Privacy For the Elite, Not the Peasantry

Befitting a land of parasitical crony capitalism and a political class that operates with impunity outside of the established laws the Obama administration and NSA allies in congress are finally being mobilized into action by oligarchic anger. As the week unwound with report after report of surveillance of foreign leaders, allies at that the privileged occupiers of the U.S. government moved to at least cosmetically reign in the spying - on the elite, as for the peasantry well let them eat wiretaps. The besieged Barry seems to be cornered - finally for his inability/unwillingness to get his NSA Stasi under control as well as for  the botching of the Obamacare website roll out, a dysfunctional mess that has seen recent polls including this one from NBC/WSJ  having his approval rating in freefall. Not that polling in this country isn't a joke, you can make a poll reflect any desired result based on the type of questioning as well as the samples used but people I know, even O-Bots are rapidly losing faith in their once messianic leader. After five plus years of Obama's reign the change promised has been of the chump change variety. Yet media apologists and shills continue, I must say that the most astonishing thing that I have recently heard was the MSNBC megaphone Chris Matthews talking Barry up as the Dow rose to record levels (never mind that QE bubble) as the man who - "kills our enemies and he makes us rich, so why are you bitching?" on Tuesday's Hardball.  I believe that David Gregory may now have a legitimate challenger as the most dishonest and slimy media propagandist in the land.

Breaking with a unified establishment line of defense against NSA spying, none other than Senator Dianne Feinstein has called for "reforms" in the aftermath of the revelations that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was being surveilled since 2002. This is what it takes to get Di Fi riled up, she has up until this week defended every unconstitutional transgression of the NSA as long as it was being used to spy on millions of law abiding American citizens but when it is one of the global political elite that is of course a different story.  The stench of hypocrisy hangs heavy in the air along the Potomac as it always does but it is growing more fragrant by the day with the tales of snooping dropping out practically every day now and includes the leadership class. Justin Raimondo over at Antiwar.com once again pegs it in his most recent column entitled Surveillance Is for Peons from which I excerpt:

It’s fun to watch the consternation in Obama-land as the blowback from the Snowden revelations lands on Washington’s doorstep in the form of angry phone calls from world leaders. Of course, most of them were to some extent complicit when the NSA wanted to spy on their countrymen: in Germany, the intelligence services cooperated with the Americans, as the Brits certainly did, along with the French. It’s just that they thought they were personally exempt.

Their outrage is echoed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, once the Senate’s biggest champion of the Surveillance State, who is now on the warpath because of the Merkel eavesdropping scandal. After announcing she is "totally opposed" to NSA spying on our European allies, she declared her intention to conduct a comprehensive formal review of US intelligence-gathering programs.

While many commentators remarked that if the NSA has even lost Feinstein they’re screwed, the oddity of her unexpectedly harsh reaction was pointed out by Spencer Ackerman and Dan Roberts writing in the UK Guardian: "Her position," they noted, "left many longtime intelligence observers puzzled. NSA spying on foreign leaders is far more traditional than its domestic bulk collection, which Feinstein has not criticized. Regardless of Feinstein’s motivations, intelligence veterans seemed to understand that the political momentum is not on their side."

But the rabble is continuing to push back. The hated by the establishment Justin Amash has joined with the PATRIOT Act author James Sensenbrenner to push legislation that would reign in the out of control NSA  “The days of unfettered spying on the American people are numbered”. NSA Stasi Commandant Keith Alexander invoked the terror talisman by urging congress that to “give up a program that would result in this nation being attacked”.  The reason why we are “hated” and why others would want to attack this nation is because of freaks such as he and his fellow warmongering militarists. When you invade, murder, torture and destroy other countries for the benefit of energy cartels, defense industry giants and other mega-corporations to expect anything other than hatred and counter attacks is sheer lunacy. Over a half century of U.S. policy and the wars and oppression of others may sell well with the television addled schmucks here in The Homeland but the civilized world outside these borders understands this. There has yet to be credible evidence that NSA surveillance on millions of American citizens has stopped even one terrorist attack – if it was so efficient then why didn’t it stop the Boston Marathon bombers? The only plots busted up are either those of fools or of those induced into actions through acts of government entrapment that justifies the continued looting of taxpayers to finance their own enslavement at the hands of those who should be standing in the dock at The Hague rather than running this nation’s military and intelligence programs.

I have long maintained that the best chance that we still have to prevent a future of tyranny is to find a unifying cause that will unite libertarians, principled conservatives and antiwar, pro-civil liberties progressives against Leviathan and this just may be it. The weekend's Washington "Stop Watching Us" rally was a diverse gathering that would seem to indicate that this is at least theoretically possible. Forget the liberals, they are useless and too invested in a myriad of identity group based crusades and also forget the dregs of society that comprise the Republican party base, primarily the decidedly pro-fascist religious right that hijacked the libertarian tea party and now is seen coalescing around the Texas Zamboni Ted Cruz.  They have finally found their Führer and hell will have no fury like a takeover by zealots who are already salivating over using the police state and spying apparatus against their many enemies, generating pickup lists of who they deem to be sexual deviants, intellectuals and defenders of liberty . 

Both of those groups are a part of the problem and should be shunned as lepers by any sane and patriotic American. The collapse is coming, while swine the likes of Chris Matthews gloat about the record levels of the stock market it is all as temporary as it is phony, capitalism has left the building in this once great country and the markets can no longer function without the constant heroin fixes provided by the government. It is all going to blow up sooner or later, whether it be two weeks, two years or a decade but it cannot be sustained. It is imperative that the NSA be stopped now because all of this surveillance of American citizens is going to be weaponized and used against any and all who attempt to hold the scoundrels accountable for the coming systemic wreckage.

