Would Obama Authorize Snowden’s Assassination?

“Death solves all problems, no man no problem”

-Joseph Stalin

With the new Oceania’s eternal wars now well into the second decade and the hijacked and subverted government screaming “national security” whenever their illicit programs are threatened by even the most minimal of oversight it is a legitimate question as to how far that they will go. As the concerted pushback against the revelations of former government contractor employee Edward Snowden turned NSA whistleblower roar into the new year, intensifying like a hurricane destined to extract maximum vengeance on landfall could this government now be moving towards escalation? Would President Barack Obama sign off on the targeted assassination of Snowden? Would his administration turn a blind eye while CIA or JSOC hit squads murdered him so as to preserve an aura of plausible deniability? Would any rational person who is aware of just how far down the rabbit hole of an abyss that we have all been dragged into since September 11, 2001 be surprised if this were to occur?

The damage that Snowden has inflicted on the fascist state that rose out of the darkness of that Tuesday morning in late summer of 2001 is immense and as we continually are assured by Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald (who had also best be watching his back) there is more coming on NSA criminality. Just this past weekend, after authoritarians received a late Christmas present with federal Judge William Pauley’s ridiculously anti-American ruling in favor of the American Stasi on Friday there have been stories broken. Germany's Der Spiegel featured a large piece on the NSA's TAO division (Tailored Access Operations) that operates out of a secretive facility in San Antonio and specializes in hacking into computers and networks around the world. The unit offers up an array of sophisticated technical gadgetry, engages in the intercepting of shipped computers in order to implant "back doors" while they are enroute to buyers - yet another revelation that NSA activities are going to do even more costly damage to American businesses and taps into underseas telecommunications cables. If what has been seen to this point and with the escalation of the shadow government's war on journalists (particularly Greenwald) through operatives like Alan Dershowitz, capture of the courts to perform legal gymnastics to find programs to be constitutional on hair-splitting and technicalities and the braying of "treason" charges against Snowden the worst is still yet to be published and the decision has likely already been made to stop it under any and all circumstances.

This would include the removal of Snowden from the mortal coil, not the best option for a desperate rogue state in that it would make him into a martyr but he is even now becoming a powerful symbol that the bastards can be fought. When Snowden came out last weekend and declared victory it crossed a line and it would be so far against the grain of what the post September 11, 2001 junta on the Potomac to think that there is not currently a serious lobbying effort being made to terminate Snowden with extreme prejudice. Hell, it's not like Obama is adverse to ordering the killing of American citizens without due process, he already one-upped George Bush and Dick Cheney with the extrajudicial assassination of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Mr. al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico, for a period following the 9/11 attacks was sought out by the establishment as a rational representation of an American Muslim (see WaPo piece from 2001) and was even invited to a dinner at The Pentagon. The iman became increasingly radicalized by the phony war on terror and its underlying war on Muslims and soon ended up as an enemy of the state, affixed with the al Qaeda devil horns by the propagandists and on the JSOC/CIA kill list. In September of 2011 the Obama administration had al-Awalki killed by a drone strike in Yemen therefore setting the precedent on depriving an American born citizen of any form of due process, not long afterwards his 16 year old son was also blown into hamburger by a drone, he was also an American citizen by birth. Obama's Justice Department provided the necessary legal cover of the killings in the manner that the department always does when high crimes need the stamp of official state sanction. This is not to defend al-Alwaki's calls for jihad on America but there are certain rights that Americans used to be entitled to as a matter of birthright, one being an actual trial. Obama has set a very dangerous precedent here and his ultimate legacy will be that he not only refined and cleaned up the programs of Bush-Cheney but codified them and sold them to liberals, an always gullible bunch.

Dick Cheney's lackey Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA head, a regular on the propaganda circuit continued to nudge the "treason" accusation closer to mass dissemination with his Sunday morning gig on CBS's (the network that was just busted for airing a total fabrication of a propaganda piece on Benghazi) Face the Nation. Hayden, who bears far more responsibility for the unconstitutional NSA programs than current American Stasi Commandant Keith Alexander spoke that Snowden's leaks have left the agency "infinitely weaker" (a damned good thing for America in my opinion) and that "What Snowden is revealing … is the plumbing. He’s revealing how we acquire this information.” The irony of a turd like Hayden speaking of "plumbing" is just priceless and is illustrative of the absolute panic that exists that the Roto Rooter men are slowly unplugging the pipes and that the ensuing torrent that is about to come sluicing out has the capability of drowning the real traitors who have used their wars and fear mongering to disembowel the Constitution and destroy the very concept of a free and open society for their own sordid and nefarious ends. Snowden as it has been made abundantly clear by both the Obama 

administration and the neocon propagandists is already an enemy of the state, just like al-Awlaki was.

So the question remains, will Barry do it if ongoing efforts to drag Snowden back for a show trial and a life in a torture prison do not bear fruit? He has already proved that he is willing to act as judge, jury and executioner out of sheer political expedience and nothing should be ruled out for our constitutional law professor in chief.

The Surveillance State’s Manhattan Firewall

Authoritarians rejoiced as Friday’s bold judicial activism emanating from a New York district court dealt a blow to civil liberties and privacy rights in the post September 11, 2001 Homeland. The smug certainty of a corrupt elite cadre of government officials who knew damned well that the fix was in exalted after the Manhattan miracle allowed an even more corrupt state media to spin away the events of last week, flushing them once and forever down the memory hole.  Judge Pauley’s scathing remarks, scoffing at American’s constitutional right to privacy are a revelation at the extent of the corruption of every institution in this once great country.  With the focus group friendly, bumper sticker two word phrase “Bold Jujitsu” being used to invoke the al Qaeda demon and choke off attempts to bring the NSA surveillance programs under control the judge spewed invective in his defense of the fascist state.

