This NSA-whistleblower-government-spying scandal is hard for many to digest. On one level, I am an idealist too. I would like to believe that a lone whistleblower can pull a fast one on the NSA/CIA/Mossad axis. But I know that it cannot be. People find it hugely difficult to accept that the world is now so unrelentingly corrupt that the true extent of this corruption cannot be exposed and overturned by any whistleblowing.

Edward Snowden is either consciously playing his part in a deliberate intelligence psy-op to erect a smokescreen about what is really going on, or he has been unwittingly set up by his masters to do this. (The latter is the most likely). One cannot pull a fast one on these people. They know everything and can track everything, since decades ago, and only allow things to become public that they approve of.

They plainly wanted the world to know about PRISM and all that stuff. It works like a kind of bloodletting, to make the public think they still have some say in the running of this thing we call life on Earth, when the exact opposite is the case. They create the leak, sit back and watch the outrage, then some government committee is set up to investigate. Then that committee (which is stuffed full of stooges to make sure it doesn't have teeth) takes a year to carry out its task - after which time most people have forgotten what the fuss was all about. Then the committee finds that certain irregularities have taken place which will be sorted out with some token legislation.

Meanwhile, everything behind the scenes has carried on unhindered and, in fact, deepened. And very few notice or even care.

Anyone who has taken the time to investigate all this will see that what I am saying is true. This isn't "conspiracy theory". It's just the way it is. You see, the people who run the world run both sides of the show. They run the bad guys (which everybody knows) but they also run the good guys who oppose them (which comparatively few realise). They told us a hundred years ago that this is how they would be running things. And that's how they work it today.

For example, they own organisations like Amnesty International. That's why they never really stick their necks out for the real oppressions in the world, nor oppose the serial wars the USA engineers. To make out as if they champion literacy and women's rights (because that's trendy and acceptable to the masses) in a country which is being bombed back to the stone age (and yet say nothing whatsoever about that) is the ultimate smokescreen!

The recent reports concerning National Security Agency (NSA) collusion with the world's largest IT giants provide an insight into surveillance techniques the US government is using to spy on its citizens (and the rest of the world), with blatant disregard of human rights, privacy and legality.

As well as the Orwellian 'Big Brother' ramifications of Stasi cyber spying and digital tracking, the ongoing revelations from 'NSA whistleblower' Edward Snowden provide glimpses of the cooperation between government, the internet giants, private corporations, and private contractors profiteering from what might be termed the
'Surveillance Industrial Complex'.

Despite their denial of any knowledge of the PRISM program, or any wilful cooperation with the US government, the 'leaks' raise serious questions over the extent of complicity between the big internet firms and the NSA.

If the big tech firms were genuinely unaware of government monitoring then it exposes severe security flaws and poses the obvious question of whether they can be trusted to ensure users' data is safe. If, on the other hand, these firms were aware of PRISM, but have been forced to deny it for reasons of 'national security', it means individuals and international businesses are victims of total digital surveillance with minimal oversight.

We are told Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defence contractor that is involved in virtually every aspect of US government intelligence gathering and mass surveillance, and is majority-owned by the politically-affiliated Carlyle group. How is it that private contractors have access to the most sensitive data concerning 'US national security'? Just how much of the state's intelligence infrastructure is being built, operated and maintained by totally unaccountable private interests?

It's midsummer in the northern hemisphere, where record rainfall and the coldest spring in living memory have European meteorologists forecasting 'a year without summer' for most of Western Europe. While climatologists got their long-term forecasts for global warming all wrong, do these environmental extremes nevertheless signal 'climate change', just not in the way the authorities have portrayed it?

Extreme weather events are happening globally. One direct result of this is widespread crop failure. This leads to food shortages, followed by increased inflation as billions of people find themselves priced out of being able to eat. Riots and revolution are never far behind. In fact, complex systems theorists calculate that we're less than one year away from a fireball of global unrest. And that's not all...

The geological record shows that the default climate for this planet is a very cold one. Ice Ages last up to 100,000 years and are separated by 'inter-glacials', narrow windows of relative warmth that last, on average, 11,500 years. Our civilization is currently situated on the tail-end of the Holocene inter-glacial, meaning that it's just a matter of time before the next Ice Age.

How much time? Nobody knows. But in this week's show we're also going to examine the evidence for a synchronistic relationship between climate stress and the rise and fall of human civilizations within a more recent historical timeframe. Is it possible that humanity does play a role in modulating 'climate change', but perhaps not in the way environmentalists are suggesting?

Running Time: 02:19:00

Download: MP3

prism (przm) n.

