Journalist Risen: 'Mercenary Class' Now Permanent Fixture in National Security State

[Octafish]

James Risen says American public must question machine that 'feeds off' never-ending war

byAndrea Germanos, staff writer
CommonDreams, Oct. 19, 2014

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist James Risen said Sunday that the secretive and multi-billion dollar war on terror has sparked an entire "mercenary class that feeds off unending war."

Risen, who could face prison time for refusing to reveal a source, made the remarks on MSNBC's Up With Steve Kornacki.

"Basically, the entire war on terror has been conducted in secret, and no one in the United states is allowed to know the full extent of what we've been doing for 13 years," Risen said.

That was the motivation for his new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, he said, to show "that the government has used secrecy in order to allow for ... really a whole string of abuses and bizarre and unintended consequences to develop. And it shows that really, in my opinion, that secrecy only leads to abuse by the government and that we have to have a more open discussion of the war on terror and really have a more skeptical eye to it if we're going to continue to do this," he said.

There's essentially been "a national security crisis, kind of like the banking crisis, where we've deregulated a large enterprise and poured hundreds of billions of dollars into it at the same time, and we've done it in secret."

"The government has stamped 'top secret' on virtually everything," he said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/19/journalist-risen-mercenary-class-now-permanent-fixture-national-security-state

[Feral Child]

1. K&R n/t

[Octafish]

3. Proof that Power, Money and Crushing Dissent Are NSA’s Real Motives for Spying

By Washington's Blog
Washington's Blog 24 October 2013

The NSA not only spied on the leaders of Germany, Brazil and Mexico, but on at least 35 world leaders.

The Guardian reports:

One unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately “tasked” for monitoring by the NSA.

SNIP...

And even the argument that 9/11 changed everything holds no water. Spying started before 9/11 … and various excuses have been used to spy on Americans over the years. Even NSA’s industrial espionage has been going on for many decades. And the NSA was already spying on American Senators more than 40 years ago.

Governments who spy on their own population always do it to crush dissent. (Why do you think that the NSA is doing exactly the same thing which King George did to the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War?)

Of course, if even half of what a NSA whistleblower Russel Tice says – that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top American government officials and military officers (and see this) – then things are really out of whack.

SOURCE with LINKS to details and sources:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/proof-that-nsa-spying-is-not-really-focused-on-terrorism.html

[ReRe]

13. When Ashcroft, Bush, et.al... came out with....

... that damn Patriot Act, I knew they were coming after the dissenters. If anyone thinks that the USG, pre-Patriot Act, did not have the ability to find someone in this country, terrorist or not, then they've been living under a rock somewhere.

[malaise]

23. I saw him on Up

He was brilliant - 100% correct re the mercenaries of war

[H2O Man]

2. Recommended.

Thank you for this. It is, I dare say, the most important information being presented on this forum at present. Thus, many will skip over it, while others will ask about Judith Miller. But still more will recognize its significance.

[Octafish]

6. War Inc is friend to Empire, not Democracy

Heads-up on this fellow, Tyler Cowen:

The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0

The guy seems to specialize in Big Ticket themes:

Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse

by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM

Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:

"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."

It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.

SNIP...

Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded — every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.

CONTINUED with link to the audio...

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse

Dr. Cowen echoes the War Party themes of "Commercial interests are very powerful interests" and "Money trumps peace." Apart from that three year interval in the early 1960s your father termed as exceptions to the normal order, it's been the official policy for most of the last century. Thank you, H20 Man! With wisdom, we can chart a different course.

[librechik]

25. T Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower all tried to rid the country of the post-war war machine

with no success. I'm stumped--what can we do? We've been strangled by these demons for --ever?

Where money can be made, money will be made.

[defacto7]

66. I believe unknowingly,

FDR set the whole thing in motion to win WWII choosing the largest and most powerful contractors for war machinery causing the smaller contractors to be swallowed up by the largest. There is a logic in it, but the end result was what we have today and with the same names on the corporations. I think FDR was too trusting of the industrial complex he created, expecting them to do the "American" thing and give power back to the government and small business. They never did.

[librechik]

70. yes, exactly!--once they discovered how much money and power it gave them

they couldn't--can't-- be stopped

[nashville_brook]

21. +1

[Octafish]

73. Everyone should know just how much the government lied to defend the NSA

A web of deception has finally been untangled: the Justice Department got the US supreme court to dismiss a case that could have curtailed the NSA's dragnet. Why?

Trevor Timm
theguardian.com, Saturday 17 May 2014

If you blinked this week, you might have missed the news: two Senators accused the Justice Department of lying about NSA warrantless surveillance to the US supreme court last year, and those falsehoods all but ensured that mass spying on Americans would continue. But hardly anyone seems to care – least of all those who lied and who should have already come forward with the truth.

Here's what happened: just before Edward Snowden became a household name, the ACLU argued before the supreme court that the Fisa Amendments Act – one of the two main laws used by the NSA to conduct mass surveillance – was unconstitutional.

In a sharply divided opinion, the supreme court ruled, 5-4, that the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs didn't have "standing" – in other words, that the ACLU couldn't prove with near-certainty that their clients, which included journalists and human rights advocates, were targets of surveillance, so they couldn't challenge the law. As the New York Times noted this week, the court relied on two claims by the Justice Department to support their ruling: 1) that the NSA would only get the content of Americans' communications without a warrant when they are targeting a foreigner abroad for surveillance, and 2) that the Justice Department would notify criminal defendants who have been spied on under the Fisa Amendments Act, so there exists some way to challenge the law in court.

It turns out that neither of those statements were true – but it took Snowden's historic whistleblowing to prove it.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/17/government-lies-nsa-justice-department-supreme-court

In this case, at least, "Why?" is more essential to know than "Follow the money."