In his ruling, peppered with the sneering disregard for liberty that has become so prevalent wrote:

..it would be an "absurdity" to permit anyone whose records had been collected to challenge the NSA in court, since Congress had allowed only for the phone companies to argue their case in the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"The ACLU would never have learned about the section 215 order authorizing collection of telephony metadata related to its telephone numbers but for the unauthorized disclosures by Edward Snowden," .."It cannot possibly be that lawbreaking conduct by a government contractor that reveals state secrets -- including the means and methods of intelligence gathering -- could frustrate Congress's intent."

What is truly horrifying about this ruling is evident and I excerpt from a Washington Post column by Andrea Peterson entitled “The most Kafkaesque paragraph from today’s NSA ruling” comments on that particular paragraph:

Re-read that a few times and let it sink in. Pauley is essentially saying that the targets of the order have no recourse to challenge the collection of their personal data because Congress never intended for targets to ever know that they were subject to this sort of spying. And that the fact that everyone knows about it now, thanks to Edward Snowden, doesn't change the targets' ability to challenge the legality of the order.

That suggests a troubling possibility: that even if there were clear-cut evidence that the government was sending out illegal 215 orders, the people harmed by the government's illegal conduct might not have any way to stop it. Instead, the only recourse may be for the recipient of an order (such as Verizon) to challenge it in the notoriously secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But Verizon isn't the one whose privacy is harmed by the order, so why would it expend legal resources to fight it?

Pauley’s ruling and the promulgating of its legitimacy using their mighty Wurlitzer not only ensures that all who challenge the rogue state will be not only denied any future recourse but that those who do not heed this last warning and undertake the efforts to fight back are doomed in the most existential sense of the term. None more so than Snowden himself though.

On the morning propaganda circuit the typical array of ghouls were dragged out to defend the mass state criminality. A favorite these days seems to be former NSA director Michael Hayden who is on the cutting edge of the coming search and destroy campaign against former government contractor Booz-Allen employee Edward Snowden. Hayden, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation pushed the envelope in labeling Snowden a “traitor” and without proof nor challenge served up this escalation in rhetoric: "I think there's an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it's treason". It matters not that there is no proof whatsoever that Snowden ever sold a damned thing to any other government and when it comes to traitors selling out America then Hayden need only look into a mirror as the worst stuff is yet to come about the NSA Stasi and what they are doing with all of that information. Industrial espionage is a certainty and when that is the case then the selling secret information to the highest bidder for blackmail and competitive advantage and front running markets based on insider information gleaned by surveillance is inevitably going to follow. That is just the way that things work in The Homeland and men like Hayden belong standing in the dock answering for their crimes against the republic rather than appearing on government propaganda organs to deliver their lies and unproven accusations.

With the counter-offensive shifting into overdrive following Judge Pauley’s wiping his ass with the U.S. Constitution and the bought and paid for media providing the new false narrative the focus is going to soon turn to Snowden himself. It is a perfectly reasonable question to ponder on whether President Barack Obama has taken a break from golf and luaus over his Hawaiian Christmas vacation to consult with those who manage his kill lists. Snowden’s poke in the eye mission accomplished” and “I already won” braggadocio are literally the last straw. I would expect that a hellfire missile now may be in his future if the almost inevitable negotiations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to expel him from Russia for torture and a show trial fail. It is for delicate tasks such as this that JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), the executive branch’s assassination arm exists, for extrajudicial killings. The precedent has already been set with the killings of radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi's denial of due process when he was taken out by a drone in 2011 in Yemen. Obama and the government crossed the Rubicon with that one and while the man was calling for jihad he still was an American and therefore entitled to a trial.

The story of JSOC is one that is chilling given the potential for abuse. The elite military command was at one time referred to as Dick Cheney’s assassination squad and operates with the same degree of impunity that the NSA Stasi does in the world of secret an unaccountable government that we now live in. Just because Snowden isn’t a Muslim calling for violence doesn’t mean that JSOC will not be sent after him similarly. There is another much more ominous question on the NSA surveillance and the secret state in which it operates that has not to this point been asked and that is to what extent does the assassination program extend to?  The NSA program’s enemies list has little to do with preventing terrorism, that is all bullshit for the rubes and the government knows this but it is increasingly likely that it has everything to do with targeting enemies of the surveillance state itself. Michael Hastings anyone?

The gloves are now coming off, Hayden and his fellow miscreants on this morning’s Orwellian two minute hate disinformation broadcasts are the vanguard of what now looms as the empire strikes back.

The Surveillance State Counter Offensive Begins

Given the immense amount of time, money and effort put forth into the construction of the infrastructure of the fascist surveillance state of the new American century along with the eradication of civil liberties it was inevitable that the big pushback was coming. A scant week and a half after the body blow delivered to the NSA Stasi by federal judge Richard Leon for “likely unconstitutional” and “Orwellian” domestic data-mining/spying programs the hydra has reconfigured. Today’s ruling by U.S. District Judge William Pauley in a New York court that the NSA programs are indeed constitutional has delivered a shot across the bow to those seeking to bring the tyrannical apparatus to heel and delivered a belated Christmas present to authoritarian defenders of the abuses of the state against individual rights. The ruling has already sent the treacherous enablers of the destruction of all privacy into jubilation, the porcine terrorist supporting neo-McCarthyist bigot Peter King praised Pauley, stating that his decision “preserves a vital weapon for the United States in our war against international terrorism”. Peals of festive holiday laughter will echo thoughout the lavish homes of vacationing elected officials particularly Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein because nothing quite delivers like a reprobate judge in a friendly venue. What Judge Pauley didn't bother to mention when rubber-stamping fascism with the 'terrorism' seal of approval is that none of the spying has ever been proven to have stopped even one terror plot but is very useful to the state when dissenters begin to be officially labeled as 'terrorists'.

