July 30, 2012
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
It’s not just the Department of Homeland Security that is gearing up for the prospect of civil unrest in America. The U.S. Army also recently purchased a stock of riot gear including batons, face masks and body shields.
As we reported last week, the DHS has put out an urgent solicitation for hundreds of items of “riot gear,” in preparation for expected unrest at the upcoming Republican National Convention, Democratic National Convention and next year’s presidential inauguration.
In a previous solicitation, the U.S. Army also put out a contract for riot gear to be delivered to the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York.
The contract, which was eventually awarded to A2Z Supply Corp, included requests to supply riot shields, face shields, batons and body protection.
Fears that the U.S. military would be used to quell domestic unrest in violation of Posse Comitatus have raged over recent years.
A recently leaked US Army Military Police training manual for “Civil Disturbance Operations” outlines how military assets are to be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.
On page 20 of the manual, rules regarding the use of “deadly force” in confronting “dissidents” are made disturbingly clear with the directive that a, “Warning shot will not be fired.”
The manual includes lists of weapons to be used against “rioters” or “demonstrators,” including “antiriot grenades.” It also advises troops to carry their guns in the “safe port arms” stance, a psychological tactic aimed at “making a show of force before rioters.” Non-lethal weapons and water cannons are also included.
Preparations for using troops to deal with mass civil unrest on U.S. soil have been in the works for years.
Back in 2008, U.S. troops returning from Iraq were earmarked for “homeland patrols” with one of their roles including helping with “civil unrest and crowd control”.
In December 2008, the Washington Post reported on plans to station 20,000 more U.S. troops inside America for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011 onwards, an expansion of Northcom’s militarization of the country in preparation for potential civil unrest following a total economic collapse or a mass terror attack.
A report produced that same year by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it termed “strategic shock.”
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” stated the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adding that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance”.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
Showing posts with label The U.S. Oligarchy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The U.S. Oligarchy. Show all posts
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Syria shockwaves sweep across Middle East
Saturday 30 April 2011
Peter Beaumont
foreign affairs editor
guardian.co.uk
The Observer's encounter with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, was an oddly informal one in a country deeply suspicious of the foreign media. An interview with his British-born wife, Asma, had been arranged, but as it ended, an aide to the president invited me to coffee with Assad himself.
Sitting somewhat awkwardly on the vast plush sofas of his reception room in the "official palace" – a place, he explained, where he did not actually live – he asked as many questions as he answered. In a conversational tone, Assad said he wanted peace with Israel, talked about reform, discussed relations with the US, and reflected on his father's harsh line on Islamists.
Syria's new president seemed then, almost a decade ago, a plausible figure, uncertain and almost modest, an impression encouraged by themarketing of him in the west by the British PR agency Bell Pottinger. He had been president for two years, having in 2000 succeeded his authoritarian father Hafez al-Assad, the man who had founded Syria's Ba'athist republic after seizing power during a coup d'etat in 1970. That early image is one that Assad and his wife have continued to promote assiduously, most recently in an interview given by Syria's first lady to a gushing Vogue magazine, which included pictures of Assad playing with his sons.
It is an image that served the London-trained ophthalmologist well, securing him a state visit to London at a time when the government of Tony Blair – as well as other European governments – thought he was a different proposition to his father, who gained notoriety for ordering the deaths in 1982 of up to 20,000 in the town of Hama during a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood.
But in the last few weeks that early image has seemed sharply at odds with the acts carried out in Assad's name in a murderous clampdown on those demonstrating against the regime, which has so far claimed more than 400 lives as Syrian towns have been put under siege – an entire country locked down.
What is less clear now is who Assad really is and what he represents. Indeed, how powerful he really is. On Friday, when a "day of rage" was called to follow Friday prayers – this time endorsed by the banned Muslim Brotherhood – Assad had taken a leaf out of the book of deposed President Mubarak of Egypt and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, flooding the streets with armed security forces even as his opponents demonstrated in more than 50 locations.
Although protests have been taking place weekly after Friday prayers, last week felt different because for the first time, the Assad regime had offered no concessions the day before. There were also the resignations of several hundred members of Assad's Ba'ath party, and reports of clashes between members of the Syrian army's 4th Brigade, commanded by the president's younger brother Maher, and the 5th Brigade outside Deraa, the besieged town that has become the symbol of the Syrian uprising. And last week felt different because of the horrors that have taken place as the regime of Bashar al-Assad has opted for repression rather than concession.
As it has cracked down, so the regime has blamed the violence on a farcically broad range of culprits: armed gangs, Lebanese legislators, Saudis, Palestinian extremists – all with ominous overtones of the 1980s and Assad's father's most infamous massacre.