[heaven05]

4. with bushieboy and darth

'employing' 10,000 blackwater assholes or whatever their name is now, in active shooting roles, in Iraq, assured that. Done, over and out.

[Octafish]

9. Carlyle Group owns Booz Allen Hamilton, NSA's go-to contractor.

Great way to know where the money is before the elected representatives even know where they'll be sending it is to hold the information first:

Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group

Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American, Thursday, 13 June 2013

According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.

For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, “nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries”; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, “bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.”

And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the company’s gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the company’s financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.

Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: &quot Booz Allen has) got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience." (Emphasis added.)

For instance, James Clapper had a stint at BAH before becoming the current Director of National Intelligence; George Little consulted with BAH before taking a position at the Central Intelligence Agency; John McConnell, now vice chairman at BAH, was director of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the ‘90s before moving up to director of national intelligence in 2007; Todd Park began his career with BAH and now serves as the country's chief technology officer; James Woolsey, currently a senior vice president at BAH, served in the past as director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and so on.

CONTINUED...w/links, details, and a roadmap for future inquiry...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group

After Allen Dulles hired the Mafia to help kill Fidel, who knew there'd be such demand to kill people on behalf of Uncle Sam?

[heaven05]

12. thank you

for this information. It is very revealing. Now as well as then.

[sabrina 1]

58. And don't forget how former Booz Allen CEO is now the lying head of the NSA. Conflict of interest

doesn't even come close to describing the corrupt system they have put in place.

He lied to Congress, blatantly. And NOTHING happened to him. He was a Bush appointee, a Bush/Cheney loyalist, so why was he left in place by the President WE ELECTED TO END the Bush reign of terror? Even AFTER he lied and people demanded he be replaced, the President we put in place refused to fire him.

If there is anyone left who doesn't see the writing on the wall by now, it is either because they have a vested interest in this corrupt system, or they are willfully blind.

[Octafish]

74. Well said, sabrina 1!

They've created a Revolving Door to Tyranny.

[Octafish]

76. Forgot to mention: Cheney spearheaded the privatization of Pentagon profits for BFEE

Mr. Other Priorities' main qualifications for Secretary of Defense seems to have been his voting record in support of War Inc. History unmentioned on campus, what was news left out of the newspapers and off the television screen:

Cheney's Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door

News: As Bush Sr.'s secretary of defense, Dick Cheney steered millions of dollars in government business to a private military contractor -- whose parent company just happened to give him a high-paying job after he left the government.

By Robert Bryce
Mother Jones
August 2, 2000

EXCERPT...

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. BRS specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

After Bill Clinton's election cost Cheney his government job, he wound up in 1995 as CEO of Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services giant -- which just happens to own Brown & Root Services. Since then, Cheney has collected more than $10 million in salary and stock payments from the company. In addition, he is currently the company's largest individual shareholder, holding stock and options worth another $40 million. Those holdings have undoubtedly been made more valuable by the ever-more lucrative contracts BRS continues to score with the Pentagon.

Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/08/cheney.html

Lovely man, that Sneer. He helped institutionalize that Revolving Conflice of Interest that is post-Great Society America, where the rich are above the law and only see themselves get richer, while the rest of us fight for the scraps that wars without end leave in the dumpster.

[sabrina 1]

82. It is truly sickening. It is obvious to anyone now that the wars they drag this country into

are simply 'business' opportunities. Cheney wanted the Iraq War so badly, you could see that each time he talked about it. Your link explains why, he was doing business for his REAL bosses, who are definitely not the American people.

These are truly evil people, they should NEVER have been allowed anywhere near the government of this country.

Who is going to stop them I wonder?

Thank you for the link, Octafish ... this is what the MSM SHOULD be talking about, most of the people have no clue who is really running this country.

[Wella]

91. Did not know that. Thanks.

[zeemike]

5. It always comes back to the military industrial complex that we were warned of.

Too much power in the complex, and people with power always use it.

[Octafish]

10. It seems they've got a special focus on enemies domestic.

FBI, Snipers & Occupy

By Dave Lindorff
WhoWhatWhy on Jun 27, 2013

Would you be shocked to learn that the FBI apparently knew that some organization, perhaps even a law enforcement agency or private security outfit, had contingency plans to assassinate peaceful protestors in a major American city — and did nothing to intervene?

Would you be surprised to learn that this intelligence comes not from a shadowy whistle-blower but from the FBI itself – specifically, from a document obtained from Houston FBI office last December, as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington, DC-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund?

To repeat: this comes from the FBI itself. The question, then, is: What did the FBI do about it?

The Plot

Remember the Occupy Movement? The peaceful crowds that camped out in the center of a number of cities in the fall of 2011, calling for some recognition by local, state and federal authorities that our democratic system was out of whack, controlled by corporate interests, and in need of immediate repair?

That movement swept the US beginning in mid-September 2011. When, in early October, the movement came to Houston, Texas, law enforcement officials and the city’s banking and oil industry executives freaked out perhaps even more so than they did in some other cities. The push-back took the form of violent assaults by police on Occupy activists, federal and local surveillance of people seen as organizers, infiltration by police provocateurs—and, as crazy as it sounds, some kind of plot to assassinate the “leaders” of this non-violent and leaderless movement.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what the document obtained from the Houston FBI, said:

An identified (DELETED) as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified (DELETED) had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. (DELETED) planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles. (Note: protests continued throughout the weekend with approximately 6000 persons in NYC. ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests have spread to about half of all states in the US, over a dozen European and Asian cities, including protests in Cleveland (10/6-8/11) at Willard Park which was initially attended by hundreds of protesters.)

CONTINUED...

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/06/27/fbi-document-deleted-plots-to-kill-occupy-leaders-if-deemed-necessary/

[heaven05]

14. no surprise

given the monied interests that runs the United States of Amerika. And I'm sure this 'solution' is still a top contingency.