Systemic Resistance to NSA Scrutiny Digs In

Like an immune system responding to the attack of a pathogen the body of the 21st Century American fascist state is rapidly working to repel growing threats to its existence. Like so many white blood cells the state media and the corrupt agents of a completely compromised political system are swarming. As the outrage grows (at least outside the borders of this cloistered colony of idiots and sheep) the responses from the protectors of the establishment react to neutralize the threats. While Congress is expected to “grill” surveillance state leaders on the rancid hill will summon the high command of Obama’s Stasi - General Keith Alexander, Director of National Intelligence and known liar James Clapper and others for a staged display meant to put on a jolly good show that there still exists a system and checks and balances. Such concepts are quaint remnants of a past in which we were probably never truly as “free” as advertised but more so than in the surveillance/police state of the post 9/11 Homeland. That the very offenders of the system, who have shat upon the Constitution are to testify before a committee that is lead by the ultra-fascist Mike Rogers, after he just spent his weekend touring the media outlets and defending the same NSA is an obvious and blatant farce.

The stories of the NSA spying on foreign leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular carry more clout than just playing peeping tom on millions of law-abiding American citizens who are largely viewed as useless eaters by the elite who run the system for their own benefit. International leaders, especially “allies” who are pissed off that they are being spied on can potentially muck up lucrative trade pacts and cost the pigs on Wall Street money so their concerns must be addressed, at least cosmetically. While the Obama administration continues to lie, obstruct and change the subject to the Obamacare website clusterf**k it is of more than of passing some note that none other than Dianne Feinstein, a hard core militarist who has served as a firewall of cellulite when it comes to NSA snooping programs has come out now and expressed obviously fake concern over the international surveillance. But of course she is full of crap and anyone who has been watching her fully understands this.

Feinstein, moving to cover her own ample backside is much making noise about a review of NSA programs – don’t hold your breath over what is to be a standard whitewash. There will be some form of Orwellian pushing of intelligence “reform” which of course will be just another big government lie. Like with the September 11, 2001 attacks, no heads will roll over this debacle because all involved are protected by the system. Sure, General Alexander will be stepping down but the damage has already been done with the implementation of this monstrosity of a high tech surveillance behemoth. He will suck the tax payer funded teat for a huge retirement package, free health care and supplement that income with gigs as an “expert” guest on FOX or CNN where he will make big money defending the snooping cash cow and the trillions of dollars that are funneled into campaign contributors by it. Americans should be pretty much used to paying for their own enslavement by now, the humiliating body searches by government TSA thugs in airports and the constant beat of FEAR and surrendering civil liberties to be kept safe has pretty much become internalized - and keep in mind, the youngest generation has never known a world other than this one.

The fabricated hearings aside the pocket media machine is busily churning out excuses and distractions, some of which are Can Merkel really be Surprised that the NSA spied on her? which covers the ‘everybody does it’ line of thinking. There is also the at least partially believable ‘out of the loop’ stories about Obama just not knowing what was really going on. While I personally think that one is total bullshit I also find Barry to be an abject incompetent, detached and content to float above it all while leaving aides like Valerie Jarrett to control access. The same excuse was used to insulate dear leader from the Obamacare website fiasco but this line would seem to mean that he is incompetent, that the emperor indeed has no clothes yet serves as a valid defense against what should be an impeachable series of offenses over the rogue NSA Stasi. It is all spin however and the spinning continues as it always does when the beltway elitists and their courtiers circle the wagons.

While I have yet to see it seriously brought up (but have no doubt that  it’s coming soon) other than by NSA Commandant Alexander there will be a propaganda front opened suggesting that the government criminalize reporting. What better way to defend actual criminals than to use the hijacked system to make any challenge of them the real crime? This is already being advanced rapidly across the pond with our friends over in the U.K. Brit leader David Cameron joins Generalissimo Keith Alexander in declaring war on the press over NSA reporting. In a Guardian story about the red coat vendetta against the Guardian Cameron issues a warning that going forward that the media must self-censor itself (much like the corrupt U.S. based counterpart does) and  that “if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act."  The piece also includes this statement from another Brit paper –“The Sun quoted a "top surveillance source" as saying that terrorists had "gone quiet" after the publication of details about NSA and GCHQ operations.”  It is lamentable that Americans of today can't make the simple historical connection in that the founding fathers had a reason for rebelling against those bastards in the first place.

The excuse that “terrorists” had “gone quiet” is asinine, any real terrorist already understands that they are under constant surveillance and at the end of the day the phony war on terror has always been a war against those free citizens who dare to challenge a corrupt and out of control power structure. Maybe Cameron’s government should just begin attracting sycophantic, egomaniac careerists with access to high state cocktail parties and preferential treatment – it has done wonders in The Homeland, just look at a guy like David Gregory. Back in the day of Operation Mockingbird where it was revealed that the CIA had plants at most influential news outlets in the country one agency employee famously commented that – “You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl”. With todays presstitutes the price is likely far less. Thirty pieces of silver is so passé when all that a lapdog really desires is an occasional scratch on the belly by his owners.

Obama Should Be Impeached for NSA Run Amok

“I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it”

Nixon aide John Dean

I continue to look for the outrage within the political establishment, especially with the diehard Obama haters in the Republican party over the rampaging run amok NSA and the global surveillance. Not only have our civil liberties as Americans been desecrated but the Constitution has become, exactly as George W. Bush so famously tabbed it “just a goddamned piece of paper”. We essentially have no privacy rights and the government has been lying for years about the invasive data-mining and storage for ominous future usage of personal communications, credit and websites visited by law abiding Americans. Again where the hell is the outrage? If the GOP wants a real reason to finally mount Barry’s head on a pike here it is, Slick Willie was impeached for far less. Congressman Grand Theft Auto, Darrell Issa made the following remark on Obama's NSA in this piece in the Guardian - "Remember, the NSA works for the president. Through his national security advisers he knew or should have known" - but he is all talk and no action, nowhere to be found conducting one of his inquisitions when it isn't for show. Darrell could be a star if he started the impeachment hearings over Obama's NSA - but he won't. He is part of the club.

