Possible New CIA Director Already Politically Compromised
by ALISON WEIR
CounterPunch, November 14, 2012
It is astounding to find that one of the handful of prospects being floated to become CIA director following the fall of General David Petraeus is a person reportedly implicated in a 2005 Israeli spy scandal.
CNN, Politico, and others have all listed former Congresswoman Jane Harman as a potential new CIA head. Oddly, however, none have mentioned reports in 2006 and again in 2009 that an NSA wiretap in 2005 had picked up Harman promising a suspected Israeli agent that she would aid people indicted for espionage on behalf of Israel.
According to reports, Harman allegedly told the Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two top officials for the powerful Israel lobby organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Marijuana Legalization for Personal Use Reaches New High in Poll
JUSTIN SINK – The Hill
We should remember that it was the states that ended Alcohol Prohibition. It began just as this is beginning, and went up quite quickly to the Federal level. I am not sure that this will happen the same way. Look for this: When it becomes politically dangerous to be anti-Marijuana. It will happen quicker with Representatives, because of their smaller concentrated populations, district by di! strict. I think this will drive the Senate to change as well.
But the opposition may be so bitter, that it is one of the first of the new development trends shifting power to the states. This is going to depend on what the Obama administration does.
A record 48 percent of Americans support legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use, just one week after three states voted to legalize the drug under some conditions – including Colorado and Washington's historic votes to allow the personal use and sale of pot.
China: Update. The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China concluded on 14 November after the Congress elected a new Central Committee and a new Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Comment:NightWatch will report at greater length as details warrant. The two most impressive themes that emerged from the early speeches were that corruption is a threat to the survival of the party and possibly the communist state itself and that the new leadership will have no latitude to compromise the communist political leadership. Political reform means measures to ease social tension and increase participation within the communist system. Put another way, free market economics with greater individual entrepreneurship will not lead to Western-style democracy or a multiparty system.
There's a flash of hope here: A remarkable U.S. transpartisan group called Represent.Us is promoting a brilliantly designed Anti-Corruption Act. Check it out!
The proposed law pulls together a number of anti-corruption and money-out-of-politics approaches into one piece of national legislation. It exposes and regulates bribery and restricts the “revolving door” of public officials getting high paying corporate jobs soon after leaving their government jobs. It tightens regulations on lobbying and exposes secret donations to public view. It strengthens the Federal Election Commission and even provides a tax rebate for small political donations.
The introduction on its website http://anticorruptionact.org explains: “The Act was crafted by former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter in consultation with dozens of strategists, democracy reform leaders and constitutional attorneys from across the political spectrum. Mr. Potter was one of the chief architects of the McCain-Feingold law. The Act would transform how elections are financed, how lobbyists influence politics, and how political money is disclosed. It is a bold, sweeping proposal that would reshape the rules of American politics, and restore ordinary Americans as the most important stakeholders instead of major donors. The Anti-Corruption Act’s provisions enjoy support from progressives and conservatives alike. Constitutional attorneys confirm that the provisions are constitutional.”
Open Season indeed. A seismic shift appears to be occurring, and CIA is the new “best target.” Below is s summary that represents the “worst-case” view of post Viet-Nam CIA.
The Petraeus Affair has demonstrated yet again how a sex scandal story can be fed into the U.S. media to serve both as a “political assassination” and as the tree hiding the forest. Even though what lies behind the salacious smoke screen is still the object of speculation, most of those speculations are more credible than a simple extramarital affair.
One of the possible explanations of Petraeus’ departure is his stance on Israel which he saw as a liability to US interests in the Middle East:
The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Operations]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas. (Ali Abunimah, When Former CIA Chief David Petraeus Enraged the Israel Lobby, Electronic Intifada, November 12, 2012.)
