Communities of Practice – Page 773 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/08/152013/08/15

Kevin Barrett: US “death squad envoy” arrives in Egypt – and the slaughter begins — Department of State Militarized AND Marginalized

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Officers Call

US “death squad envoy” arrives in Egypt – and the slaughter begins

My new Press TV article, published Monday, is looking prophetic – or as we Muslims prefer to say “precognitive.”

When the US sends a “death squad ambassador” to Egypt, you can figure that the big slaughter is about to begin. As of today, it has begun. Just as I predicted, the mass slaughter of Morsi/democracy supporters was triggered by false-flag terror.

Yahoo News reports: “Live (Egyptian) television footage on several channels appeared to show hooded Brotherhood (sic) gunmen brandishing what appeared to be small automatic rifles and firing them in the direction of soldiers.”

In fact, the “hooded gunmen” – like those who set off the Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq in Iraq and Syria – are professional killers working for the Empire and its current Egyptian stooge, el-Sisi. The purpose: To demonize Islam, destroy democracy, and perpetrate a genocide in Egypt.

-KB

Is the US government targeting Egypt for destabilization – and eventual destruction?

The recent appointment of death squad organizer Robert Ford as US Ambassador to Egypt suggests as much.

Ford’s appointment sends a clear message: US policymakers want to destroy Egypt in the same way they have destroyed Iraq and Syria – by using death squads and false-flag terror to incite civil war.

Continue reading “Kevin Barrett: US “death squad envoy” arrives in Egypt – and the slaughter begins — Department of State Militarized AND Marginalized”

2013/08/152013/08/15

Former CIA Spy Jose Rodriguez’s Truly Sociopathic ’60 Minutes’ Interview

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Media, Officers Call

Former CIA Spy Jose Rodriguez’s Truly Sociopathic ’60 Minutes’ Interview

By: Kevin Gosztola

dissenter.firedoglake.com, Monday April 30, 2012

Former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations Jose Rodriguez appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to flaunt his new book Hard Measures, which details how he came to be in charge of CIA torture against terror suspects at “black site” prisons, why he believes torture was effective and why it should not be vilified.

The segment with Lesley Stahl has the same title as Rodriguez’s book. The title sounds like the name of a film starring an action movie star like Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal, which makes it appropriate because each answer from Rodriguez is dripping with bravado. From Rodriguez’s first answer to the last, one cannot help but realize he believes it is somehow unmanly to be concerned that torture of terror suspects violates the rule of law. He appears in his sleek white Camaro rolling down the highway to the CIA. And he says at one point, “We needed to get everyone in government to put their big boy pants on and give us the authorities we needed.”

Of course, like most establishment media interviews, the torture is not called torture. It is called “harsh techniques.” Or the official term Cheney coined for it—“enhanced interrogation techniques.”

*Here are both parts of the interview: Part 1 / Part 2

The first words in the segment are, “After the attacks of 9/11…” That phrase is all one needs to hear to know that this is going to be a tireless exercise in explaining away acts that historically have been considered war crimes when carried out.

Read full post with quotes and links.

2013/08/15

4th Media: Fukushima Three Strikes

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

There is No Way to Stop Fukushima Radioactive Water Leaking into the Pacific

The rate at which contaminated water has been pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the disabled Fukushima nuclear plant is worse than previously thought, an Industry Ministry official said Wednesday as PM Shinzo Abe pledged to step up efforts to halt the crisis. The Voice of Russia contacted Arnold Gundersen, founder and president of Fairewinds Associates, to discuss the crisis and its possible solutions. The expert suggests radioactive material will continue to leak into the global seas unless the plant is surrounded with a trench filled with zeolite. Even then however, toxic material will still flow into the Pacific through underwater routes.

Letting Tepco “Clean Up” Fukushima Is Like Letting a Murderer Do Brain Surgery On a VIP

In 3 Months, Do We Want to Entrust U.S. “National Security” and Perhaps Even “Human Survival” In the Northern Hemisphere to These Guys?

Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War
The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)
I-Book No. 3, January 25 2012

2013/08/15

David Swanson: Bradley Manning Meets Kafka

09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

Screaming in Bradley Manning's Trial

I sat in the courtroom all day on Wednesday as Bradley Manning's trial wound its way to a tragic and demoralizing conclusion. I wanted to hear Eugene Debs, and instead I was trapped there, watching Socrates reach for the hemlock and gulp it down. Just a few minutes in and I wanted to scream or shout.

