Russia Likely to Extend Political Asylum for Patriotic Snowden

At this point it is difficult to see the Obama administration, the warmongering neocons at the State Department and the constantly squealing authoritarian freaks in Congress getting any bigger bug up their asses than the one that they already have embedded there against Russian leader Vladimir Putin so it remains to be seen how much weeping and gnashing of the teeth will occur now that the word out of Russia is that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's asylum is likely to be extended. This would be great news for those of us in The Homeland and the larger world outside who value the great service that the patriot has already provided by outing the NSA as a smoother, more sophisticated version of the East German Stasi - although from the ongoing flurry of stories based on Snowden's leeks they are obviously far less competent. The Snowden leaks have allowed the post September 11, 2001 star-spangled fascist surveillance machine to be seen as exactly the menace to freedom that it is and the US establishment has been furious ever since he was able to elude capture by US goons in Hong Kong last June.

So much for the dishonest calls for Snowden to come home to argue his case that was floated by that pathologically dishonest bitch Hillary Rodham Clinton during her interview with The Guardian last week. Hillary may be able to successfully sell her bullshit that he would have a chance at a fair trial to many but that is just sucker bait for the rubes who don't have an inkling that the totalitarian dream that is the Espionage Act of 1917 precludes any potential defense that Snowden could be entitled to. Were he to return he would rapidly be thrown into some dank, brutal and cold hell on an undisclosed military base where he would be tortured and subjected to psychological torment because hey, that is just the way that we roll in the USA! USA! USA! anymore. The effeminate Skull and Bones pedigreed doofus John Kerry's demand that Snowden "man up" is just a less sophisticated taunt to get Snowden's goat - he is far too smart for either of the venal, immoral slimeballs who have risen to the apex of the Democratic party and Russia is as good as it is going to get until this filthy, corrupt power structure has been banished and driven back into the sewers where it belongs.

The momentum set off by Snowden - despite widespread propaganda, demonization and disinformation ops being waged in the corrupt state-corporate media - has continued despite every effort to quash it. Critical European ally Germany just hosted two pre-Snowden whistleblowers in William Binney and Thomas Drake to give official testimony on NSA abuses to a government committee. Then there are  Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman who continue to report on the abuse of the NSA programs that were said to only be necessary to combat "terrorism" in order to collect data on law abiding Americans including those who are targeted for their religious and political views and according to some reports there even may be another NSA leaker besides Snowden. The US establishment can no longer claim the moral high ground when it comes to conducting economic espionage and snooping on dissenters and this is a hugely important factor when it comes to exposing the criminal racketeers who run the government as their credibility suffers the death of a thousand cuts.

Outside of the sheep who choose to live within electronically reinforced cocoons of willful ignorance there is a rapidly growing number of people who are waking up to the scam, much like being freed from the pods in the classic metaphor-movie The Matrix and sooner or later there will be a tipping point reached. Revolutions are really never started by the majority but rather a dedicated vanguard of those who are informed and determined cast off those painful shackles of tyranny, it is history and it is most importantly OUR history as Americans. If you really believe that the Founding Fathers wouldn't be immediately hung as traitors by our current government just as Jesus Christ would be summarily thrown into a 4 x 6 cell at Gitmo were he to return to Earth tomorrow preaching the same message then you don't get it.

But every day people more do get it and the number continues to grow, thanks to Edward Snowden. The man should be brought home to parades and honors and awarded the Medal of Freedom if this country truly existed as it falsely promotes itself as being rather than the lawless, tyrannical bunting-draped banana republic that it has become.

Is There a Second NSA Leaker in Addition to Edward Snowden?

A very interesting question has come out regarding a story on the NSA's targeting of those who utilize internet privacy tools, specifically the browser Tor (The Onion Router) and portable Linux based operating system Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) as potential "terrorists" and "extremists". The question being is that the copy of the XKeyscore code published by German website Das Erste apparently was not a part of the collection of NSA documents procured by whistleblower Edward Snowden but may actually have come from a second leaker. If true this would be a bombshell as well as a game-changer that could reverberate throughout the world and shake the US national surveillance state to its very roots.

The big story which is written by Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz originally broke in Germany's Tagesschau (you will need Google Translate) and cites the NSA targeting of a German student and internet privacy activist named Sebastian Hahn who is involved with the Tor Project. The NSA has determined that anyone who even searches for information on internet encryption and privacy tools is deemed to be an "extremist". They are then flagged for a higher level of monitoring, data-mining and retention of content instead of the limited hangout of only the metadata. This goes far beyond what has been openly admitted to by the Obama administration and the array of national intelligence goons - even if they did manage to retroactively legalize their snooping as divulged in the report by that independent executive branch internal oversight office the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

This is where it begins to get really scary now that NSA has been outed for officially crossing over into thought crime. Internet privacy organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called out NSA for infringing upon the First Amendment "Dear NSA, Privacy is a Fundamental Right, Not Reasonable Suspicion":

Learning about Linux is not a crime--but don't tell the NSA that. A story published in German on Tagesschau, and followed up by an article in English on DasErste.de today, has revealed that the NSA is scrutinizing people who visit websites such as the Tor Project's home page and even Linux Journal. This is disturbing in a number of ways, but the bottom line is this: the procedures outlined in the articles show the NSA is adding "fingerprints"--like a scarlet letter for the information age--to activities that go hand in hand with First Amendment protected activities and freedom of expression across the globe.

