Puppet MastersS


Wall Street

Best of the Web: Abby Martin and Ben Swann: Real journalists in an 'ice age' of journalism

Abby Martin talks to with investigative journalist, and former host of 'Reality Check', Ben Swann, about the war on journalism, the mainstream media's failure to hold the establishment accountable, being labeled fringe for asking questions and his new independent media venture 'Liberty is Rising Truth in Media Project'.


Pirates

Best of the Web: 'Intelligence', corporatism, and the Dance of Death

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You may at first think the following is a bad joke, but I assure you it is not a joke at all. At the very end of this NYT story about Booz Allen and the complex interconnections between nominally "private" business and the national intelligence community, we read:
But the legal warnings at the end of its financial report offered a caution that the company could be hurt by "any issue that compromises our relationships with the U.S. government or damages our professional reputation."

By Friday, shares of Booz Allen had slid nearly 6 percent since the revelations. And a new job posting appeared on its Web site for a systems administrator in Hawaii, "secret clearance required."
Yes, that appears to be Edward Snowden's old job.

Crappy spy fiction doesn't look quite so crappy now, does it? In many respects -- in fact, I would argue in every critical respect -- the spy business is actually that dumb.

In an earlier post about the NSA/surveillance stories, I discussed the profoundly offensive elitism involved in the argument that "special" people in both government and journalism, people endowed with understanding and judgment that is the envy of the gods and forever denied to all us ordinary schlubs, should decide what information will be provided to the motley mass of humans who merely pay for all of it, and for whose benefit all this godlike work is supposedly undertaken. Talk about idiocies: "We're doing all this for you! You're too stupid to be told most of what we're doing!" Put it on a bumper sticker, baby, so we can throw rotten eggs at it.

Star of David

Unattainable peace: Illegal West Bank settlements expansion continues

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But for the chap from Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza who emerged earlier this week as the winner of the "Arab Idol," the news from Palestine is grim.

The newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister resigned and Israel still insists it should be able to negotiate over dividing the pie while it continues to eat it.

By the end of April, US Secretary of State John Kerry succeeded in tailoring another peace plan to entice Israel. Arab ministers supposedly agreed to amend a decade-old peace plan to satisfy Israeli demand for legalising major illegal Jewish colonies in the West Bank.

In May 2009, Israel responded to the US mediated overture by issuing permits to build 296 illegal new homes in the Jewish-only colony of Beit El near Ramallah. This week the Secretary of State was scheduled to arrive on his fifth visit since February in an attempt to restart the Palestinian and Israeli negotiation.

The visit seems to be on hold to give time to Palestine's President to consider a new US economic peace plan and for Israel to give Abbas a face-saving cover to return to the negotiation table.

Israel is already sending mixed messages.

USA

'Hypocrite of the century': Irish MP blasts US president's G8 visit

Obama
© AFP PhotoUS President Barack Obama waves as he poses for the family picture of the G8 summit at the Lough Erne resort near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland on June 18, 2013.
Barack Obama is a "war criminal" and a "hypocrite," an Irish politician has said in a damning attack on the US president. The MP slammed the Irish treatment of Obama during his G8 visit as akin to 'prostituting' Ireland for a "pat on the head."

Irish MP Clare Daly took no prisoners in her heated attack on the visit of the Obama family to Ireland during this year's G8 summit, which was held in the five-star resort of Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

During a session of the Irish parliament last Tuesday, Daly slammed media coverage of the visit as tantamount to "a nation of pimps, prostituting ourselves in return for a pat on the head."

"It's hard to know which is worse, whether it's the outpourings of the Obamas themselves, or the sycophantic fawning over them by sections of the media and the political establishment," said Daly, saying that the Irish nation had been subjected to "unprecedented slobbering" over the presidential family.

Che Guevara

Whistleblower Snowden seeks asylum in Ecuador

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© APA banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping US surveillance programs, is displayed in Hong Kong
Admitted leaker Edward Snowden took flight in evasion of US authorities, seeking asylum in Ecuador and leaving the Obama administration scrambling to determine its next step in what became a game of diplomatic cat-and-mouse.

The former National Security Agency contractor and CIA technician fled Hong Kong and arrived at the Moscow airport, where he planned to spend the night before boarding an Aeroflot flight to Cuba. Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his government received an asylum request from Snowden, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said it would help him.

"He goes to the very countries that have, at best, very tense relationships with the United States," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., adding that she feared Snowden would trade more US secrets for asylum. "This is not going to play out well for the national security interests of the United States."

The move left the US with limited options as Snowden's itinerary took him on a tour of what many see as anti-American capitals. Ecuador in particular has rejected the United States' previous efforts at cooperation, and has been helping WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.

V

Few options for Brazil leader in face of protests

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© APA protestor shouts during an anti-government protest in Rio de Janeiro's sister city, Niteroi, Brazil
With massive protests by middle-class Brazilians demanding wholesale government reforms, people all over this continent-sized country have reached a verdict on the streets and online: "The giant has awakened".

President Dilma Rousseff has tried to placate the crowds by supporting their right to protest, and the Sao Paulo municipal government has rescinded the 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares that sparked the demonstrations in the first place. But as the protests grow even bigger, with two major marches called for Thursday (local time), the Brazilian government seems at a loss over how to address the sweeping demands of its people.

