Anything else is Kabuki Theater, IMHO

[kpete]

The data collection and dossier-building on hundreds of millions of Americans needs to stop. The militarization of police forces needs to end. All collected data needs to be destroyed. The revolving-door corruption that has created a veritable Corporate/Security State Frankenstein needs to be smashed, and replaced with a firm wall of separation between profit-seeking corporatist hucksters and those who are entrusted to protect and serve and to defend the Constitution.

Anything else is Kabuki Theater, IMHO
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/17/1231813/-Assassinations-Intimidation-Psychological-Warfare-Misinformation-And-Other-Illegal-Tactics

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. Caligula did that.

Of course it was rumored that he had all the data on Rome's ruling class copied before the public burning, but it was extremely popular.

[Just Saying]

2. One thing Snowden absolutely proved to me

Is that we shouldn't have contractors doing such sensitive work. It's odd that despite the many threads on the NSA scandal, I haven't seen this issue brought up much at all. Can we get rid of all military contractors as well and give our soldiers a raise instead?

[kpete]

3. add that to the list

xlnt idea
we get rid of all military contractors as well and give our soldiers a raise instead



peace, kp

[Octafish]

4. Know your BFEE: WikiLeaks Stratfor Dump Exposes Continued Secret Government Warmongering

War is big business. It's an insider's game. It's why we have so much secret government. And why privatized intel is so corrupting.

The last remaining enormous wads of cash in the Treasury are to be had for purchasing today's modern military industrial intel complex.



There's more than a trillion to be grabbed -- just for the Lockheed-Martin F-35.

Now keeping tabs on us -- people interested in using some of the nation's treasure for more peaceful purposes -- are for-hire spies. How do I know this? Julian Assange and Anonymous:

WikiLeaks' Stratfor Dump Lifts Lid on Intelligence-Industrial Complex

WikiLeaks' latest release, of hacked emails from Stratfor, shines light on the murky world of private intelligence-gathering

by Pratap Chatterjee
Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 by The Guardian/UK

What price bad intelligence? Some 5m internal emails from Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that brands itself as a "global intelligence" provider, were recently obtained by Anonymous, the hacker collective, and are being released in batches by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, starting Monday.

The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder. Clients of the company include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, as well as US government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marines.

SNIP...

Assange notes that Stratfor is also seeking to profit directly from this information by partnering in an apparent hedge-fund venture with Shea Morenz, a former Goldman Sachs managing director. He points to an August 2011 document, marked "DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS", from Stratfor CEO George Friedman, which says:

"What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor's intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/28-10?print

If it weren't for Anonymous and WikiLeaks, we probably wouldn't know about any of that.

It's no joke. It's no unimportant story. It's no boring history. Run by insiders, the secret government is key to making the system run on behalf of the few -- the 1-percent of 1-percent. Central to that is intelligence -- economically, politically and military useful information.

Which brings up the nation's purported free press, the only business mentioned by name in the entire United States Constitution, and how the organizations therein have miserably failed to feature prominently the sundry and myriad ways the insiders on Wall Street and their toadies in Washington do the work for Them.

The problem is systemic. The corruption is systemic.

Because it involves oversight of secret organizations -- the Pentagon, Homeland Security, CIA, etc -- Congress and the Administration often have no clue, let alone oversight, to what is happening because the corruption is marked "Top Secret."

Secret government also means We the People can't do our job as citizens, which is to hold them accountable and find the ones responsible in order to vote the crooks out and, it is hoped, the honest ones in.

With no citizen oversight, anything goes. And it doesn't stop.

Remember this fine fellow, US Navy fighter ace Randy "Duke" Cunningham?

Later a member of the United States Congress, he used his position to feather his nest, Big Time.



In his political career, Cunningham was a member of the Appropriations and Intelligence committees, and chaired the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Human Intelligence Analysis and Counterintelligence during the 109th Congress. He was considered a leading Republican expert on national security issues.

Currently, he's in USP Tuscon or another fine facility where he gets three squares, medical and dental.
He's due for release in a year or so. He'll be able to pick up his pension.

"The Duke Cunningham Act, also known as the Federal Pension Forfeiture Act, was introduced by U.S. Senator John F. Kerry in 2006. The bill would have denied pension benefits to any members of Congress convicted of bribery, conspiracy or perjury. The bill died in committee. (Source: The Press Enterprise)

Duke wasn't alone. He really was just one snake in a long line of snakes. Remember Dusty Foggo, Number 3 at CIA and close associate of CIA Director and former Congressman Porter Goss? Swells sitting atop the peak of political and military secrecy and power.

Unfortunately, when it comes to modern governance, no oversight means means the insiders are getting away with murder, and warmongering and treason and all the power that they bring. Appointed pretzeldent George W Bush on Valentine's Day 2007 put it in words: "Money trumps peace."

Secret government warmongering and war profiteering are systemic. Secret government is rotten to the core. What's more, in a democracy that once really was land of the free and home of the brave, secret government poses the greatest threat to true national security.

[kpete]

5. Cunningham

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

thanks for the post Octafish
going to share it with mr. pete


peace, kp

[Octafish]

6. You are most welcome, kpete! DUer's contributions on the original are excellent...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002366571

Note the privatized profiting and the socialized sacrificing.

[johnnyreb]

8. tv's thunderous silence

You would think that teevee news could sell tons of commercials exposing all this stuff.

http://www.jtmp.org/Songs/The_John_Kasper_Band-Conspiracy_of_Silence.mp3

[Octafish]

9. When the crooks control the Fed, they can print what they need.

One story that would have a lot of viewers for advertisers would examine what happened to the $16 trillion that disappeared during the Bankster bailout.

No one asks, though, because they know what's good for them.

Zum Beispiehl: For the non-paupers in spirit, a pot of gold awaits...

Neil Barofsky Gave Us The Best Explanation For Washington's Dysfunction We've Ever Heard

Linette Lopez
Business Insider, Aug. 1, 2012, 2:57 PM

Neil Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP, and just wrote a book about his time in D.C. called Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.

SNIP...

Bottom line: Barofsky said the incentive structure in our nation's capitol is all wrong. There's a revolving door between bureaucrats in Washington and Wall Street banks, and politicians just want to keep their jobs.

For regulators it's something like this:

"You can play ball and good things can happen to you get a big pot of gold at the end of the Wall Street rainbow or you can do your job be aggressive and face personal ruin...We really need to rethink how we govern and how regulate," Barofsky said.

CONTINUED... http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-barofsky-2012-8

...for the rest of us, it's Austerity Time. Again.

[Scuba]

7. +1,000