[ReRe]

17. We've got domestic enemies alright...

... and they are NOT the dissenters. The domestic enemies are the ones who have been running this country ever since Truman signed that National Security Act creating the CIA back in when? 1947? The CIA doesn't serve the President and has nothing at all to do with national security. The CIA was created to serve The Corporation, to be the front men, as The Corporation invaded the globe for valuable natural resource$.

Carry on.

[nationalize the fed]

30. i just listened to an interview with Dave Lindorff

it was great!



http://noliesradio.org/archives/90032

Dave Lindorff – one of the last real journalists in America – contrasts Cuban vs. American responses to Ebola and more

Kevin Barrett and NoLiesRadio are excellent

[Octafish]

36. Department of Homeland Security Brands ThisCantBeHappening! a ‘Threat’

Disturbing News, but Our Proudest Moment

by DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch, JUNE 09, 2014

ThisCantBeHappening! has just learned that our little news organization was listed, in an alert fired off to all 78 Fusion Centers by Kelly Wilson, Director of the Washington DC Fusion Center’s Regional Threat and Assessment Center, as a potential threat.

The stated role of the Fusion Centers, which were created (and lavishly funded) in the wake of 9-11, was to link federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in order to better detect and combat terrorists inside the US. So what about this threat posed by ThisCantBeHappening!, though? Well, as Threat Assessment Director Wilson explains in her alert, the threat is that TCBH! published an article suggesting that the Fusion Centers played a central role in orchestrating the attacks on Occupy Movement actions in cities all across the US.

As she states in her alert:

“Although at this time these reference to fusion centers and Occupy seems (sic) to be compartmentalized I wanted to make you aware of these references in case the national news media begins (sic) speculating about fusion center involvement.”

Wilson includes in her alert a headline and several key paragraphs from our Nov. 15, 2011 article (which was later proven by us and others to be totally accurate), as well as a link to our entire article on those connections. The selected quotation she chose read as follows:

Police State Tactics: Signs Point to a Coordinated National Program to Try and Unoccupy Wall Street and Other Cities

“…Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 25, (Oakland Mayor Jean) Quan authorized the first brutal police assault on Occupy Oakland. It led, among other things, to the critical wounding of Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran who was among the protesters, and was hit in the forehead by a police tear gas canister fired at close range.

“Who organized that critical conference call (among 18 mayors)? Was it Quan or one of the other mayors, or was it someone in the federal government? (Oakland attorney Dan) Siegel says he doesn’t know, and Quan isn’t saying.

“But both Siegel and (National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi) Boghosian say they strongly suspect federal involvement in the planning of the recent spate of police violence against the occupiers. Says Siegel (who resigned in disgust from his post as an advisor to Quan following the brutal OPD assault on Occupy Oakland), ‘It’s only logical to assume that the Fusion Centers are involved, (Wilson’s emphasis) especially after the Oakland occupiers shutdown of the port in Oakland…’”

Homeland Security Fusion Center alert sent to all Fusion Centers by DC Office of Threat Assessment concerning ThisCantBeHappening! Homeland Security Fusion Center alert sent to all Fusion Centers by DC Office of Threat Assessment concerning ThisCantBeHappening! (click on image to go to original image at the Partnership for Civil Justice, which obtained the memo through the Freedom of Information Act)

We can see then that the exposing of a federal role in the brutal crushing of the peaceful and Constitutionally-protected Occupy Movement nationally, or even suggesting such a thing, in today’s America, is now considered to be a “threat” by the Department of Homeland Security and its Fusion Centers — both organizations that were specifically created not to monitor the media but to root out and “defend” the country from terrorism. The threat in our case is not that we are planning a bombing or some other kind of mayhem. Rather, what alarms the DHS and the “threat assessors” in the Fusion Centers is that ThisCantBeHappening!’s investigative reporting might eventually lead to the news about the Fusion Centers’ role in crushing Occupy breaking out of the “compartmentalized” alternative media and into the national news media, which then might “begin speculating about fusion center involvement.” (It seems self-evident that if the Fusion Centers had not been involved in orchestrating the Occupy crackdown, they wouldn’t have been worried at all about some small alternative news outfit like ours, or even the mainstream media, “speculating” about such a role, ergo this fear of exposure amounts to a full admission that the DHS and its Fusion Centers stand guilty as charged.)

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/09/disturbing-news-but-our-proudest-moment/

Thank you for the heads-up on the Lindorff interview, nationalize the fed. I will listen later today. The guy is an enemy of the state for telling the truth about the state. What that makes us for knowing that should concern not only DU, but ALL Americans.

[L0oniX]

39. They hate the new Iphone. We aren't supposed to have anything that can keep them from searching us.

They have have a direct OC3 static IP to my inner bowl toilet cam.

[zeemike]

46. Interesting thanks.

But not supriseing...they have the means to do it and so they would if they needed to.

[WillyT]

7. Huge K & R !!!

[Octafish]

15. Remember when Blackwater threatened to kill State Department inspector in Iraq? RISEN told us...

Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater

By JAMES RISEN
The New York Times, JUNE 29, 2014

WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created “an environment full of liability and negligence.”

“The management structures in place to manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors themselves,” the investigator, Jean C. Richter, wrote in an Aug. 31, 2007, memo to State Department officials. “Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law,” he said, adding that the “hands off” management resulted in a situation in which “the contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.”

His memo and other newly disclosed State Department documents make clear that the department was alerted to serious problems involving Blackwater and its government overseers before the Nisour Square shooting, which outraged Iraqis and deepened resentment over the United States’ presence in the country.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/us/before-shooting-in-iraq-warning-on-blackwater.html?_r=4

Gee. Whatever happened to that story? Must've dropped off the media radar as it's gotten zero mention in my local noosepapers or tee vee screen.