The EFF also encourages the continued use of Tor and Tails:

One question that is sure to come up is whether this means people desiring anonymity should stop using Tor or Tails. Here's the bottom line: If you're using Tor or Tails, there is a possibility that you will be subject to greater NSA scrutiny. But we believe that the benefits outweigh the burdens.

In fact, the more people use Tor, the safer you are. That's why we're continuing to run the Tor Challenge. The ubiquitous use of privacy and security tools is our best hope for protecting the people who really need those tools--people for whom the consequences of being caught speaking out against their government can be imprisonment or death. The more ordinary people use Tor and Tails, the harder it is for the NSA to make the case that reading about or using these tools is de facto suspicious.

My personal take on this is that if you are currently using these tools or otherwise engaged in fighting the surveillance state then you are already on their list so just f*ck the NSA. At this point activists and those who challenge the system still have a relative degree of freedom to do exactly that so why retreat into the sheep pack when you have a vested interest in challenging the bastards - especially when that vested interest is in saving one's own skin. If someone is already on the pickup list, the primary objective is to do everything possible to keep the black vans from rolling on that day when it becomes politically acceptable to give the order - such as the next "terrorist" attack like the one that Dick Cheney has promised.

The key aspect of this story - anyone who gets it has understood for a long time that the NSA is lying their asses off and has been using their surveillance systems to build electronic dossiers on journalists, activists, bloggers, political dissidents and anyone who may one day pose a threat to the gangster state - is that the code apparently did not come from Mr. Snowden. According to a piece at the blog Boing Boing, written by Cory Doctorow and entitled "If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance" I except the following:

I have known that this story was coming for some time now, having learned about its broad contours under embargo from a trusted source. Since then, I've discussed it in confidence with some of the technical experts who have worked on the full set of Snowden docs, and they were as shocked as I was.

One expert suggested that the NSA's intention here was to separate the sheep from the goats -- to split the entire population of the Internet into "people who have the technical know-how to be private" and "people who don't" and then capture all the communications from the first group.

Another expert said that s/he believed that this leak may come from a second source, not Edward Snowden, as s/he had not seen this in the original Snowden docs; and had seen other revelations that also appeared independent of the Snowden materials. If that's true, it's big news, as Snowden was the first person to ever leak docs from the NSA. The existence of a potential second source means that Snowden may have inspired some of his former colleagues to take a long, hard look at the agency's cavalier attitude to the law and decency.

Doctorow then cites security expert Bruce Schneier (who has worked with Glenn Greenwald) who writes at the blog Schneier on Security who has stated in his recent post "NSA Targets the Privacy-Conscious for Surveillance" that "And, since Cory said it, I do not believe that this came from the Snowden documents. I also don't believe the TAO catalog came from the Snowden documents. I think there's a second leaker out there." Greenwald himself seems to acknowledge this possibility in a Tweet.

That would be huge - particularly now that Greenwald's big story -that promised "fireworks show" - has been shut down by the US government which has gotten to either the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist himself or to the decision makers at the abysmal (at least to this point anyway) Pierre Omidyar backed venture The Intercept. The prospect of a second NSA leaker - who if he/she is smart, will avoid outing themselves and then being subjected to the concerted campaigns of media and establishment demonization and vilification - must send cold chills up the spines of the American Stasi high command over at Ft. Meade and the rotten to the core political class that protects it from any form of oversight.

It would be even better if there were more than two and with the website Cryptome having alluded to the coming release of all the Snowden material nothing could make for a bigger and better party than a couple of wild cards floating around out there with more seriously explosive evidence like the set of XKeyscore instructions that shows the lengths to which this monstrous surveillance colossus is prepared to go in order to lock down its gains.

Just Like Torture: NSA Spying is Legal

Just like the crushing of a child's testicles can be interpreted to be "legal" within the context of the dictatorial power of the unitary executive as former Bush-Cheney lawyer John Yoo once infamously declared but now all of that NSA mass surveillance and data-mining is "legal" now too.  In a resounding endorsement of the unconstitutional abuses of the American Stasi the "independent"  Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board - which happens to reside within the executive branch  and was formed in 2004 after 9/11 or 'the day when everything changed' has issued a report that is being touted by defenders of the corrupt US power structure as vindication for the programs that NSA whistleblower revealed. George Orwell was definitely an optimist in that he never could have foreseen his grim visions of a savage totalitarian society so meshed with the circus maximus that is the USA!, USA! USA!

According to a story from The Guardian entitled "Some NSA data collection is 'legal and effective', says independent board" , I excerpt the following:

An independent board has declared a set of National Security Agency data collection programs both "legal and effective in protecting national security", despite expressing concern about "intrusions" into individuals' privacy.

As the NSA's troves of ostensibly foreign emails and Americans' international communications come under heavy scrutiny, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board dealt the NSA a victory on Tuesday night by calling the information reaped "valuable". It pointedly rejected similar claims for the bulk collection of US call data in a January report.

Under the so-called "702 program" – named after section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008 – the NSA can harvest large amounts of ostensibly foreign digital information, including Americans' international communications.

AND

In another vindication for the NSA, the PCLOB assessed that the NSA's massive amounts of data collected under section 702 is not "bulk" collection, describing itself as "impressed with the rigor" of government surveillance targeting.

The NSA defends its Prism and "upstream" communications troves long after it has accepted divestiture of US phone records. Representatives from the intelligence agencies and the Obama administration sternly defend both the legality and the wisdom of retaining those content and metadata databases as a measure to defend the US against terrorism, espionage and even crime.

