TTIP, TPP + TISA.
They're not your friend ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABDiHspTJww


Donate at:
http://wikileaks.org/ttip-reward
or send the TTIP text via that site and earn €100,000.
(don't give up if slow connecting - Big business seeks to sink the effort)

War No More

The wars of the past continue into the future...

Japanese premier Shinzo Abe visits occupied Okinawa and gets booed & heckled. His puppet government provides rubber-stamp authorization to US military occupation of large segments of Okinawa.  Local people are enraged by the trashing of democratic procedures, as Tokyo vetoes all, disregarding local elections. The result = kiss Yankee butt, and live with G.I. tumult destroying the living environment.

Who profits?

Meanwhile, frantic refugees from American / Israeli-supported overseas wars continue to destabilize Africa, Europe and elsewhere. American wounded warriors are loyally supported, but numbers rise, the wars continue, and too many lives go wasted. Better to keep our young folk home! Bush-Cheney-Blair lunacy of Afghanistan & Iraq are now further fueled by troubles in Syria, Libya and Egypt -- with planned war for Iran. Let local people settle their own conflicts: we should not fund or fuel the fighting.

Japan's March to War

Japanese Prime Minister Abe's government is enmeshed in a scandalous push to change national security laws, allowing far more overseas operations.

The legislation is 'supported' (link) by the USA, which still operates military bases throughout Japan.

In fact, it's clear Abe's a Yankee puppet. He's sometimes portrayed as right-wing, but Japan's true right wing wants to expel the Americans. There's never mention of such sovereign action by Abe's government.

Government deliberations are poorly attended by ruling LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) members. They need know nothing - they'll just vote as directed on the highly unpopular legislation.

Abe's first administration upgraded the Defense Agency to Ministry level. Now in Abe's second term, Japan's Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani might rightly be renamed "Minister of War"...

American Militarism Sucks

President Obama reportedly congratulated his "outstanding partner" British Prime Minister David Cameron. "Outstanding partner" means Cameron's a money-wasting butt-kissing lackey.

Obama congratulated Cameron for wasting achieving "the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence." (link)  But Obama & Co. don't spend 2% ...

America would be much better-off  only spending  2%

US Military spending = $598.5 billion
US GDP = $17693.3 billion
US Militarist spending  =  3.38%
(American militarism is at least 3.38% of GDP, and does not include multiple long-term costs & obligations such as continuing treatment of disabled soldiers or other veteran's benefits)

If defense were 2% of US GDP...
...what could America do with our surplus?
41% of American defense spending ($244.6 billion) unnecessary

US$244.6 billion each year

 2% of $17693.3 billion GDP  = $353.9 billion
$598.5 billion now spent,  minus - $353.9 billion = overspending at least $244.6 billion

The Stink Ain't Only Texas

Official comments on the Sandra Bland death in police custody must be doubted.

Why after three days was this woman still jailed? The problem's much deeper than one aggressive & inexperienced cop, or a suddenly depressive woman.

We've all seen smirking cops in the dramas: "Yo' ass is Ours!" they grin, while the spectre of Guantanamo's never-ending-torture-without-charges colors each interaction.

How many days before anyone would feel abandoned, alone, and abused? The police squad seeks now to portray themselves as reasonable. Their first dashcam video, amateurishly edited, shows the cop declaring her under arrest while she's still in her car, with no arrest charge stated. She didn't kick him through a closed door. But shameless police jailed her 3+ days...

Why didn't one of the army of reasonable cops watch that dashcam video and release Sandy Bland? They forced her to stew, and "guilt" was inconsequential.

From one arbitrary "lawful order" to another -- Sandy Bland was maltreated & strung-up by the American police state. One of many many abused people.

84-yr old 'jaywalker' Kang Wong beaten in NYC  [more]

Understand Sandra Bland?

A lively young woman, rousted & jailed in Texas for not signalling a turn, is now dead.

Sandy Bland was a newly-hired administrator for the Prairie View A&M University alumni association. The 2009 graduate was to be an ambassador & liaison to students. But her return to town became a nightmare when she failed to quickly & wholly obey a demanding cop at a traffic stop. Brand was ultimately arrested, forced from her car, and locked up for "assaulting a law officer" -- though subsequent dashcam footage showed her arrest stemmed from police brutality (link)

Grovel to the badge & accept American police state bullying!?
Sandy expected justice & proper legal procedure.

Sandra Bland was soon mysteriously dead in a grubby Texas jail. RIP

Toxic Toshiba

Corporate governance took two major hits this week, as Samsung agreed an insider-friendly merger within Korea over substantial opposition, and Toshiba in Japan admitted six years of "overstating profits" (deliberate accounting fraud of at least 1500億円 = more than US$1.2 billion).

When convenient, both Japan & Korea still play as "weak little brother" -- unseemly & absurd if evaluating multinational public corporations with global ownership. Samsung group generated at least US$325 billion in 2013 sales. Japanese blue chip Toshiba now mirrors Olympus as incapable of basic arithmetic, sneaky & corrupt. 

A few Toshiba executives agreeing to resign is ridiculous; this should attract severe criminal punishment. The deception was systematic and long term, damaging Japan's credibility.

Go to any accounting department in Japan and watch them calculate every yen, multiple times, in a horrendous bureaucracy. Dozens of dirty Toshiba employees & corporate auditors should be liable for criminal charges. They should serve time in prison alongside TEPCO executives and government regulators responsible for Fukushima's nuclear pollution.

