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Gary Edwards

Michael Coffman -- Goodbye Property Rights - How Agenda 21 will destroy the Constitution - 0 views

www.newswithviews.com/...mike137.htm

Agenda-21 property-rights Property-Seizure-AND-Redistribution-of-Wealth progressive-socialism

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Dec 12
     
    Excellent historical background to the Agenda 21 effort to regulate private property and eventually put all private property under the control of the UN regional governments. "Since the early 1970s there has been a systematic and deliberate effort to destroy private property rights in America through the warm and fuzzy goal of sustainable development. David Rockefeller co-founded the Club of Rome in 1968 as an elite, somewhat occult think tank. The Club of Rome published Limits to Growth in 1972, which called for severe limits on human population and state control of all development in the world to achieve "sustainable development." Sustainable development was eventually formalized into a United Nations global action plan called Agenda 21, which President Bush committed the U.S. to at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. President Clinton put into action by the creation of Sustainable America in 1996. If fully implemented, private property rights will be a thing of the past. Concurrent to Limits of Growth, New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller introduced legislation to create the Adirondack Park Agency in 1971 patterned after Limits of Growth. It was so successful that Nelson's brother-Laurence Rockefeller-commissioned and led a study entitled Use of Land: A Citizen's Policy Guide to Urban Growth as a set of goals for America. Published in 1973, the nationally based Use of Land was a companion to the Club of Rome's internationally based Limits of Growth. The Use of Land was edited by William Reilly, who would later be appointed by George H. W. Bush as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1989. Reilly also attended the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where he advised President Bush to sign the UN Agenda 21, thereby committing the United States to Agenda 21. Although utterly evil, the Rockefeller's effort to destroy the constitutional basis of property rights was brilliant. The thrust of the Use of Land report sup
Paul Merrell

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35198.htm - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35198.htm

surveillance state prism NSA social media

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the scope of the NSA phone monitoring includes customers of all three major phone networks—Verizon, AT&T and Sprint—as well as records from Internet service providers and purchase information from credit card providers.
  • GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, first of all, after our story was published, and The Washington Post published more or less simultaneously a similar story, several news outlets, including NBC News, confirmed with government officials that they in fact have exactly the access to the data that we describe. The director of national intelligence confirmed to The New York Times, by name, that the program we identify and the capabilities that we described actually exist. So, you have a situation where somebody seems to be lying. The NSA claims that these companies voluntarily allow them the access; the companies say that they never did.
  • on Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein told reporters in the Senate gallery that the government’s top-secret court order to obtain phone records on millions of Americans is, quote, "lawful." SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the FISA court under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act, therefore it is lawful.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • On Thursday, Glenn, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he stood by what he told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in March, when he said that the National Security Agency does "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. Let’s go to that exchange. SEN. RON WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? JAMES CLAPPER: No, sir. SEN. RON WYDEN: It does not? JAMES CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.
  • AMY GOODMAN: That’s the questioning of the head of the national intelligence, James Clapper, by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Glenn Greenwald? GLENN GREENWALD: OK. So, we know that to be a lie, not a misleading statement, not something that was sort of parsed in a way that really was a little bit deceitful, but an outright lie. They collect—they collect data and records about the communications activities and other behavioral activities of millions of Americans all the time. That’s what that program is that we exposed on Wednesday. They go to the FISA court every three months, and they get an order compelling telephone companies to turn over the records, that he just denied they collect, with regard to the conversations of every single American who uses these companies to communicate with one another. The same is true for what they’re doing on the Internet with the PRISM program. The same is true for what the NSA does in all sorts of ways. We are going to do a story, coming up very shortly, about the scope of the NSA’s spying activities domestically, and I think it’s going to shock a lot of people, because the NSA likes to portray itself as interested only in foreign intelligence gathering and only in targeting people who they believe are guilty of terrorism, and yet the opposite is true. It is a massive surveillance state of exactly the kind that the Church Committee warned was being constructed 35 years ago. And we intend to make all those facts available so people can see just how vast it is and how false those kind of statements are.
Gary Edwards

100th Anniversary of the Beginning of the End? (Part 1) - The Patriot Post - 1 views

patriotpost.us/17878

progressive-socialism Woodrow-Wilson Globalist

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • I take the Oath of John Galt and put action to it: "I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another person, nor ask another to live their life for me."
  • In this dark day of the former republic, I stand in Resistance to the premier means of acquisition by the State, the Income Tax.
  • "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Ben Franklin)
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  • "A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." (John Adams)
  • "Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!" (George Washington)
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Apr 13
     
    Excellent history of how America lost it's Constitutional Republic.  The author tags the first progressive (marxist/socialist) President, Woodrow Wilson, as the culprit.  In 1913 Wilson shoved through the 16th and 17th Amendments.  He also pushed through the midnight express known as the Federal Reserve.  And as if that was not enough damage, he pushed for the "League of Nations" - a precursor to the present day United Nations Globalist New World Order. Oh yeah, the first progressive president also jacked us into humanities first World War. Wilson was a Manchurian stooge for the Globalist Rothschild Banksters, and the USA Bankster contingent led by Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie.   Note that in the election of 1896, the Banksters banked the corporatist McKinley against the GOLD standard populist, William Jennings Bryan.  McKinley was assassinated in 1901, and his VP, Teddy Roosevelt, became President.  Roosevelt successfully went after the Robber Bankster Barons; Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan, passing the Sherman Anti Trust laws and bringing the criminal corporations to trial.  This set the stage for the Bankster coup in 1913, where, with the election of Wilson the Banksters ended the great Consttitutional Republic and ushered in a century of ever encroaching socialist tyranny. ........................... excerpt: "One hundred years ago, our federal government, under control of the progressive Woodrow Wilson, took actions that have since become a disaster for these United States. Looking back, these actions were the beginning of what could be the end of our Constitutional Republic. With progressives in control in 2013, similar actions are underway that could complete a sinister view by progressives then and now to "transform" us into something our Founders never intended, and most Americans through the years never wanted and still don't. In 1913 our Constitution was amended by the ratification of two amendments, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth, an
Paul Merrell

Clapper Reads From the Bush/Cheney/Nixon Playbook to Fear-Monger Over Transparency - Th... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...sparency-helps-terrorists-like

