Journal: Loch Johnson on It’s Never a Quick Fix at the CIA

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Policy, Reform, Strategy
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Professor Loch Johnson is one of two people who have served on both the Church Committee and the Aspin-Brown Commission.  The other is Britt Snider, Esquire.

Today he examines the lack of integrity on the Hill, or totthless, inattentive oversight.  He does not address two factors that we comment on below the fold:

1.  There are five CIAs, and as long as the Wall Street and White House CIAs are doing what they are told to do, no one really cares about the integrity or the pathos of the other three.

2.  Leon Panetta could have been the greatest Director in history, just as Barack Obama could have been the George Washington of this century, but both sacrificed their integrity for partisan gain, deliberately ignoring the urgent calls for both reform at CIA and non-partisan reality-based policy-making in the White House.  Phi Beta Iota

By Loch K. Johnson

Sunday, August 30, 2009

skip sad story . . . . . . .

The Church Committee discovered that intelligence abuses ran far deeper than initially reported. The CIA had indeed spied on Vietnam War dissenters at home, but the FBI had gone further, disrupting the lives of antiwar protesters and civil rights activists. It was “a road map to the destruction of American democracy,” committee member Walter Mondale said during a public hearing.

Church was equally appalled by the overseas excesses of the CIA, including covert actions against democratic regimes — such as Chile's — and assassination plots. He blasted the agency for “the fantasy that it lay within our power to control other countries through the covert manipulation of their affairs.”

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Journal: Tyranny Looms Large–First the Internet, then the Guns, then Liberty Lost

09 Justice, 10 Security, Ethics, Government
Impeach Jay Rockefeller
Impeach Them All

Tyranny looms large in America, because We the People have become ignorant, inert, and too subject to mass deception.   Read the headline and first pargragraph, then (below the fold) the Phi Beta Iota comment, and then the full story online.  One bird, two wings.  Time to retire this turkey, starting with Rockefeller, Webb, and Warner.  The Internet is resilient against everything EXCEPT domestic treason.

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

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Journal: Webster Tarpley Flags Cindy Sheehan, Peace, and the Silent Liberals

10 Security, Ethics, Government, Reform

NOT COVERED BY THE MEDIA AT ALL:

Three Items Below the Fold:

IGNORED BY MEDIA:  Sheehan Announces First Draft of International People's Declaration of Peace

IGNORED BY LIBERALS:The Silence of the Antiwar Movement is Deafening Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

LEARN MORE ABOUT NANCY PELOSI'S OPPONENT IN 2010

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Journal: Cheery Waves Flags Washington’s Tangled Web Of Deception

03 Economy, Government

INVESTORS.COM

By ERNEST S. CHRISTIAN AND GARY A. ROBBINS

Posted 08/25/2009 06:06 PM ET

It's not just that the wheels are coming off President Obama's credibility; they're also starting to come off the federal government in general.

Washington is no longer able to hide its failures behind the flag. Its mistakes are too obvious and too costly. Even ardent “my country, right or wrong” patriots are now distinguishing between America the nation, which we all rightly revere, and the political enterprise in Washington — which nearly everyone now distrusts.

The politicos in Washington have gone into business for themselves. And most folks — like newly price-conscious consumers — aren't any longer buying the elixirs that Washington is peddling. They all cost too much, almost none of them work, and most have severe side effects.

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Journal: Weak Signals–Social Dislocation Ahead

03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Government
Image Credit
Image Credit

From a source that must remain anonymous.

State governments are in serious trouble now and once the federally-provided Stimulus Funds are used up in FY10 many states willhave no choice but to cut significant numbers of staff as well as marginalize social & health services programs (not to mention Corrections,compliance programs like Environmental Protection) dislocating chunks of the American population. As you can imagine, the US has manydomestic problems ahead.

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Journal: MILNET Flags Managing Oversight–the Breakdown of Congress

Ethics, Government

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Managing Oversight

By Shane Harris

August 26, 2009

Congressional oversight of intelligence is broken. That was the dismal conclusion of a 2006 report by the Center for American Progress, as well as the bipartisan 9/11 commission, both of which scoured the histories of congressional watchdogging — real and imagined — and concluded that the system set up to guard against abuses and keep intelligence in line with U.S. policies was not working the way it was intended.

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Journal: Chuck Spinney Flags 8-14 the “foreclosure wave” – now, a tsunami of sorts

03 Economy, Commerce, Government
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The Foreclosure Wave” — Now a Tsunami of Sorts

Over the past two days, the popular foreclosure reporting firms released their monthly numbers and the takeaway was that the foreclosure crisis is getting worse. Indeed, the foreclosure crisis is worsening, but July’s actual foreclosure numbers do not pose much additional risk to the housing market because most of the worsening was seen in the pre-foreclosure pipeline (notice-of-default & notice-of-trustee sale). Based upon July’s results, the players that will feel most of the additional reported foreclosure pressure are the banks, mbs holders, insurers, and servicers.
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It is important to always remember that when one person gets a ‘good deal’ on a house, orders of magnitude more are thrown into a negative-equity (or deeper negative equity) position exponentially increasing their likelihood of loan default. Loan default leads to foreclosure and another ‘good deal’ on a house and so on and so on.