The ruling smacked down an ACLU challenge to the anti-American domestic bulk data collection of the phone records of tens of millions of law abiding citizens whose constitutional rights ot not be subjected to unreaonable searches. Pauley played the 9/11 card beautifully in writing that “technology allowed al Qaeda to operate decentralized and plot international attacks remotely” and that the programs represented the “government’s counter-punch”. Sucker punch is more like it given that Americans have never been given any say so in the use of the ‘day that everything changed’ to steal their tax money and use it to pay billions of dollars to well-heeled contractors waving campaign donations at corrupt politicians to effectively pay for their own enslavement. Fittingly the ruling was delivered in Manhattan, the birthplace of the full blown fascist takeover of what used to be at least in theory a free country.

Sunday morning talk show bookers are likely frantically lining up their Sabbath day state propaganda forums with the usual defenders of this new order and the those same programs will serve as the launching pad for the coming smear campaigns, fear-mongering and official lies that will now be used to cement the surveillance systerms into place forever. Again, all of this is not any surprise for there are too many criminals in high places and far too much rottenness that would be exposed were the NSA programs brought under control and exposed to transparency. There had to have been much gnashing of the teeth earlier this week when former government contractor Booz-Allen employee turned whistleblower Edward Snowden effectively rubbed the noses of the usurpers into a big pile of shit with his “mission accomplished” statement then followed up by his response to the Queen of England’s Christmas address. Now it’s payback time.

At the tip of the spear will be the professional electronic hitmen, for example celebrity pundit, fascist activist and Harvard big shot Alan Dershowitz who appeared on CNN on Wednesday to viciously slime former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald in his typical cowardly and vile manner:

“As far as Greenwald is concerned, he’s an ideologue. I don’t think he would have revealed this information if it had been critical of Venezuela or Cuba or the Palestinian Authority. You know, he doesn’t like America. He doesn’t like Western democracies. He’s never met a terrorist he didn’t like. So he’s a very hard-left ideologue that uses this to serve his political agenda not simply to reveal information in a neutral way. That makes him very different from WikiLeaks, I think.”

A charlatan of the highest order Dershowitz despite his high public profile has little credibility which makes him a perfect regular on the state-corporate media whenever the need for character assassination beckons. It is rarely if ever noted that he is a media whore of an opportunist whose idea of legal integrity was to attach himself to the O.J. Simpson murder trial like a barnacle on the bottom of a garbage barge. It was a media circus that never lacked for clowns and the careers of long tenured cable television ‘legal experts’ are owed to “the Juice”. The references to leftism and being a “very hard left ideologue” are regular talking points directly from the fanatic infested neocon sewer in which the likes of David Horowitz, Pamela Gellar, James Kirchick, BIll Kristol and other propagandists deliver their jeremiads from via Commentary, Front Page Magazine and The Weekly Standard. The attack on Greenwald is a preemptive shot at the new media venture First Look Media, already high on the hit list for a lazy, venal and corrupt media establishment grown fat from suckling off of power. Dershowitz makes Geraldo Rivera look like a towering giant of journalism by comparison.

It would be interesting to know what ensured that Judge Pauley could be counted on to be the go to guy on this latest use of the Constitution as toilet paper but don’t count any serious analysis from the normal poisoned information channels while trashing Judge Leon’s competence and integrity are fair game. Just listen to Bush regime’s legal eagle on codifying torture John Yoo whose expertise has been trotted out for something outside of opining on whether the president has the right to crush a child’s testicles to smear Leon as "out of touch".

The attack dogs have now been loosed, have the scent of blood in their nostrils and hunt in packs.

A Tale of Two Christmas Speeches

In a revealing contrast of Christmas messages from President Barack Obama as well as from Pope Francis the difference between the permanent warfare state of The Homeland and the message on the teachings of Jesus Christ were made clear. While the Pontiff delivered his initial Christmas message to the world from St. Peter’s basilica, calling for peace, in Sudan and in Syria even as the warmongers in America continue to push for war in both countries as well as a resolution to the forever intractable Israel-Palestine situation Barry was promoting militarism and empire. Obama, in Hawaii on holiday vacation with his family took time for the obligatory visit to a Marine Corps base for a public relations appearance to pay homage to our imperial stormtroopers.  He laid in on thick as he and the first lady milked the military appearance for all that it was worth, “Michelle and I know that we would not enjoy the freedoms that we do if it weren’t for the incredible dedication and professionalism and work that we do” crooned El Presidente. While it wasn’t exactly a surprise visit to a Baghdad war zone chow hall on Thanksgiving Day wielding a plastic turkey as a prop as his predecessor did it was more than surreal to hear the man whose NSA surveillance programs are a global disgrace and who dials up drone strikes that often kill innocent women and children taking about “freedoms” and holiday peace.

The always pervasive U.S. militarism can no longer be escaped, not even on Christmas Day in this armed madhouse of a country. It is now deeply embedded within the national DNA now, sporting events are rife with military references and metaphors, cloying and insincere homages to our blessed troops, million dollar flyovers of stadiums and mandatory suckling of all things military have siphoned off any form of enjoyment from all of it for a non-worshipper of the religion of the state.  It has gotten far worse too, since “the day that changed everything” and set the U.S. on a course of perpetual warfare, when in the aftermath the flags and bunting and regalia were a star spangled reincarnation of the state bachanallia of late stage Weimar Republic when everything also changed for another society that had a date with destiny and an unyielding love of militarism.