surveillance state politics of fear terrorists™ presstitutes mainstream-media

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • James Clapper, President Obama’s top national security official, is probably best known for having been caught lying outright to Congress about NSA activities, behavior which (as some baseball players found out) happens to be a felony under federal law. But – like torturers and Wall Street tycoons before him – Clapper has been not only shielded from prosecution, and not only allowed to keep his job; he has has now been anointed the arbiter of others’ criminality, as he parades around the country calling American journalists “accomplices”. Yesterday, as Wired’s Dave Kravets reports, the “clearly frustrated” Clapper went before a Senate committee (different than the one he got caught lying to) to announce that the Snowden disclosures are helping the terrorists: We’re beginning to see changes in the communications behavior of adversaries: particularly terrorists. A disturbing trend, which I anticipate will continue . . . Terrorists and other adversaries of this country are going to school on U.S. intelligence sources, methods, and tradecraft. And the insights they’re gaining are making our job in the intelligence community much, much harder. And this includes putting the lives of members or assets of the intelligence community at risk, as well as those of our armed forces, diplomats, and our citizens. As Kravets notes, “Clapper is not the most credible source on Snowden and the NSA leaks.” Moreover, it’s hardly surprising that Clapper is furious at these disclosures given that “Snowden’s very first leak last June” – revelation of the domestic surveillance program – “had the side-effect of revealing that Clapper had misled the public and Congress about NSA spying.” And, needless to say, Clapper offered no evidence at all to support his assertions yesterday; he knows that, unlike Kravets, most establishment media outlets will uncritically trumpet his claims without demanding evidence or even noting that he has none.
  • But in general, it’s hardly surprising that national security officials claim that unwanted disclosures help terrorists. Fear-mongering comes naturally to those who wield political power. Particularly in post-9/11 America, shouting “terrorists!” has been the favorite tactic of the leadership of both parties to spread fear and thus induce submission. In a recent New York Times op-ed detailing how exploitation of terrorism fears is the key to sustaining the modern surveillance state, Northwestern University Philosophy Professor Peter Ludlow wrote that “since 9/11 leaders of both political parties in the United States have sought to consolidate power by leaning … on the danger of a terrorist attack”. He recounted that ”Machiavelli notoriously argued that a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble” and that “Hobbes in ‘The Leviathan’ argued that fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign.” It would be surprising if people like Clapper didn’t do this. But what has struck me is how seriously many media figures take this claim. In the vast majority of interviews I’ve done about NSA reporting, interviewers adopt a grave tone in their voice and trumpet the claims from U.S. officials that our reporting is helping the terrorists. They treat these claims as though they’re the by-product of some sort of careful, deliberative, unique assessment rather than what it is: the evidence-free tactics national security state officials reflexively invoke to discredit all national security journalism they dislike. Let’s review a bit of history to see how true that is.
  • Political officials hate transparency.They would rather be able to hide what they’re doing. They therefore try to demonize those who impose transparency with the most extreme and discrediting accusations they can concoct (you’re helping terrorists kill Americans!). The more transparency one imposes on them, the more extreme and desperate this accusatory rhetoric becomes. This is not complicated. It’s all very basic. James Clapper is saying exactly what Dick Cheney and George Bush before him said, and those three said what John Ehrlichman and Henry Kissinger said before them about Ellsberg. It’s all spouted with no evidence. It’s rote and reflexive. It’s designed to smear and fear-monger. As Professor Ludlow notes, “Fear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety.” Maybe it’s time for journalists to cease being the leading advocates for state secrecy and instead take seriously their claimed role as watchdogs. At the very least, demand evidence before these sorts of highly predictable, cliched attacks are heralded as something to be taken seriously. As it is, they’re just cartoons: ones that are played over and over and over.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 14
     
    Glenn Greenwald pokes his stick in the presstitutes' eyes, again.
Gary Edwards

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet' | World ne... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...top-secret-program-online-data

Edward-Snowden Glenn-Greenwald NSA NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.
  • The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10
  • "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."
  • But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.
  • XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.
  • Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity.
  • Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets.
  • But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.
  • One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst's ability to query the databases at any time.
  • The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a "selector" in NSA parlance) associated with the individual being targeted.
  • Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.
  • One document notes that this is because "strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability" because "a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous."
  • Email monitoring
  • One top-secret document describes how the program "searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents", including the "To, From, CC, BCC lines" and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites".
  • To search for emails, an analyst using XKS enters the individual's email address into a simple online search form, along with the "justification" for the search and the time period for which the emails are sought.
  • One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by NSA analysts for general surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications.
  • Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications:
  • Chats, browsing history and other internet activity
  • Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.
  • An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.
  • The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.
  • The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn "call events" collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.
  • William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had "assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens", an estimate, he said, that "only was involving phone calls and emails". A 2010 Washington Post article reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications."
  • The ACLU's deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans' communications without individualized warrants.
  • "The government doesn't need to 'target' Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications," said Jaffer. "The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans" when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance.
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13
     
    "One presentation claims the XKeyscore program covers 'nearly everything a typical user does on the internet' ................................................................. A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do." But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks - what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 13
     
    "But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. " Note in that regard that Snowden said in an earlier interview that use of this system rarely was audited and that when audited, the most common request if changes were requested was to beef up the justification for the search. The XScore system puts the lie to just about everything the Administration has claimed about intense oversight by all three branches of federal government and about not reading emails or listening to (Skype) phone calls. The lies keep stacking up in an ever-deepening pile.
Paul Merrell

WASHINGTON: Americans' personal data shared with CIA, IRS, others in security probe | N... - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...cans-personal-data-shared.html

surveillance state 1st Amendment Privacy-Act book-purchases

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — U.S. agencies collected and shared the personal information of thousands of Americans in an attempt to root out untrustworthy federal workers that ended up scrutinizing people who had no direct ties to the U.S. government and simply had purchased certain books.Federal officials gathered the information from the customer records of two men who were under criminal investigation for purportedly teaching people how to pass lie detector tests. The officials then distributed a list of 4,904 people – along with many of their Social Security numbers, addresses and professions – to nearly 30 federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.
  • The unprecedented creation of such a list and decision to disseminate it widely demonstrate the ease with which the federal government can collect and share Americans’ personal information, even when there’s no clear reason for doing so. The case comes to light amid revelations that the NSA, in an effort to track foreign terrorists, has for years been stockpiling the data of the daily telephone and Internet communications of tens of millions of ordinary Americans. Though nowhere near as massive as the NSA programs, the polygraph inquiry is another example of the federal government’s vast appetite for Americans’ personal information and the sweeping legal authority it wields in the name of national security. “This is increasingly happening – data is being collected by the federal government for one use and then being entirely repurposed for other uses and shared,” said Fred Cate, an Indiana University-Bloomington law professor who specializes in information privacy and national security. “Yet there is no constitutional protection for sharing data within the government.”
  • While the collection of the information likely passes constitutional muster, the federal agencies involved may have violated their own privacy policies by sharing the personal information of people who aren’t government employees, several legal experts agreed.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Nov 13
     
    The inter-agency sharing of information described in this article sounds like a straightforward violation of several different sections of the federal Privacy Act. That Act places severe restrictions on inter-agency sharing of information that includes personal identifiers of members of the public, including the requirement of notifying the victims when a violation is discovered. The Act also provides a private right of action for anyone whose rights under the Act are violated with a statutory minimum damages award of $1,500 plus attorney fees and expenses of litigation.   
Paul Merrell

"The machiavelian threefold game of the neoconservatives" - 0 views

www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html

neocon U.S.-politics Israel zionists

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • To realize their fantasies of world domination, the neocons resorted to a triple discourse, as Laurent Guyénot shows in this study, i.e. a cynical political philosophy developed by their mentor Leo Strauss for domestic consumption; a cold analysis of Israeli strategic interests for the benefit of the leaders in Tel Aviv, and a fear-mongering warning against imaginary dangers besetting U.S. public opinion.
  • The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than “conservative”) Republican right, is, in reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary, a media arm of the American Jewish Committee, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward, the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: “If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It’s a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants’ grandchildren”. The neoconservative apologist Murray Friedman explains that Jewish dominance within his movement by the inherent benevolence of Judaism, “the idea that Jews have been put on earth to make it a better, perhaps even a holy, place” (The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy, 2006).
  • Just as we speak of the “Christian Right” as a political force in the United States, we could also therefore speak of the neoconservatives as representing the “Jewish Right”. However, this characterization is problematic for three reasons. First, the neoconservatives are a relatively small group, although they have acquired considerable authority on and within Jewish representative organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. In 2003, journalist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times counted twenty-five members saying, “if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened”. The neoconservatives compensate for their small number by multiplying their Committees, Projects, and other think tanks, which certainly give them a kind of ubiquity.
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  • unlike evangelical Christians who openly proclaim their unifying religious principles, neoconservatives do not display their Judaism. Whether they’d been Marxists or not, they appear mostly non-religious. It is well-know that their major influence is the philosophy of Leo Stauss, so much so that they are sometimes referred to as “the straussians”;
  • The thinking of Leo Strauss is difficult to capture, and certainly beyond the purview of this work. Moreover, Strauss is often elliptic because he believes that Truth is harmful to the common man and the social order and should be reserved for superior minds. For this reason, Strauss rarely speaks in his own name, but rather expressed himself as a commentator on classical authors, in whom he discovers many of his own thoughts. Moreover, much like his disciples Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind, 1988) and Samuel Huntington, he is careful to clothe his most radical ideas in ostensibly humanist principles. Despite the apparent difficulty, three basic ideas can easily be extracted from his political philosophy, no different from Schmitt. First, nations derive their strength from their myths, which are necessary for government and governance. Second, national myths have no necessary relationship with historical reality: they are socio-cultural constructions that the State has a duty to disseminate. Third, to be effective, any national myth must be based on a clear distinction between good and evil; it derives its cohesive strength from the hatred of an enemy nation. As recognized by Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt in an article “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence” (1999), for Strauss, “deception is the norm in political life” – the rule they applied to fabricating the lie of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein when working inside the Office of Special Plans.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13
     