But Japan's corruption, like the US and it's dirty financial system, will likely ignore these crimes. Thousands of people are locked-up for minor crimes, but big criminals remain free. Major US war criminals continue to travel & talk shit. It's a fucked-up world.

Brazil again in 2020

Nobody yet officially says the 2020 Olympics scheduled for Tokyo are impossible.

But plans for the main stadium have been shredded -- to start again early next year as a "blank canvas"

Japan's antinuclear contingent is mostly marginalized & ignored, but the heavily damaged nuclear storage at Fukushima Daiichi remains unstable. Terrible reality could surely eclipse the dirtiest of nightmares in the next five years -- with another earthquake or tsunami inescapably poisoning a huge region of the world.

What's Hillary Done?

Hillary Rodham Clinton has been near the center of American power since 1992, that's twenty-three years. She talks fancy, but the bottom line = she ain't done much good.

She's been in the White House for eight years, a U.S. Senator, and America's Secretary of State. She gives a lot of speeches and she's worked hard to get rich. Hillary's been at the forefront of power throughout dozens of blunders and more than a generation of reform efforts. She's entrenched power elite -- uninterested in change.

Hillary whores for Israel.

As President, she'll soon commence open war on Syria & Iran.

Hillary Clinton is typical of many politicians: highly ambitious, but unmotivated to actually work in public service. In the early 1990s she tried laudable health care reforms but failed (though both House & Senate were controlled by Democrats). Since then, she's done damn little noteworthy. Don't expect if  President she'll do anything for you ...
Hillary Clinton's interests are elsewhere.

Bureaucracy, Spying & Data Security

Data breach (link) at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management releases detailed financial & personal information about 21.5 million American federal employees, their families, etc.

This should come as no surprise.

The key 'takeaway' on US federal spying from Ed Snowden's whistleblowing was that American bureaucracy has run amok - and cannot properly protect the vast information gathered.

Bureaucrats sadly once again do more harm than good.

Analysts failed to properly process numerous warnings and indicators leading up to the devastation of 9/11. Our ineffective National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice kept her job -- whining "nobody could've predicted...?" -- when she should've been fired in disgrace (along with Bush & Cheney).

Now its clear senseless bureaucrats have weakened the American nation, perhaps even critically crippling our staffing for decades. In the wrong hands, federal employee career information and private data is a time bomb.

Wherever possible, resist supplying more info about anything.
Assume all private data is now available to anyone who'll pay.
   TRAGIC + STUPID !

Thousandth Post: 1000 musings

Celebrating 1000 posts published!

Uncomplicated premise to these publications: simple reflections

But what motivates composition?

Typically, sensing something wrong draws me to compose.

And though writing of petty personal troubles might offer catharsis, and may be easier to read, I continue writing about bigger problems. Macro problems.

Global problems such as war, peace & prosperity deserve & demand analysis - but most citizens of our democratic societies are too busy or otherwise unable to scrutinize what's going on.

People have assorted dispositions. I contentedly watch daft entertainment, but viscerally & quickly feel unhappy watching TV shows "Friends" or "Seinfeld" -- I sense presumption and some premise I reject. Yet those shows attract many viewers; I wish each and every one of them great good luck.

Boredom is a powerfully active force, however unruly.  
There's too much waste in our societies.
Each of us with many energies must find or develop a suitable platform, a life milieu.

But what of the seemingly endless wars being waged from the USA? How can we characterize the US war in Vietnam, with involuntary servitude of military draft: Oops? Something better forgotten?

The very many war casualties are Very Real. Dead. Maimed. Deeply disturbed. And it continues: ragged holes in many families; great potential smothered; escalating costs. Some people who set us on that military path profited greatly. Are they criminals? Was each leader well-meaning? Were their selfish goals justifiable in combination with the sacrifice they demanded from others? Should such militarists have been allowed influence over teenagers? Were our dirty efforts in Vietnam all a mistake?

I don't know the answers.

Welcome AIIB (update)

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB, (亚洲基础设施投资银行 or 亚投行) had their official signing ceremony today.

Read here (link) about bitter bickering behind the launch.

We wish them well. Generally, more capital investments are highly welcome, especially in the poorest parts of the world.

The USA and Japan have thus far refused to participate - believing the new AIIB rivals their own entrenched leverage over the World Bank / IBRD and Asian Development Bank. But although the US urged its allies to spurn & boycott the new bank, most signed-up. Perhaps most notably, even Israel ignored Uncle Sam's guidance and turned its back on America.

Other nations perhaps realize that the USA has greatly overextended its resources & talent. American towns and cities are beggared by endless foreign wars. Over-reliance on the US defense industry to drive the economy has resulted in entrenched corruption and underinvestment in education and domestic infrastructure. Key human capital has been sidelined by incestuous linkages between US politicians, military, and heavy industry.

It's a momentous day - (sad too!) - a shift in Great Power relationships.

Bugging & Spying by USA

How are smiles by America's leaders reconciled with news of US targeted infiltration & spying on the German Chancellor, the French President, and many other national leaders?

America must be treated as a poisonous lizard.

Now stating "We do not and will not spy on you" is beyond belief. Two months later, or three years from now, when policies diverge, the bugs & dirty tricks are again activated.

This spying is corrosive, foolhardy, and not in America's best interest. Defense and high-tech security firms benefit; the rest of us flounder in distrust and cynicism.

Obama encourages key ally Merkel. Unknown others snooped on  her phones.