Writer Lawrence Vance had a piece over at Lew Rockwell.com entitled The Cult of the Uniform from which I excerpt:

There are a number of distinctly American symbols that evoke feelings of pride, nationalism, and patriotism. There is the Constitution. There are monuments like Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial. There are structures like the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. There are buildings like the White House and the Capitol. There are also things that there are many of: American flags, bald eagles, dollar bills, and images of Uncle Sam and the Great Seal of the United States.

In the last ten or so years, these symbols have all been superceded by one image that is so powerful and so overwhelming that it drives some Americans to tears and causes others to act in the most nonsensical and irrational of ways.

I am referring to a military uniform.

Not just any military uniform, of course, but one of the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. And especially a uniform adorned with lots of badges, awards, medals, ribbons, and insignias. Naturally, a uniform that indicates that a member of the military has been in combat is far superior to a uniform not so ornamented.

The reverential status bestowed upon our servicemen and women, who are now just anointed with the title of “HERO” despite the majority of them never actually having engaged in any actual sort of heroic behavior as has been understood from previous days is a dangerous distinction in that it is a confirmation of a society that has already accepted authoritarianism. Put the “heroes” in full uniform and patrolling the streets of America when the day of the collapse finally arrives and it smells like tyranny. Obama also used his Christmas radio address to appeal to the better angels of Americans:

"For families like ours, that service is a chance to celebrate the birth of Christ and live out what He taught us - to love our neighbors as we would ourselves; to feed the hungry and look after the sick; to be our brother's keeper and our sister's keeper."

But it all rings very hollow coming from this leader of this country at this time in history. While the Pope used his Christmas address to also reach out to those of other faiths as well as atheists to call for peace and social justice it must always be remembered that we live in a corrupt land of hypocrisy where each and every year brings more income inquality and a callousness of our ‘leaders’. Were Obama a sincere man he would have spent the holiday acting more like Jesus, perhaps providing comfort in one of the plentiful tent cities that have sprung up while the national credit card continues to be racked for more wars and banker bailouts instead of making a phony public relations appearance on a Marine base acting like he gives a rats ass about the troops while his administration and the detestable congress continue to work ceaselessly to start more wars that they can then be marched off to serve as cannon fodder for corporate profits.

And most importantly of all, campaign contributions. As General Smedley Butler so aptly put it "War is a Racket" and nowhere on the globe more so than here in our god kissed land of destiny. 

Snowden Declares Victory, Calls out Rogers and Feinstein

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA…I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

-Edward Snowden

In an extensive interview former government contractor Booz-Allen-Hamilton employee turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden proclaimed that in the battle over the exposure of unconstitutional spying programs that he is the victor and it would be hard to argue this point. The interview, conducted by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman was published Monday following what has arguably been the worst week for the American Stasi at Fort Meade since the initial leaks were published. It was not a festive holiday season for fascists across the fruited plain as CBS propaganda vehicle 60 Minutes NSA puff piece was met with ridicule, federal judge Richard Leon ruled that the activities of the rogue agency were likely “unconstitutional” and “Orwellian”, Barack Obama was read the riot act at a White House meeting with tech executives and the NSA review panel report was less the total whitewash than expected. Mr. Snowden certainly deserves his props for risking his life to out the darkest machinations of the post September 11, 2001 fascist Homeland and has to this point avoided being abducted and imprisoned at a CIA black site where he would assuredly be tortured six ways from Sunday.

The published comments and story are a part of a 14 hour series of interviews granted by Snowden from Russia where he has been chased and trapped by Obama and Holder’s police state goons who are without a doubt desperately working to get him into a U.S. secret court for a show trial and public vilification by a corrupt state-corporate media. It would be Orwell’s “two minute hate” 24/7 if the government managed to somehow abduct Snowden and he would be utterly crushed by the full fury of the state in order to discourage more patriotically inclined Americans who have had it with the ruination of a once great country by corrupt sociopaths and may be encouraged to reveal the vast institutional con games of a government gone to rot.  It would take ten Guantanamo Bays to hold all of the criminals within the system, the abusers of the public trust and the war criminals were the rule of law to ever be restored in this collapsing empire of greed, vileness and hate and the hijackers of the system would never allow that to happen least they end up occupying those cells or in the words of neocon war criminal John Bolton find themselves swinging from a tall oak tree.

In Snowden’s published comments he not only declared victory: “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated” but reclaimed that most lamentable two word phrase so abused by former President George W. Bush in 2003 when he stated that: “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished.” Bush’s enormous waste of taxpayer money for a staged event where he landed in full military gear on the deck of the aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego was a propaganda coup that would have been choreographed by Leni Reifenstahl herself and such garish shows were instrumental in laying the foundations of the NSA fascist programs and the public acceptance of them. The Iraq war of course has been a historical disaster and now over ten years after Dubya’s costly publicity stunt and subsequent proclamation of “Mission Accomplished” the country is roiling with violence again and Uncle Sam is once again sending arms into the area that could and will likely end up in the hands of Islamic militants, this was revealed in a story in today's New York Times. That however is a still developing, ugly story that will receive its due very soon.

