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.

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.