[WillyT]

19. Yep... I Do...

[Fumesucker]

8. But.. But.. Judith Miller

OK, got that mandatory Risen thread comment out of the way.

[Octafish]

11. Jeff Gerth, meet Judith Miller

Eric Boehlert
Media Matters, Column, May 30, 2007T

Isn't former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth writing the definitive book about Hillary Clinton sort of like Judith Miller deciding to write the definitive book about Iraq's WMDs? It just doesn't add up.

After all, both Gerth and Miller, former star reporters, are well known for the facts they got wrong, more so than the stories they got right. While Miller limited most of her damage to a single topic, Iraq, Gerth, by contrast, became a Zelig-like figure at the newspaper during the 1990s, appearing at every crossroads where The New York Times lost its newsroom composure, and uncorked dark, convoluted tales featuring the conniving Clintons at the heart of a would-be criminal enterprise.

Indeed, Gerth was at the center of a rather unfortunate period in the Times' history. It was pre-public editor, pre-bloggers, and pre-Media Matters for America. And it was a time when the paper's leadership seemed more concerned with protecting high-profile scandal stories -- propping them up, really -- than with being accurate and honest with its readers.

But that shoddy approach to journalism caught up with the Times in recent years, and the paper has suffered a series of credibility setbacks, particularly with its prewar reporting. If you don't think Gerth's corner-cutting contributed to the paper's troubles -- if you think ambitious insiders at the Times didn't take notice of Gerth's star run when he was lauded and rewarded for writing accusatory stories that couldn't withstand close scrutiny and often didn't even make sense -- then I don't think you understand how the Beltway media's star system works.

Meaning Judith Miller simply picked up where Jeff Gerth left off.

CONTINJUED...

http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/05/30/jeff-gerth-meet-judith-miller/138965

Thanks for the heads-up, Fumesucker. An ounce of awareness is worth a pound of sideshow.

[H2O Man]

43. While I can't

speak about Gerth, I can about the infamous Ms. Miller. She was a solid example of an intelligence asset, working under the cover of journalism. Her intent was to print misinformation, in a manner that the White House and OVP were able to coordinate their campaign of lies with.

I've often wondered if she felt betrayed, in that no one faked "finding" evidence of WMD programs. I suspect that she figured the boys would provide cover for her many purposeful lies.

[zeemike]

47. I don't think they feel they need to fake evidence any more.

I mean look at all the evidence of the lies being told...it don't seem to make any difference at all in what they do...they are confident that the media will not pick up on it and soon the American public will forget about it...especialy when we have a new thing to fear most every week now.

We are living in Orwellian times Mr. Waterman.

[daleanime]

16. K&R....

and bookmarked.

[Octafish]

48. Leaked documents expose secret contracts between NSA and tech companies

By Thomas Gaist
World Socialist Web Site, 20 October 2014

Internal National Security Agency documents published by the Intercept earlier this month provide powerful evidence of active collaboration by the large technology corporations with the US government’s worldwide surveillance operations. The documents give a glimpse of efforts by the American state—the scale and complexity of which are astonishing—to penetrate, surveil and manipulate information systems around the world.

Reportedly leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the documents catalogue a dizzying array of clandestine intelligence and surveillance operations run by the NSA, CIA and other US and allied security bureaucracies, including infiltration of undercover agents into corporate entities, offensive cyber-warfare and computer network exploitation (CNE), theoretical and practical aspects of encryption cracking, and supply chain interdiction operations that “focus on modifying equipment in a target’s supply chain.”

The trove of documents, made available in their original forms by the Intercept, are largely comprised of classification rubrics that organize NSA secrets according to a color-coded scale ranging from green (lowest priority secrets), through blue and red, to black (highest priority secrets).

The secret facts organized in the leaked classification guides supply overwhelming evidence that the NSA and Central Security Service (a 25,000-strong agency founded in 1972 as a permanent liaison between the NSA and US military intelligence) rely on cooperative and in some cases contractual relations with US firms to facilitate their global wiretapping and data stockpiling activities.

Blue level facts listed in the documents include:

* “Fact that NSA/CSS works with US industry in the conduct of its cryptologic missions”
* “Fact that NSA/CSS works with US industry as technical advisors regarding cryptologic products”

Red level facts include:

* “Fact that NSA/CSS conducts SIGINT enabling programs and related operations with US industry”
* “Fact that NSA/CSS have FISA operations with US commercial industry elements”

Black level facts include:

* “Fact that NSA/CSS works with and has contractual relationships with specific named US commercial entities to conduct SIGINT [signals intelligence] enabling programs and operations”
* “Fact that NSA/CSS works with specific named US commercial entities to make them exploitable for SIGINT”
* “Facts related to NSA personnel (under cover), operational meetings, specific operations, specific technology, specific locations and covert communications related to SIGINT enabling with specific commercial entities”
* “Facts related to NSA/CSS working with US commercial entities on the acquisition of communications (content and metadata) provided by the US service provider to worldwide customers; communications transiting the US; or access to international communications mediums provided by the US entity”
* “Fact that NSA/CSS injects ‘implants’ into the hardware and software of US companies to enable data siphoning”

Particularly damning are facts reported by a leaked classification schema detailing operation “Exceptionally Controlled Information (ECI) WHIPGENIE,” described in the document’s introduction as covering NSA “Special Source Operations relationships with US Corporate Partners.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/20/nsad-o20.html

Thanks, daleanime. Interesting, if not colorful, times, ours.

[daleanime]

53. Isn't that an old Gypsy curse?

May you live in interesting times.