The PCLOB is "independent" alright - in the same way that a Tony Soprano ordered internal audit of the Bada Bing Club conducted by Paulie Walnuts and Christopher Moltisanti would be and this is just pure damage control, pails of whitewash being applied to our nearly fully evolved fascist state and indicative of a concerted effort to make all of the NSA bad publicity just go away.

The rogue establishment is riding high too, especially after at least temporarily quashing that much heralded Glenn Greenwald piece, conducting a mafia style knee-capping on the journalist while he was busy doing his victory lap after the Polk Award, the Pulitzer Prize and his best-selling book on the Snowden revelations "No Place to Hide". There are probably high-fives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Fort Meade NSA Stasi HQ and throughout the national surveillance state, tax-dollar eating great parasite after Greenwald was forced by the government (and likely his billionaire boss Pierre Omidyar whose money funds neo-Nazi atrocities in Ukraine) to pour water over the "fireworks". The preemption of the Greenwald story is likely going to be a mortal wound to the fledgling website The Intercept as well as his long-term reputation itself. This is a shame because the man had stones in standing up to Uncle Scam and his murderous machine of plunder and oppression but you can really only push things so far if you are working within the establishment.

So the state-corporate media will continue to trumpet the "legal" NSA surveillance just as they covered up the same sort of torture techniques that had members of the Nazi command and the Japanese Empire hanged after war crimes trials at the end of World War II - the end of a bygone era when there was actually some moral clarity in this country.

And the "legalization" comes just in time for those patriotic Fourth of July BBQ's where Americans will drink beer, ingest Pink Slime laced hamburgers and dance the slow grind to Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" as though it were our own equivalent of "The Horst Wessel Song". 

They will also be enjoying the fireworks - too bad that they won't be the ones that Glenn Greenwald promised. 

Big Greenwald NSA Story Squashed - For Now

"I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way... I'll never make that mistake again. No more half measures”

- Mike Ehrmantraut

With that cryptic tweet from Pulitzer prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald yesterday it is time to consider seriously that the “imminent” game-changing story on NSA surveillance targets and other acts of wanton criminality has been sunk by the US government. Whatever it is that those “new last-minute claims” that preempted the publication by The Intercept at midnight last night consisted of, they must have been of the gravest nature to derail the biggest story of Greenwald’s career. As to what exactly they were may never be known, perhaps a sealed indictment, the shutdown of The Intercept and billionaire Pierre Omidyar's businesses under some trumped up bullshit interpretation of a terrorist law written in secret then approved by a secret court or even a death threat could have done the trick. There could have been a mole inside of Greenwald’s operation – there has been no secret that The Intercept was hiring – providing leaked information to the government or conducting sabotage or maybe Omidyar just lost his nerve but the fact is that the story has for the moment been effectively killed. 

Greenwald's work on the Snowden documents has been extraordinary and has made him many an enemy within both the corrupt state-corporate US media as well as within the US power structure and political class alike which is truly a badge of honor for the man considering the criminality of the scum that he has exposed. The wrath of the United States government and national security state and their relentless drive to keep the big story under wraps and therefore censored could be expected. I have no doubts towards Greenwald's integrity but his one major blind spot over the last year was his decision to cast his lot with moneybags Omidyar and the fledgling First Look Media which his near barren site The Intercept is a part of. The intentions of Omidyar have already been questioned by many with his fortune and his political support of neo-Nazis in Ukraine and murderous fascists in India and his rapacious globalist interests in pursuit of more money for his eBay expansionism would seemingly make him a strange bedfellow to a crusading journalist like Greenwald. The halting of the publication of the story will only give the doubters, as well as many fence-sitters more reason to question this relationship.

One can understand why Greenwald would jump at the alleged opportunity to build a new media outlet that would challenge the contaminated electronic and print media in The Homeland but perhaps he should have done a more thorough job of researching his new employer. When the blog Pando came out with a story breaking Omidyar's dabbling in foreign dictatorships Greenwald was Johnny on the spot with a lengthy defense but with last night's bad news one has to think that perhaps he was hoodwinked and maybe it was a honey trap all along and a damned good one at best considering the serious damage that may have been inflicted on our already endangered species of investigative journalism in the USA!, USA!, USA!

Not only was Greenwald lured by Omidyar's money but also Jeremy Scahill (Dirty Wars) and perhaps the greatest of the new generation of muck-raking financial writers Matt Taibbi whose departure from Rolling Stone magazine was as much the end of an era as was the passing of Hunter S. Thompson. Taibbi was brilliant in his scathing attacks on the depravity of Wall Street and crony capitalism and the hijacking of democracy by the greedy gamblers who are able to operate with impunity and his finale at Rolling Stone on Goldman Sachs commodities trading scams along with Greenwald's work on the NSA looked like First Look had an unbeatable pair of cops on the beat. Taibbi really pushed the envelope in “The Vampire Squid Strikes Again”, turning up the heat on Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder who has presided over the Justice Department's passing out of 'get out of jail free' cards since Barack the transparent took office. Back during the days when the entire scam was being set up the infamous global swindler and friend of  Bill and Hillary Clinton, the now deceased Marc Rich was instrumental in establishing the conditions for the ongoing commodities con. I excerpt the following from Taibbi:

Goldman and Chase – along with Glencore and Trafigura, a pair of giant Swiss-based conglomerates that were offshoots of a firm founded by notorious deceased commodities trader and known market manipulator Marc Rich – all made notably coincidental purchases of metals-warehousing companies in 2010.