    Toward a deeper understanding of Neoconservatism, which has ruled U.S. foreign and military policy in the Mideast almost without interruption since the election of George W. Bush. 
Paul Merrell

Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit 'Radi... - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...sa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-porn COINTELPRO FBI must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority. The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. “A previous SIGINT" -- or signals intelligence, the interception of communications -- "assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent,” the document argues. Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”
  • The Director of the National Security Agency -- described as "DIRNSA" -- is listed as the "originator" of the document. Beyond the NSA itself, the listed recipients include officials with the Departments of Justice and Commerce and the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence," Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence, told The Huffington Post in an email Tuesday. Yet Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said these revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse. "It's important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused -- the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone," he said. "Wherever you are, the NSA's databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online," he added. "The NSA says this personal information won't be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines 'abuse' very narrowly."
  • None of the six individuals targeted by the NSA is accused in the document of being involved in terror plots. The agency believes they all currently reside outside the United States. It identifies one of them, however, as a "U.S. person," which means he is either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident. A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are. Stewart Baker, a one-time general counsel for the NSA and a top Homeland Security official in the Bush administration, said that the idea of using potentially embarrassing information to undermine targets is a sound one. "If people are engaged in trying to recruit folks to kill Americans and we can discredit them, we ought to," said Baker. "On the whole, it's fairer and maybe more humane" than bombing a target, he said, describing the tactic as "dropping the truth on them." Any system can be abused, Baker allowed, but he said fears of the policy drifting to domestic political opponents don't justify rejecting it. "On that ground you could question almost any tactic we use in a war, and at some point you have to say we're counting on our officials to know the difference," he said.
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  • In addition to analyzing the content of their internet activities, the NSA also examined the targets' contact lists. The NSA accuses two of the targets of promoting al Qaeda propaganda, but states that surveillance of the three English-speakers’ communications revealed that they have "minimal terrorist contacts." In particular, “only seven (1 percent) of the contacts in the study of the three English-speaking radicalizers were characterized in SIGINT as affiliated with an extremist group or a Pakistani militant group. An earlier communications profile of [one of the targets] reveals that 3 of the 213 distinct individuals he was in contact with between 4 August and 2 November 2010 were known or suspected of being associated with terrorism," the document reads. The document contends that the three Arabic-speaking targets have more contacts with affiliates of extremist groups, but does not suggest they themselves are involved in any terror plots. Instead, the NSA believes the targeted individuals radicalize people through the expression of controversial ideas via YouTube, Facebook and other social media websites. Their audience, both English and Arabic speakers, "includes individuals who do not yet hold extremist views but who are susceptible to the extremist message,” the document states. The NSA says the speeches and writings of the six individuals resonate most in countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Kenya, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia.
  • The NSA possesses embarrassing sexually explicit information about at least two of the targets by virtue of electronic surveillance of their online activity. The report states that some of the data was gleaned through FBI surveillance programs carried out under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. The document adds, "Information herein is based largely on Sunni extremist communications." It further states that "the SIGINT information is from primary sources with direct access and is generally considered reliable." According to the document, the NSA believes that exploiting electronic surveillance to publicly reveal online sexual activities can make it harder for these “radicalizers” to maintain their credibility. "Focusing on access reveals potential vulnerabilities that could be even more effectively exploited when used in combination with vulnerabilities of character or credibility, or both, of the message in order to shape the perception of the messenger as well as that of his followers," the document argues. An attached appendix lists the "argument" each surveillance target has made that the NSA says constitutes radicalism, as well the personal "vulnerabilities" the agency believes would leave the targets "open to credibility challenges" if exposed.
  • One target's offending argument is that "Non-Muslims are a threat to Islam," and a vulnerability listed against him is "online promiscuity." Another target, a foreign citizen the NSA describes as a "respected academic," holds the offending view that "offensive jihad is justified," and his vulnerabilities are listed as "online promiscuity" and "publishes articles without checking facts." A third targeted radical is described as a "well-known media celebrity" based in the Middle East who argues that "the U.S perpetrated the 9/11 attack." Under vulnerabilities, he is said to lead "a glamorous lifestyle." A fourth target, who argues that "the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks on itself" is said to be vulnerable to accusations of “deceitful use of funds." The document expresses the hope that revealing damaging information about the individuals could undermine their perceived "devotion to the jihadist cause." The Huffington Post is withholding the names and locations of the six targeted individuals; the allegations made by the NSA about their online activities in this document cannot be verified. The document does not indicate whether the NSA carried out its plan to discredit these six individuals, either by communicating with them privately about the acquired information or leaking it publicly. There is also no discussion in the document of any legal or ethical constraints on exploiting electronic surveillance in this manner.
  • While Baker and others support using surveillance to tarnish the reputation of people the NSA considers "radicalizers," U.S. officials have in the past used similar tactics against civil rights leaders, labor movement activists and others. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI harassed activists and compiled secret files on political leaders, most notably Martin Luther King, Jr. The extent of the FBI's surveillance of political figures is still being revealed to this day, as the bureau releases the long dossiers it compiled on certain people in response to Freedom of Information Act requests following their deaths. The information collected by the FBI often centered on sex -- homosexuality was an ongoing obsession on Hoover's watch -- and information about extramarital affairs was reportedly used to blackmail politicians into fulfilling the bureau's needs. Current FBI Director James Comey recently ordered new FBI agents to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington to understand "the dangers in becoming untethered to oversight and accountability."
  • James Bamford, a journalist who has been covering the NSA since the early 1980s, said the use of surveillance to exploit embarrassing private behavior is precisely what led to past U.S. surveillance scandals. "The NSA's operation is eerily similar to the FBI's operations under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as sexual activity, to 'neutralize' their targets," he said. "Back then, the idea was developed by the longest serving FBI chief in U.S. history, today it was suggested by the longest serving NSA chief in U.S. history." That controversy, Bamford said, also involved the NSA. "And back then, the NSA was also used to do the eavesdropping on King and others through its Operation Minaret. A later review declared the NSA’s program 'disreputable if not outright illegal,'" he said. Baker said that until there is evidence the tactic is being abused, the NSA should be trusted to use its discretion. "The abuses that involved Martin Luther King occurred before Edward Snowden was born," he said. "I think we can describe them as historical rather than current scandals. Before I say, 'Yeah, we've gotta worry about that,' I'd like to see evidence of that happening, or is even contemplated today, and I don't see it."
  • Jaffer, however, warned that the lessons of history ought to compel serious concern that a "president will ask the NSA to use the fruits of surveillance to discredit a political opponent, journalist or human rights activist." "The NSA has used its power that way in the past and it would be naïve to think it couldn't use its power that way in the future," he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13
     