Snowden also managed to get in a few shots at two of the most contemptible fascists in a rotten congress with his great denouncing of Republican House Intelligence Committee head Mike Rogers and the impenetrable firewall of cellulite that protects the NSA from scrutiny Senate Intelligence Committee queen Diane Feinstein:

“Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions” in committee hearings, he said. “Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. . . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

Touche. The failure of congress and particularly powerful committee heads to enforce oversight is a stunning example of the degree of the contempt for the Constitution and the very principles of American freedom and liberty that is held by those who are at least in theory supposed to provide representation to the people. It is very obvious by now exactly who Rogers, DiFi and their ilk truly represent and that is the mega-money of the military industrial complex and the surveillance state. They are long overdue for a public shaming and deserve far worse, removal from office, a trial and a jail cell would be far more appropriate for that sort of treasonous scum.

Let the new year bring even more revelations of what the NSA's real purpose is now that it is being revealed that these programs haven't a damned thing to do with preventing terrorism as advertised.

Are Syrian Barrel Bombs the New Sarin?

Percolating heavily for the first time in months the state-corporate media is beginning to produce more tales of dead children in Syria, still more alleged victims of the Assad regime.  The latest horror stories from the abattoir relate to some truly nasty munitions – barrel bombs – that have been being dropped on populated areas by what are reported to be government helicopters. The bombs, which are described as improvised explosive devices being barrels or barrel shaped containers packed with explosives and shrapnel have largely been used in the city of Aleppo and are capable of causing horrific damage, this is especially so given the presence of the shrapnel within. There has been much reportage of late over the mounting death toll courtesy of the barrel bombs and look for it to continue as the neocons, war freaks and their media operatives will continue to try to package a relaunch of the justification for U.S. intervention in Syria. They nearly pulled it off with the great chemical weapons scam of 2013, Barry was preaching war to the people and were it not for an inconvenient case of diarrhea of the mouth from his Secretary of State allowing Russian leader Vladimir Putin to intervene we would now be mired in the midst of an increasingly brutal civil war.

The war machine has continued to agitate for action in Syria goaded along by the Saudis and silent partner Israel (which is more preoccupied with starting another war in Iran) and the ongoing killing of civilians will provide much fodder in the coming weeks. But it is just more of the usual propaganda and warmongering, nothing is more able to influence American hearts and minds to support foreign interventions in a civil war that is none of our business like piles of little dead bodies as American tykes are gleefully awaiting Santa. The carnage factor this time is far more graphic than the endless loop of those twitching, dying Syrian children, the victims of a still mysterious sarin gas attack in Ghouta that nearly convinced the sheeple to bleat their consent for yet another Middle Eastern intervention.  While the narrative of the little severed limbs and lives cut short is indeed tragic, even more so when it is cynically pushed to send more people to die there is the obvious lack of context, the big lie of omission. This being of course that the poor little innocent children in Iraq who fell victims to U.S. bombs and the fallout from the sectarian warfare that was set off when President George W. Bush and his gaggle of neocon war criminals  chose to attack and invade a country that did nothing to us are always left out. They are just as dead as any victims of Syrian barrel bombs yet are merely “collateral damage”, acceptable victims of the righteous cause of making the world safe for McDonalds and Wal-Mart.

While Syria has been relegated to the back burner as the treasonous cabal of U.S. Senators frantically work to sabotage the P5+1 Iran peace talks it has never truly been off of the radar for the war machine. The situation continues to deteriorate as those freedom fighting rebels that U.S. officials the likes of blood thirsty Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and others so advocated for have increasingly come to be dominated by serious Islamist fanatics looking to go medieval on Assad’s ass. When considering that those type of savages differ very little from the barbaric hoards that inflicted unspeakable cruelty on their victims centuries ago it would be difficult to not understand why the Assad regime is becoming increasingly desperate to destroy them. With the rebel forces dug deeply into densely populated areas such as Aleppo they also should bear a fair share of the blame for the mounting death toll of children but you won't see that sort of moral equivalence pointed out by the corrupt media in this country which long ago ensured that the devil horns would be affixed to President Bashar al Assad alone. In yet another aspect of the ridiculous Time Magazine "Person of the Year" award that was given to the Pope rather than former government contractor Booz-Allen employee turned NSA whistleblower it was Assad who was also a runner up and probably would have adorned the cover had El Presidente and Secretary of Skull and Bones Kerry been able to have their war in September. Assad is also vilified in the 'iiberal' New Republic as "Madman of the Year". 

War is always brutal, particularly civil wars and even more so when ancient religious and ethnic tensions are exploited by foreign inciters of violence with their own agendas. While the barrel bombings don’t rise to the level of bullshit that the sarin gas attacks did, simply because it was a full blown lie that the rebel forces did not possess the capability to concoct the toxic brew they still are going to be used very soon, likely the weekend after Christmas has passed via the Sunday morning bloviation circuit to gin up the case for U.S. entry into another conflict where we have zero compelling national interest. There will inevitably be calls for the military action that is most dear to liberals, humanitarian interventions coming in the new year to Sudan as well, Obama is already planting the seeds for U.S. action and rebels there reportedly fired on U.S. aircraft over the weekend. There are also now reports of the discovery of mass graves. 

All they want for Christmas is war. 

New Revelations Show that NSA Spied on Top Ally Israel

Stunning new revelations from former government contractor Booz-Allen-Hamilton employee turned whistleblower Edward Snowden have shown the NSA has been spying on that most indispensable ally of them all – Israel.  In a Guardian story that broke Friday it was reported that the American Stasi and their partners in crime across the pond GCHQ were spying on former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the latest addition to the list of “allies” that been targets of the rogue intelligence agency. U.S. intelligence thugs also maintained an apartment across the street from then Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak as well.  It is going to be very interesting to see how this goes over particularly with the normal public proclamations that United States leaders are in ‘lockstep’ with the Israelis and that there is “no daylight” between the most critical as well as most high maintenance country in the Middle East. I can’t imagine that Israel would be in the least bit shocked that the NSA is spying on their leaders, after all General Alexander’s electronic goon squads already have a sharing agreement or a "memorandum of understanding" to provide the data of millions of law-abiding Americans to the Israeli intelligence services as was previously reported. The spying on Jewish leaders should send a chill down the spines of all who have an awareness of history and any comparisons to the German Gestapo would be fair to make despite protestations by the politically correct who regularly invoke Godwin's Law to stifle free speech against tyrannical actions of out of control governments.