The presence of these Marc Rich entities is particularly noteworthy. According to famed Forbes reporter Paul Klebnikov, who was assassinated in 2004 after years of reports on Russian corruption, Rich made a fortune in the early Nineties striking crooked deals with the Soviet bosses who controlled the U.S.S.R.'s supplies of raw materials – in particular commodities like zinc and aluminum. These deals helped create a fledgling class of profiteers among the bosses of the crumbling Soviet empire, a class that would go on years later to help push Russia out of its communist past into its kleptocratic present.

"He'd strike a deal with the local party boss, or the director of a state-owned company," Klebnikov said back in 2001. "He'd say, 'OK, you will sell me the [commodity] at five to 10 percent of the world-market price . . . and in return, I will deposit some of the profit I make by reselling it 10 times higher on the world market, and put the kickback in a Swiss bank account.'"

Rich made these reported deals while in exile from the United States, which he fled in 1983 after the U.S. government charged him with tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering and trading with the enemy after being caught trading with rogue states like Iran, among other things. The state filed enough counts to put him away for life, and he remained a fugitive until January 2001, when a little-known Clinton administration Justice Department official named Eric Holder recommended Rich be pardoned. A report by the House Committee on Government Reform later concluded that Holder had not provided a credible explanation for supporting Rich's pardon and that he must have had "other motivations" that he didn't share with Congress. Among other things, the committee speculated that Holder had designs on the attorney general's office in a potential Al Gore administration.

In any case, in 2010, a decade after the Rich pardon, Holder was attorney general, but under Barack Obama, and two Rich-created firms, along with two banks that have been major donors to the Democratic Party, all made moves to buy up metals warehouses. In near simultaneous fashion, Goldman, Chase, Glencore and Trafigura bought companies that control warehouses all over the world for the LME, or London Metals Exchange. The LME is a privately owned exchange for world metals trading. It's the world's primary hub for determining metals prices and also for trading metals-based futures, options, swaps and other instruments.

With the NSA abuses including names of those who have been spied on (or blackmailed) as well as Taibbi's foray into the crooked financial aspects (NSA ties as well?) it seemed like an awesome and unprecedented run at the Deep State was nigh with some of the revelations coming very close to the domain of the mysterious and legendary "Octopus" of which was the subject of work by investigative reporter Danny Casolaro who was found dead under very mysterious circumstances back in 1991. Casolaro's research came to reach into the upper echelons of politics at the time and included the use of the sophisticated, ahead of its time software program PROMIS and according to some accounts - notably Guy Lawson's book "Octopus" and Cheri Seymour's "The Last Circle" - was being used to rig financial markets as well as facilitate the trafficking of drug money though the financial system. In the case of Seymour's research the US Department of Justice (or more accurately elements within) are implicated, particularly Reagan administration figures such as Edwin Meese - and Holder has a long history within the department. While most do not probably have the necessary knowledge to recognize these historical linkages they are such which would make the establishment very wary of the possibility of Snowden's leaks being used as a point of reference for backtracking through a very sordid history. It had the potential to blow the lid off of the entire fucking sewer which is truly what these bastards are afraid of, there are far too many crimes and crimes to cover up those crimes going back decades to risk exposure.

But I digress..

So as it sits now, with Greenwald's story in limbo - the "imminent" scoop is starting to look like it has been squashed like a pesky insect by the red, white and blue jackboot of Leviathan. There is absolutely no way that the government is going to allow it to be published in a form that will challenge the corruption of the entire system - we are not only talking about the NSA here but everything and that will not happen. Greenwald fucked up by allowing himself to be put under the control of one who benefits from the existence of that corrupt system through what is really starting to look like a legacy killer in The Intercept and First Look Media. Perhaps it is hubris, he has been so busy making appearances in an obviously dishonest domestic media conducting his victory tour after the publication of "No Place to Hide" that he never saw it coming. His delay - there have been many calling for the publication of the entire Snowden trove - has only allowed for the government to regroup, plot and bring pressure to kill the story. If the story is halted, substantially delayed or gutted then it represents a major strategic failure on his part and a successful attempt to dilute or halt the story will do immense damage to those who are desperately fighting for justice and the return to accountability.

Greenwald's failed calculus was in believing that the bastards could actually be beaten - they can't, like that classic Dire Straits song puts it "the man's too strong". This is a guerrilla war in which the only victory is in causing them problems with an ongoing series of non-centralized swarm attacks by dedicated activists, bloggers and writers - this is why the Occupy Movement was such a threat and was crushed.

While Greenwald's delay may only be temporary the cave in to the government that he himself has acknowledged will make any future revelations suspect, as much as the affiliation with The Intercept and Omidyar which already has suffered a ding in credibility by not publishing that other country being involved in the SOMALGET program. This was a transgression that Wikileaks - which saved Snowden's ass from a US torture chamber - immediately decried and revealed what the bosses at First Look Media would not.

The only solution is to PUT IT ALL OUT THERE and let the bloggers and alternative media have at it and if the establishment successfully suppress Greenwald's big "fireworks" show then there is really no other way.

It has been reported that there are more than one complete set of Snowden's documents out there and let one who is not subject to coercion by the rogue elements in Washington set off their own extravaganza and truly light up the sky - it would be delightful were this to happen on the Fourth of July as a symbolic gesture to the principles that this once great country was founded upon.

No more half measures.

