Cornered Rat and Pathological Liar Clapper Cries Wolf

Coming on the heels of the all hype and little substance State of the Union Address in which President Barack Obama once again established himself as the nation’s preeminent bullshit artist we were all today offered up the theater of the absurd of a seasoned liar engaged in standard fear-mongering. Obama may have been devoid of shame when he cynically trotted out wounded Army Ranger Cory Remsburg to a thunderous roar of bipartisan support for the perpetual warfare state but as has always been the case for our fine Director of National Intelligence James Clapper he is in a league of his own when it comes to dishonesty and waving the bloody flag to support his own lying ass.

Clapper, appearing in front of a Senate Intelligence committee was basking in his George W. Bush standing on the smoking rubble with a megaphone moment as he dodged responsibility for the illegal NSA surveillance programs and went on offense. You have to give it to the man, in addition to his set of stones he has zero scruples nor loyalty to the Constitution but when it comes to lying to Congress and playing the fear card he has few peers. The Clapper used the forum to lambaste former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden - a man whose revelations would in a decent land where the law still applies would have sent James Clapper to prison - was in rare form. He picked up the ball from where it was left by Mike Rogers, DiFi, Peter King and others far more crude who are practically masturbating over their fantasies of the murder of Snowden and rammed it down the throats of the members of a legislative body whose popularity rating is somewhere in between pedophiles and genital herpes.

He decried Snowden and “his accomplices” – being of course journalist Glenn Greenwald and other journalists who at great risk to their careers and lives have been shining a light into the teeming next of cockroaches at Fort Meade. Brashly calling for Snowden to return all of the purloined documents immediately the man had the look in his eye of a cornered animal – likely knowing fully well that what is in those documents could very likely result in even the quisling Congress holding him and his “accomplices” in the American Stasi pay for play racket accountable for the myriad of crimes that are likely contained within. I am betting that it is a lot more than data-mining Angry Birds that has Mr. Clapper’s asshole puckering today, not the least of which are Snowden’s assertions during a German public TV interview on Sunday that the NSA is also in the business of  industrial espionage. According to a story in The Guardian the DNI when asked about such a thing:

Clapper also declined to answer a question about European surveillance involving US businesses, and possibly upon them, in an open hearing.

The iron bar hotel is beckoning because if the Snowden documents aren’t returned to the scum running this country’s intelligence beast and given that it has already been revealed that industrial espionage has been conducted against Latin American interests (including Brazilian oil company Petrobas) what is still out there promises to rock the national security state in all of its resplendent rottenness to the very core. Think blackmail, market manipulation, cover for drug money laundering, political fixing, assassinations and Christ only knows what else. Were I in Snowden’s shoes, given his limited time left on the planet with numerous extrajudicial murder plots likely already being assessed I would just post it all on the internet – ALL OF IT. Because this would be the only way to get these fascists, thugs and killers under control. There is no negotiating with these people and despite his nomination for the Nobel Peace prize (far more deserving a recipient than the war criminal who resides in the White House) he is a dead man walking and really, the best way to deal with thugs is to get them first. The entire NSA is now much like the spaceport Mos Eisley in Star Wars as described by Obi-Wan Kenobi : “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”.  This of course could apply the entire government of that perverse parasite that has sucked the very essence of all that was good about the once greatest country in history The United States of America that is “The Homeland”, an evil empire of which James Clapper is a product.

The most disgusting aspect of all of this is that Clapper and his ilk continue to cry 9/11, a day in which the National Security Agency should have been dismantled over for missing existing intel that could have shut down the entire plot. In the standard post Septermber 11, 2001 world of providing excuses for tolerating the evisceration of the U.S. Constitution to preserve their dirty little spoils system Clapper and his fellow gangsters pulled out an imminent threat to "The Homeland"  today.  According to this pack of swine there is currently an Al-Qaeda faction in Syria (one that we were arming?) that is hellbent on attacking America in the near future - perhaps this can finally be the one that the NSA Stasi is able to stop given their dismal return on investment to the American taxpayers who have been getting fleeced by these flim flam men for over a decade now and have nothing but their own enslavement, crumbling national infrastructure and looming hyperinflation to show for it.

The only thing that would have made Clapper's bottom feeding today would be if he were to have rolled out Sgt. First Class Cory Remsburg as a stage prop to justify the illegal wars abroad and usurping of the Constitution that the poor bastard was sacrificed for.