[nashville_brook]

18. k and r

[Octafish]

60. Sen. Prescott Bush, Sr. talked about Iraq's oil reserves back in 1959...

First he wrote about showing the Soviets we mean business when it comes to warfighting in order to avoid a war, which is a most reasonable thing:

To Preserve Peace Let’s Show Russians How Strong We Are

By Prescott Bush
U.S. Senator from Connecticut;
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
The Reader’s Digest July 1959

MAN’S GREATEST danger, it is said, is ignorance. In a very real sense, the Soviet Union’s ignorance of our military strength may be the source of her gravest peril—and ours. Kaiser Wilhelm started World War I because he miscalculated Allied power. Hitler, mistakenly thinking he could blitz the world, launched World War II. Kruschev today lacks firsthand knowledge of our country; he may be given what others think he would like to hear—rather than an objective report on our actual military strength. Although it seems impossible that any sane person could start a war, we would be wise to take no chances.

Why not invite the Soviet high command to the United States for a conducted tour of our military might? We are bringing Russians to see our farms and factories, our scientific laboratories and research centers; we exchange dancers and musicians. Why not have their military leaders over for the most beneficial look of all? Our expressed policy, the aim and purpose of our entire defense system, is to deter the Kremlin from starting a war. What better way to deter than to show?

What we could show is nothing more nor less than the greatest military might ever assembled in the history of the world. If the Soviet high command could see what we have, they should be of our mind—that for them to start war today would be an act of insanity.

We could start in a Pentagon briefing room. There, with maps, globes, films and sound-projection equipment to help illustrate our points, we could give them a good hard look at the distribution of American power. Then we could fly the group to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Montana, where bombers of the Strategic Air Command are on 24-hour alert, many ready to take off within 15 minutes. We could see an awe-inspiring line of B-47’s, any one of which can, in a single mission, deliver explosive power equivalent to that of all the bombs dropped by all sides in World War II. We could invite the commander of the Soviet air force to ride in one of these planes, and see it refueled in the air, thus quietly demonstrating that, while most Soviet bombers would have to fly one-way missions, ours can strike any target in the world and return nonstop.

SNIP...

The demonstration at SAC should effectively dismiss from Soviet minds any speculation about the possibility of their gaining an advantage from all-out war any time soon. But we must face the fact that in a few years the Russians may be able to zero in our SAC bases with ballistic missiles. To drive this temptation out of their minds, we could show them other deterrents.

CONTINUES…

The Reader’s Digest
July 1959 pp. 25-30

Prescott Bush detailed how Kruschev and the head of the Soviet armed forces be our guest on nuclear submarines, demonstrations of sea- and land-launched ICBMs, operations from aircraft carriers and a cruise aboard the inter-continental strategic bomber, the B-52.

The guy was on to something. You know how much they get for a lousy B-2 these days? Two billion? Each?



Then, Sen. Bush also discussed the strategic importance of Iraq – the very same right next door to Iran, the very place the CIA and MI6 had, five years earlier, replaced a democratically elected government with a despot, the Shah, who promised to do business Wall Street's way.

It’s fortunate for them that we want only peace with justice. Our entire record attests to that. We have no history of aggression, profess no desire for world domination, as do the Communists. Only by their continued menace have we been forced to take these measures for defense.

I ASK, “Why don’t we show the Russians many of these defense measures?” What I would not show them is any self-satisfaction on our part about the future, any slowing-up of plans to produce the new weapons which must inevitably take the place of the old ones. I believe we are in a continuing struggle to keep on top in this business of declaring war. I think that the Russians are never to be underrated. [font color="red"]I also believe that the Communists are master bluffers that they seek to put us off by arrogant threats to Berlin and to the peace of the far Pacific, and, while our people are preoccupied with these threats, they may try to take over Iraq as the Chinese Reds have conquered Tibet.
[/font color]

So. At least three generations of the Bush Family Evil Empire have had their eyes on Iraq’s oil. Interesting how Prescott mentioned Tibet's destruction by China. How was he to know his namesake, Prescott Bush, Jr., would one day become head of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce? The article also shows how Prescott, Sr. boosted the Cold War, way back in ’59. It’s not so odd to think that three generations of crazy petrodollar-loving warmongers would rise to the top echelons of American leadership.



This is exactly what Ike was talking about when he mentioned being on our guard against the “Military-Industrial Complex.” And now we also have to throw in the Intelligence Community, which, evidently, has declared We the People enemies for all the spying and counter-political actions they do in secret.

The Bushes and their supporters in the Secret Government may think they're American royalty, but all they are is a multi-generational mob of traitors who have used public office to enrich and empower themselves and their cronies. The problem is, most people know it, they just can't put their finger on it because so much of their story is classified Top Secret, destroyed by fires at SEC and Pentagon facilities, and otherwise lost to history.

[democrank]

20. The prolongation of the mercenary class/top secret everything is deeply troubling to me.

The Bush administration`s "with us or with the terrorists" was an enormous success. Malleable politicians, a lying/bullying president and vice president and their savvy handlers were able to garner support from frightened citizens and get them to go along with just about anything, including torture.

If members of Congress could be bullied into something as ridiculous as wearing flag pins to "prove" their patriotism, you can be sure The Test didn`t stop there.

All this sacrifice, all these values and principles flushed down the toilet, and where did it get us?
We swapped real-life arms and legs, real life loss of global influence for a government`s right to claim it`s A-OK to kill an American citizen on foreign soil. It`s okay to kidnap and torture people. It`s okay to bankrupt a nation. It`s okay to deploy soldiers three, four, five, six times.

A crisis? Oh, yes indeed.

[Octafish]

24. Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change. (Boston Globe)

Last edited Mon Oct 20, 2014, 10:39 AM - Edit history (1)

The people we elect aren’t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael Glennon

By Jordan Michael Smith
The Boston Globe, OCTOBER 19, 2014

THE VOTERS WHO put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor.