More NSA Mischief: Purchased Products Intercepted and Tampered With

In another revelation  on still more NSA malfeasance that was published in the just released Glenn Greenwald book "No Place to Hide" the American Stasi has been intercepting computer hardware purchases and implanting spying tools before repackaging the product in the original wrapping. Not this should be a surprise to anyone who has been following the wanton criminality of Obama's out of control surveillance state and an earlier piece that was published in Germany's Der Spiegel back in December already had revealed the hijacking of laptop deliveries but the book adds it to the pile of damning evidence courtesy of heroic whistleblower Edward Snowden that is also available online here in a large file but one that is well worth the space. This story of what is basically theft of a customer's paid for item by government goons and which should be a felony along the lines of mail fraud is not going to go over well with American tech companies, one of which, Cisco Systems just published a stinging letter on exactly what is thought of such sleazy chicanery.

Other than the inclusion in "No Place to Hide" the story is getting increasing circulation as a caveat emptor to all who which to purchase US manufactured network hardware with the expectation that the product will arrive as promised and without surveillance mechanisms illegally implanted. The Guardian in a piece from Greenwald's book has the following in a story entitled "Glenn Greenwald: how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers" from which I excerpt the following:

For years, the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other internet devices pose a "threat" because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA's documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the US accused the Chinese of doing.

The drumbeat of American accusations against Chinese internet device manufacturers was unrelenting. In 2012, for example, a report from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Mike Rogers, claimed that Huawei and ZTE, the top two Chinese telecommunications equipment companies, "may be violating United States laws" and have "not followed United States legal obligations or international standards of business behaviour". The committee recommended that "the United States should view with suspicion the continued penetration of the US telecommunications market by Chinese telecommunications companies".

AND

But while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organisations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers.

The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users. The document gleefully observes that some "SIGINT tradecraft … is very hands-on (literally!)".

Eventually, the implanted device connects back to the NSA. The report continues: "In one recent case, after several months a beacon implanted through supply-chain interdiction called back to the NSA covert infrastructure. This call back provided us access to further exploit the device and survey the network."

It is quite possible that Chinese firms are implanting surveillance mechanisms in their network devices. But the US is certainly doing the same.

This by the way has not jack shit to do with "terrorism", the justification of this monstrous and ongoing invasion of privacy by a long out of control NSA and the trillion dollars of taxpayer subsidized bottom feeders that contribute to our Surveillance State Gomorrah. This is just plain and simple using a technological advantage as well as laws that have been hollowed out by the phony war on terror - which Obama and others paid homage to today at the grand opening of the obscenity that is the 9/11 Museum - to commit industrial espionage and gain unfair competitive advantage but hey that is the American way now in the land of fuck you, I got mine. The 9/11 Museum is just grotesque and sickening and only perpetuates the myth of the day that everything changed but that is a story for another time - be sure and get your T-shirts, coffee mugs, beer coolers and key chains at the gift shop. 

Greenwald is everywhere right now promoting the book and is getting the well deserved attention that he deserves as an investigative journalist, the careerist, power-sucking scum here in The Homeland would do well to take some lessons from the man who harkens back to the good old days of muckraking and non-celebrity journalists who shined a light on corrupted power like a blowtorch. Two great extended interviews of Greenwald were done by Amy Goodman at the liberal Democracy Now - here are the links (transcripts also available): May 13, 2014 and May 14, 2014 - check them out and pass them around to others. Now may be the last time that we have to really hit these bastards hard and put a choke chain on them while there is still a slim chance to do so.

I have always maintained that the only way that any serious restraint of the cancerous surveillance industrial complex can only be made possible by an alliance of American tech businesses (fuck the corrupt telecoms who are in on the con) to engage in awareness campaigns, implementing stronger encryption and pooling their vast resources to sue the hell out of the US government and fund the campaigns of political opponents of those that protect the NSA - like California's own Dianne Feinstein. If this is the case there is hope in the aforementioned Cisco Systems communique by Mark Chandler which I excerpt from at length:

Today’s security challenges are real and significant.  We want governments to detect and disrupt terrorist networks before they inflict harm on our society, our citizens, and our systems of government.   We also want to live in countries that respect their citizens’ basic human rights.  The tension between security and freedom has become one the most pressing issues of our day.  Societies wracked by terror cannot be truly free, but an overreaching government can also undermine freedom.

It is in this context that I want to offer some thoughts on actions by the US Government that in Cisco’s eyes have overreached, undermining the goals of free communication, and steps that can be taken to right that balance, and I do so on behalf of all of Cisco’s leadership team.

Confidence in the open, global Internet has brought enormous economic benefits to the United States and to billions around the world.  This confidence has been eroded by revelations of government surveillance, by efforts of the US government to force US companies to provide access to communications of non-US citizens even when that violates the privacy laws of countries where US companies do business, and allegations that governments exploit rather than report security vulnerabilities in products.

As a matter of policy and practice, Cisco does not work with any government, including the United States Government, to weaken our products. When we learn of a security vulnerability, we respond by validating it, informing our customers, and fixing it.  We react the same when we find that a customer’s security has been impacted by external forces, regardless of what country or form of government or how that security breach occurred.  We offer customers robust tools to defend their environments against attack, and detect attacks when they are happening. By doing these things, we have built and maintained our customers’ trust.  We expect our government to value and respect this trust.

This past December, eight technology companies expressed concern to the President of the United States and Members of Congress that the US government’s surveillance efforts are in fact harmful. They stated, in part, “We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight.”  We agree and support these positions – without customer confidence in the privacy and security of communications, the extraordinary steps toward freedom, productivity and prosperity that is the promise of the Internet can be lost.