Obama is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors for allowing the NSA surveillance to continue and grow exponentially on his watch, hell he constantly lies about it to protect the criminals within the system. This is not some bullshit Benghazi conspiracy mongering, nor more political carping over a disastrous rollout of an abominable corporate insurance parasite friendly health care “reform” scam. This is real, not only are the rights of American citizens being trampled but ongoing revelations of the extent of our fascist deep state operations monitoring the communications of world leaders - our freaking allies for God’s sake is doing enormous damage to the national image and squandering whatever credibility had been accumulated, earned hard by those who gave their lives in past wars all for naught.  Hard core American fascists such as House Intelligence honcho Mike Rogers can primp and pontificate for the cameras spewing nonsense like this for CNN per the above linked Guardian piece -

"I would argue by the way, if the French citizens knew exactly what that was about, they would be applauding and popping champagne corks," he said. "It's a good thing – it keeps the French safe."

Going further, Rogers claimed that the emergence of fascism in Europe in the early 20th century could be partly explained by a conscious decision by the US not to monitor its allies.

"We said: 'We're not going to do any kinds of those things, that would not be appropriate," he said. "Look what happened in the 30s: the rise of fascism, the rise of communism, the rise of imperialism. We didn't see any of it. And it resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people."

Godwin’s Law aside because it was brought up by Rogers who never bothers to mention that the rise of Hitler’s Nazis did not exactly take place in a vacuum hidden away from public view. There were years of warning signs of what was coming, pogroms, demagogic rallies and the man did after all write a book entitled Mein Kampf in which he laid out exactly what was to become of the Jews. Rogers is a liar and a delusional paranoid authoritarian at that. Invoking the European fascist regimes of the past as justification for the current domestic fascism is hogwash. My grandfather risked his life fighting against scum like Rogers and his ilk and so did the grandfathers and great grandfathers of millions of Americans who are having that for which they sacrificed all stolen away by men like him. And men like Obama for that matter, a war criminal who has nicely grown into all of the vileness that the men who occupy that office have come to stand for.  He should be impeached and removed from office because in any society where the rule of law actually meant something other than to borrow from the late Hunter S. Thompson allow the establishment to push for  ”.. the systematic destruction of everything this country claims to stand for except the rights of the rich to put saddles on the backs of the poor and use public funds to build jails for anybody who complained about it.”

Bill Clinton was impeached over lying about a blow job yet Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid failed to use their majority to do likewise to Bush for the torture state and illegal wars of aggression nor was there any support for such a thing from all of the elitists on either side of the proverbial aisle. By failing to impeach Bush a climate of lawlessness and unaccountable crooked conduct was established and it has served to embolden Obama. The abuses will be far worse under his successor who might do more than just spy upon the population, his replacement may act upon that information that has been gathered and is just sitting out in a monster data storage facility in the Utah desert.

None of this is going to stop until the day that these high officials are brought under control and held accountable by the law – whatever remains of it and Obama would be damned good start, as the old Democrat Harry Truman was famous for saying “the buck stops here” and the top offender is sitting in Harry’s old office.

This is neither liberal nor conservative, those labels lose more meaning by the minute given the level of systemic corruption - this is about right or wrong.

Sunday Morning Propaganda Organs Defend NSA Spying

The usual corporate-state media defenders of Obama’s unconstitutional NSA Stasi surveillance apparatus were busily hosting establishment shills this Sunday morning, performing the usual damage control for the rogue government of The Homeland. It had been another week of damaging revelations, primarily the NSA spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s private communications since 2002. Barry’s ass is in hot water on his goon squads and justifiably so, reports have begun to surface that none other than Obama himself knew about the snooping on Merkel which flies in the face of his statements to the contrary. Being that the reports put the origination of the spying at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration it was a marvelous bit of serendipity when none other than Richard B. Cheney, war criminal and traitor was trotted out on the prestigious electronic platform of ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.  The former Bill Clinton flack turned celebrity talking head rolled out the red carpet for Cheney in the sort of dignified type of atmosphere more befitting a benevolent former statesman other than a sadistic, lying, torture-mongering, , mass murderer whose disembowelment of the constitution set the standard for Obama’s police state policies.

Stephanopoulos slobbered over the evildoer while lobbing softballs that were easily smacked out of the park by well-prepared talking points. Cheney defended activities of Obama’s NSA Stasi “It's something that we have been involved in for a long time. And the -- I think the unfortunate aspect of it is that Mr. Snowden has, in fact, divulged a lot of information which is damaging to the United States” as well as pimped his deranged neocon daughter Liz’s run for the upcoming Wyoming Senate seat. The bulk of Cheney’s airtime was however dedicated to a continuation of the promotion of standard neocon world dominance doctrine primarily pushing for an attack on Iran, long the apple of the eye of the PNAC imperialists:

“I don’t have a lot of confidence in the administration to be able to negotiate an agreement. I think sanctions offer some prospect of bringing the Iranians around. I’ve talked to my friends in that part of the region. I still know them, a lot of them, and they’re very fearful that the whole Iranian exercise is going to go the same way as the Syrian exercise; that is, that there will be bold talk from the administration. But in the final analysis, nothing effective will be done about the Iranian program,”

Croaked Cheney in his trademark serpentine whisper, his “friends” likely his benefactors in the House of Saud and the right-wing government of Israeli strongman Bibi Netanyahu, two regimes that squeal the loudest for American blood and treasure to be shed to protect their own power base that don’t have the stones to go it alone. Not that I would expect anything else from an elitist turd like Stephanopoulos but a question on Cheney’s view on comments by Republican mega-donor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson suggesting a nuclear strike on Iran would have been a relevant thing to ask given that he will likely be her sugar daddy.