    By Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim, 26 November 2013. I will annotate later. But this is by far the most important NSA disclosure from Edward Snowden's leaked documents thus far. A report originated by Gen. Alexander himself revealing COINTELPRO like activities aimed at destroying the reputations of non-terrorist "radicalizers," including one "U.S. person." This is exactly the kind of repressive activity that the civil libertarians among us warn about. 
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 13
     
    By Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim, 26 November 2013. I will annotate later. But this is by far the most important NSA disclosure from Edward Snowden's leaked documents thus far. A report originated by Gen. Alexander himself revealing COINTELPRO like activities aimed at destroying the reputations of non-terrorist "radicalizers," including one "U.S. person." This is exactly the kind of repressive activity that the civil libertarians among us warn about. 
Paul Merrell

Israel losing Democrats, 'can't claim bipartisan US support,' top pollster warns | The ... - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/-us-support-top-pollster-warns

war & peace Israel Democrats polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • hree quarters of highly educated, high income, publicly active US Democrats — the so-called “opinion elites” — believe Israel has too much influence on US foreign policy, almost half of them consider Israel to be a racist country, and fewer than half of them believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors. These are among the findings of a new survey carried out by US political consultant Frank Luntz
  • Detailing the survey results to The Times of Israel on Sunday, Luntz called the findings “a disaster” for Israel. He summed them up by saying that the Democratic opinion elites are converting to the Palestinians, and “Israel can no longer claim to have the bipartisan support of America.” He said he “knew there was a shift” in attitudes to Israel among US Democrats “and I have been seeing it get worse” in his ongoing polls. But the new findings surprised and shocked him, nonetheless. “I didn’t expect it to become this blatant and this deep.” A prominent US political consultant known best for his work with Republicans, Luntz is meeting with a series of high-level Israeli officials this week to discuss the survey and consult on how to grapple with the trends it exposes.
  • “Israel has won the hearts and minds of Republicans in America, while at the same time it is losing the Democrats,” he said. On US politics, “I’m right of center,” he added. “But the Israeli government and US Jews have to focus on repairing relations with the Democrats.” Luntz put a series of largely Israel-related questions to 802 members of the opinion elites and his findings have a 3.5% margin of error. The survey, sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, was conducted last week. Among the key findings: • Asked about Israeli influence on US foreign policy, an overwhelming 76% of Democrats, as compared to 20% of Republicans, said Israel has “too much influence.” • Asked whether Israel is a racist country, 47% of Democrats agreed it is, as opposed to 13% of Republicans. Another 21% of Democrats didn’t know or were neutral (as opposed to 12% of Republicans), and only 32% of Democrats disagreed when asked if Israel is a racist country, as opposed to 76% of Republicans. (Overall 32% of those polled said Israel is a racist country.)
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  • • Asked whether Israel wants peace with its neighbors, while an overwhelming 88% of Republicans said it does, a far lower 48% of Democrats agreed. Another 21% of Democrats didn’t know or were neutral (as compared to 7% of Republicans). And 31% of Democrats did not think Israel wants peace (as compared to 5% of Republicans). • Asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a local politician who supported Israel and its right to defend itself, an overwhelming 76% of Republicans said yes, but only 18% of Democrats said yes. Meanwhile, only 7% of Republicans — but 32% of Democrats — said they would be less likely to support a local politician who backed Israel. • Asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a local politician who criticized Israeli occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians, 45% of Democrats said yes, compared to just 6% of Republicans. Asked whether they would be less likely to vote for a local politician who criticized Israeli occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians, a whopping 75% of Republicans said yes, compared to just 23% of Democrats.
  • • Asked whether the US should support Israel or the Palestinians, a vast 90% of Republicans and a far lower 51% of Democrats said Israel. Another 8% of Republicans and 31% of Democrats were neutral. And 18% of Democrats said the Palestinians, compared to 2% of Republicans. Overall, 68% of those polled said the US should support Israel, and 10% said the US should support the Palestinians. • Asked about which side they themselves support, 88% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats said they were “pro-Israeli” while 4% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats said they were “pro-Palestinian.” • Asked if settlements are an impediment to peace, 75% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans agreed.
  • A specialist in finding and testing the language that can impact public opinion, Luntz was vehement that Israel’s “messaging” has to be different if support for Israel among US Democrats is to be revived. “Obviously, policy has something to do with it, but the messaging is critical,” he said. “And the Republicans have to realize that their rhetoric is part of the problem: It’s not security that needs to be highlighted, but [Israel’s] social justice and human rights.” Underlining Israel’s role in protecting human rights and promoting equality could be particularly resonant, he said. The “words that work best” among Republicans, he said, are those along the lines of, “Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, and attempts to destroy the country economically and politically could do direct harm to the United States.” By contrast, the “words that work best” among Democrats are those to the effect that, “We should be encouraging more communication and cooperation, not less. We should be encouraging more diplomacy and discussion, not less.”
  • More specifically, when it comes to the most effective messaging, Luntz found that the statement “Women in Israel have exactly the same rights as men. No other Middle Eastern country offers women fully equal rights” was particularly well received among Democrats, as was the declaration, “Everyone in Israel is free to practice their religion and worship their God. No other Middle Eastern country offers similar religious protections.” By contrast, responses were markedly less positive to statements about the need for a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust, Israeli claims to the Holy Land, and Israel’s start-up technology prowess. Widely resonant among all those polled, he found, was the statement that “Despite the ongoing conflict with Gaza, Israel still donates tens of millions in humanitarian aid to Palestinians and opens its hospitals to treat them.”
  • “They don’t care about the ‘Start-Up Nation,'” he said flatly of American opinion elites in general. “It’s tragic that so much effort has been devoted to selling an image of Israel that many aren’t interested in buying.” Still more drastically, Luntz said the word “Zionism” could play no part in messaging designed to repair relations with US Democrats. There has to be an “end to the [use of the] word Zionism,” he said. “You can’t make the case if you use that word. If you are at Berkeley or Brown and start outlining a Zionist vision, you don’t get to make a case for Israel because they’ve already switched off.” He also predicted that Israel is in for “a lot more trouble” from the BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) campaign. Once they had been informed about the BDS campaign, 19% of respondents supported it — 31% of Democrats and 3% of Republicans. And, stressed Luntz, 60% of America’s opinion elites said they were not familiar with BDS. “Israel is already having trouble with BDS, and Americans don’t even know what it means. Can you imagine how bad it will get?”
  • He also foresaw a looming battle in the US over foreign aid to Israel. Some 33% of Democrats and 22% of Republicans, his poll found, were upset that “Israel gets billions and billions of dollars in funding from the US government that should be going to the American people.” Luntz also asked whether respondents see anti-Semitism as a problem in the US. Overall, 58% agreed with the idea that anti-Semitism is a problem in America (57% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats), compared to 28% who disagreed. “Non-Jews recognize the problem, even if some Israelis want to minimize it,” he said. Ironically, the poll also found, 50% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans (and 36% of all respondents) agreed with the proposition that “Jewish people are too hyper-sensitive and too often label legitimate criticisms of Israel as an anti-Semitic attack.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jul 15
     
    So the cure is supposedly "better messaging" rather than substantive reforms in Israel. Anything but behave as a civilized nation. 
Gary Edwards

We've got plenty of "Bad Banks" - What we really need now is one "Good Bank" :oseph Sti... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/stiglitzs-bailout-piece-2009-3

financial-crisis obama-socialism bank-crisis banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Mar 09
     
    Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz has an important article in the Nation arguing for "A Bank Bailout That Works." Unfortunately, it won't be read by many people because it's in The Nation and it's thousands of words long. The six points are: Solvency not liquidity ..... TARP sucks .... Forget the Bad Bank .... Drop the insurance idea ...Public private partnerships won't work either ... We have enough bad banks - Let's start a good one! That's where we come in. We went ahead and read the entire thing so you don't have to. Here are the six things you need to know from Stiglitz's piece. Feel free to pretend you read it. We won't tell.
Paul Merrell

One Click Politics - 0 views

oneclickpolitics.com/...movetoamend

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Senate Joint Resolution 19 is a proposed Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United, but it doesn’t address corporate constitutional rights at all. Please send a message to the authors of SJR19 -- let them know that Corporate Personhood MUST be included in the language of the amendment... What You Can Do: Help movetoamend accomplish these goals by contributing your power of voice. Take action now by sending a message to Congress telling them why these issues are important to you.
  • Formed in September 2009, Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests.
  • Senate Joint Resolution 19 is a proposed Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United, but it doesn’t address corporate constitutional rights at all. Please send a message to the authors of SJR19 -- let them know that Corporate Personhood MUST be included in the language of the amendment... What You Can Do: Help movetoamend accomplish these goals by contributing your power of voice. Take action now by sending a message to Congress telling them why these issues are important to you.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14
     
    I have never forwarded action alerts to others by email. The typical action alert winds up sharing your email address with at least one other organization. The next thing you know you're getting donor solicitations from both the Republican and Democratic party central national coordinating committees. It's not just that I'm a political independent; it's an ongoing task to unsubscribe from unwanted mailing lists. Today I got an action alert from Move to Amend, only the second I have received from the organization. This group does not share your email address with anyone. If you choose to participate in this action alert, which is nearing 1 million messages sent, there is a send button near the bottom of the page to participate. That takes you to a page where you can read the message that will be sent. Move to Amend is a non-partisan organization that has been working toward a constitutional amendment for around 4 years that would clear the way for Congress to regulate campaign contributions, in light of Supreme Court decisions declaring that corporations have a First Amendment right to make campaign contributions in any amount they desire. But their amendment would also abolish constitutional rights for all fictional legal "persons" other than human beings and government at the local, state, and national levels. Move to Amend has been going about the process the right way and to date has scored supporting resolutions in 16 state legislatures and hundreds of community governments. That's enough to get oligarchs worried. So there's a bill gathering steam in the U.S. Senate, SJR 19, that's a watered-down version. It grants Congress and the states power to regulate campaign contributions, but it does not speak to the problem of granting human constitutional rights to entities that have existence only in the eyes of the law. The Senate bill is here: http://goo.gl/Nkvfkg Our nation's Founders unmistakably did not contemplate that corporations would have constitution
Paul Merrell

Snowden GCSB revelations / Russel Norman says GCSB 'breaking the law' - National - NZ H... - 0 views

www.nzherald.co.nz/...article.cfm

surveillance state NSA 5-Eyes New-Zealand X-KEYSCORE

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • New Zealand is "selling out" its close relations with the Pacific nations to be close with the United States, author Nicky Hager has said. Hager, in conjunction with the New Zealand Herald and the Intercept news site, revealed today how New Zealand's spies are targeting the entire email, phone and social media communications of the country's closest, friendliest and most vulnerable neighbours. The revelations, based on documents supplied by United States fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden, expose a heavy focus on "full-take collection" from the Pacific with nearly two dozen countries around the world targeted by our Government Communications Security Bureau.
  • The Snowden documents show that information from across the Pacific is collected by New Zealand's GCSB but sent on to the United States' National Security Agency to plug holes in its global spying network.
  • READ MORE• The price of joining the Five Eyes club• How foreign spies access the data
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • From there, the documents show information collected by New Zealand is merged with data captured from across the world. It is then able to be accessed by the NSA's XKeyscore computer program through an online shopping-style interface, which allows searching of the world's communications. This morning, Hager told Radio New Zealand that the documents revealed even more countries which New Zealand was spying on, and more information would come. "The Five Eyes countries led by the US are literally trying to spy on every country in the world ... and what we're going to be hearing about in the next few days is New Zealand in all kinds of very surprising ways playing a role in that," he said. MORE: Read the Intercept's NZ story here Hager said New Zealand was "selling out" its close relations with the Pacific nations to be close with the United States. "The reason we spy on those little Pacific countries ... is not because New Zealand cares ... it's just something to take to the table to belong to the [Five Eyes] club."
Paul Merrell

Venezuela's Maduro Granted Decree Powers by Parliament to Confront Imperialism | venezu... - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11272

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Venezuela emergency-powers

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looks set to pass landmark legislation aimed at shielding the country from continued US aggression, after the Venezuelan parliament approved his request for temporary decree powers on Sunday.  Officially submitted to parliament last week, the petition was a response to the release of an Executive Order from the White House which classified Venezuela as an “extraordinary threat to U.S. national security”. The designation was preceded by a series of sanctions against Venezuelan officials enacted by the Obama administration, which cited unsubstantiated allegations of human rights abuses.  Venezuela and almost all countries in the Latin American region have interpreted the move as an act of interference and aggression. 
  • Venezuelans Mobilize in Marches and Military Exercises in Defense of Sovereignty Against U.S. Aggression
  • Entitled the "Anti-Imperialist Enabling Law for Peace", the latest decree powers will last for a period of nine months and allow the president to pass legislation in pre-established areas without parliamentary debate and consent - a process which can take several years.  According to the draft presented by Maduro to parliament, the four articles which make up the law are designed to “prepare the country for any eventuality”. 
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  • UNASUR Rejects US Aggressions on Venezuela Mar 16th Venezuelan Social Movements Take to the Streets to Oppose U.S. Aggression Mar 13th Venezuelan Assembly Grants Executive Powers while Military Drills in Defensive Exercises
  • Initially written into Venezuela’s Constitution in 1961, the enabling laws are often used when the president is deemed to be responding to a situation which requires immediate action. Nonetheless, they require at least 60% approval from the National Assembly and consent from a designated specialist commission.  The laws have subsequently been used by several Venezuelan presidents, including former president Hugo Chavez in 1999, 2000, 2007 and 2010.  President Maduro last made use of the laws in 2013 in order to pass a slew of anti-corruption legislation, for which he was condemned by the Obama administration for allegedly overstepping his boundaries as chief executive. However, critics have fired back that Obama's own executive orders targetting Venezuela with sanctions do not, by contrast, require legislative approval.
  • Although few details are known about the prospective laws, on Sunday Cabello confirmed that the government was looking to create a norm in order to “repatriate all Venezuelan capital” being held in the U.S. 
  • While legislators from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) voted unanimously in favour of the law, its use was opposed by all but one opposition legislator. A dissident from the opposition coalition, the Roundtable of Democratic Unity, Ricardo Sanchez, stated that his defence of the law came down to “whether we are prepared to defend the sacred soil or whether we will be collaborators with foreign boots."  “If this (executive order) isn’t the preamble to a military intervention, then it certainly looks like one,” stated the legislator to private press.  Many opposition politicians have longstanding ties to the United States, and some parties such as Voluntad Popular (The Popular Will party) have received funding from US "democracy promotion" organisations such as the NED (National Endowment Democracy) and USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development). 
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Fears of a U.S. invasion have become widespread in Venezuela after two failed U.S.-instigated coup attempts, sanctions issued by Obama, and bellicose statements by prominent War Party members of the U.S. Congress.   
Gary Edwards

