national security

Moments ago a far less liberal outlet than either the WaPo or the NYT, came out with its own interpretation of the ongoing FBI escalation involving Hillary, and according to the NY Post, "the FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s unsecured e-mail account is not just a fact-finding venture — it’s a criminal probe, sources told The Post on Wednesday."

"What can we do?"

In this perfection of consumerist narcissism, the only goal is maximizing private gain by whatever means are available. Clinton solidified the modern presidency's narcissistic obsession with public approval (the political equivalent of "likes" on Facebook) and the exploitation of that popularity for maximum self-enrichment.

The US has determined that the Chinese cyber attack on the databases of the Office of Personnel Management "was so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases [does] not apply," The New York Times reports. In short: "this agression will not stand, man."

US global superiority in military affairs is actually the superiority of a rich kid who thinks he’s really smart but in reality is merely just rich. When the seemingly endless flow of money slows (as it inevitably will), the mask of cleverness will fall. Everyone who resented the kid will be waiting at the edge of the playground for this day of reckoning, and because no one else will have been so dependent on spending-as-strategy, the erstwhile rich kid will find it tough going.

The United Kingdom has gone batshit crazy. There’s simply no other way to put it...

When do we get to exercise democracy and fire every factotum, apparatchik, toady and lackey in the state who has abused his/her authority?

After two years and a massive 167,000 signatures, FirstLook reports that The White House has officially denied a hugely popular whitehouse.gov petition calling for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon,” saying thanks for signing, but no, stating that "Mr. Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it." While acknowledging that "this is an issue that many Americans feel strongly about," Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s advisor on homeland security and terrorism, said in a statement, "we live in a dangerous world."

• Fed Officials May Offer More Clarity on Rates (WSJ)
• Stocks rebound, shrugging off volatile and weak China (Reuters)
• Three-Day Selloff Knocks 11% From China Shares (WSJ)
• China shares fall again as Beijing scrambles to calm markets (Reuters)
• VAT hikes to make Greek destination less popular (Kathimerini)
• Varoufakis - Something is rotten with the eurozone’s hideous restrictions on sovereignty (FT)
• EU denies Varoufakis 'tax control' claims (FT)

If the neoconservatives have their way again, US ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the US military will take out Syria’s secular government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the US Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending.  In other words, more and more fires of Imperial “regime change” abroad even as the last embers of the American Republic die at home. Much of this “strategy” is personified by a single Washington power couple...

Years of growing resentment for the Japanese premier, who panders only to the rich, to the exporting corporations, to the Japanese military-industrial complex, and of course, to the US government and Goldman Sachs (whose idea Abenomics was from the very beginning) thousands of protestors rallied Friday night in downtown Tokyo in a campaign of "Say no to the Abe government," targeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "runaway" policy. The protestors gathered at the Hibiya Park, Diet building and the prime minister's official residence, shouting "Abe step down."

Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad, and New Delhi have been actively establishing interlocking security guarantees. They have been simultaneously calling the Atlanticist bluff when it comes to the endless drumbeat of attention given to the flimsy meme of Iran’s "nuclear weapons program."  And a few days before the Vienna nuclear negotiations finally culminated in an agreement, all of this came together at a twin BRICS/SCO summit in Ufa, Russia -- a place you’ve undoubtedly never heard of and a meeting that got next to no attention in the U.S.  And yet sooner or later, these developments will ensure that the War Party in Washington and assorted neocons (as well as neoliberalcons) already breathing hard over the Iran deal will sweat bullets as their narratives about how the world works crumble.

As President Obama completes the re-fueling ahead of the second leg aboard Air Force One on his way to Kenya to visit extended family (and we are sure to do some America-related business), concerns over security have been dismissed after the President's schedule was leaked this week by a Kenyan airline. However, as China Daily reports, Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser said that Obama will not visit his family's ancestral village of Kogelo due to "time and logistical reasons."

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), once seen as a cornerstone of America’s energy security, is losing its shine in Washington.

Despite the literal hundreds of thousands of pages of information about government snooping and the Congressional “investigations” that followed, nothing has been done to curb the unabated violations of Americans’ Constitutional rights to be secure in their homes and personal effects. Thus, as always, the free market began developing its own solutions. Earlier this year an inventor by the name of Benjamin Caudill announced a device he dubbed the ProxyHam which was going to literally change everything about how those concerned with privacy could connect to the internet. However, just hours before Caudill was to reveal a fully-functioning ProxyHam at the DefCon hacking conference his presentation was abruptly cancelled - No reason was given and Caudill posted several cryptic Tweets that left many baffled; the device had been disappeared, the company was cancelling production on retail units, and the source code and blueprints would no longer be released to the public.