(Image credit: National Review)

Bush Era Goons Issue Open Letter to Decry RNC's NSA Resolution

Remember, remember the eleventh of September. That is the message being delivered by Bush era thugs in an open letter to RNC Chairman Reince Preibus over Friday’s daring  “Resolution To Renounce The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program”.  The letter invokes nearly every bullshit talking point that Americans were fed after the September 11, 2001 attacks that were then seized upon by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats (including the signatories) and used to launch two ruinous Middle East wars and redistribute billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the national security state spoils system. The attacks also allowed for the massive expansion of big government creating the decidedly anti-American Department of Homeland Security, paramilitary police forces and legions of private contractors of enormously more expense had their functions been performed by civil servants. If you want to see exactly why this once great country is on the verge of collapse and goose-stepping towards insolvency you only need to read the open letter to the RNC.

The letter, obtained and published by the website The Daily Beast is stunning in its callous disregard for constitutional principles as well as a blanket denial that the NSA programs are illegal, as it as open letter and fairly brief here it is:

Dear Chairman Priebus:

As Republicans who are familiar with the threat that terrorism still poses to this country, we are compelled to dissent from the ill-considered resolution adopted by the Republican National Committee on January 24 by voice vote.

The Republican National Committee plays a vital role in political campaigns, but it has relatively little expertise in national security.  Unfortunately, that lack of expertise is on full display in the resolution. The RNC condemns “the secret surveillance program called PRISM,” and claims that it “monitors [the] searching habits of virtually every American on the internet.”  In fact, there is no program that monitors the searches of all Americans.  And what has become known as the PRISM program is not aimed at collecting the communications of Americans. It is targeted at the international communications of foreign persons located outside the United States and is precisely the type of foreign-targeted surveillance that Congress approved in 2008 and 2012 when it enacted and reauthorized amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The errors in the resolution do not end there.  The resolution falsely implies that NSA collects and has easy access to telephone metadata, when in fact every search of the data requires a reasonable and articulable suspicion and is strictly limited by the courts, with oversight by the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress.

The resolution says that the program violates the Constitution, something that will come as news to the many judges who have found to the contrary – and to the Supreme Court, which has said that such limited billing data is not protected by a constitutional expectation of privacy.  The resolution’s claim that the program violates section 215 also runs counter to the rulings of practically every court to address the issue.

As far as we can tell, none of these facts was presented to the RNC before it adopted the resolution.  It is  a shame that the resolution reached the Committee without correction of its many errors.

Worse, the RNC resolution threatens to do great damage to the security of the nation.  It would be foolhardy to end the program without ensuring that we remain safe from attack. This database provides a uniquely valuable capability for discovering new phone numbers associated with international terrorist organizations, including numbers that may be used by terrorist cells within the United States.  Former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morrell has testified that having this capability might have prevented 9/11 and could help to prevent the next 9/11. 

This is not a Democratic or a Republican program.  Protecting Americans from terrorism should not be a partisan issue.   The program was first launched under President George W. Bush. It was approved by Congressional leaders of both parties. And for good reason.  It helps to keep Americans safe.

It may be appropriate to modify the program in certain respects, if that can be done without a significant loss in effectiveness, but abolishing it without any idea how to close the intelligence gap that 9/11 exposed is not a recipe for partisan advantage.  It is a recipe for partisan oblivion.

Count us out.

The seven signatories are led by the three-headed monster of Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey. That latter is Bush’s former Attorney General who was an apologist for the grotesque torture programs of that administration and the other two have in their post government careers on the other side of that infamous revolving door become profiteers off of the same national security state that they themselves helped to create. With former government contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden having just given an interview to German public television in which he stated that the NSA programs are used for industrial espionage it is no surprise to see rats like Chertoff and Hayden getting restive. Clearly the revelations of NSA criminality that have already been made public only scratch the surface of what is to come and both of these men given their ability to reap the financial profits from the years when their salaries came courtesy of the American taxpayer stand to be outed as the corrupt swine that they truly are. Don’t forget that it was the lobbying firm inconspicuously named The Chertoff Group that opportunistically seized on the Christmas Day “Underwear Bomber” plot to bilk taxpayers into putting those nifty naked body scanners into the nation’s airports.

The open letter, following the deranged Peter King’s opening salvo will provide a platform for the other defenders of the rampant criminality of the NSA and the fascist state propaganda machine will be churning out jeremiads and screeds from their shills like link sausage made with tainted skunk meat. It is imperative to the corrupt system that has hijacked constitutional government in The Homeland to beat back the coming threat to their secret state and all of the tools that they use to protect it. The invocation of ‘the day that changed everything’ will be all inclusive but the RNC’s bold (although still suspect) move to begin to punch back at Leviathan is evidence that when it comes to the phony war on terror that the zeitgeist has already changed.

When the dam finally does burst on those other activities, aside from industrial espionage that these illegal and anti-American programs have been used for there will be no stopping the waves of outrage and revulsion and this is what truly terrifies the signatories of the open letter and their ilk. 

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.

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.