Stasi in the White House - Paul Craig Roberts - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...berts-Stasi-in-the-White-House

Paul-Craig-Roberts End-of-America Obammunism Stassi ruling-class-elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • On June 19, 2013, US President Obama, hoping to raise himself above the developing National Security Agency (NSA) spy scandals, sought to associate himself with two iconic speeches made at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy pledged: "Ich bin ein Berliner." In 1987, President Ronald Reagan challenged: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Obama's speech was delivered to a relatively small, specially selected audience of invitees. Even so, Obama spoke from behind bullet proof glass.
  • Obama's speech will go down in history as the most hypocritical of all time. Little wonder that the audience was there by invitation only. A real audience would have hooted Obama out of Berlin.
  • Obama spoke lofty words of peace, while beating the drums of war in Syria and Iran. Witness Obama's aggressive policies of surrounding Russia with missile bases and establishing new military bases in the Pacific Ocean with which to confront China.
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  • This is the same Obama who promised to close the Guantanamo Torture Prison, but did not; the same Obama who promised to tell us the purpose for Washington's decade-long war in Afghanistan, but did not; the same Obama who promised to end the wars, but started new ones; the same Obama who said he stood for the US Constitution, but shredded it; the same Obama who refused to hold the Bush regime accountable for its crimes against law and humanity; the same Obama who unleashed drones against civilian populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen; the same Obama who claimed and exercised power to murder US citizens without due process and who continues the Bush regime's unconstitutional practice of violating habeas corpus and detaining US citizens indefinitely; the same Obama who promised transparency but runs the most secretive government in US history.
  • The tyrant's speech of spectacular hypocrisy elicited from the invited audience applause on 36 occasions.
  • Here was Obama, who consistently lies, speaking of "eternal truth."
  • Here was Obama, who enabled Wall Street to rob the American and European peoples and who destroyed Americans' civil liberties and the lives of vast numbers of Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Libyans, Pakistanis, Syrians − and others, speaking of "the yearnings of justice."
  • Obama equates demands for justice with "terrorism."
  • Here was Obama, who has constructed an international spy network and a domestic police state, speaking of "the yearnings for freedom."
  • Here was Obama, president of a country that has initiated wars or military action against six countries since 2001 and has three more Muslim countries − Syria, Lebanon, and Iran − in its crosshairs and perhaps several more in Africa, speaking of "the yearnings of peace that burns in the human heart," but clearly not in Obama's heart.
  • Obama has turned America into a surveillance state that has far more in common with Stasi East Germany than with the America of the Kennedy and Reagan eras. Strange, isn't it, that freedom was gained in East Germany and lost in America?
  • At the Brandenburg Gate, Obama invoked the pledge of nations to "a Universal Declaration of Human Rights," but Obama continues to violate human rights both at home and abroad.
  • Obama has taken hypocrisy to new heights. He has destroyed US civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
  • In place of a government accountable to law, he has turned law into a weapon in the hands of the government.
  • He has intimidated a free press and prosecutes whistleblowers who reveal his government's crimes. He makes no objection when American police brutalize peacefully protesting citizens.
  • Obama kept Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for nearly a year assaulting his human dignity in an effort to break him and obtain a false confession. In defiance of the US Constitution, Obama denied Manning a trial for three year
  • Obama sends in drones or assassins to murder people in countries with which the US is not at war, and his victims on most occasions turn out to be women, children, farmers and village elders.
  • His government intercepts and stores in National Security Agency computers every communication of every American and also the private communications of Europeans and Canadians, including the communications of the members of the governments, the better to blackmail those with secrets.
  • On Obama's instructions, London denies Julian Assange free passage to his political asylum in Ecuador. Assange has become a modern-day Cardinal Mindszenty.
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13
     
    Wow.  I remember Paul Craig Roberts writing on the backpage of NewsWeek Magazine, back in the late 1960's.  Wow, we've come a long way since the days of protesting the Vietnam War, the socialism behind LBJ's Great Society, and the outrageous coup d'état that took place with the in-your-face-America assassination of JFK.  The circle is almost complete. The American Constitution hangs by a thread.  The anger and heart ache of Paul Craig Roberts says it all. I wonder who will win this years "Dancing with the Stars" competition?
Paul Merrell

Voters Say "Yes" to the Republican Who Said "No" to Wall Street | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...blican-who-said-no-wall-street

Auction-2014 Libertarians Jones banksters neocons

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • House Speaker John Boehner and his cronies removed North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones from the House Financial Services Committee in late 2012, as part of a purge that removed Republicans who were not all in for Wall Street -- and for Boehner's brand of "service" to the industries that are supposed to be regulated by Congress -- from the one panel with the power to hold bankers and brokers to account. But Jones, who had opposed bank bailouts and favored Wall Street regulation, did not go quietly. He spoke up about the purge and made little secret of his sense that -- though he had split with Boehner on a number of issues -- his biggest "sin" in the eyes of the party leadership was his refusal to bow to the demands of big campaign donors. “This whole place is all about money. Money is more important than policy,” complained Jones, who has in recent years co-sponsored most major pieces of campaign-finance reform legislation in the House -- including a call for a constitutional amendment designed to restore the ability of federal, state and local officials to regulate campaign spending.
  • The congressman's bluntness did not go over well with the masters of the universe on Wall Street. So, this spring, they set out to purge Walter Jones from Congress altogether. They found a consummate DC insider with close ties to the financial-services industry, Taylor Griffin, and filled the challenger's campaign treasury with PAC checks from J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, as well as political powerbrokers like former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour and Wayne Berman of the Blackstone Group. It did not stop there. Jones' independence extended far beyond debates over Wall Street bailouts and regulation. The Republican is a social and economic conservative -- make that a social and economic very conservative -- but he has repeatedly broken with the party establishment on issues of war and peace, privacy rights, trade policy and budgets. He even voted against proposals by the darling of Wall Street and the party establishment, Congressman Paul Ryan
  • Bush administration aides and apologists rushed in with public statements and "independent" expenditures to attack Jones for his opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for his refusal to go along with moves that might lead to wars with Iran and other countries. Former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer gave his enthusiastic backing to Griffin, as did former national security adviser Juan Zarate. Sarah Palin, one of the party's most consistent militarists, came in big for Griffin, who hailed her as an "old friend." A neo-conservative group, the Emergency Committee For Israel, spent at least $250,000 on ads that claimed Jones "preaches American decline." What Jones actually said was that, “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.” At the same time, the wealthy champions of Ryan's crony-capitalist approach to budgeting were in with big money for TV ads and direct mail from the "Ending Spending Action Fund" -- a super PAC backed by billionaire businessman Joe Ricketts. By a lot of DC measures, Jones should have been doomed.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But the ten-term congressman bet that the voters of eastern North Carolina would stick with him. “I’m not going to sacrifice my integrity for anyone or any party,” he said. “It’s the price you pay. I didn’t come (to Washington) to be a puppet for anyone. And I think the public back in my district, which is the most important, has seen I’m willing to do what I think is right.” It was the right bet. On Tuesday, Republican primary voters in eastern North Carolina decided to purge the Wall Street donors and the special interests. The reelected Walter Jones by a solid 51-45 margin.
Gary Edwards

US debt problem visualized: Debt stacked in 100 dollar bills - 1 views

usdebt.kleptocracy.us

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bank-Cartel national-debt-Ceiling Trillion Debt-Visual banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 11
     