This week a number of media outlets reported another serious allegation: that the National Security Agency took steps to compromise IT products enroute to customers, including Cisco products. We comply with US laws, like those of many other countries, which limit exports to certain customers and destinations; we ought to be able to count on the government to then not interfere with the lawful delivery of our products in the form in which we have manufactured them.   To do otherwise, and to violate legitimate privacy rights of individuals and institutions around the world, undermines confidence in our industry.

As our malignantly rotten Supreme Court has made evident: money is speech and there shall be no constraints on those who have a shitload of it. Silicon Valley has an abundance of it and in the best interests of not only keeping the internet free but for just the sake of ensuring that American business won't take another big hit due to crony capitalism and outright fascism should invest as much of it as possible to carpet bomb the corrupt Democrat and Republican criminals back to the stone age in 2014, 2016 and forever after in favor of pro-American, pro-civil liberties and pro-business libertarians and independents.

Up Yours Rogers! Greenwald Wins Polk Award for NSA Reporting

That very nasty scowl that is permanently affixed to the fat face of Congressman and House Intelligence Committee head Mike Rogers, the thug shoved down the entire country’s throats by voters in Michigan’s 8^th congressional district is about to get even worse. In breaking news today the “thief” Glenn Greenwald who is the target of Rogers’ latest vendetta just won the prestigious George Polk Award for his reporting on the Edward Snowden story.  Along with Greenwald fellow reporters who also worked on the stories of the former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower - Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras as well as the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman - were honored. This is a triumph for the now on life support concept of freedom of the press in the darkest days of Obama’s war on journalism. They along with Snowden himself have all done this country a great service by outing the criminal rats at Fort Mead Stasi headquarters along with their oath breaking enablers in the most corrupt Congress in the nation’s long history.

Rogers in particular has got to be furious over this and he and his fellow usurpers of the Constitution had better tread carefully if Greenwald chooses to "force the issue" and return to the U.S. to pick up his Polk come April. According to a recent "exclusive"piece in Salon he seems to intend to do such a thing:  “I’m going to go back to the U.S. for many reasons, but just the fucking principle is enough … On principle I’m going to force the issue”. God forbid that any serious journalist dare to have principles in these sorry days of careerism, sensationalism, panty-sniffing, celebrity worship, tabloid drivel, dead child stories and acting as stenographers for the same crooked government figures that the they are supposed to be holding to account per the First Amendment. Christ knows that we certainly couldn't have accountability in this collapsing lemming colony. 

It will be time for Rogers to put up or shut up since the state-corporate media refuses to call him on his bullshit about Snowden being a Russian spy and Greenwald being a thief. If Rogers and his ilk are able to push Obama and his ruthless hatchet man Eric Holder into actually going full fascist and arresting Greenwald it may finally be that tipping point that will trigger a chain reaction against this now thirteen year running coup d’etat that started with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. There is much sentiment for stringing Greenwald up by his heels in some dank CIA torture gulag and if that is allowed to occur then we might just as well abandon any idiotic babble about ‘freedom’ and ‘checks and balances’ because it will be a sign that Orwell was dead on about that “boot stamping on a human face.. forever”.

From the moment that he first revealed that meeting with Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room and then began writing on the material provided Mr. Greenwald was an enemy of the state. He had already incurred the wrath of the corrupt political class when he was targeted several years ago by corporate wet work artists HBGary Federal as a supporter of Wikileaks in aftermath of the Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning's whistleblowing, particularly of the huge embarrassment that was the "collateral murder" video that showed our imperial stormtroopers indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. Greenwald isn't easily intimidated and it is about damned time that someone who is a public figure took a principled stand against this scum. He has a king-sized chip on his shoulder which is what it takes when going up against Leviathan, a recent Rolling Stone magazine article  entitled "Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets" quotes Greenwald who is openly gay:

"I decided to wage war against this system and institutional authority that had tried to reject and condemn me," he says. "It was like, 'Go fuck yourselves. Instead of having you judge me, I'm going to judge you, because I don't accept the fact that you're even in a position to cast judgments upon me.'"

That is something for Mike Rogers to suck on as it will be his move if Greenwald indeed chooses to "force the issue". 

Congratulations to all of the Polk Award honorees for their courageous reporting on the Snowden material despite incurring the full fury of the U.S. and British power structure and their well paid presstitutes by daring to report on the truth of just how bottomless that the snakepit has become. 

(Image: The Guardian) 

Rand Paul Sues the Bastards

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul just manned up big time and stepped to the plate, filing a class action lawsuit against President Barack Obama for his lack of control over an NSA gone rogue. It is about damned time that a national political figure showed a set of stones and demanded accountability from a flagrantly out of control administration and the ongoing assault against the Constitution that it is conducting.  The rank cowardice from the political class has been evident since the revelations of former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and has been not only an embarrassment to this country but also a violation of their oaths to uphold the Constitution that borders on treason. If we still lived in a land where the rule of law was upheld the entire Congressional leadership and their little gangs of eight and sixteen that operate outside the legal parameters would be removed from office and placed on public trial after which they would be thrown into the prisons in which they belong for the remainder of their miserable lives. They are all jackals and thieves and their war on the American people must be stopped. Thanks to Senator Paul the proverbial shot across the bow has been delivered.

The Washington based establishment went into their usual mode when the sanctity of their incestuous little bubble gets pricked, they unleashed the smear brigade. From the tip of the spear that is the neocon dominated Washington Post the scorn for Paul (but really for the country itself) erupted shortly after the suit was filed in the D.C. federal district court. The veteran house lackey Dana Milbank immediately accused Paul of plagiarism and hijacking the lawsuit from the seasoned conservative activist Bruce Fein. Charles Kraüthammer and Jennifer Rubin are likely well into their standard poison pen propaganda and will inveigh against Paul, the demon of the month libertarians, privacy rights and the Constitution itself come Friday. The winter storm that has hit the pox along the Potomac and resultant bad weather event closures will have many a blood-sucking leach that is dependent on the bloated fascist surveillance industry flying into action to denounce the lawsuit in print and on message boards.