Following Cheney was arch neocon propagandist William Kristol, a coward’s coward who has never met a Middle East war that he wouldn’t send some other poor bastard off to die in all the while grinning like some obscene Chesire cat. The credibility that is afforded to these ridiculously phony political discussion programs would make probably be an embarrassment to Joseph Goebbels but that is the way we roll in The Homeland. In fact the quicker that the appearances are booked, just look at defense industry pitchmen John McCain and Lindsey Graham who on any given Sunday morning will be seen selling death to credulous viewers along with their morning orange juice. Then of course there is Peter King, a hypocritical fanatic whose anti-Muslim tribunals are an embarrassment to any concept of a free and decent society. The Long Island demagogue routinely rails against “terrorists” yet it is never once pointed out that he himself long supported the militant wing of the Irish Republican Army that murdered civilians with relish.

The ever swinish King was front and center as was the uber-fascist House Intelligence Committee head Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and by nature a man who gets his rocks off with seeing federal thugs conducting home invasions under mysterious and trumped up evidence. Absent was the usual false equivalence nor any serious alternative voices that place the gross constitutional violations of the big-money surveillance state in a context outside of that permitted by the state.  This is where the mythology of a government paralyzed by internal strife, party civil wars and rancorous partisan paralysis is exposed as the crap that it truly is. When it comes to matters of suppressing civil liberties, hypocrisy, war, torture and thuggery and most of all being able to gather information from everyone on earth for some vague future usage that probably involves “selling” intelligence secrets to big corporations by government operatives for industrial espionage the unified voices of state power are all singing in unison from the same hymnal. King provided Obama with the 'bipartisan' cover for the Merkel surveillance, invoking the treasured talisman of flag-draped fascism 9/11 - "As far as Germany, that's where the Hamburg Plot began, which led to 9/11. They've had dealings with Iran and Iraq, North Korea -- the French and the Germans, other European countries."  It might be noted that the Germans also had past dealings with Nazis, a group that both King and Rogers would fit in very nicely with.

Saturday’s Washington rally against NSA intrusions on privacy predictably get much press here in the fascist states of America, the walkoff World Series win by the St. Louis Cardinals over the Boston Red Sox on a controversial “obstruction” call dominated this morning’s big stories. Whatever coverage that was offered up tried to downplay the number of participants that gathered in D.C., this Reuters story refers to “hundreds” while more reputable foreign news sources reported the presence of “thousands”. I suppose that Reuters is at least technically right being that ten times one hundred equals one thousand but it was just more of the same dishonesty, propaganda and outright balderdash that is spoon fed to the lemmings by a media teeming with rats, paid operatives and careerists that long ago abrogated the responsibility of a free press that the First Amendment was supposed to guarantee.

Be sure not to miss tonight's 60 Minutes, which will feature former CIA official Michael Morrell capping off the day vilifying former Booz Allen government contractor employee and NSA whistleblower for revealing the existence of the "black budget".  In a preview of what promises to be a grand promenade of big fascist government lies Morrell cries wolf that Snowden has put Americans in danger and that outing the black budget is - "I think this is the most serious leak-- the most serious compromise of classified information in the history of the U.S. intelligence community".  It does'nt take much to see who the true enemies of America are, just turn on your television every Sunday morning.

NSA Commandant: Ban Reporting on Surveillance

The top Nazi over at surveillance central in Fort Meade, General Keith Alexander continues to provide the best examples of exactly why Obama’s rogue NSA spying operations need to be shut down for good. With outrage building outside of the United States of Dancing With the Stars as revelations of surveillance on foreign leaders now breaking on a near daily basis Barry is besieged  by calls for explanations from those heads of state. The Obama regime has succeeded in finishing the job that Bush and Cheney started in turning this once great country into a global pariah that speaks with a forked tongue and carries the biggest stick in world history of a bloated imperial war machine - the moron bully of the neighborhood. Alexander is now taking it to the next level in calling for the government to stop reporters, like his buddies across the pond he has a fear of being held accountable for their criminal actions. The man is a power hungry, Star Trek junkie of an authoritarian  freak and should be the last person allowed to run the spying apparatus, he is to be stepping down come springtime but that isn’t enough, the man should be court martialed, busted down to buck private and then sent packing without the lavish taxpayer funded retirement package that his is going to score. And the closest thing to an electronic device that the bastard should be allowed to have for the rest of his life is the ankle bracelet that will be mandated for his house arrest.

General Alexander’s latest and greatest grabbing of the brass ring of infamy are comments that he made during an interview for a Defense Department blog in which he called for the halting of reporting on the boatload of abuses that he and his data miners have been caught red handed perpetrating. The General ranted that  "I think it’s wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000—whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these—you know it just doesn’t make sense" and "We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more of the courts and the policymakers but, from my perspective, it’s wrong to allow this to go on". The comments are the plaintive wails of a cornered rat and even more of an indication that the worst (or best) stuff is yet to come. Interesting that he referenced “selling” of documents of which nothing has been reported on this angle but it reeks of the same type of lies that are always spewed to defend the all-encompassing blanket of impunity provide by invoking “national security” to cover up big government criminality. It  could be a trial balloon for a new avenue of smearing by the Obama goons and rational for unleashing dirty Eric Holder for yet another of the witch hunts that have pockmarked this rancid administration and its war on journalists. I suspect that the “selling” of leaked documents will be used to turn investigative reporting into an act of espionage and that the secret courts and grand juries of the fascist state will be very busy in the coming months.

Glenn Greenwald has every reason to be worried as do any other truth tellers who are about to become the prey of a desperate predatory state as it seeks to once and for all eradicate its enemies. War criminal Dick Cheney is a scheduled guest on the Sunday morning propaganda circuit so let's see if the treasonous old dog goes to the "selling documents" talking point much like he did when he and the war machine mouthpieces used the forums to lie the country into attacking and invading Iraq. Obama may be running the U.S. Stasi now but another story in Der Spiegel reports that according to documents obtained that the U.S. fascist apparatus has been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002. Dastardly Dick should have to answer that question were it to be posed to him by one of those smug, sanctimonious sacks of shit Sunday morning hosts. 

