national security

"It was like ‘Hey,…. its Crackas With Attitude.’ He was like ‘What do you want?’ We said ‘2 trillion dollars hahhaa, just joking. 'How much do you really want?' 'We just want Palestine to be free and for you to stop killing innocent people.'"

The American people accept the persecution of truth-tellers, because they have been brainwashed into believing that patriotism means defense of the government no matter what. As truth is so unfavorable to Washington, Americans believe that it must not be revealed, and if revealed, covered up, and those who reveal truth must be punished. A country with such a population as this is a police state, not a free country.

“President Obama’s decision to prolong the U.S. led war in Afghanistan only ensures U.S. responsibility for more death and destruction. Veterans For Peace condemns the decision and calls on the U.S. public to say no to more war..."

"Injecting politics into what is supposed to be a fact-finding inquiry leaves a foul taste in the F.B.I.’s mouth and makes them fear that no matter what they find, the Justice Department will take the president’s signal and not bring a case."

Whatever the efforts of that expansive corps of intelligence analysts (and the vast intelligence edifice behind it), when anything happens in the Greater Middle East, you can essentially assume that the official American reaction, military and political, will be “surprise” and that policymakers will be left “scrambling” in a quagmire of ignorance to rescue American policy from the unexpected. The evidence, after all, is largely in.  In these years, for what now must be approaching three-quarters of a trillion dollars, the national security state and the military seem to have created an un-intelligence system.  Welcome to the fog of everything.

The reason these articles are so important, is not because they are based on intel leaked by an additional whistleblower (i.e., not Snowden), but because you can’t read the information without concluding quite simply that the U.S. empire is completely and totally out of control. That the plethora of American military adventures overseas are not only not making us safer, but are in fact making us far more vulnerable.

Allen Dulles, the CIA director under presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and younger brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was the architect of a secretive national security apparatus that functioned as essentially an autonomous branch of government. In a Cold War-era world full of spy games and nuclear brinkmanship, in which everyone is either a good guy or a bad guy, Dulles - who deceived American elected leaders and overthrew foreign ones, who backed ex-Nazis and thwarted left-leaning democrats - falls firmly in the latter camp.

"The big battle preparations in that area are clear. There is a large mobilization of the Syrian army ... elite Hezbollah fighters, and thousands of Iranians who arrived in stages in recent days."

It is America the Herd that is keeping America the Civilization from feeling and being prosperous and safe. For too long, we have let our rulers ride us roughshod, using us to trample the economy and global tranquility with its economic and military interventions. Make America good again, and the kinds of greatness actually worth having will naturally follow.

The world is beginning to realize that a seachange in world affairs occured on September 28 when President Putin of Russia stated in his UN speech that Russia can no longer tolerate Washington’s vicious, stupid, and failed policies that have unleashed chaos, which is engulfing the Middle East and now Europe. Simply put, Washington’s impulsive use of power is a danger to America and to the world.

Last weekend we called Obama's latest failed attempt to replace Syria's president for what it is: "this is shaping up to be the most spectacular US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam." Today, less than a week later, we have confirmation that this was correct after first Bloomberg reported that "some top White House advisers and National Security Council staffers are trying to persuade President Barack Obama to scale back U.S. engagement" in Syria, and then a report from the NYT that "the Obama administration has ended the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels." And just like that Obama folds, again.

Long before Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was Lennon who was being singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files collected on his activities and associations. For a little while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.

In what seems like a nervous populist move amid Bernie Sanders' gains, Hillary Clinton has flip-flopped rather stunningly to oppose President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership. Despite supporting the bill at least 45 times, as CNN's Jake Tapper points out, Clinton told PBS' Judy Woodruff Wednesday in Iowa that, "As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it." It's also a departure from the Clinton legacy, as CNN notes, it was President Bill Clinton who, two decades ago, signed the first mega-regional pact: the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"The Saudi population, especially the younger people, are growing restless because they see what is happening in the world through social media of which they are among the highest users - that’s the only means they have to communicate. So the situation inside the country is also very fragile and the foreign policy conducted by the current regime is very perilous. It is only a matter of time because the Gulf States are ruled by oligarchies who maintain control through bribery and the sword. So this is a challenging time for the Gulf States despite all the public commentary suggesting they are immune to the uprisings."

• Endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, and undermining national unity;
• Inciting ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination, and undermining national unity;
• Spreading rumor, disturbing social orders, undermining social stability;
• Spreading obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, murder, terrorism or instigating others to commit crimes;
• Insulting or slandering others, infringing upon the legal rights and interest of others;