The spying on Israeli leaders is only a part of the investigative tale conducted jointly by the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times that also outed other targets including charities and the vice president of the European Commission none of which have a damned thing to do with 'terrorists' but rather industrial espionage and using the power of the U.S. state surveillance apparatus to create an unfair competitive balance. Hell, given that free enterprise has effectively been killed here in The Homeland where ingenuity, hard work and the once taken for granted virtue of American fair play have been replaced by bribery, lying, cheating, legal chicanery and buying political influence have replaced what was once capitalism only schmucks play fairly and those who are the most successful continue to destroy the system that at one time made this country into an economic power second to none. That  however is a story for another time which most assuredly will be coming soon as more documents are leaked debunking the corrupt government's ongoing sale of these monstrous programs as being necessary to keep us all safe.

Interestingly the normally demagogic paranoid right wing Israeli leader  Bibi Netanyahu was at first strangely muted on this gross breach of trust from a critical ally but has now vented, calling the snooping “unacceptable” and has called for an investigation of the activities. Not that there should be much sympathy for Netanyahu given his bellicose rhetoric, refusal to allow for a diplomatic solution over the Iranian nuclear program and the outright summoning of his loyal winged monkeys in the U.S. Congress to sabotage the talks but he is absolutely correct it is “unacceptable”. Being criticized for aggressive intelligence gathering by the Israelis though is pretty goddamned hypocritical given the existende of the aforementioned “memorandum of understanding” as well as the currently incarcerated American citizen Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence employee who was a spy for Israel and convicted to a life sentence. Mr. Netanyahu has long been a top advocate for the release of Pollard and he is already using the news about the NSA’s spying on Olmert and Barak to push for his release, cynically posting a video of him meeting with Pollard's wife on You Tube. There is also the ugly history of Israeli meddling in domestic U.S. politics notably the AIPAC spy case in which two pro-Israeli lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman were receiving transfers of classified information from former Defense Department employee Lawrence Franklin. Franklin was charged under the Espionage Act before the Obama administration’s flagrant abuse of it but the case against the AIPAC lobbyists was dropped, one can only imagine how much dirty laundry would have been aired had the trial been allowed to proceed. Bibi has a valid point but in the constitutional wasteland of the post-September 11. 2001 world hypocrisy has become the coin of the realm. So far he has yet to formally accuse Obama of running a Gestapo unlike German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has rightly affixed the Stasi label to Barry and the boys and their fascist surveillance machine.

I would wonder where all of the ardent defenders of both the NSA Stasi and waging wars that are more in the national interest of Israel than the United States stand on this, in particular the Senate renegades who are going to ring in the new year with the Iran negotiation killing bill that will set the stage for the war with Iran. Democrat New Jersey Senator and alleged prostitute chaser Robert Menendez and Israeli toady Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois and the 26 co-sponsors of their anti-American bill to effectively nuke the P5+1 negotiations have an interesting conundrum that only can only further expose their corruption, hypocrisy and disloyalty to their American constituents. How can they condemn the mass NSA surveillance that most of those fascists so adore only when it includes spying on Israel at the same time that they are hellbent on an unprecedented subversion of American interests in order to deliver Netanyahu his war? Were this a sane country where the rules of law were respected then Jonathan Pollard would soon have 27 new buddies in his cell block.

Renegade Senate Preps to Deliver Iran War for 2014

Working largely on the behalf of a foreign power an unprecedented U.S. Senate power play is about to drag the United States into what is to be a ruinously costly and potentially catastrophic war with Iran. In the latest and to this point most serious effort to sabotage the P5+1 talks with Iran on limiting nuclear programs in exchange for easing of sanctions the U.S. Congress is now preparing to act against the long term safety and security interests of the American people in ensuring that war will be coming. The effort is led by the normal rat pack of warmongering swine the likes of John McCain, Lindsey Graham , the callow and opportunistic Marco Rubio, Wall Street’s very own Chuck Schumer and the Texas Zamboni Ted Cruz being the most vocal and media accessible shills for WW III. The bill itself, a piece of trash being pimped under the name of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act ensures that there will be the exact type of additional sanctions applied that the Iranian’s have stated would end the negotiations. 

Christ knows that we certainly could never enter into any sort of rational and normal sort of relationship with the oil rich Iran allowing the U.S. to tell the degenerate, terrorist supporters in the House of Saud to go and pound sand. Hell, when fifteen of the nineteen September 11, 2001 hailed from The Kingdom the biggest question that should be asked is why did Bush attack Afghanistan and Iraq instead of Riyadh.But the constantly carping Saudis, led by Prince Bandar bin Sultan (aka Bandar Bush) aren’t the most meddlesome in the Iran provocations, they have already destabilized Syria by funding Islamic militants and then watching as their efforts to have Barry and the boys start a war that would primarily benefit them go up like a flaming bag of dogshit.

