07 Other Atrocities – Page 333 – Public Intelligence Blog

What kind of people are running American? Here are some insights.

Shocking ‘Extermination' Fantasies By the People Running America's Empire on Full Display at Aspen Summit

Security Forum participants expressed total confidence in American empire, but could not contain their panic at the mention of Snowden.

AlterNet / By Max Blumenthal, July 25, 2013

Seated on a stool before an audience packed with spooks, lawmakers, lawyers and mercenaries, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer introduced recently retired CENTCOM chief General James Mattis. “I’ve worked with him and I’ve worked with his predecessors,” Blitzer said of Mattis. “I know how hard it is to run an operation like this.”

Reminding the crowd that CENTCOM is “really, really important,” Blitzer urged them to celebrate Mattis: “Let’s give the general a round of applause.”

Following the gales of cheering that resounded from the room, Mattis, the gruff 40-year Marine veteran who once volunteered his opinion that “it’s fun to shoot some people,” outlined the challenge ahead. The “war on terror” that began on 9/11 has no discernable end, he said, likening it to the “the constant skirmishing between [the US cavalry] and the Indians” during the genocidal Indian Wars of the 19th century.

“The skirmishing will go on likely for a generation,” Mattis declared.

Mattis’ remarks, made beside a cable news personality who acted more like a sidekick than a journalist, set the tone for the entire 2013 Aspen Security Forum this July. A project of the Aspen Institute, the Security Forum brought together the key figures behind America’s vast national security state, from military chieftains like Mattis to embattled National Security Agency Chief General Keith Alexander to top FBI and CIA officials, along with the bookish functionaries attempting to establish legal groundwork for expanding the war on terror.

Partisan lines and ideological disagreements faded away inside the darkened conference hall, as a parade of American securitocrats from administrations both past and present appeared on stage to defend endless global warfare and total information awareness while uniting in a single voice of condemnation against a single whistleblower bunkered inside the waiting room of Moscow International Airport: Edward Snowden.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Sick People at the Aspen Summit — “Extermination” Fantasies of the Empire”

2013/07/25

Josh Kilbourn: BREAKING — Attempts to Set Activists Up with Porn Downloads Into Their Computers

07 Other Atrocities, IO Impotency

This has happened once before, and appears to be a rather sad attempt to discredit activists not realizing that all this exposure is discreting any future attempt to prosecute real child pornography violators — and the elite pedophiles that appear to be “untouchable” by the FBI. There is no evidence this is being done by the US Government, only by those who believe that activists are fair targets for unethical, invasive, and criminal attack.

BREAKING: Attempted Set-Up of Stewart Rhodes & Dan Johnson With Child Porn

2013/07/222013/07/22

Alessandro Politi: The First Financial World War

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of Peace

This article is divided into two parts: the first part will summarise the situation and propose solutions, explaining the analytical and geopolitical reasons behind the war, the main players and events, future evolution and political proposals; the second will set out the events in chronological form, in order to avoid including an excessive amount of detail in the previous part.

. . . . . . . .

Democratic politics has been kidnapped and intoxicated by the insidious totalitarianism of finanzcapitalism. If democracy is not capable of winning back its independence and freedom, we may only have the cold comfort of living in a science fiction world where financial zaibatsu control the planet and Blade Runner will seem like a children’s fairy-tale.

2013-07-19 Politi First Financial World War

2013/07/22

David Swanson: Deep Dissection of Trans-Pacific Partnership — The Most Evil Reprehensible Impeachable Act To Come Out of Washington in Recent Memory

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

TPP: The Terrible Plutocratic Plan

By David Swanson

Remarks July 21, 2013 at an Occupy Harrisonburg (Va.) Event.
Make your voice heard here.

Thanks to Michael Feikema and Doug Hendren for inviting me. Like most of you I do not spend my life studying trade agreements, but the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is disturbing enough to make me devote a little time to it, and I hope you will do the same and get your neighbors to do the same and get them to get their friends to do the same — as soon as possible.

I spend most of my time reading and writing about war and peace. I'm in the middle of writing a book about the possibility and need to abolish war and militarism. I hate to take a break from that. But if we think trade and militarism are separate topics we're fooling ourselves.