1. A solid figure whose bases or ends have the same size and shape and are parallel to one another, and each of whose sides is a parallelogram.
2. A transparent body of this form, often of glass and usually with triangular ends, used for separating white light passed through it into a spectrum or for reflecting beams of light.
3. A cut-glass object, such as a pendant of a chandelier.
4. A crystal form consisting of three or more similar faces parallel to a single axis.
5. A medium that misrepresents whatever is seen through it.

[Alternatively...]

prism noun ˈpri-zəm

[...]

4. a medium that distorts, slants, or colors whatever is viewed through it

The ongoing 'NSA surveillance scandal' has many parallels, and some direct links, with the disclosures made by WikiLeaks, the organisation its leader Julian Assange described as the "the intelligence agency of the people".

While we took satisfaction in seeing government and corporate crimes come back to haunt their perpetrators, SOTT.net remained cautious about lauding Assange or the WikiLeaks organisation as heroic. What did any of the 'Iraq War Logs' or U.S. State Department 'diplomatic cables' reveal that was not already publicly available information? Obviously some details were new, but they didn't change the fact that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal under international law and that everyone involved had either committed or were ancillary to war crimes. Nor did anything so damaging come out to bring the perpetrators to justice or to catalyse real political change that would actually improve ordinary people's welfare.

Things, as you may have noticed in recent years, have only gotten worse for the masses.

So is Edward Snowden, the U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower currently 'on the run' after disclosing 'top secret documents' to major media outlets, a hero or traitor? Is he neither? We discussed this and more in last Sunday's SOTT Talk Radio show on the NSA leaks. Have a listen:

So apparently NSA has been listening to our conversations, and - oy vey! - Israeli companies are involved in this too. Am I surprised? Not one bit. I understand that many, who are still dangerously ignorant and believe that governments have our best interests at heart, find this "revelation" rather shocking and outrageous, but the truth is that this is far from being new. I remember how many years ago I first read about a project called Echelon.

ECHELON, according to information in the European Parliament document, "On the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)" was created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s[...]

Bamford describes the system as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.[...]

The UK/USA intelligence community was assessed by the European Parliament (EP) in 2000 to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states: UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands.[...]

Echelon was created long before the War [of] Terror and prior to the arrival of the Internet, meaning that back then there was no need for thorough "shaping of the public opinion", no need for media to be an overt whore for the military or intelligence agencies. NSA, CIA, Mossad, MI5, etc. just did their bloody thing and didn't worry much about whistleblowers. Of course, there were always trouble-makers, but everything was manageable (various coup d'états, COINTELPRO projects, assassinations, etc... piece of cake!), not to mention using the wonderfully silver-tongued concept of "plausible deniability", which came in handy, oh so often. In any event, in the public's eyes, intelligence agencies still had an aura of mystique about them. Hey, who wouldn't want to be a secret agent or a spy?

The first in an occasional series exploring the amalgamation of political and financial interests between Government legislators and the world's biggest industries.

To know what Fascism really is and why we must fight it and destroy it here in America, we must first of all know what it is we are fighting, what the Fascist regimes really are and do, who puts up the money and backs Fascism in every country (including the United States at this very moment), and who owns the nations under such regimes, and why the natives of all Fascist countries must be driven into harder work, less money, reduced standard of living, poverty and desperation so that the men and corporations who found, subsidize and own Fascism can grow unbelievably rich.

~ George Seldes, 1943

Now more than at any other time in history are we unwitting fodder in the merciless growth of corporate conglomerates. Tacitly accepted and often even championed as a necessary ingredient for the 'progress of civilisation', the globalisation of today's corporate captalism is something its Founding Fathers in 1930s Italy and Germany could only dream about. While it's debatable that large profit-making enterprises are necessary in providing affordable and essential products and services to a growing population, the unabated merging of political and financial interests between Government legislators and the world's biggest industries is arguably one of the biggest problems facing humanity today. It has led to corruption, greed, nepotism and 'moral hazard' on an absolutely gargantuan scale. It has brought obscene levels of prosperity to the minority of wealthy insiders while the majority of planet earth's inhabitants have fallen victim to economic disparity, extreme poverty, cultural disintegration, environmental catastrophe, pollution, sickness and a plethora of accompanying negative social issues.

Maybe Francis Fukusyama was right about 'free market' capitalism heralding the end of history (as we know it), except that there's nothing free about it because the markets are rigged.

Over a century ago, a 'scientific breakthrough' ushered in radical dietary changes that saw the US, and eventually most of the world, put on a low-fat diet. The discovery that high cholesterol levels were associated with coronary heart disease led to saturated fats, particularly animal fats, being singled out for elimination from meals. In theory, they told us, people will get less heart attacks and become healthier.

But what actually happened?