The real problem with the now extremely dangerous push to start the long agitated for Iran debacle is of course the right-wing regime of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. This has been the case for too long now and to this point has been the one grave mistake that the corrupt, incompetent and psychopathic regimes in Washington haven’t made. It was looking like a go back during the Bush regime but Dubya wisely overruled Dick Cheney on this one and Obama became president and Bibi Netanyahu became Prime Minister of Israel in 2009. Despite his constant hysteria, bullying, allies within the U.S. media and political system and ridiculous drawings of cartoon bombs at the United Nations Netanyahu has thus far been unable to push the U.S. into waging the war that he lacks the balls to carry out on his own, sending his own people into the meat grinder instead of American servicemen and women.

Now that has all changed as desperation oozes Bibi's pores for a peace deal with Iran would mean that he is only Sir Winston Churchill in his own warped mind. Netanyahu has shed any pretenses of rationality and a respect for letting the government that pumps billions of dollars of taxpayer money (largely military aid)into his country every year in mobilizing his stooges in Congress. The “Nuclear Free Weapon Iran Act” is the lovechild of a bipartisan coalition (notice how well they all get along when it comes to murdering non-white, non-Christian people?) led by New Jersey Senator Robert Mendez and Illinois Senator Mark Kirk who according to comments made via telephone to a private audience revealed who his true constituents are. Kirk regularly receives a boatload of money from AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) which is mounting an all out offensive to slap deal-killing sanctions on Iran and put the U.S. on a path to war. Menendez, who is the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and I do put the emphasis on "foreign" as according to the website Open Secrets led all members of the Senate in receiving payola from Israeli interest groups for 2012.  He also has a had a rather interesting recent run in with a prostitution scandal of the type that would make a member of this rotten congress susceptible to the type of sexual blackmail that could influence voting.  The big push for the Menendez-Kirk 'Screw America" bill has caused consternation to the point where an open letter from ten committee chairs - including DiFI - was sent to Senate Majority Leader and Democrat party poobah Harry Reid warning explicitly of the threat to the Iran talks and even the feckless Obama has threatened a veto. With 26 "bipartisan" co-sponsors, the lobbying might of AIPAC and Bibi's continued demagoguery this thing is going to pass early next year. Palmetto State Princess Lindsay Graham has her panties in a wad over a promised "veto proof majority". Jesus, wouldn't it be nice to see this venal pack of assholes manage 67 votes for something that benefits America.

The renegade Senate managed to slither out of D.C. for their latest taxpayer paid vacation prior to getting their dirty deal done but rest assured that it will be at the top of the list come January when they return. The deranged Netanyahu is hellbent at punching his ticket with history and dragging Americans along on the descent into hell.  This Reuters article lets slip that any facade that hid his meddling in congress and concealing his control of U.S. politicians is now no longer important to the 'new Churchill':

Taking even wider aim, Netanyahu said negotiators should demand a change to Iran's "genocidal policy" toward Israel, manifested through its supply of thousands of missiles to Palestinian and Lebanese militants, and its calls for the Jewish state's destruction.

The wish list has received a cool reception in Washington, will be given short shrift by Iran and was described as "crazy" by a senior Western diplomat. But experts believe the Israeli leader wants to put pressure on President Barack Obama and prevent U.S.-Iranian ties from thawing too far, too fast.

One way to do that would be to send a message to Israel's supporters on Capitol Hill. The Senate has already sparred with Obama over whether new sanctions against Iran should be prepared.

A former Netanyahu adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. legislators were Netanyahu's target audience.

"It's one thing for Congress to hold off on imposing sanctions, quite another for it to cancel sanctions under a final deal with Iran. Netanyahu wants to help set the tone in Congress and he doesn't mind if Obama notices."

There is a growing sense in Washington that Netanyahu has accepted it is unlikely he can derail the negotiations, so he may have reverted to spoiling tactics, however unpopular they may be in Obama's administration.

"I can't believe the Americans are happy about (Netanyahu) sounding off the way he is at this critical point in time," said one Israeli official, who has direct knowledge of recent White House consultations between U.S. and Israeli experts on Iran.

The United States views engagement with the new, relatively moderate government in Iran as a chance to defuse more than three decades of tensions.

While the piece accurately (and surprisingly) fingers Bibi for mustering his cats paws in congress it fails to note that the reference to " defuse more than three decades of tensions" in Iran are the result of the CIA backed 1953 coup against the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mossadegh and led to the reign of terror of the  U.S. puppet Shah of Iran and his torture regime. The state-corporate media's greatest lies are those of omission and perhaps there is no greater of an omission than a discussion of Israel's own nuclear weapons when it comes to the invocation of the Iran's nukes. Given the increasingly fascistic track that Netanyahu's country has placed itself on as well as it's extreme and unstable leadership would it not be the safest course for the planet to ensure that neither Iran nor Israel had a nuclear weapons capability?

With the Senate now gone fully rogue with no aspersions of any longer concealing who and what they truly represent (it ain't America folks) we now enter a truly perilous time in history. With it fully obvious that none of the Menendez-Kirk jihadists have ever been made subject to the Foreign Agents Registration Act and are hellbent on self-immolation for the sake of a foreign country the future is bleak.  The collapse that has to this point been put off is coming now and all Americans need to consider what they need to do in order to protect themselves and their families.

