In a document released at the end of May, the American banking and investment giant JP Morgan Chase calls for the overturning of the bourgeois democratic constitutions established in a series of European countries after the Second World War and the installation of authoritarian regimes.

The 16-page document was produced by the Europe Economic Research group of JP Morgan and titled "The Euro Area Adjustment - About Half-Way There." The document begins by noting that the crisis in the euro zone has two dimensions.

First, the paper argues, financial measures are necessary to ensure that major investment houses such as JP Morgan can continue to reap huge profits from their speculative activities in Europe. Second, the authors maintain, it is necessary to impose "political reforms" aimed at suppressing opposition to the massively unpopular austerity measures being carried out at the behest of the banks.

The report expresses satisfaction with the implementation of a number of financial mechanisms by the European Union to secure banking interests. In this respect, the study maintains, reform of the euro area is about halfway there. The report does, however, call for more action by the European Central Bank (ECB).

© rt.com

Edward Snowden

In the course of his professional life in the world of national security Edward Snowden must have gone through numerous probing interviews, lie detector examinations, and exceedingly detailed background checks, as well as filling out endless forms carefully designed to catch any kind of falsehood or inconsistency. The Washington Post (June 10) reported that "several officials said the CIA will now undoubtedly begin reviewing the process by which Snowden may have been hired, seeking to determine whether there were any missed signs that he might one day betray national secrets."

Yes, there was a sign they missed - Edward Snowden had something inside him shaped like a conscience, just waiting for a cause.

It was the same with me. I went to work at the State Department, planning to become a Foreign Service Officer, with the best - the most patriotic - of intentions, going to do my best to slay the beast of the International Communist Conspiracy. But then the horror, on a daily basis, of what the United States was doing to the people of Vietnam was brought home to me in every form of media; it was making me sick at heart. My conscience had found its cause, and nothing that I could have been asked in a pre-employment interview would have alerted my interrogators of the possible danger I posed because I didn't know of the danger myself. No questioning of my friends and relatives could have turned up the slightest hint of the radical anti-war activist I was to become. My friends and relatives were to be as surprised as I was to be. There was simply no way for the State Department security office to know that I should not be hired and given a Secret Clearance. 1

So what is a poor National Security State to do? Well, they might consider behaving themselves. Stop doing all the terrible things that grieve people like me and Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning and so many others. Stop the bombings, the invasions, the endless wars, the torture, the sanctions, the overthrows, the support of dictatorships, the unmitigated support of Israel; stop all the things that make the United States so hated, that create all the anti-American terrorists, that compel the National Security State - in pure self defense - to spy on the entire world.

Officers familiar with workings of unit indicate that many of campaigners listed on database have no criminal record

A national police unit that uses undercover officers to spy on political groups is currently monitoring almost 9,000 people it has deemed "domestic extremists".

The National Domestic Extremism Unit is using surveillance techniques to monitor campaigners who are listed on the secret database, details of which have been disclosed to the Guardian after a freedom of information request.

A total of 8,931 individuals "have their own record" on a database kept by the unit, for which the Metropolitan police is the lead force. It currently uses surveillance techniques, including undercover police, paid informants and intercepts, against political campaigners from across the spectrum.

Senior officers familiar with the workings of the unit have indicated to the Guardian that many of the campaigners listed on the database have no criminal record.

As as Scotland Yard was battling to contain the fallout over the activities of a former undercover police officer who was asked to dig for "dirt" that would undermine the Stephen Lawrence campaign, evidence emerged that the main witness to his murder was also targeted.

This is the ultimate "Friend of Syria". But what is Qatar really up to? Word in Doha is that Qatar may have spent as much as a staggering US$3 billion to make sure "Assad must go". Yet he hasn't gone anywhere. Even the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, deposed himself this week, to the benefit of his son, former "heir apparent" Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani (see We are all Qataris now, Asia Times Online, June 26, 2013). But Bashar al-Assad stays put. What gives?

Qatar has spent a fortune weaponizing the myriad Syrian "rebel" factions, buying everything from stashes in Libya to new stuff in Croatia, flown as cargo and distributed by Turkish intelligence (there's an alternative weapons flow by Sunni Lebanese connected to the Saudis.) The chief weaponizer is a Qatari general.

Doha has dispatched Qatari Special Forces on the ground - just as in Libya - to advise "their" favorite batch of rebels. Crucially, these Special Forces are experienced instructors. They are not Qatari; they are Pakistani - as detailed in this must-read dossier.