Rates of coronary heart disease rose to today's staggering levels. Some 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. Today, nearly half of all Americans can expect to get cancer at least once.

This week we're going to be talking with Dr. Dwight Lundell, who spent 25 years performing over 5,000 heart surgeries before realizing that the theory he believed in and promoted was not just wrong, it significantly contributed to the explosion of disease.

Running Time: 02:00:00

Download: MP3

I recently wrote an article explaining the reasons why I think there were no 'actors' used in place of victims at the Boston Marathon bombings. In that article I made reference to other websites and researchers who had taken up the 'actors' meme and run with it. In this article I'll be looking more closely at the 'evidence' that has been presented in support of the 'actors' theory. Before I begin though, I should explain how and why my approach differs from the approach that the 'actors' advocates have taken.

When trying to decide whether a particular conspiracy theory, or particular angle on a conspiracy theory, is likely to be true or false, my approach is to first look at the plausibility of the theory in question. In terms of the Boston bombings, the idea that 'actors' took the place of real victims is the theory. When I first was forced to consider this theory, it took me about 3 minutes of rumination before it began to make no logical sense whatsoever. I more or less spelled out the lack of logic in my previous article, but it can be summed up as: why would a US intel agency choose to use actor victims at a bombing that is designed to terrify the US population into believing that evil terrorists are out to kill them when they could very easily just plant a bomb and let the bomb do what bombs do best, kill and maim people?

Why would a US intel agency choose to do this when, if you think about it, it massively complicates the planning of such an operation and greatly increases the chances of the official story falling apart? To date, no one has offered a sensible answer to this question.

Some bloggers have claimed that the use of 'crisis actors' at the Boston bombings is an attempt to further blur the lines between what is real and what is false, between fantasy and reality, and usher us all into a 'reality TV' world.

That's a reasonable enough idea, but hasn't that fantasy world already been achieved, to a great extent, with the long list of US/Israeli/British false flag "Muslim terror attacks" over the past 15 years? Isn't the yawning chasm between what most people believe about "Muslim terror attacks", and the likely truth behind them, wide enough that it constitutes an already massive break with reality?

What do the PTB have to gain, vis a vis the public, by adding the 'actor victims' element into the mix. If the average person in the street is none the wiser about the presence of 'actors', isn't that functionally the same, from a psy-ops point of view, as if victims were real people and not actors? If people believe the 'actors' to be real victims, what's the point in having actors rather than real victims? Maybe the answer is that US intel agencies have suddenly grown a conscience and an aversion to killing people, hence their use of 'actors'? But the last time I checked, those high-level intel and government types were still a bunch of conscienceless, blood-thirsty, murderous bastards who delight in the suffering of others.

So basically, that's where I was coming from when I began to look at the 'actors' theory. I could find no logical reason for the inclusion of 'actors' and many reasons why they should not be used. In addition, I found the alleged evidence for 'actors' at Boston sorely lacking in that it relied on conjecture, supposition and a good measure of imagination, all to make the evidence fit what appears to be a pre-established theory. Basically, all of the 'actors' theorists seem to have used an "ink blot test" approach to their analysis of the photographic evidence from the Boston bombings.

Note, it wasn't that I was averse to the idea of the Boston bombings being staged by some element of US intel agencies - far from it. I was more or less fully convinced (based on the hard evidence and historical context) that the Boston bombings were a dyed-in-the-wool, false flag "homegrown terrorism attack", designed, like all others, to justify US imperial warmongering and to terrorize the American people into trusting their authorities and looking to them for protection.

I recently wrote an analysis of the Boston Bombings and the idea that 'actors' were used in place of victims. In that article I made reference to other websites and researchers who had taken up this meme and run with it. Author and researcher Dave McGowan has been cited most often (to me at least) as having made the best case for 'actors'. McGowan has published a multi-part series of articles, all of which rely heavily on photographs to make his case. In this article I'll be looking at the 'evidence' that he presents for the 'actors' theory. Before I begin though, I should explain how and why my approach differs from what appears to be the way McGowan has approached this event.

The short explanation is that my approach employs a sane mind, logic and critical thinking. McGowans' approach employs mostly his imagination possibly fueled by crack cocaine or psychotropic drugs. I also assume he uses some metaphorical surgical gloves and tweezers or similar intangible instruments, because he pulls most of his 'evidence' out of his ass, metaphorically-speaking.