Protesters have presented the government with myriad demands and a growing list of complaints: It can't provide its citizens with basic security, officials are corrupt and inefficient, traffic is bottlenecked on pot-holed streets, and even cellphones don't work. And the investment that should be going into health care and education are pouring into soccer stadiums and airports instead.

Rousseff's response has been little more than rhetoric. She hasn't formed any emergency committees to deal with the crisis or offered grand gestures or fresh ideas.

And that has further angered Brazilians such as Rosana Reis, a 51-year-old nurse who like millions in the middle class is feeling the pinch of high taxes and perennially poor public services while the country spends billions of dollars to host next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

Arrow Down

NSA deletes fact sheet on NSA spying after Senate points out it's actually NSA lying

NSA Logo
© PCWorld

The joke around the NSA used to be that the acronym stood for "No Such Agency" as its very existence was denied for years. While the NSA is now very official, it's still probably the most secretive agency out there. That's to be somewhat expected, given its mission, but it appears that when it needs to be transparent, it doesn't do very well at all. We noted yesterday that Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall had called the NSA out for flat out lying on a "fact sheet" the agency had posted about its section 702 surveillance efforts.

The NSA's response? They quietly deleted the pdf document from their website. Because it's not like the internet notices when you suddenly delete the document you put out to defend your overreaching surveillance techniques... You'd think that, of any agency out there, the NSA would recognize the most that simply deleting something on your local computers doesn't make it actually disappear from the world. But, here's the best part:
Separately Tuesday, another NSA official said the removal of the fact sheets and letter from the senators were unrelated.
Ah, yeah, I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with that whatsoever...

In more "unrelated" news, NSA boss, General Keith Alexander has also admitted that perhaps the fact sheet wasn't fully accurate:
"After reviewing your letter, I agree that the fact sheet that the National Security Agency posted on its website on 18 June 2013 could have more precisely described the requirements for collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act."
Oh, I'm sure that the original wording was fairly "precise." It's just that it was precisely misleading, which is the sort of precision that the NSA seems to specialize in when it comes to any sort of public discussion.

Handcuffs

Best of the Web: Not Prepared: 17 signs that most Americans will be wiped out by the coming Economic Collapse

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The vast majority of Americans are going to be absolutely blindsided by what is coming. They don't understand how our financial system works, they don't understand how vulnerable it is, and most of them blindly trust that our leaders know exactly what they are doing and that they will be able to fix our problems. As a result, most Americans are simply not prepared for the massive storm that is heading our way.

Most American families are living paycheck to paycheck, most of them are not storing up emergency food and supplies, and only a very small percentage of them are buying gold and silver for investment purposes. They seem to have forgotten what happened back in 2008. When the financial markets crashed, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Because most of them were living on the financial edge, millions of them also lost their homes.

Unfortunately, most Americans seem convinced that it will not happen again. Right now we seem to be living in a "hope bubble" and people have become very complacent. For a while there, being a "prepper" was very trendy, but now concern about a coming economic crisis seems to have subsided. What a tragic mistake.

Eye 1

Best of the Web: Booz Allen Hamilton: Far worse than Blackwater

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Let's take another trip down the rabbit hole, shall we?

Lost in the Edward Snowden debate is a critical look at his former employer, the company doing the spying on Americans in the first place: Booz Allen Hamilton.

Booz Allen Hamilton is a government contractor, with 99% of its revenue coming from the US government. Not only does it receive money from the NSA, but also the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and ... the IRS. In addition, Booz Allen is heavily connected to the CIA.

Among the individuals involved in running the company, we have:

James Clapper - current Director of National Intelligence (DNI), head of NSA, the man who lied to Congress about the fact that NSA is actively spying on Americans, is a former executive

Mike McConnell - a current executive of the company, had Clapper's job (DNI) during George W. Bush's administration (keep it in the family, eh?) -- he worked for Booz Allen before Bush, then worked for Bush, then back to Booz Allen after Bush

James Woolsey - former CIA Director, current executive (see Jan Helfeld's interview of Mr. Woolsey where it becomes clear that Woolsey has no interest in discussing principles, only war)

Melissa Hathaway - former executive, also worked for McConnell during the Bush administration

Ian Brzezinski - former executive, son of Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, central figure in the NWO crowd, and mastermind of Operation Cyclone

Vader

Flashback Former CIA Director says U.S. economic spying targets "European bribery"

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Former United States Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey confirmed in Washington this week that the US steals economic secrets "with espionage, with communications [intelligence], with reconnaissance satellites", and that there was now "some increased emphasis" on economic intelligence.

He claimed that economic spying was justified because European companies had a "national culture" of bribery and were the "principle offenders from the point of view of paying bribes in major international contracts in the world".

Responding to the European Parliament report on interception capabilities and the Echelon satellite surveillance system, Woolsey said that the "Interception Capabilities 2000" report which had been presented to the parliament's Citizens' Rights Committee on 23 February, was "intellectually honest". In two cases cited in the report, "the fact [is] that the subject of American intelligence collection was bribery."

"That's correct", he told a packed audience of foreign press journalists:
"We have spied on that in the past. I hope ... that the United States government continues to spy on bribery."