Saturday, June 29, 2013

Wall Street Journal Plants Crosshairs On Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras

Notice I said "expose," not "leak." This wasn't a leak, some anonymous transfer of info to the public by an insider. This was an expose by a courageous, principled, and in terms of his personal fate, unfortunately foolish or self-sacrificing, depending on how you view it, person in a position to reveal scary police state surveillance.

In the Saturday June 29 edition of the Wall Street Journal, the leading U.S. paper of high finance and a consistently utterly reactionary editorial line, Obama is attacked for not "demanding" and "forcing" the Chinese and Russians to hand over Snowden. (Snowden has been in the Moscow airport arrival lounge for several days now.) They excoriate Obama for not picking up the phone and reading the riot act to Putin (and the Chinese boss too).

Even more sinister, there's an op-ed by known CIA operative Edward J. Epstein, who played a role in Nixon's overthrow (set up by the CIA) and in the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald for the JFK assassination. His op-ed darkly insists that Snowden "penetrated" Booz Allen Hamilton (and thus the NSA) according to an advance "plan" to infiltrate and "steal" "secrets." He accuses Glenn Greenwald and the documentarian Laura Poitras of possible involvement in a conspiracy to "steal" "national security secrets" namely "communications intelligence." This is very threatening to all three.

Already, deranged U.S. House Representative Peter King on TV has called for Greenwald's prosecution and slandered him by falsely claiming Greenwald threatened to reveal CIA officers' identities. Greenwald responded by pointing out that that's a flat falsehood- I would say probably a lie, that is, King probably knew it was false. King certainly hasn't corrected the public record or issued a retraction.

Poitras already is subject to fairly severe persecution by the U.S. Government, and has been for several years, for making documentaries on such subjects as Iraqi and Yemeni suffering at the hands of the U.S. Agree or disagree, she SHOULD have the right to pursue those topics, and the U.S. establishment PRETENDS she does, in fact they claim her right to do so is "guaranteed" by their Holy Constitution. Too bad their oaths to "defend and uphold it" are so much empty prattle. It really reveals the cynicism of their constant invocation of "legality" and "rule of law" and justifying their police state by saying it's "lawful." Their Blessed Constitution is supposed to be foundational law. And yet the parts that get in the way of their exercise of repressive power is trampled by their goons and enforcers daily. [The details on Poitras' persecution by U.S. police state goons are in her interviews at democracynow.org and elsewhere. Do a search.]

See more on the Snowden matter at Taboo Truths by Jason Zenith. Click the link in the sidebar at right. [And while you're at it, sign up for email alerts to this site, OK? Why not? What's it gonna hurt? I'm not gonna come to your house, you know! You probably don't think I'm good enough to come to your house, do you! What's that? Sure you do? Oh OK, I'll drop in sometime!]

Friday, June 14, 2013

Aljazeera Joins Attack on NSA Leaker

Aljazeera has joined the assault on Edward Snowden, the cashiered Booz Allen Hamilton Corporation computer systems administrator who exposed a couple of the “National Security” Agency's hidden, massive surveillance programs that surreptitiously seize the phone and Internet records of the American public en masse.

Their Washington correspondent, Kimberly Dozier, joining the U.S. media offensive against Snowden, piled on, calling him a “liar,” because some U.S. politician says so. The story was headlined by Aljazeera calling Snowden a “liar.” (There's no substance to the smear.)

Yet Alajzeera doesn't call obvious, proven liars, like James Clapper Jr, U.S. “Director of National Intelligence,” liars. Clapper lied in Congressional testimony in March when Senator Ron Wyden asked him directly if the NSA was collecting data of Americans. Clapper said no. Then nervously added “not advertently,” another lie. (Now that he was caught lying, although the establishment media is too polite to point out the blatant lie, Clapper says his lie was the “least untruthful” thing he could have said, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. When the true answer is “yes” and you say “no,” that is the MOST untruthful thing you can say. It is the exact opposite of the truth.)