Pity that the good Senator from the Bluegrass State had the audacity to float a turd in the punchbowl of the WAPO Snowden bashing party. The paper launched an asinine story today that will spread throughout the state media like ticks jumping from rabid dog to rabid dog that Snowden gained his access to the purloined data by stealing the password of a co-worker.  That this sordid little character attack has nothing to do with the proverbial price of rice in China that the NSA was the violator of the law is as pearls before swine to the masses of asses. It plays directly into the Mike Rogers-James Clapper war on the First Amendment argument that journalist Glenn Greenwald is a "thief" and so is Snowden so they cannot be held as any thing other than enemies of the state. In the corrupt den of star-spangled iniquity that is the post 9/11 Homeland the best way to defend oneself from their own criminal acts is to play the victim and go on the attack against the very people who exposed their illegality. It is so effective that even that the operatives of that corrupt fat bastard Governor of New Jersey Krispy Kreme  Christie are doing it.

Paul will be smeared six ways from Sunday and then some from the big five TV networks operating in unison during the regular state propaganda Sabbath vomit fests by the usual array of scum trotted out on NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CNN's State of the Union, FOX News Sunday and CBS's Face the Nation and they will be looking to destroy him. That is the way that it works in this country anymore, it is far more sophisticated than just unleashing hordes of brownshirt thugs on those who question and even worse fight the criminal acts of the government that have so effectively served the interests of history's despots.

In an opinion piece written by Paul (along Matt Kibbe and Ken Cuccinelli) that is a CNN Exclusive the challenger to Leviathan states his case and I excerpt the following:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

This is the beginning of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and defines one of the most important rights we have against a potentially tyrannical government.

Throughout history, governments have used the confiscation of private property, as well as bullying and surveillance techniques, to keep populations under control and maintain a continuous threat against those who would dare criticize them.

AND

In recent years, however, this right, like so many others, has come under attack by the overzealous powers that be in Washington, eager to sacrifice liberty in the name of security, and using fear as a weapon to make us forget the importance of being free.

In 2013, the revelation that the National Security Agency was collecting and storing the metadata from the phone calls and e-mails of millions of American citizens -- without any suspicion of criminal activity -- served as a striking wake-up call for the country.

Americans do not like to think of their government as some Orwellian leviathan, engaging in surveillance tactics that we only expect to see in oppressive autocracies. That such surveillance could be going on in what is ostensibly the freest nation in the world is a chilling thought indeed.

Since 2006, the NSA has been spying on us, treating American citizens as no more than common criminals, casting suspicion on honest people with not even a whisper of criminal activity about them. These are not the actions befitting a country that was once held up as a paragon of freedom and a model for the rest of the world.

AND

It's time to hold government officials accountable for their habitual trampling on the Constitution and on our rights as individuals. Our case will be an important step down the road of restoring our Constitution and reining in our own overreaching federal government.

Bravo to Senator Paul. I must admit that I have never been much of a supporter although I greatly admired his father Ron Paul for his courageous stand against the criminal Bush administration during the darkest years of the civil liberties destroying "War on Terror" when it wasn't easy to denounce the establishment and get away unscathed. Today in 2014 however, the same advances in communications and social networking technology that allow the NSA to conduct their unconstitutional mass surveillance and data-mining against us also has a flip side in that millions who lacked that capability in the early years of the New American Century can now organize and fight back. I support the efforts of Senator Paul to bring these criminal bastards to heel and so should any decent American.

Rand Paul is not the first person to sue Obama over the excesses of the permanent and fraudulent “War on Terror”. Journalist and author Chris Hedges, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and others filed suit against the latest imperial president over the NDAA Act. The Obama administration and his savage, unprincipled attack dog of an Attorney General Eric Holder brought all the state power to bear against Hedges and the same corrupt courts packed with politically appointed judges that fought him will only increase their efforts versus Senator Paul and the rest of us whose civil liberties have been shit upon by an entrenched fifth column.

As patriotic Americans it is of the utmost in importance and urgency to do what you can to get behind Senator Paul's lawsuit. To my liberal and progressive friends I ask that you please put aside any ideological differences to stand in unity against the greatest menace to freedom in the history of the planet - the NSA oppression machine and the corrupt elite that it serves and protects against the rabble. I have long been a proponent of a libertarian-progressive alliance based on these most important of matters and there is now way to fight this threat unless petty differences are set aside before we ALL end up in those internment camps that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia just waxed nostalgic over where we will be pitted against each other for the amusement of our captors.

There is nothing else that is going to matter in the long run if we can't stop fascism.