But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons.

Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

SNIP...

How exactly has double government taken hold? And what can be done about it? Glennon spoke with Ideas from his office at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This interview has been condensed and edited.

IDEAS: Where does the term “double government” come from?

GLENNON: It comes from Walter Bagehot’s famous theory, unveiled in the 1860s. Bagehot was the scholar who presided over the birth of the Economist magazine—they still have a column named after him. Bagehot tried to explain in his book “The English Constitution” how the British government worked. He suggested that there are two sets of institutions. There are the “dignified institutions,” the monarchy and the House of Lords, which people erroneously believed ran the government. But he suggested that there was in reality a second set of institutions, which he referred to as the “efficient institutions,” that actually set governmental policy. And those were the House of Commons, the prime minister, and the British cabinet.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/vote-all-you-want-the-secret-government-won-change/jVSkXrENQlu8vNcBfMn9sL/story.html?event=event25

The fact that those responsible for the deaths of more than 4,500 Americans and a million more innocent people killed in illegal, immoral, unnecessary and disastrous wars for profit have not been prosecuted is proof ours no longer is a republic. Thank you, democrank, for understanding what the real situation and our seemingly everlasting crisis are

[L0oniX]

37. Expect the usual attacks because this info discourages voting.

[nashville_brook]

40. this is actually the point where we need POTUS to fulfill the promise of transparency

i agree that POTUS doesn't oversee the administration of this stuff. But he did promise to bring transparency and accountability to the system which would restore value to voting by disarming these technocratic powers.

just b/c our votes don't really touch this aspect of power today, doesn't mean it can't tomorrow. that's what good leadership does.

[rhett o rick]

51. I think you missed the point here. It appears that Pres Obama doesn't have the power

to bring transparency and accountability to the system. There is a higher power.

[Scuba]

56. Eggzaklee!

[SHRED]

22. The first mistake the citizens make...

...is assuming they are defending us.

[Octafish]

87. True and before a single shot is fired, somebody's got to pay. Just don't ask for an accounting...

Don’t Ask the Pentagon Where Its Money Goes

It won't tell.

by Medea Benjamin
Oct. 22, 2014, CommonDreams/Other Worlds

EXCERPT...

very taxpayer, business, and government agency in America is supposed to be able to pass a financial audit by the feds, every year. It’s the law, so we do our duty. There’s one exception: the Pentagon.

Year after year, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) declares the Pentagon budget to be un-auditable. In 2013, for example, the GAO found that the Pentagon consistently fails to control its costs, measure its performance, or prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse.

Congress thankfully, did give the Pentagon a deadline to get itself in better financial shape — 25 years ago. Taxpayers are still waiting.

SNIP...

How has Congress responded? By doubling the Pentagon’s budget between 2000 and 2010. Many members are now railing against “cuts” that will still keep military spending at stratospheric levels over the next decade.

SNIP...

A bipartisan group led by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Michael Burgess (R-TX), and Dan Benishek (R-MI) wants to push the Pentagon further. Their Audit the Pentagon Act of 2014 (HR5126) calls for cutting any “un-auditable” Pentagon operation by one-half of 1 percent. It will be an uphill battle to get majority support for even that slap on the wrist, given how lawmakers have failed to get the Pentagon to carry through with the audit they first demanded more than 20 years ago.

I find this particularly amazing due to my own personal experience as the co-founder of a small and scrappy feminist peace group called CODEPINK. In 2008, the Internal Revenue Service singled us out for an audit. We underwent a tedious, energy-draining accounting of every dollar spent and complied with every bit of minutiae the IRS requested. It wasn’t fun, but it was our duty and we did it — and passed. And every year we’re prepared to do it again.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/22/dont-ask-pentagon-where-its-money-goes

[Blue_Tires]

26. It's been "permanent" for a long while already...

[Octafish]

88. Nov. 22, 1963

Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam.

James K. Galbraith
September 01, 2003

EXCERPT...

(John M.) Newman’s argument was not a case of “counterfactual historical reasoning,” as Larry Berman described it in an early response.2 It was not about what might have happened had Kennedy lived. Newman’s argument was stronger: Kennedy, he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here is the chronology, according to Newman:

(1) On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal.

(2) On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:

The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.)

The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended 3) but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bostonreview.net/us/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam

[liberal_at_heart]

27. The fact that they can keep files locked for 50 years says a lot about how little we are allowed to

know while things are happening. Only after the people responsible are either dead or beyond penalty are we allowed to know what really happens within our government.

[Octafish]

89. Answers sought on CIA role in ‘78 JFK probe

Investigators say files could prove interference

By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 2014

WASHINGTON — It was nearly four decades ago that Eddie Lopez was hired by a congressional committee to reinvestigate the 1963 murder of President John F. Kennedy, a role that had him digging through top secret documents at the CIA.

In the end, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1978 that it believed the assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy, although it couldn’t prove that, and its conclusions are disputed by many researchers.

But now Lopez is seeking answers to a lingering question: Could still-classified records reveal, as he and some of his fellow investigators have long alleged, that the CIA interfered with the congressional investigation and placed the committee staff under surveillance?


SNIP...

“It was time to fight one last time to ascertain what happened to JFK and to our investigation into his assassination,” Lopez, who is now the chief counsel for a school district in Rochester, N.Y., said in an interview. He is joined in the effort by two other former investigators, researcher Dan Hardway and G. Robert Blakey, the panel’s staff director.

Lopez, 58, charges that the CIA actively stymied the probe and monitored the committee staff members as they pursued leads about the events leading up to the assassination.