WA-PO Fascists Rush to Defend Unconstitutional NSA Spy Programs

Organized opposition to the reigning in of the NSA Stasi was preordained and the usual suspects being neoconservative warmongers with zero respect for either the Constitution nor any concept of an America that is not on a permanent war footing are squealing like stuck pigs. With the reverberations to this week’s ruling by Federal Judge Richard Leon that only one of the myriad NSA programs  being the metadata gathering and storing for as yet to be revealed mysterious future use of bulk telephone records of millions was “Orwellian” and “likely unconstitutional” and then the tepid (but better than nothing) report of Obama’s NSA review panel beginning to finally batter the Stasi at Fort Meade the pitched defense has begun. The front lines of the war for public opinion are of course the D.C. neocon propaganda beacon that is The Washington Post. Not that the paper doesn't publish the occasional piece of excellent journalism, Barton Gellman has reported on the NSA casting the rogue intelligence operation in a considerably less favorable light than his colleagues in the teeming snakepit of an editorial section and Dana Priest has also has outstanding work to her credit like the Top Secret America series. However in the sewer that is the Washington beltway the paper is the preeminent news source although the cheesy tabloid style Politico is closing ground.

Today’s WaPo alone features a veritable holiday stocking bursting at the seams with fear-mongering, a prominently featured column, a joint effort led by former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey parses a boatload of legalistic bullshit in order to discredit Leon’s ruling – you have to give it to Mukasey, at least he is consistent in his contempt for the Constitution. The piece ends with the standard lie that turning America into a fascist police state is necessary to keep the sheep safe: “Most Americans willingly accept less privacy in exchange for the conveniences the Internet makes possible. But Leon’s analysis means that U.S. intelligence agencies cannot protect Americans from foreign threats using the same analytical tools that private companies employ”.  And any column that starts off with the following just cannot be taken seriously:

“A federal judge’s ruling Monday that the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) bulk telephone metadata collection is “likely” unconstitutional is wrong on the law and the facts. It conflicts with the opinions of 15 other federal judges who have sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and approved the NSA’s metadata collection 35 times since 2006.”

The FISA court of course is a secret court where there is no representation present from civil liberties advocates nor attorneys arguing the opposite side. It is what it is, an official rubber stamp on the ever growing expansion of the government’s power to control the lives of the citizenry. It takes a real legal contortionist to pull some bizarre interpretation of the Constitution out of his ass that supports the existence of secret courts, this is truly a man who would be in good company in the service of Hitler’s Gestapo or Stalin’s NKVD.  But that is what the neocons have always been about, using the memes of the foreign menace to cloak the real threat to Americans which is the fascist bent of our very own government and the revolving door of fifth-columnists the likes of Mukasey who like termites have spent decade gnawing away at our cherished freedoms. Complementing the neocon former A.G. is the always reliable shill for the PNAC/Clean Break manifestos of the eternal Middle Eastern war that is Jennifer Rubin, a propagandist as loathsome as she is prolific.

Rubin, when she isn't openly lying she is smearing libertarians, embracing Obama whenever his policies and statements are steeped in the rebooting of the Cold War and backing up swine like Mukasey with drivel like this vomit inducing bit "The NSA review report should be tossed in the trash" in which she refers to a "pre 9/11 mindset" and backs Mukasey's defense of the secret FISA court that is not included within the U.S. Constitution from which I excerpt:

The House and Senate intelligence committee chairmen also will be highly skeptical of the report. In a curt statement, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) already declared, “Though I am still studying the details, I have serious concerns with some of the report’s 46 recommendations. Any intelligence collection reforms must be careful to preserve important national security capabilities. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress to enact meaningful reforms in the near future.”

Like Rogers, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been a responsible defender of the NSA program. In response to the much-criticized district court ruling holding the program unconstitutional, she issued a detailed rebuttal pointing out that the ruling “differs from those of at least 15 separate federal district court judges who sit, or have sat, on the FISA Court and have reauthorized the program every 90 days — a total 35 times in all” as well as another district court judge from California. After pointing out that the Supreme Court will have the final say, she noted, “Those of us who support the call records program do so with a sincere belief that it, along with other programs, is constitutional and helps keep the country safe from attack. I believe the program can benefit from additional transparency and privacy protections — including additional public reporting and added court review provisions which were recently adopted by the Senate Intelligence Committee in the bipartisan FISA Improvements Act.”

There you have it, any column that not only defends secret courts but also hard core and corrupt fascists who use their plum congressional committee chair positions to wage war against the American people cannot be taken seriously.

While the NSA is defended the insipid Charles Kraüthammer wages a rearguard attack on – groan – Obamacare, the massive corporate scam that has deftly been repackaged as a Bircheresque communist takeover of America by longtime, well paid propagandists looking to rouse the rabble for a 2014 storming of the polls. Obamacare sucks, has been falsely sold as healthcare reform when it is nothing but a taxpayer subsidized gift to the parasitic insurance industry and has provided greedy corporations with the perfect opportunity to jettison those inconvenient drags on annual executive bonus amounts that are employee dependents. Only in a country as dumbed down as this one does this pass for communism, socialism or Marxism when it is what it is and that is fascism – a merger of corporate and state power, just like the ongoing government support of financial markets with 85 billion a month in free gambling money to Wall Street casinos. That all three systems do nothing but redistribute wealth to a corrupt, entrenched elite with varying degrees of the use of state power against those not connected is rarely if ever noted. But Kraüthammer has bills to pay too so the flogging of the dead horse continues and I have yet to see the sleazy bastard critique the loss of civil liberties under the rogue surveillance machine run by the NSA.

The Washington Post has long been one of the most sordid sources of big state propaganda in the land and has for too long been able to live off of the laurels of the Watergate reportage that led to the downfall of Richard M. Nixon. It was former publisher Philip Graham who was recruited by the CIA's Frank Wisner for Operation Mockingbird the agency's prototype program to transform media into state propaganda organs. The WaPo's legacy of collaborating with the deep state intelligence agencies will continue as the torch is now passed to the new owner, Amazon's Jeff Bezos who has sealed a $600 million deal to provide the CIA with cloud services.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.