New York Timescolumnist Thomas Friedman, a big fan of the supposed wonders of the hidden hand of the market economy says, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Continue reading “David Swanson: Deep Dissection of Trans-Pacific Partnership — The Most Evil Reprehensible Impeachable Act To Come Out of Washington in Recent Memory”

2013/07/222013/07/22

Ray McGovern: General Hayden’s Glass House

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Gen. Hayden’s Glass House

By Ray McGovern

July 21, 2013

Editor Note: Official Washington’s national security/mainstream media incest was on scandalous display when ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden posed as a CNN analyst to denounce Edward Snowden for exposing surveillance excesses that Hayden had a hand in creating.

Former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden should not throw any more stones, lest his own glass house be shattered. His barrage Friday against truth-teller Edward Snowden and London Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald invited a return rain of boulders for Hayden committing the same violations of constitutional protections that he is now excusing.

Writing as “CNN Terrorism Analyst,” Hayden read from the unctuous script previously used by “Meet the Press” host David Gregory on June 23 when he questioned Greenwald’s status as a journalist. Hayden claimed Greenwald deserves “the Justice Department’s characterization of a co-conspirator.”

But the principal target of Hayden’s ire was Snowden. After lumping him together with despicable characters like CIA’s Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen of the FBI, and others who spied for the U.S.S.R. – and then disparaging “leakers” like Bradley Manning – Hayden wrote, “Snowden is in a class by himself.”

But it is Michael Hayden who is in a class by himself. He was the first NSA director to betray the country’s trust by ordering wholesale violation of what was once the First Commandment at NSA: “Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.” Not to mention playing fast and loose with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

Continue reading “Ray McGovern: General Hayden's Glass House”

2013/07/19

SchwartzReport: Parents Struggle to Afford Food in USA

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

I find the food trend in the U.S. utterly shameful. It says something really sad about us as a culture. Click through to see the charts which are very helpful.

In U.S., Single-Parent Households Struggle More to Buy Food
JESSICA STUTZMAN and ELIZABETH MENDES – The Gallup Organization

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the U.S., 31% of single-parent households report times in the past 12 months when they struggled to afford food, much more than the 19% of two-parent households who say the same, according to an analysis of adults aged 18 to 50. Single-parent households also report greater difficulty affording food than do unmarried and single adults who do not have children. But, in households with two adults, the percentage who struggled at times to afford food is the same — 19% — regardless of the presence of children in the home.

2013/07/172013/07/17

Neal Rauhauser: The Pentagon’s Third Rail

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

The Pentagon’s Third Rail

This came out of the morning Situation Report from @glubold of Foreign Policy magazine. The secret sauce, for those interested, is to read NightWatch for a mix of what might happen and what the news is too clumsy to cover, then check the various FP feeds to see what has actually come to pass.

This is a domestic rather than international issue, but it’s one that is liable to bite us hard.

The Pentagon is starting to touch the third rail of budgetary spending: military compensation, retirement and benefits spending. As Chuck Hagel completes his “listening tour” of troops and their families, a quiet effort has begun to review military retirement and compensation that will grow louder as its work begins to surface. Hagel is finishing up his domestic road trip today, visiting airmen at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., and then Marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Hagel, we’re told, wants to hear from troops and families about the challenges they face during a period of shrinking budgets. He’s listening but he’s also starting slowly to float the idea that compensation benefits and even retirement plans may have to be pared back in order to make the Pentagon’s ledgers add up. Personnel costs alone cost the services between 55 and 65 percent of their budgets and rising – a fact the Pentagon brass say they’ve been saddled with for years. But now as budgets tighten, it’s a fact that can’t be ignored.

Airmen, marines, sailors, and soldiers who served their time and were discharged with a clean DD214 are going to see their retirement benefits slashed. The 55% – 65% of budget being personnel was an eye opener for me – if I pay attention to domestic matters it’s almost always system costs, system life cycle, and changing military doctrine. This looks like a brewing battle between our veterans and defense contractors who are desperately trying to keep their nose in the Pentagon’s feeding trough as the normal 25% post war budget cuts begin.

But there is a ticking bomb out there:

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