Lopez and his two colleagues are asking the CIA to release “operational files you have regarding operations aimed at, targeting, related to, or referring to” the House panel they worked for, along with records about the “surveillance of any and all members of the staff.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/10/15/decades-later-seeking-shed-light-cia-conduct-congressional-inquiry-jfk-assassination/dUf8qawsBQWfM2kxm7w7DM/story.html

Thank you for grokking, liberal_at_heart. Truth is required for Democracy to function. Justice is required for the republic to thrive.

PS: What Ed Lopez's partner, Dan Hardway, told me and a roomful of folks a year ago.

[kelliekat44]

28. And guess what? Obama has little or no control over them... nt

[L0oniX]

34. POTUS has no real power? Well I figured that anyway.

[Octafish]

50. Which would explain why Gov. Don Siegelman's in prison and George W Bush is not.

Not to disagree, but it must be more complicated than that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8614514

[nationalize the fed]

29. k/r you rock Octafish

"The government has stamped 'top secret' on virtually everything," he said.

Thomas Jefferson rolls in his grave

[OnyxCollie]

31. K&R. nt

[JDPriestly]

32. In general, the Founding Fathers did not even want us to have a standing army,

much less a standing intelligence service to feed secrets to our standing army.

The problem is that to have a really effective intelligence service, you have to have a group of people who work in secret and share secrets only amongst themselves. Much of their information has to be off limits or protected from the public at large, that is the voters. When you have a government that relies in making decisions not on the consensus of the people, not on the will of the people, but on a select and secretive elite within the government that has information that voters are not allowed to have, you do not have representative or democratic government.

And that is where we are. The secretive agencies within our government have become so powerful. In contrast, the voters are so weak. The secretive agencies have so much information. The voters have so little. The secretive agencies have displaced voters as the source of final authority in our society. Only the secretive agencies know best, or so we are led to believe. So we are told.

The meaning: We no longer have a representative government. Let's don't even use the word democracy. Our government isn't really even representative any more. We don't have enough information about really important issues like ISIS, Syria, the Ukraine, who is reading our e-mails or collecting our phone information to talk about representative government.

It isn't that Obama is a bad president or that Congress is in disarray. The reality is that we voters are so ignorant about what is really going on that our votes are irrelevant. Many of us vote based on our whims. Ridiculous stuff.

How can we know what we are voting for? I really thought that Obama's policies on human rights and privacy would be much different than they are. It's very disappointing to watch him just go along with the status quo of corrupt intelligence agencies that keep their corruption secret.

Our government should have some secrets, but Congress should determine what is to be kept secret and what is not to be kept secret. The president should not be the last word on this.

I was shocked to learn that members of Congress are afraid to reveal "secrets" merely because the executive branch has identified them as "secret." Members of Congress should be responsible for telling the American people the truth and the whole truth. Secrecy be damned. If a member of Congress thinks we need to know that our e-mails are being collected and categorized and analyzed, he or she should have the authority to tell us that. If a member of Congress thinks that too much money is being spent for activities that are secret and not explained in detail to members of Congress, he/she should have the authority and the confidence to say so.

The executive branch should not have so much power. The president may be the commander in chief but to designate one man as the final word on what is secret and what is not makes the president vulnerable to all kinds of pressures from those who wish to control the country through the apparatus that finds out and protects secrets. It's a sick system.

There should be no legal liability, no repercussions against members of Congress who divulge intelligence secrets. If someone can think of some other way to control the excessive secrecy, I'd like to know what it is. Let members of Congress speak out on this issue and even on the explicit abuses or suspected abuses of secrecy as they see fit. Members of Congress should not be silenced for any reason other than being rejected at the ballot box. Even then, former members of Congress should be honest and open with us. So should the press. The press should be truly free.

Sorry for the incoherent rant, but this irks me. It makes our "democracy" into a sham, a farce. Ridiculous.

[L0oniX]

33. Where Democracy, freedom, privacy goes to die ...USA

James Risen will be attacked as all who expose government bad shit.

[JEB]

35. K&R for the original post and subsequent informative posts and links.

[raouldukelives]

38. Perpetual war is good for the economy.

Good for the defense industry, good for investors, good for military recruitment, its just all good. Well, kinda bad for the people being killed and sometimes the killers themselves may die. But, not like they care about them anyway. When your done wasting civilians we have some choice underpass land you can crash on.
Oh, and thanks for your service to freedom and democracy.

[hootinholler]

41. There's a certain voice conspicuously missing from this thread

How refreshing!

Thank you Der Fishie!

[johnnyreb]

42. "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design"

[99th_Monkey]

44. Blackwater & Co.

are a blight and a shit-stain on our nation.

Thanks BushCo. By the time Obama got into town,
it was already "game over" for democracy.

[riderinthestorm]

45. Back to the top with this incredibly important story. BIG K&R nt

[Electric Monk]

49. k&r

[rhett o rick]

52. Thanks once again. You are dominating my bookmarks. nm

[navarth]

54. wholehearted kick. thx Octafish nt

[Enthusiast]

55. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

Thank you, Octafish!

[Scuba]

57. Kick. Thanks Octafish.

[Octafish]

77. With US-led air strikes on ISIS intensifying, it’s a good time to be an arms giant

With US-led air strikes on Isis intensifying, it’s a good time to be an arms giant like Lockheed Martin

Last month American warships fired $65.8m worth of Tomahawk missiles within just 24 hours of each other

ROBERT FISK
The Independent (UK), Sunday 19 October 2014

So who is winning the war? Isis? Us? The Kurds (remember them?) The Syrians? The Iraqis? Do we even remember the war? Not at all. We must tell the truth. So let us now praise famous weapons and the manufacturers that begat them.

Share prices are soaring in America for those who produce the coalition bombs and missiles and drones and aircraft participating in this latest war which – for all who are involved (except for the recipients of the bombs and missiles and those they are fighting) – is Hollywood from start to finish.