The blowback against the NSA Stasi surveillance continues here in the star spangled lemming colony as well albeit on a lesser level than in the educated world, largely due to an abundance of television addicted borderline retards and a state media that abhors the truth as much as General Alexander. There is to be a 'stop watching us" rally in Washington D.C. today to protest the ruling establishment’s disdain for constitutional privacy rights but don’t look for it to get much play in the national media that is enjoying a fresh round of ghoulish pedophilia over startling new revelations in the Jon Benet Ramsey case.

The Saudi Royal Snit

While the United States somehow managed to avoid another ruinous war in Syria back in September the push for military strikes against the regime of Bashar al-Assad continues. Despite all of the best efforts of the Obama administration to sell yet another Middle East war to a public that has been slowly bled dry economically by the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan over the last twelve years Barry couldn’t close the deal.  It was close, the propaganda value of the poor, twitching dead children, gassed at Ghouta had enormous emotional power especially when it was continually rebroadcast and invoked in speech after speech by Obama and Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry. The bombers and missiles were nearly flying towards Damascus when Russian President Vladimir Putin pounced on an offhand gaffe about chemical weapons disarmament by Kerry who has long been afflicted with an incurable case of diarrhea of the mouth. Assad eagerly agreed to surrender his chemical weapons stocks and the imminent disaster that could have morphed into World War III was put onto the back burner.

This did not sit well with some, especially those who have been instigating for American intervention to fight their own territorial wars lest they be seen as what they really are, always best to let the western devil do the dirty work lest the revolution fall upon their own opulent palaces. Specifically outraged over the rare bit of American hesitance are our dear 'partners in peace' the Saudis. The House of Saud has been apoplectic over the failure of Obama to order up the attacks based on ginned up evidence that is still inconclusive and more likely the culprits were the radical Islamist militants, some of them cannibals and others affiliated with al Qaeda and backed by the Saudis. The roiling cauldron of animosity boiled over in an ugly public snit at the United Nations when the Saudis rejected a U.N. Security Council seat based on the failure of the body to lunge for the bait at Ghouta and back the plans to tip the balance of the Syrian civil war against Assad. Then in the aftermath of the Kingdom's great insult of giving the finger to the U.S./U.N. the veteran manipulator and media friendly fixer for the royal family Prince Bandar bin Sultan, now the head of Saudi intelligence came out and stated that the Saudis would be making a "major shift" away from the United States going forward.

Predictably this display of petulant indignity by a longtime entitled parasite rattled cages in the establishment.  The ever feckless elitist Kerry immediately flew into action to kiss the asses of the royals in a frantic effort at damage control, hope that he has his bags packed because with the revelations of the Obama NSA Stasi spying on foreign leaders growing by the day he is going to need to pay a lot of lip service in the coming weeks - hope he has a good supply of lip balm on hand. I am sure that while true rulers of this country, the big moneyed interests who most benefit from kowtowing to the rotten, oppressive and decadent Saudi monarchy and the most to lose from a cessation of the graft that millions of Americans would be perfectly happy to see Bandar and the rest of The Kingdom go their own way.

Let us not forget that fifteen of the nineteen September 11, 2001 hijackers hailed from Bandar’s land and that the Bush administration which then allowed planeloads of Saudis leave America while the national airspace was locked down out of fear of more attacks. The Bush family adored bin Sultan so much that they affectionately referred to him as “Bandar Bush” and during his time spent as U.S. ambassador was quite the aficionado of decadent western culture. While the royals funded and encouraged terrorists it was far from uncommon to see Prince Bandar partying with celebrities and wealthy Americans, even at one time reportedly prancing around on the sidelines of Texas Stadium during the 1990's Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl winning dynasty years. If you want to see a picture of the sheer hypocrisy of the Saudis as they currently rage about some perverse and self-serving Orwellian form of 'morality' you need look no further than their outward face of their own moral rot who is the loquacious Bandar Bush. He is a pimp for a regime that treats women like animals, brooks no tolerance for resistance and is among the most regressive countries on the planet. With "friends" like this who the hell needs enemies?

The Saudis have overplayed their hands and outlived their usefulness. With the rising domestic energy production courtesy of the shale boom and technological advances in hydraulic fracturing aka fracking  (which represents problems of its own) we now may finally be able to wean ourselves away from the Middle East tyrants and dependence on oil that requires catering to every whim of their despotic regimes. No wonder that Bandar is shitting bricks these days, there are finally options available and it is about damned time to cast away the vileness that is the Saudi monarchy - like the removal of a painful and annoying anal cyst. They can throw all of the ugly snits that their black hearts desire and while they are flush with money to buy politicians and launch public relations campaigns the era of having to bow down to those desert dwelling reprobates is coming to an end. Bandar Bush and his despicable royal family can continue to sow the seeds of unrest by backing terrorists and may yet succeed in bullying Obama into another regional disaster but their time of disproportionate influence is just about over.

At the end of the dawning day the brutal truth is that they can’t eat their oil. Conversely, once the oppressed religious fanatics that they have so nurtured, funded and sent forth to fight the same Great Satan that they were cutting deals with to fund their whores, yachts and partying finally turn on them absent the protection of the American military and political power structure there will be nowhere to hide.

Yes We Scan- EVERYONE

Mounting reports on the massive invasive NSA surveillance programs are continuing to damage U.S. credibility in the civilized world as well as right here on Homeland soil. Were the architects of the epic embarrassment of the Obamacare website only one tenth as competent at their jobs as our legions of government employed and subcontracted electronic voyeurs shameless GOP opportunists wouldn’t be able to successfully shift attention from their own inner corruption (Kentucky kickback) into criticism of the botched rollout of the corporate gift of an insurance swindle. The difference is astonishing and places an emphasis on where our values as a society are, nothing is more precious to those with the ability to control the data than the ability to spy with impunity upon critics, reporters, ordinary citizens and foreign leaders. If you don’t see the coming train wreck of the American Stasi being caught red handed engaging in industrial espionage to ensure big banks and corporations a competitive advantage that money can’t buy you still have far too much faith in this putrid system.