As Stephen Lendman observes, sex scandals don’t necessarily lead to resignations unless state secrets are at stake:
Note to readers: this blaster contains two clearly marked inserts that were not in my Time essay. Also, in introducing Seymour Melman's important work below, I should have mentioned that it was Melman's considered belief in the possibility of putting together a political coalition to facilitate the conversion of the defense industry to civilian production. Conversion is a exceedingly complex and highly controversial subject; and to date, conversion has not been accomplished in any meaningful way, but that does not mean conversion is impossible. Here, that possibility or impossibility is not at issue in this essay; my focus is on the very short term: namely how in the next few months the defense dependency may induce politicians who have been captured by the defense industry to react to the looming budget sequester by flinging the middle class off the fiscal cliff.
This recent essay – America the Third World Nation in Just 4 Easy Steps – describes how our political addiction to the free-trade ideology of neoliberal economics has helped to de-industrialize America and thereby impoverish much of the American middle class.
My essay describing the decline of manufacturing employment will give you a sense of the mind-boggling magnitude of what has happened. While “4 Easy Steps” makes passing references to the increasing dependence of the manufacturing sector on military spending, as well as the financialization of economy (but not the latter’s Siamese-twin ‘managerialism’), the authors do not develop these points. Without implying any criticism of this excellent essay, my aim today is to tweak your interest in these omissions, particularly America’s defense dependency.
The late Professor Seymour Melman of Columbia University wrote a prescient book, Profits Without Production (Knopf, 1983) that explained how the militarization and managerialization of our economy were becoming the central causes of the decline in America’s manufacturing competitiveness. This decline started in the 1970s, but Melman showed how it grew out of seeds planted by the permanent military mobilization of a huge defense industry in the 1950s.
The birth date for the permanent war economy was 30 September 1950.
On that day, President Harry Truman officially signed NSC-68, a document that became a blueprint for the containment strategy for waging the Cold War. Central to this strategy was the establishment of a large, permanently-mobilized defense manufacturing sector.
They justified the permanent mobilization, in part, with an economic rationalization reflecting their contention that the World War II production miracle proved the multiplier effects of Military Keynesianism, or in their words: “the economic effects of the [NSC-68] program might be to increase the gross national product by more than the amount being absorbed for additional military and foreign assistance purposes.”
The post-WWII economic boom in the U.S. (with our competitive performance aided in part by the lingering effects of the WWII damage to the world’s other major industrial economies) hid the adverse economic effects of the economic diversion attending to the permanent war economy unleashed by NSC-68. Nevertheless, by early 1961, the accumulating damage caused by the diversion was apparent to some insiders: President Eisenhower famously warned the nation about the rise of misplaced power posed by the rise of a large permanent standing arms industry, which he said, pointedly, was new in our national experience.
The accumulating damage wrought by the permanent war economy started to accelerate in the 1970s, and by 1980, the cancer metastasized: militarization and managerialization began to openly thrive at the expense of the traditional high-wage manufacturing sector, in effect, siphoning off money flows via a combination of government handouts and favorable tax treatment that in effect rewarded both the looting of the tax base and the draining of competitiveness and ingenuity from the civilian manufacturing sector (via the increased defense subsidy, leveraged buyouts, offshoring of jobs, emphasizing short-term focus to pump stock prices, etc.)
“You know, I don't know if by any chance, because I'm an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property. I don't know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well,” she told the 911 dispatcher, who agreed to pass the information along to police.
Kelley, 37, and her husband Scott Kelley, a cancer surgeon in Tampa, Fla., have been sued at least nine times, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Despite their lavish lifestyle, they face foreclosure and massive amounts of debt, according to court documents.
While the origins of the seed money used to start the charity in 2007 are unclear, financial records reviewed by The Huffington Post reveal that the group spent all of its money not on research, but on parties, entertainment, travel and attorney fees.
There could be a good financial reason why Tampa socialite Jill Kelley blew the whistle on ex-CIA boss David Petraeus‘ affairwith his biographer. The story of the sexy tattletale’s takedown of master spy Petraeus is now worth millions!