People like Clapper, and every head of the NSA, ever, lie every time they speak. Their counterparts at the major national and international secret police agencies, the FBI and CIA, also chronically lie. Right now, the FBI boss, Robert S. Mueller, III, is lying, claiming terrible damage to U.S. “security” has been done, which is obvious nonsense. [1]

Aljazeera is owned by the monarchy of Qatar, a U.S. ally. Nice of them to join the U.S. government side in this, especially considering how the U.S. treats Aljazeera, bombing their offices, kidnapping their employees, and much else. Ironically, the NSA is part of the Pentagon, it's a military agency, always headed by a general, and it's the U.S. military that keeps bombing Aljazeera, in Kabul and Baghdad, and almost in Doha, Qatar- Tony Blair managed to talk George Bush the Younger out of doing that. The U.S. also reviles Aljazeera as terrorist propaganda, and U.S. corporations have bent over backward to keep Aljazeera television out of the U.S. But not out of Washington, D.C. Apparently the U.S. Imperialist elite, including past Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rely on it for information!

Kind of like if Heinrich Himmler had kept a secret copy of the Torah for reference.

1] Mueller was also boss of the FBI when the Al-Qaeda airliner kamikaze attacks of 9/11/01 occurred, so most likely he was part of the conspiracy that was watching the hijackers and deliberately allowed the attacks to occur, to enable the subsequent power grab by the secret police agencies. To mention just a few of the many facts that make this conclusion inescapable: Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker,” was arrested before 9/11. French intelligence had told the U.S. he was a “terrorist.” The Minnesota FBI asked FBI headquarters in Washington for a FISA warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. HQ said getting a warrant would be impossible. WHAT?! The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court virtually never says no to warrant requests. In its history (1979-2012 data) it has granted almost 34,000 warrants and refused- hang on- eleven. That's right, less than one out of every 3,000 get turned down.

Two of the hijackers were living in California. Their landlord was an FBI informer. After 9/11, Congress asked the FBI to present the informer and his FBI handler for questioning. The FBI flatly refused. Congress slinked off with its tail between its legs. Obviously the FBI had a lot to hide. The incident also proves that the secret police are more powerful than the national legislature. That's one definition of a police state. (The FBI has always been more powerful than Congress. Historically, part of that has been due J. Edgar Hoover's practice of assembling blackmail dossiers on politicians. Another factor is the repressive laws that Congress passes, and the way the FBI si allowed to ride roughshod over alleged “Constitutional rights.”)

Mueller just came out with a stunningly cynical and dishonest statement. Testifying to Congress on June 13th, he invoked the 9/11/01 attacks, claiming that if the just revealed NSA spy programs had been in effect then, they might have stopped the attacks. He admitted that “intelligence agencies” (in the description of the New York Times) was tracking one of the hijackers [i.e.one of the ones living in the FBI informer-landlord's place] and also looking at an Al-Qaeda safehouse in Yemen, and if only they could have connected the two by seizing the phone records of everyone in the U.S., they could have made the connection. How's that for brazenness! First of all, the NSA has ALWAYS spied on all overseas communications as that is their official mission. So any phones in that “safehouse” would have been automatically covered. And since the FBI had set up the San Diego hijackers in their informers pad, their phones no doubt were tapped, and probably the house was bugged too. Of course, the U.S. media won't mention any of this.

And Mueller knows that, which is what gives him the confidence to display such breathtaking chutzpah. [The NY Times pretty much hid what happened in the committee hearing Mueller appeared at. They buried the details in a long article about NSA boss Alexander allegedly promising more openness. There is no hint in the NYT's version of Mueller's appearance of conflict at the hearing between Mueller and the Congressmen. I had to go to foreign media to find that out- namely the Guardian. See “FBI chief Mueller says spy tactics could have stopped 9/11 attacks, June 13th.]