The trickle revelations has become a torrent, the NSA has been snooping on allies relentlessly for years and now the rogue administration of Barack H. Obama is being called on it. While Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry is over palling around with terrorists with his whirlwind Saudi suckling tour, leaders in France have summoned the U.S. envoy to explain why the phone conversations of millions of law abiding French citizens were collected. Then there is Mexico where it has been revealed that Obama's Stasi hacked into the email account of President Felipe Calderon sparking cries of outrage so intense that Barry himself has reportedly promised an investigation into the "Tailored Access Operations" .  The story that broke the Mexican email hacking was published in the German magazine Der Spiegel and journalist Laura Poitras who had accompanied former Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald to Hong Kong to meet former Booz Allen contractor Edward Snowden who is now actually being defended by at least some of the corrupt U.S. media elite, so unsuccessful that the Obama regime has been in terminating the heroic whistleblower with the usual policy of extreme prejudice. The piece also brings up the specter of industrial espionage by referencing Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff who after it was revealed that the NSA was spying on oil company Petrobas cancelled a visit to Washington and later denounced the surveillance at the UN in a blistering speech.  I excerpt the following from Der Spiegel:

Rousseff believes Washington's reasons for employing such unfriendly methods are partly economic, an accusation that the NSA and its director, General Keith Alexander, have denied. Yet according to the leaked NSA documents, the US also monitored email and telephone communications at Petrobras, the oil corporation in which the Brazilian government holds a majority stake. Brazil possesses enormous offshore oil reserves.

Just how intensively the US spies on its neighbors can be seen in another, previously unknown operation in Mexico, dubbed "Whitetamale" by the NSA. In August 2009, according to internal documents, the agency gained access to the emails of various high-ranking officials in Mexico's Public Security Secretariat that combats the drug trade and human trafficking. This hacking operation allowed the NSA not only to obtain information on several drug cartels, but also to gain access to "diplomatic talking-points." In the space of a single year, according to the internal documents, this operation produced 260 classified reports that allowed US politicians to conduct successful talks on political issues and to plan international investments.

The tone of the document that lists the NSA's "tremendous success" in monitoring Mexican targets shows how aggressively the US intelligence agency monitors its southern neighbor. "These TAO accesses into several Mexican government agencies are just the beginning -- we intend to go much further against this important target," the document reads. It goes on to state that the divisions responsible for this surveillance are "poised for future successes."

While these operations were overseen from the NSA's branch in San Antonio, Texas, secret listening stations in the US Embassies in Mexico City and Brasília also played a key role. The program, known as the "Special Collection Service," is conducted in cooperation with the CIA. The teams have at their disposal a wide array of methods and high-tech equipment that allow them to intercept all forms of electronic communication. The NSA conducts its surveillance of telephone conversations and text messages transmitted through Mexico's cell phone network under the internal code name "Eveningeasel." In Brasília, the agency also operates one of its most important operational bases for monitoring satellite communications.

This summer, the NSA took its activities to new heights as elections took place in Mexico. Despite having access to the presidential computer network, the US knew little about Enrique Peña Nieto, designated successor to Felipe Calderón.

Spying on Peña Nieto

In his campaign appearances, Peña Nieto would make his way to the podium through a sea of supporters, ascending to the stage like a rock star. He is married to an actress, and also had the support of several influential elder statesmen within his party, the PRI. He promised to reform the party and fight pervasive corruption in the country. But those familiar with the PRI, which is itself regarded by many as corrupt, saw this pledge as little more than a maneuver made for show.

 First and foremost, though, Peña Nieto promised voters he would change Mexico's strategy in the war on drugs, announcing he would withdraw the military from the fight against the drug cartels as soon as possible and invest more money in social programs instead. Yet at the same time, he assured Washington there would be no U-turn in Mexico's strategy regarding the cartels. So what were Peña Nieto's true thoughts at the time? What were his advisers telling him?

Industrial espionage and monitoring drug enforcement policies? Could the NSA be providing intelligence to the big banks that make it easier to evade detection in order to launder drug money?  The BCCI model of banking black networks seems to potentially be applicable to all of this stuff. And there is also the Jeremy Scahill-Glenn Greenwald joint venture on NSA involvement in assassinations - BCCI allegedly ran such ops back in the day. Blackmail? Political manipulation? Watch lists, enemies lists, hit lists - this thing is a snakepit without a bottom. Perhaps General Alexander is getting out of town ahead of the posse because it looks like the really serious stuff is yet to come. Late breaking news today has the NSA being nabbed spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone and she is seriously pissed off, demanding an explanation from Barry himself. We live in very strange times indeed when the Germans are able to express justifiable outrage against snooping, with our advances in technology perhaps Himmler can soon be cloned to eventually replace Alexander at the NSA Stasi HQ. 

Obama is normally as slippery as a greased hamster at Bohemian Grove but the Teflon coated bullshit salesman, now facing enormous criticism both at home and abroad for his dishonesty, fecklessness and narcissism and fooling fewer people every day is coming closer to his accountability moment. When his policies are defended by pathological liars such as James Clapper who denied the surveillance of French phone calls and who has to this point gotten off of the hook completely for perjuring himself in front of congress it exemplifies the terminal degradation of our government. Lying is the first resort and if it doesn't work, then lie again and again. 

Kentucky Kickback Symbolic of a Corrupt Political System

When it comes to the corrupt Washington Republican establishment are few better examples than Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. As the Senate Minority Leader the longtime insider who at least to me is a dead ringer for Yertle the Turtle has just enraged conservatives with his latest bit of deal cutting with his counterpart, former Nevada Gaming Commissioner Harry Reid. With the twin manufactured crises of the partial government shutdown seemingly at a stalemate it was good ole Mitch who rode to the rescue to partner with the Democratic party Majority Leader to put down the insurgency led by Canadian born charlatan Ted Cruz and save the day. If there is a bit of an eerie déjà vu feeling it is because McConnell essentially played the same game back in January when the state-corporate media was caterwauling about the “Fiscal Cliff”, the baddest thing to come down the pike since the Y2K computer hoax.