It goes without saying that these Pakistanis hail from the same tradition of schooling of the mujahideen in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s. We all know what came out of it. Asia Times Online has extensively reported that Syria is the new Afghanistan - but now with extra bonus jihadi gore, developed in the Iraq war, such as suicide bombing, beheading and intestine-eating.

It's no secret most of the rebels are mercenaries - usually paid $1,300 a month directly by the Qataris, with an extra $1,000 if they carry out a special ops. Quite a few have also developed a secondary career as YouTube videos uploaders, the weapon of choice in Arab networks (not to mention Western) to prove how "evil" the Assad regime is.

© Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
James Cartwright as vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in 2011.

Report says Cartwright, once the second-highest ranking US officer, is under investigation over Iran cyber attack leaks.

A retired US general, James Cartwright, is the target of a Justice Department investigation into the leaking of secret information about the Stuxnet virus attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, NBC News reported on Thursday, citing unidentified legal sources.

NBC said Cartwright, once the second highest ranking officer in the US military, was being investigated over the leaked information about the computer virus, which temporarily disabled 1,000 centrifuges used by Iran to enrich uranium, setting back its nuclear programme.

A "target" is someone a prosecutor or grand jury has substantial evidence linking to a crime and who is likely to be charged.

The Justice Department referred questions to the US attorney's office in Baltimore, where a spokeswoman, Marcia Murphy, declined to comment.

The New York Times published a detailed account of the Stuxnet program in June last year, in which it said President Barack Obama had decided to accelerate US cyber attacks, which began under George W Bush.

New polls show that 80% Americans think it's a bad idea for the U.S. to intervene in Syria. Meanwhile, 300 U.S. Marines have been stationed along the Syria's southern border with Jordan. Is the U.S. about to become involved in Syria?

Answer: We already are.

Ben Swann presents Full Disclosure on Syria:

Following the debacles and disasters in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has actually adopted a new role to avoid direct engagement, like in Syria, to go underground and conduct secret operations, an analyst says.

"The decision to pull back on massive engagements of military force does not mean force is not going to be used. It just goes underground," Gordon Adams wrote on the website of Foreign Policy on Wednesday.

"Arguably, today the U.S. military is more involved than ever overseas, on a global basis, carrying out missions that extend well beyond classic military competencies," he added.

Adams said that the approach, described by the Pentagon and the White House as "building partner capacity" is a "stealthy" model which focuses on training and equipping the troops from other countries, allowing the US military to make smaller deployments to more countries across the world.

The Swedish Security Service (Säpo) embedded a spy to monitor activities in the Left Party beginning in the 1980s, according to revelations in the Aftonbladet daily on Tuesday.

The newspaper reports that Säpo officer Hans-Erik Sjöholm infiltrated the party in the early 1980s tasked with keeping tabs on party members, including then party secretary, and later leader, Lars Ohly.

"Säpo really has no bloody business collecting information about a party secretary in the a Riksdag party, that is completely out of order. I am extremely surprised," Ohly said to Aftonbladet when told of the claims.

Sjöholm relates how he joined the party, then known as Left Party - the Communists (VPK), in the beginning of the 1980s and continued to report on members and from meetings over the following two decades.

Government documents have revealed that the Obama administration is implementing a program that requires millions of federal employees to spy on their co-workers as part of a sweeping crackdown on security leaks across the U.S. government.

The program titled "Insider Threat" which has gone almost entirely unnoticed in the U.S. media also presses managers to punish employees who fail to report their suspicions, McClatchy reported Friday after obtaining the documents.

The program spans all federal agencies and mandates employees and their superiors to identify and report behaviors associated with someone who might leak sensitive government information.

Those who fail to expose "high-risk persons" face penalties that include criminal charges, according to the report.

The program was launched in October 2011 after Army Private Bradley Manning blew the whistle on U.S. war crimes, in the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history.

700 Club host Pat Robertson gave his opinion today on the U.S. Supreme Court's recent rulings on two gay marriage cases.
Robertson began by suggesting that the court's swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, might have some law clerks "who happen to be gays," notes MediaMatters.org.

"Let me ask you about Anthony Kennedy, does he have some clerks who happen to be gays?" Robertson asked American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) founder and lawyer Jay Sekulow (video below). Sekulow seemed taken back by the bizarre question and said: "I have no idea. I think what Justice Kennedy did, if you look at a series of cases that he's been involved in, he's taken the view that sexual orientation is a special class."

The ACLJ is a Christian law firm and activist group that was originally funded by Robertson.