    From USDebt.Kleptocracy.us.  These visual depictions of our national debt are based on Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel numbers and the USdebtclock.org.  Warning; this will wreck your day.  Our government is spending us into a hole future generations will never dig out of.  And they refuse to stop spending. $114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world's tallest buildings. If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty. The 114.5 Trillion dollar super-skyscraper is the amount of money the U.S. Government knows it does not have to fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program, Social Security, Military and civil servant pensions. It is the money USA knows it will not have to pay all its bills. If you live in USA this is also your personal credit card bill; you are responsible along with everyone else to pay this back. The citizens of USA created the U.S. Government to serve them, this is what the U.S. Government has done while serving The People. The unfunded liability is calculated on current tax and funding inputs, and future demographic shifts in US Population. Note: On the above 114.5T image the size of the base of the money pile is half a trillion, not 1T as on 15T image. The height is double. This was done to reflect the base of Empire State and WTC more closely.
Gary Edwards

‪Ask the President: What are you going to do with $181 Billion Dollars if you... - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

Banksters national-debt-Ceiling financial-collapse Obammunism SCAM banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Aug 11
     
    President Obama, what exactly will you choose to pay? What are your priorities?  Excellent YouTube video explaining the National Debt Ceiling SCAM!  (Many thanks to uber Patriot Frank A. for the link).  Great graphics, and the end sequence is perfect!! The graph is meant to visually demonstrate just what was stated in the video... That after obligations like Social Security, Medicare, Military, Air Traffic Control, and existing debt management are met, there is still another 17 billion left over.  Meaning the aforementioned services are being threatened at the President's own discretion. The politics are thick here, with both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department full participants in the political scam.   The question remains, if Obama is not going to meet those debt obligations outlined in the graph, WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO WITH THE $181.1 Billion in MONEY that comes into the Treasury this August?
Paul Merrell

Beware: Someone Is Trying to Convince You That Bernie Can't Win | Common Dreams | Break... - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...g-convince-you-bernie-cant-win

Auction 2016 Sanders MSM Dem-Establishment

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Perhaps you’ve noticed. Some people and institutions are working feverishly to convince us that real social change is not possible. Their target is Bernie Sanders and the growing army of his supporters who are fed up with politics as usual and the grip of Wall Street and corporate America on our political, economic and social system. The theme is to desperately convince us that Sanders can’t win. They repeat it over and over, even though Sanders polls as well or better than Hillary Clinton does against every leading Republican candidate. Behind this effort is an alarmed corporate old guard that still runs the Democratic Party establishment and their allies in the corporate think tanks and the media, with a special nod to NBC/MSNBC, which is owned and operated by General Electric and Comcast.
  • In this scenario to blunt the Sanders’ surge, and what it represents for the millions of people who want to reverse income inequality, guarantee health care to everyone, break up the banks, carry out meaningful environmental justice and criminal justice reform, and all the other far reaching planks of Sanders’ campaign and the coalition supporting it. A thrust of their effort is to persuade Sanders supporters that he cannot win, in large part by using all the well-funded mechanisms in their control to retard wider exposure to the message of Sanders and his allies. The power elite form of turning down the gaslights. Here’s a small part of how the manipulation works. 
  • The Democratic National Committee slashes the number of debates and schedules debates on Saturday nights when far fewer people are watching, and pressures its elected officials and convention super delegates for an early endorsement in an effort to lock down a coronation of their preferred candidate. Meanwhile the media, in particular NBC/MSNBC which has the biggest network audience of presumed Democratic Party voters, limits coverage of Sanders while it’s parent company, GE, also directs its Hollywood subsidiaries, including Universal Studios (co-owned by Comcast) and its NBC shows, to line up its contracted celebrities to endorse the politics as usual campaign. Other national media, which also has a stake in the status quo, contributes as well. While Sanders has now drawn more than 400,000 people to his rallies – far more than any other candidate – he routinely receives less coverage than most of the other leading candidates. A report, circulated by Media Matters, found that on one network alone Donald Trump has been given 81 minutes of coverage compared to less than one minute for Sanders, even though, as The Nation’s John Nichols notes, Sanders has broader support among Democratic voters than Trump does among Republicans in the first voting state, Iowa.
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  • In a fall speech to the DNC, Sanders put it bluntly. “The people of our country understand that given the collapse of the middle class and a grotesque level of income inequality, we do not need more establishment politics or establishment economics.”  “What we need,” Sanders emphasized, “is a political movement that is prepared to take on the billionaire class, a movement that works for all of us and not just the corporate class and a handful of the wealthiest people in this country.”  It’s a message, a campaign, and an uprising that has sent chills through those whose primarily loyalty is to the wealthy donors in mansions and corporate suites and the policy architects on Wall Street.  But it’s a message that sure has resonated in the grassroots.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 15
     
    Sanders is getting the same treatment Ron Paul got last time around. But my guess is that like Trump, if elected Sanders wouldn't live long enough to take office. 
Paul Merrell

The Arab Spring: Made in the USA | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5484950

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Arab Spring NED Soros

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Arabesque$: Enquête sur le rôle des États-Unis dans les révoltes arabes (Investigation into the US Role in the Arab Uprisings) is an update of Ahmed Bensaada’s 2011 book L’Arabesque Américaine. It concerns the US government role in instigating, funding and coordinating the Arab Spring “revolutions.” Most of this history has been carefully suppressed by the western media.The new book devotes much more attention to the personalities leading the 2011 uprisings. Some openly admitted to receiving CIA funding. Others had no idea because it was deliberately concealed from them. A few (in Egypt and Syria) were officially charged with espionage. In Egypt, seven sought refuge in the US embassy in Cairo and had to be evacuated by the State Department.
  • According to Bensaada, the MENA Arab Spring revolutions have four unique features in common: None were spontaneous – all required careful and lengthy (5+ years) planning, by the State Department, CIA pass through foundations, George Soros, and the pro-Israel lobby.1 All focused exclusively on removing reviled despots without replacing the autocratic power structure that kept them in power. No Arab Spring protests made any reference whatsoever to powerful anti-US sentiment over Palestine and Iraq. All the instigators of Arab Spring uprisings were middle class, well educated youth who mysteriously vanished after 2011.
  • Follow the Money Relying mainly on Wikileaks cables and the websites of key CIA pass through foundations (which he reproduces in the appendix), Bensaada methodically lists every State Department conference and workshop the Arab Spring heroes attended, the dollar amounts spent on them by the State Department and key “democracy” promoting foundations3, the specific involvement of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign team in training Arab Spring cyperactivists in encryption technologies and social media skills, US embassy visits, and direct encounters with Hillary Clinton,  Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Barack Obama and Serbian trainers from CANVAS (the CIA-backed organization that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000). Bensaada focuses most heavily on the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt. TheWashington Post has estimated approximately 10,000 Egyptians took part in NED and USAID training in social media and nonviolent organizing techniques. For me the most astonishing information in this chapter concerned the role of an Egyptian exile (a former Egyptian policeman named Omar Afifi Suleiman) in coordinating the Tahrir Square protests from his office in Washington DC. According to Wikileaks, NED paid Suleiman a yearly stipend of $200,000+ between 2008-2011.
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  • When Nonviolence Fails Arabesques$ devotes far more attention to Libya, Syria and Yemen than Bensaada’s first book. In the section on Libya, Bensaada zeroes in on eleven key US assets who engineered the overthrow of Gaddafi. Some participated in the same State Department trainings as the Middle East opposition activists and instigated nonviolent Facebook and Twitter protests to coincide with the 2011 uprisings in Tunisian and Egypt. Others, in exile, underwent guerrilla training sponsored by the CIA, Mossad, Chad and Saudi Arabia. A few months after Gaddafi’s assassination, some of these same militants would lead Islamic militias attempting to overthrow Assad in Syria. Between 2005 and 2010, the State Department funneled $12 million to opposition groups opposed to Assad. The US also financed Syrian exiles in Britain to start an anti-government cable TV channel they beamed into Syria. In the section on Syria, Bensaada focuses on a handful of Syrian opposition activists who received free US training in cyberactivism and nonviolent resistance beginning in 2006. One, Ausama Monajed, is featured in the 2011 film How to Start a Revolution about a visit with Gene Sharp in 2006. Monajed and others worked closely with the US embassy, funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). This is a State Department program that operates in countries (such as Libya and Syria) where USAID is banned. In February 2011, these groups posted a call on Twitter and Facebook for a Day of Rage. Nothing happened. When Sharpian techniques failed to produce a sizable nonviolent uprising, as in Libya, they and their allies (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan) were all set up to introduce Islamic mercenaries (many directly from Libya) to declare war on the Assad regime.
  • Dr. Bramhall is a retired American psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has published a free, downloadable non-fiction ebook 21st Century Revolution.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15
     