Shares in Lockheed Martin – maker of the “All for One and One for All” Hellfire missiles – are up 9.3 per cent in the past three months. Raytheon – which has a big Israeli arm – has gone up 3.8 per cent. Northrop Grumman shares swooped up the same 3.8 per cent. And General Dynamics shares have risen 4.3 per cent. Lockheed Martin – which really does steal Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers quotation on its publicity material – makes the rockets carried by the Reaper drones, famous for destroying wedding parties over Afghanistan and Pakistan, and by Iraqi aircraft.

And don’t be downhearted. The profits go on soaring. When the Americans decided to extend their bombing into Syria in September – to attack President Assad’s enemies scarcely a year after they first proposed to bomb President Assad himself – Raytheon was awarded a $251m (£156m) contract to supply the US navy with more Tomahawk cruise missiles. Agence France-Presse, which does the job that Reuters used to do when it was a real news agency, informed us that on 23 September, American warships fired 47 Tomahawk missiles. Each one costs about $1.4m. And if we spent as promiscuously on Ebola cures, believe me, there would be no more Ebola. Let us leave out here the political cost of this conflict. After all, the war against Isis is breeding Isis. For every dead Isis member, we are creating three of four more. And if Isis really is the “apocalyptic”, “evil”, “end-of-the-world” institution we have been told it is – my words come from the Pentagon and our politicians, of course – then every increase in profits for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics is creating yet more Isis fighters. So every drone or F/A-18 fighter-bomber we send is the carrier of a virus, every missile an Ebola germ for the future of the world. Think about that.

Let me give you a real-time quotation from reporter Dan De Luce’s dispatch on arms sales for the French news agency. “The war promises to generate more business not just from US government contracts but other countries in a growing coalition, including European and Arab states… Apart from fighter jets, the air campaign [sic] is expected to boost the appetite for aerial refuelling tankers, surveillance aircraft such as the U-2 and P-8 spy planes, and robotic [sic again, folks] drones… Private security contractors, which profited heavily from the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, also are optimistic the conflict will produce new contracts to advise Iraqi troops.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/with-usled-strikes-on-isis-intensifying-its-a-good-time-to-be-a-shareholder-in-the-merchants-of-death-9804918.html

PS: You are most welcome, Scuba!

[Scuba]

80. It’s always good time to be an arms giant.

Good stuff Octafish. Thanks for posting it, and all you do.

[dgauss]

59. A little late maybe, but another K&R

[Octafish]

69. ''Money trumps peace.'' -- appointed pretzeldent George Walker Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

The very words of George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007, uttered at a White House press conference. And then he laughs.

[font color="green"]Not even a single member of the callow, cowed press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up. [/font color]

One extraordinary American, Cindy Sheehan, did try to bring it to the nation's attention at the time. She was largely ignored, for similar warmongering reasons.

As for his Poppy: Bush Sr told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

PS: Thanks, dgauss! Great to read you. Good luck flushing Walker!

[blkmusclmachine]

61. War is here to stay. Too much PROFIT to be had. And, yeah, we'll all be starving penniless in the

broken down streets, in servitude to the 1% that has captured both political parties.

[Octafish]

68. ''War is a Racket.''

After World War I, Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC (ret.) even wrote an excellent book about it:

Chapter 2 EXCERPT...

The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up -- and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.

It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.

Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee -- with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator -- to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.

Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses -- that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.

There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.

Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.

SOURCE: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

To the warmonger, money and things are more precious than life and justice.

[JEB]

62. This story should be front page stuff across the country.

[woo me with science]

63. +1

[woo me with science]

64. Well, look what Risen has been facing.

Real journalism is being criminalized in this country. Our criminal oligarchy prefers a bunch of purchased toadies and a relentless propaganda machine.

[whereisjustice]

65. Yet the Democratic Party resists any attempt to bring these toxic agencies under control. eom

[Octafish]

67. The Church Committee - the last time they tried.

Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) warned us, so NSA spied on him.

Frank Church was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American.

The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.

And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:

In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.

SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1

From GWU's National Security Archives:

"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era

Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted – September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).

SNIP...

Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/

I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT) also got the treatment from NSA?

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT

[CanSocDem]

71. What's worse...

...is that this was a warning back in the 70's:

"I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America..."

They're a lot more engaged these days with the prize within reach.

k&r


.

[KoKo]

75. Always worth a trip back to the links.....to refresh the dot connections.

[whereisjustice]

81. Great post. Thanks!

[woo me with science]

72. K&R

Thank you, Octafish.

[wavesofeuphoria]

78. K&R .. thanks Octafish

[leftstreet]

79. DURec

[wildbilln864]

83. k & r & thanks! n/t

[suffragette]

84. "But some have seen this national security crisis as a financial opportunity, Risen said."

That's some Shock Doctrine for the rest of us, as we deal with with ever increasing insecurity from the funneling of money to this 'security economy.'

For the rest of us, more: financial insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, educational insecurity, health insecurity and retirement insecurity.

[Octafish]

85. It is clear traitors use the state to make war and enrich themselves.

As we waste the nation's finest and its treasure for greed and empire, no money ever trickles down -- even during the richest times in human history -- for humanity. Why? It makes the people smarter and stronger. Warmongering Slavemasters, like their Bankster cronies, don't like that. Nor do they like being held to account for their criminality.

Perhaps the only true thing George w Bush ever uttered in answer to a reporter's question: "money trumps peace."

[suffragette]

90. Sad, but oh so true.

Thank you as always for the thoughtful OP and replies.

[Puzzledtraveller]

86. but doing that would destroy the facade that it's us vs. them!

That being Democrats vs. Republicans, Liberals vs. Conservatives, Equality vs. Anti's, because we have our own never-ending war to fight, the one that keeps us from from noticing the one being waged on ALL of us.