The longer explanation is that, when trying to decide whether a particular conspiracy theory or particular angle on a conspiracy theory is likely to be true or false, my approach is to first look at the plausibility of the theory in question. In terms of the Boston bombings, the idea that 'actors' took the place of real victims is the theory. When I first was forced to consider this theory, it took me about 3 minutes of rumination before it began to make no logical sense whatsoever. I more or less spelled out the lack of logic in my previous article, but it can be summed up as: why would a US intel agency chose to use actor victims at a bombing that is designed to terrify the US population into believing that evil terrorists are out to kill them when they could VERY easily just plant a bomb and let the bomb do what bombs do best, kill and maim people? Why would a US intel agency chose to do this when, if you think about it, it massively complicates the planning of such an operation and greatly increases the chances of the official story falling apart? To date, no one has offered a sensible answer to this question. For his part, at the end of his series of articles on the topic, Dave McGowan suggests that all of the alleged "fakery" is:

a campaign aimed at erasing the line between reality and fantasy - between what is objectively real and what is make-believe. For many years now we have seen a blurring of the line between news and entertainment, as well as, through 'reality' television, a blurring of the line between what is 'real' and what is scripted. We are now entering an age when there will be no dividing line at all between news, scripted entertainment and 'reality' TV. It will all be one and the same. In the new 'reality' we will be living in, nothing will be real and everything will be true.

That's fair enough, but hasn't that already been achieved, to a great extent, with the long list of US/Israeli/British false flag "Muslim terror attacks" over the past 15 years? Isn't the yawning chasm between what most people believe about "Muslim terror attacks", and the likely truth behind them, wide enough that it constitutes an already massive break with reality? What do the PTB have to gain, vis a vis the public, by adding the 'actor victims' element into the mix. If the average person in the street is none the wiser about the presence of 'actors', isn't that functionally the same, from a psy-ops point of view, as if victims were real people and not actors? If people believe the 'actors' to be real victims, what's the point in having actors rather than real victims? Maybe the answer is that US intel agencies have suddenly grown a conscience and an aversion to killing people, hence their use of 'actors'? But the last time I checked, those high-level intel and government types were still a bunch of conscienceless, blood-thirsty, murderous bastards who delight in the suffering of others.

So basically, that's where I was coming from when I began to look at the 'actors' theory. I could find no logical reason for the inclusion of 'actors' and many reasons why they should NOT be used. In addition, I found the alleged evidence for 'actors' at Boston sorely lacking in that it relied on conjecture, supposition and a good measure of imagination, all to make the evidence fit the pre-established theory. Basically, all of the 'actors' theorists seem to have used an "ink blot test" approach to their analysis of the photographic evidence from the Boston bombings.

Note, it wasn't that I was averse to the idea of the Boston bombings being staged by some element of US intel agencies - far from it. I was more or less fully convinced (based on the hard evidence and historical context) that the Boston bombings were a dyed-in-the-wool, false flag "homegrown terrorism attack", designed, like all others, to justify US imperial warmongering and to terrorize the American people into trusting their authorities and looking to them for protection.

So, let's look at some of McGowan's 'evidence':

The idea that many 'terrorist' attacks are in fact carried out by government intelligence agencies is not a new concept (we here at Sott.net have spent the last ten years attempting to highlight the evidence for government complicity in 'Islamic terrorism' for one example). What is new is the idea that these government-inspired or perpetrated terrorist attacks are somehow doubly "fake" in the sense that some or all of the details of the attack didn't actually happen in any real sense. The idea is that, not only was the attack fake in the sense that government, not 'Muslim terrorists' or 'homegrown terrorists', were responsible, but that the apparent victims were fake also, their roles, where necessary, being portrayed by 'actors', presumably working for the government. The claim that 'crisis actors' were used in place of real victims has been made about the December 2012 Sandy Hook shootings, the more recent Boston marathon bombings and even the May 22nd knife attack on a British soldier in London.

To clarify, the idea of 'actors' as it is being used in this context is not the same as 'media plants'. Media plants are people placed at the scene of a government false-flag terror attack who pose as 'eyewitnesses' to establish an official narrative for the media and public. 'Actors', on the other hand, are people who are supposedly part of the false-flag attack itself and who pose as victims of the attack but who are not really injured at all.

The Sandy Hook massacre last December seems to have been the first major event where the 'actors' idea gained traction. Within a month of the massacre, there were literally hundreds of Youtube videos and articles supposedly providing proof that the parents and neighbors of the victims were actually crisis actors and, therefore, the entire event was probably staged and no one was killed. The 'hoax' was, it is claimed, a crass and obvious attempt by the government to impose 'gun control' on America.

Many of the Sandy Hook hoax videos have received tens, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of views. I wrote about the implausibility of that particular 'actors' theory here and tried to compile the best evidence for Sandy Hook being a US intel 'black' operation here and here. Despite my efforts, (not that I ever expect them to make much difference) the 'terror attack actors' idea continued to gain pace and made a serious reappearance at the Boston Marathon bombings.