I don't blame Bradley Manning for apologizing for his actions and effectively begging for the court's mercy. He's on trial in a system rigged against him. The commander in chief declared him guilty long ago. He's been convicted. The judge has been offered a promotion. The prosecution has been given a playing field slanted steeply in its favor. Why should Manning not follow the only advice anyone's ever given him and seek to minimize his sentence? Maybe he actually believes that what he did was wrong. But — wow — does it make for some perverse palaver in the courtroom.

This was the sentencing phase of the trial, but there was no discussion of what good or harm might come of a greater or lesser sentence, in terms of deterrence or restitution or prevention or any other goal. That's one thing I wanted to scream at various points in the proceedings.

This was the trial of the most significant whistleblower in U.S. history, but there was no mention of anything he'd blown the whistle on, any of the crimes exposed or prevented, wars ended, nonviolent democratic movements catalyzed. Nothing on why he's a four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Nothing. Every time that the wars went unmentioned, I wanted to scream. War was like air in this courtroom, everybody on all sides militarized — and it went unnoticed and unmentioned.

Read rest of post.

2013/08/152013/08/15

Marcus Aurelius: How Snowden “Came Out” — Includes Tradecraft Insights

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Government, Media, Military

How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets

This past January, Laura Poitras received a curious e-mail from an anonymous stranger requesting her public encryption key. For almost two years, Poitras had been working on a documentary about surveillance, and she occasionally received queries from strangers. She replied to this one and sent her public key — allowing him or her to send an encrypted e-mail that only Poitras could open, with her private key — but she didn’t think much would come of it.

The stranger responded with instructions for creating an even more secure system to protect their exchanges. Promising sensitive information, the stranger told Poitras to select long pass phrases that could withstand a brute-force attack by networked computers. “Assume that your adversary is capable of a trillion guesses per second,” the stranger wrote.

Before long, Poitras received an encrypted message that outlined a number of secret surveillance programs run by the government. She had heard of one of them but not the others. After describing each program, the stranger wrote some version of the phrase, “This I can prove.”

Seconds after she decrypted and read the e-mail, Poitras disconnected from the Internet and removed the message from her computer. “I thought, O.K., if this is true, my life just changed,” she told me last month. “It was staggering, what he claimed to know and be able to provide. I just knew that I had to change everything.”

Read full article, includes tradecraft details.

2013/08/152013/08/15

SchwartzReport: LIES by Banks, Corporations, & Government — This is “Business As Usual” in the USA

Commerce, Corruption, Government

Recently Ronlyn and I moved our banking from Bank of America; it has been an incredibly time consuming process. Starting a banking relationship in the post 9/11 world we discovered, particularly if one receives money from non-US sources, as I do from foreign publishers of my books, and from lecture fees, took six hours of paperwork. Amazing experience. We did this for one reason: the incredibly unethical behavior of BoA. We felt that we could not ban! k with a corporation that behaved as BoA has. Here is an example of what I mean.

Your Mortgage Documents Are Fake!
DAVID DAYEN, Contributing Writer – Salon

The most pernicious effect of Fracking is its potential to poison underground aquifers. In spite of that the corporations that control this desperate technology, fully supported by their governmental vassals, are doing everything in their power to sell their right to make obscene profits to an ignorant and gullible public. Here is a good assessment of what is going on, and I urge you to click through a! nd look at the map that accompanies this story.

Govt, Energy Industry Accused of Suppressing Fracking Dangers
JARED METZKER – Inter Press Service

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: LIES by Banks, Corporations, & Government — This is “Business As Usual” in the USA”

2013/08/14

Owl: Feds give millions in contracts to small time crooks

Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

If You Have the Cojones to Rob The Feds, the Feds Have The Money to Give You – Lots of It

“A Maryland woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges related to setting up at least 15 false businesses in six states that received government contracts despite often being registered to people who did not exist. The businesses subcontracted all the work to other companies, then took the federal dollars without paying the companies doing the work. Larayne Whitehead, 34, of Clinton, Md., agreed to forfeit $2.4 million in illegal proceeds and a silver Audi.

Continue reading “Owl: Feds give millions in contracts to small time crooks”