Obama Administration Plots Next Extrajudicial Murder

Having already acted as judge, jury and executioner and gotten away with it scot-free President Barack Obama, our constitutional law professor in chief is preparing to target yet another American citizen for termination with extreme prejudice. In a flurry of stories on Monday it has been stated that the Obama administration is about to launch another operation to carry out an extrajudicial murder of a so-called threat to America, reported to be a member of the now umbrella term that is applied to ALL Islamic militants - Al Qaeda.  The yet unnamed target of the coming murder without a trial is only identified as being a part of “Al Qaeda” which has become a resurgent Manichean devil serving perfectly the interests of a militarist surveillance state that is  increasingly losing the war of public opinion for its now obvious lawless and renegade nature. If the propaganda of the swarthy Muslim menace and their new Islamic caliphate accompanied by the coming activation of thousands of domestic sleeper cells to launch terrorist attacks and force Americans to heel to Sharia law can just be hammered home to keep the scrutiny at bay while the criminal hydra reconfigures then the pushback can begin in earnest. Pickup lists that are likely already being compiled by NSA spying will lead to mass arrests, mass detentions (per Justice Scalia) and the extrajudicial murders of domestic ‘troublemakers’ - this is the way that it always works in a nascent totalitarian state.

Obama has already set the precedent with the killing of American born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. Alwaki had at one time been used as an example of a ‘good Muslim’ by the U.S. establishment to the extent that he was featured in a Washington Post puff piece about Ramadan. He however became increasingly radicalized by the vicious anti-Muslim response to the ‘day that changed everything’, September 11, 2001 and began to call for jihad thereby making him a perfect candidate for the Obama “kill list”. Not that I condone al-Awlaki’s calls for attacks on innocent Americans but that isn’t the point - we at least theoretically are a constitutional republic and as such there are certain rights that U.S. citizens are entitled to such as due process. It is a serious departure from the rule of law when a president is given the unaccountable powers of a king which is increasingly how the head of the executive branch is allowed to operate. When al-Awlaki was murdered instead of being apprehended and brought back to the U.S. to stand trial it was the equivalent of crossing the Rubicon. The Obama regime then followed up that killing with the murder by drone of his teenage son also without due process but very more ominously in what bodes ill for the future of all who oppose the criminal state as a sort of pre-crime form of intervention to prevent the son from avenging the father.

Where does it all end?

The knuckle-dragging thug who is safely gerrymandered Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers who represents only a fraction of a percentage of the country yet due to our perverse system of government is able to lord it over the majority from his throne as House Intelligence Committee boss mouthed off during a hearing on security threats last week according to a Washington Post story published today:

“Individuals who would have been previously removed from the battlefield by U.S. counter terrorism operations for attacking or plotting to attack U.S. interests remain free because of self-imposed red tape”. He added that the new constraints on drone strikes are “endangering the lives of Americans at home and our military overseas in a way that is frustrating to our allies and frustrating to those of us who engage in the oversight of our classified activities.”

Rogers is a fascist scumbag, that much is beyond any reasonable argument and a lying one at that for his belching out of allegations that former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower is a Russian spy and that journalist Glenn Greenwald is a “thief”.  The man has an absolute hard-on to do it the John Wayne way and kill both of them and another Obama extrajudicial assassination of a U.S. citizen would bring him all that much closer to realizing that wet dream of his. Rogers is never called out for his bullshit nor asked for proof of his allegations but when you happen to hail from a state in which the high-rolling DeVos family has set up operations in and can ensure that those swinish gangsters can operate with impunity you are a made man in The Homeland circa 2014.

Speaking of Glenn Greenwald today marks the day of the launching of the long anticipated new media venture First Look Media. The first of several different online magazine is called “The Intercept” and will serve as an independent vehicle for the type of crusading, hold corrupt power accountable type of investigative journalism that has been nearly snuffed out in this country by a venal, consolidated and connected corporate media.The first story, in collaboration with journalist Jeremy Scahill (Dirty Wars) is perfectly timed given the Obama administration’s latest targeting of an American without the benefit of a trial in that the NSA has been providing targeting intelligence to the ongoing armed drone attacks that are a pox upon this one great country’s reputation. The piece is entitled "The NSA's Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program" details how the American Stasi assists in tracking cell phone coordinated for those targeted for killing. While this fails to surprise those who truly understand the vile and anti-American nature of the wretched hive of scum and villainy at Fort Meade the revelation that the stupid bastards fail to take into account exactly WHO is using the targeted cellphones only further cements the image of an agency that is a sucking black hole of taxpayer money and an abject failure in fighting "terrorism". I excerpt from the piece:

In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.

One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”

As a result, even when the agency correctly identifies and targets a SIM card belonging to a terror suspect, the phone may actually be carried by someone else, who is then killed in a strike. According to the former drone operator, the geolocation cells at the NSA that run the tracking program – known as Geo Cell –sometimes facilitate strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cell phone or SIM card is in fact the intended target of the strike.

“Once the bomb lands or a night raid happens, you know that phone is there,” he says. “But we don’t know who’s behind it, who’s holding it. It’s of course assumed that the phone belongs to a human being who is nefarious and considered an ‘unlawful enemy combatant.’ This is where it gets very shady.”

The former drone operator also says that he personally participated in drone strikes where the identity of the target was known, but other unknown people nearby were also killed.

“They might have been terrorists,” he says. “Or they could have been family members who have nothing to do with the target’s activities.”

Now that is reassuring isn't it? The more that you see exactly how the infrastructure of The Homeland operates as they justify their phony War on Terror and the thousand year reign of the New American Century operates the more they resemble their historical predecessors the Nazis, another corrupt and ultimately incompetent collection of perverts, thugs, petty bureaucrats drunk on power and an ideology that was destined for history's scrap heap from the minute Adolph Hitler stood on a table in a Munich beer hall. Rogers would have fit in nicely as would the vast majority of the decision makers in this collapsing empire of greed, lies, violence and stupidity.

Godwin's Law be damned, he never could have envisioned the criminal swine and vermin who have seized control of the at once free country and hijacked it as a vehicle for their own tyranny and corruption.