Obamacare was saved and the can was kicked down the road on the debt ceiling until February when the same tired dog and pony show will be trotted out once more and McConnell will reliably be there to come through again. The man is a master at working the working the levers of the arcane rules of that parliament of whores that is the United States Senate to benefit himself and the “Kentucky kickback” is Mitch at his finest. The ink of Barry’s signature had barely dried when it was revealed that McConnell was the beneficiary of a particular piece of greasy pork that was embedded in the debt bill, a 2.1 billion dollar gift to the Bluegrass State in the form of a dam project. Conservatives cried bloody murder and justifiably so over this veteran flim-flam man’s latest act of political chicanery with the denunciations coming from high power lobbying group Freedom Works as well as myriad other luminaries. The slimy little opportunist Senator Marco Rubio, an ambitious little twit from Florida who rode the wave of the backlash against Obama into a sunshine state Senator’s seat has already come out to praise McConnell which speaks volumes. Rubio, after his election never failed to play the race card in promoting himself as the party savior who could deliver the critical Hispanic demographics to the GOP and immediately went neocon, serving up warmonger talking points to ingratiate himself to the three-headed monster of McCain-Graham and Lieberman.

McConnell deserves to be roasted for the Kentucky Kickback, not only is he a hypocritical bastard but is emblematic of the bipartisan cancer of corruption that has metastasized through Washington like some mutant strain of kudzu. The defeat of McConnell in 2014 should supplant all conservative efforts to tilt at the Obamacare windmills because despite the disastrous clusterfuck rollout it is here to stay thanks to the judicial seal of approval affixed to it by the Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Roberts, a career corporate water carrier. Good ole Mitch in defending the Kentucky Kickback admits that doing away with Obamacare is indeed an "impossible dream".  No, the likes of McConnell need to be purged once and for all because let’s face it, the GOP is on life support right now, totally dependent on the whack jobs of the religious right, neo-confederate base that infiltrated and hijacked the libertarian tea party movement with the financial backing of the same big business interests that are now vowing to destroy it. McConnell needs to be more than just defeated, he needs to be made into a symbol of what happens to amoral, corrupt, career gravy train riders, I can think of nothing that would better unite Americans than a diverse and ongoing crusade against the D.C. elites who have sold us all out for pennies on the dollar. While I find Texas Congressman Steve Stockman to be a loud-mouthed oaf whose desire for publicity drives him to pander to the likes of washed up rocker and draft dodging baby daddy Ted Nugent I do have to give credit where it is due. Stockman blasted good ole Mitch with both barrels during an appearance on the Glenn Beck Show:

“Unfortunately … you’re playing on a football team and you got a bunch of guys over in the Senate that are not playing on your team,” Stockman said. “It’s unbelievable.”

“Jesus Christ was sold out for 40 pieces of silver, apparently we were sold out for a $2 billion project,” he continued. “That’s horrible. That was a backroom deal that should never have happened…”

It is nice to see the scales falling from eyes on the right about the true nature of their “leadership”. I would also remind folks that back in the aftermath of the 2008 economic implosion when there was some serious talk about retribution over the degenerate gamblers who blew it all up it was good ole Mitch who showed up on Wall Street to save the day. With the support of McConnell, the insiders in the Obama administration (as well as the incompetence of dear leader himself), Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and a bought and paid for media the day was carried for the banksters. They have been busting all of our backs ever since with their endless subsidizing of the Wall Street casinos through Q-Eternity programs.

Mitch and all of the others like him have to go (to prison preferably but at least out of office) if there is any chance to still avoid the looming collapse that will occur when the bailout bubble bursts or if our buddies in Saudia Arabia and Israel succeed in dragging the U.S. into World War III. Sunday morning McCain needs to be another top target for ouster, the man who never fails to sink to lower levels of political depravity has now hit bottom and set up a drilling rig. The Arizona warmonger has used the Kentucky Kickback deal to keep the spoils system running and the  establishment war against the GOP insurgents to co-opt the fight against the implementation of Obamacare. Taking a break between pimping for wars and mass surveillance good ole John sees a golden opportunity for himself and is maneuvering into position as a defender of the rotten establishment. Wasn’t it just a week or two ago that he was defending Obamacare instead of using it at a lifeline out of his fading relevance? You just have to love the phony conservative flip-floppers, just like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney whose state health care system served as a blueprint for Obamacare – they were for it before they were against it.

Time for Kentucky to kick back and ditch Mitch next year as a warning, it would be the equivalent of the GOP party bosses waking up one morning with a severed horse’s head in their beds.

The Exceptional: We Honor Our War Criminals

In another example of just how exceptional that we are in the American Homeland the state corporate media aired an extended interview with one Richard B. Cheney on 60 Minutes yesterday. The interview, conducted by celebrity physician Dr. Sanjay Gupta was puff piece that put a good amount of lipstick on a pig to always accentuate the positive by turning the rotten old bastard into some sort of national model on cardiac health. Cheney’s recent heart transplant – one has to wonder how many less well-heeled and connected recipients were leapfrogged - allowed for his continued presence upon this mortal coil. It is somehow grossly wrong that this man whose policies have resulted in well over a hundred thousand deaths as well as the implementation of a vast domestic fascist police state is not being trotted out on national television as some sort of sympathetic elder figure. It should be noted that Cheney was also pimping his new book, the latest in a series of writings by former Bush regime figures that keep the money rolling in as they tour the country feted as beloved champions.