    Alas, the book is apparently available only in French. 
Paul Merrell

Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...sunstein_2

surveillance state psywar Sunstein Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.”  In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government.  This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here. Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.”  He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).   This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.”  Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story‘s Daniel Tencer.
  • There’s no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein’s position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked.  Regardless, Sunstein’s closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote.  This isn’t an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein’s close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees.  Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.  All of that makes Sunstein’s paper worth examining in greater detail.
  • Initially, note how similar Sunstein’s proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates.  The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as “independent analysts” in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon.  Bush officials secretly paid supposedly “independent” voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts.  In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens.  In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda — and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda.  Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government ”propaganda” within the U.S., aimed at American citizens: As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.”  By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves.  His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise.  Indeed, he favorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer’s closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifies them as arguably necessary to combat “false conspiracy theories” in Iraq — the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S.Sunstein’s response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself.  He acknowledges that some “conspiracy theories” previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true (his examples:  the CIA really did secretly administer LSD in “mind control” experiments; the DOD really did plot the commission of terrorist acts inside the U.S. with the intent to blame Castro; the Nixon White House really did bug the DNC headquarters).  Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government “conspiracy theories,” discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements?  Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good — i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama
  • Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so. But it’s precisely because the Government is so often not “well-motivated” that such powers are so dangerous.  Advocating them on the ground that “we will use them well” is every authoritarian’s claim.  More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture:  when our side does X, X is Good, because we’re Good and are working for Good outcomes.  That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.
  • Consider the recent revelation that the Obama administration has been making very large, undisclosed payments to MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide consultation on the President’s health care plan.  With this lucrative arrangement in place, Gruber spent the entire year offering public justifications for Obama’s health care plan, typically without disclosing these payments, and far worse, was repeatedly held out by the White House — falsely — as an “independent” or “objective” authority.  Obama allies in the media constantly cited Gruber’s analysis to support their defenses of the President’s plan, and the White House, in turn, then cited those media reports as proof that their plan would succeed.  This created an infinite “feedback loop” in favor of Obama’s health care plan which — unbeknownst to the public — was all being generated by someone who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret from the administration (read this to see exactly how it worked).In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned.  Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack “intellectual integrity”; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case.  Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being “just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals.”  What is one key difference?  Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views — he favors health care — and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he’s defending are dismissed as a “fake scandal.”
  • Sunstein himself — as part of his 2008 paper — explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls “credible independent experts” to advocate on the Government’s behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don’t trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are “independent.”  In so arguing, Sunstein cites the Armstrong Williams scandal not as something that is wrong in itself, but as a potential risk of this tactic (i.e., that it might leak out), and thus suggests that “government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes,” but warns that “too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed.”  In other words, Sunstein wants the Government to replicate the Armstrong Williams arrangement as a means of more credibly disseminating propaganda — i.e., pretending that someone is an “independent” expert when they’re actually being “prodded” and even paid “behind the scenes” by the Government — but he wants to be more careful about how the arrangement is described (don’t make the control explicit) so that embarrassment can be avoided if it ends up being exposed.  
  • In this 2008 paper, then, Sunstein advocated, in essence, exactly what the Obama administration has been doing all year with Gruber:  covertly paying people who can be falsely held up as “independent” analysts in order to more credibly promote the Government line.  Most Democrats agreed this was a deceitful and dangerous act when Bush did it, but with Obama and some of his supporters, undisclosed arrangements of this sort seem to be different.  Why?  Because, as Sunstein puts it:  we have “a well-motivated government” doing this so that “social welfare is improved.”  Thus, just like state secrets, indefinite detention, military commissions and covert, unauthorized wars, what was once deemed so pernicious during the Bush years — coordinated government/media propaganda — is instantaneously transformed into something Good.* * * * *What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein’s worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that “false conspiracy theories” are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world.  That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9/11 theories — both domestically and in Muslim countries — as his prime example.
  • It’s certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive “false conspiracy theories” have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power:  namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, “crazy conspiracy theorist” has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption. Who is it who relentlessly spread “false conspiracy theories” of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba’athist/Al-Qaeda alliance — the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation?  And who is it who demonized as “conspiracy-mongers” people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government?  The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of “conspiracy theory” games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources:  namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him.
  • It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein’s desire to use covert propaganda to “undermine” anti-government speech so repugnant.  The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned — rationally — to distrust government actions and statements.  Sunstein’s proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is.  In other words, people don’t trust the Government and “conspiracy theories” are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.
  • The point is that there are severe dangers to the Government covertly using its resources to “infiltrate” discussions and to shape political debates using undisclosed and manipulative means.  It’s called “covert propaganda” and it should be opposed regardless of who is in control of it or what its policy aims are. UPDATE II:  Ironically, this is the same administration that recently announced a new regulation dictating that “bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.”  Without such disclosure, the administration reasoned, the public may not be aware of important hidden incentives (h/t pasquin).  Yet the same administration pays an MIT analyst hundreds of thousands of dollars to advocate their most controversial proposed program while they hold him out as “objective,” and selects as their Chief Regulator someone who wants government agents to covertly mold political discussions “anonymously or even with false identities.”
  • UPDATE III:  Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for ”cognitive infiltration of extremist groups,” as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:
  • So Sunstein isn’t calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) — having Government ”ban conspiracy theorizing” or “impose some kind of tax on those who” do it — but he says “each will have a place under imaginable conditions.”  I’d love to know the “conditions” under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will “have a place.”  That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment.  Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14
     
    This is a January 2010 article by Glenn Greenwald. The Sunstein paper referred to was published in 2008 and is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585  Sunstein left the Obama Administration in 2012 and now teaches law at Harvard. He is the husband of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice,a notorious neocon.  His paper is scholarly only in format. His major premises have no citations and in at least two cases are straw man logical fallacies that misportray the position of the groups he criticizes. This is "academic" work that a first-year-law student heading for a 1.0 grade point average could make mincemeat of. This paper alone would seem to disqualify him from a Supreme Court nomination and from teaching law. Has he never heard of the First Amendment and why didn't he bother to check whether it is legal to inflict propaganda on the American public? But strange things happen when you're a buddy of an American president. Most noteworthy, however, is that the paper unquestionably puts an advocate of waging psychological warfare against the foreign populations *and* the American public as the head of the White House White House OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2008 through 2012 and on Obama's short list for the Supreme Court. Given the long history of U.S. destabilization of foreign nations via propaganda, of foreign wars waged under false pretenses, of the ongoing barrage of false information disseminated by our federal government, can there be any reasonable doubt that the American public is not being manipulated by false propaganda disseminated by their own government?  An inquiring mind wants to know ...   
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