We honor our war criminals here in America. Look at another former Bush aide, Condoleeza Rice whose lies about the potential for a smoking gun as a mushroom cloud helped to sell the war in Iraq and who has been tabbed as a member of the new NCAA college football playoff selection committee. The best public relations that money can buy is a contemptible and corrupt media propaganda machine that normalizes the abnormal and always promotes the post September 11, 2001 national religion of eternal war. Rice and Cheney should have been tried a the Hague and both should currently be rotting in prison cells but that isn’t the way that we roll in the USA..USA..USA. The Cheney hagiography, outside of serving as a national public health forum was also notably disturbing in that it provided additional insight into the diseased mind of a paranoid.  Cheney revealed that he was concerns that a “terrorist” may have had thoughts about hacking his pacemaker. A story in the beltway edition of Inside Baseball Politico states:

Dick Cheney’s heart problems are well known.

What isn’t widely known is that the former vice president had the wireless feature of his implanted defibrillator disabled so nobody could attempt to assassinate him by hacking into the device.

During a “60 Minutes” interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta scheduled to air on CBS this Sunday, Cheney said his cardiologist feared a terrorist could send a signal to the device to make him go into cardiac arrest.

“And it seemed to me to be a bad idea for the vice president to have a device that maybe somebody on a rope line or in the next hotel room or downstairs might be able to get into— hack into,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner said, according to the show’s transcript. “And I worried that someone could kill you.”

During the interview Cheney reveals that he watched an episode of Showtime’s “Homeland” last year in which a terrorist kills the vice president by sending a fatal signal to his cardiac implant.

“Because I know from the experience we had and the necessity for adjusting my own device that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible,” the former vice president said.

This lunatic was within a heartbeat of the nuclear launch codes but arguably with George W. Bush as president Cheney likely had already circumvented the chain of command. On hearing this latest tidbit from the former veep we should all be down on our knees thanking God today that he never got that wild hair up his ass and went balls out General Jack D. Ripper rogue, launching a global thermonuclear war. The fears of the heart hack are not the only exhibits in the gallery of the mind of a madman. I recall a 2006 Vanity Fair article on Cheney admitting that he always traveled with a biological weapons protective suit within reach:

National Editor Todd Purdum reports that Cheney travels with a chemical-biological suit at all times. When he gave his friend Robin West and his twin children a ride to the White House a couple of years ago, West commented on the fact that Cheney's motorcade varied its daily path. "And he said, 'Yeah, we take different routes so that "The Jackal" can't get me,'" West tells Purdum. "And then there was this big duffel bag in the middle of the backseat, and I said, 'What's that? It's not very roomy in here.' And [Cheney] said, 'No, because it's a chemical-biological suit,' and he looked at it and said, 'Robin, there's only one. You lose.'"

With the reference from the propagandistic series Homeland I would think that Mr. Cheney watches too much television, not that an immersion in a fantasy world is something that is rare in this sordid, collapsing society. I suspect that Dick as an avid fan of the enormously popular Fox torture infomercial "24" back during his days in office. CBS should be ashamed of their polishing up of Cheney's legacy to be anything other than the Machiavellian, paranoid, torture loving, war mongering monster that he is - were such a thing as shame to actually exist in the corporate-state media which it doesn't.

NSA Stasi Commandant to Step Down

General Keith Alexander is going to have plenty of time to catch up on Star Trek trivia soon. The man in charge of Obama’s massive surveillance apparatus is leaving the NSA in early 2014. Call it the death of a thousand cuts, Alexander had become such a lightning rod for the unconstitutional spying programs that were leaked by former government contractor Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden is likely being asked to fall upon his sword . It could be that Barry and the boys are just doing the requisite damage control by dumping Alexander or rather there are going to be much worse revelations coming soon as former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald recently alluded to.

Dumping General Spock after all of the already substantial revelations of gross misconduct really doesn’t amount to much damage control, as former Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman once remarked “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube” but considering the bumbling incompetence of the Obama administration on this entire fiasco being too late with too little would be par for the course. I would personally suspect that Alexander is getting the hell out of Dodge before the posse arrives with the really serious stuff about what the NSA is really involved in. I am talking about extrajudicial killing, running interference for Wall Street banks (laundering drug money?), industrial espionage and Christ only knows what else. The story is already out about the foreign assassinations, particularly Obama’s beloved toy drone fleet and one gets the feeling that the other shoe is about to drop.

Greenwald who just revealed that he was leaving The Guardian for a unique opportunity described as a new media venture funded by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. It was divulged previously that  he would be teaming up with fellow investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill (Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield) and that they would be working on a story about the assassination business. Scahill’s latest book takes a good look at JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), the elite unit formerly run by General Stanley McChrystal and possibly involved with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s death squads. Just imagine if there was actually proof that NSA surveillance combined with black ops hit teams were operating domestically and conducting targeted killings against Americans right here on our own soil. There is a long list of highly suspicious deaths of those who ran afoul of the establishment, most recently journalist Michael Hastings whose demise in a fiery car explosion does not pass the smell test.

In addition to their upcoming collaboration on assassinations and the NSA, Scahill and journalist Laura Poitras have been revealed that they would be joining Greenwald in the new gig. Things were getting pretty hot for the Guardian with the British government behaving like Norsefire party goons out of V For Vendetta. There is the already notorious supervised destruction of hard drives and computers in the Guardian’s basement as well as the Gestapo style detaining and harassment of Greenwald’s partner David Miranda, a Brazilian citizen under UK anti-terrorism laws. Much like her in Der Homeland our authoritarian allies across the pond have a serious hard-on for journalism and a free press. With British official Jack Straw recently coming out against the Guardian as well as the leading redcoat war criminal David Cameron denouncing the Snowden leaks as damaging national security  it is likely only a matter of time until a joint U.S.-U.K. operation targets the paper with extreme prejudice. Hopefully whatever Greenwald and his new associates have in mind it will blow the entire fascist hijacking of this country by General Alexander’s rogue agency out of the water and result he and all of his criminal accomplices (especially elected government officials who have betrayed their oaths of office) hauled before the courts and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.