To underline the message of what might happen should the regime fall, state media and newly printed posters on the streets have pushed fears of chaos, especially of a sectarian nature.
In the coastal city of Latakia, gunmen believed to belong to the shabiha, an Alawite smuggling gang drawn from the extended Assad clan, have shot at Christian neighbourhoods with warnings of a Sunni takeover, before going to Alawite neighbourhoods and warning of Sunni revenge. (The minority Alawite sect, to which the Assads belong, is generally regarded as a branch of Shia Islam.)
But if the tactics used by the regime appear largely identical to that used by Gaddafi, the response by the international community has been markedly different. On Friday, as the US moved to apply sanctions, Assad was noticeably absent from the list of targets, although it named his younger brother Maher as well as his cousin Atif Najib and the Iranian al-Quds forces which the US accuses of channelling riot equipment to the regime. Noticeably absent too has been any threat of military action against a country which – unlike Libya – is seen as having a very well-equipped and trained army and powerful friends, not least Iran.
Officially, the opinion offered by analysts and diplomats in the last few days to explain this difference is that Syria matters in a way that Libya does not in regional and international affairs.
It is for that reason, perhaps, that Qatar, which led the charge against Libya, on Friday quietly absented itself from the UN Human Rights Council's deliberations on Syria.
For Assad, the survival of the police state founded by his father is a very personal affair which he has dressed up as a national necessity to "prevent" his country from slipping into civil war. For the wider region, how events will unfold in Syria is becoming equally pressing.
Gaddafi's regime in Libya has over the decades antagonised most in the Arab region. Syria, however, despite its poverty and waning importance as a leader in regional affairs – not least since its humiliating retreat from Lebanon in 2005 – remains a presence that has to be acknowledged.
It occupies a crucial location, bordering Iraq, Israel and Lebanon. And a Syria plunged into chaos, diplomats fear, would have profound consequences for all of those countries as well as for the Middle East peace process.
Damascus hosts the political bureau of Hamas, including its political leader Khaled Meshaal, although reports emerged yesterday – denied by Hamas – that it is now planning to relocate. Indeed, some have argued that Hamas's peace deal with its Palestinian rival Fatah was prompted by the fear of losing Syria as a patron.
Assad has also allowed weapons to pass over Syria's borders for the rearming of Hezbollah after the 2006 war between that group and Israel.
Despite western efforts to prise it apart from its alliance with Iran, Syria remains close to Tehran. And while Syria played host to a large number of Iraqis fleeing violence, it also allowed passage for foreign fighters travelling to fight the US-led coalition in Iraq.
Joshua Landis of the Middle East Centre at the University of Oklahoma told the Christian Science Monitor last week that Syria epitomised the split nature of the region, describing it as "the cockpit of the Middle East".
"On the one hand," he said, "it has always made a claim to be the beating heart of Arabism, calling for unity and secularism, and on the other, it is a deeply fragmented nation with a regime dominated by a religious minority."
Of most immediate concern to neighbouring countries last week was fear of a flood of migrants fleeing the violence. Cyprus's foreign minister, Markos Kyprianou, announced on Friday that the authorities there are drawing up plans on how to cope with a possible wave of migrants from crisis-hit Syria – a contingency being prepared by other nearby territories.
For others, such as Turkey, with which Syria came close to war at the end of the 1990s over Damascus providing a safe haven for Kurdish separatists, the violence in Syria is deeply embarrassing. These days, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is personally close to Assad, their families have holidayed together, and visa restrictions were lifted for Syrians travelling to Turkey under Ankara's "Zero Problems" foreign policy.
Mubarak and Gaddafi also tried to play on fear of the chaos that might follow the fall of their regimes, but Assad's warnings appear to have found a more receptive audience.
"It's messy," says Jane Kinninmont, researcher at the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House. "What makes it different, I think, is the particular nature of the uncertainty over what might follow Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.
"In Tunisia and Egypt it was known who the opposition were, although it is true that in Libya a recognisable opposition pulled itself together pretty quickly. What is more worrying in Syria, given its geographic position, is the prospect of civil war."
It is a fear that is shared by Syrians themselves. "No one can predict with certainty what would happen if Assad fell," says one Syrian analyst in the capital Damascus who asked for anonymity. "Those suspicions have been stoked by the government alone. We don't trust our neighbours not to be members of the security forces. But the conclusion that there will be chaos is an under-analysed scare tactic. The majority of Syrians want to live together in peace."
The fear of internal violence has been raised by rumours of clashes between different army units outside the key town of Deraa, which has become the symbol of Syria's uprising.
There are some in the region who might actually prefer that to a quick transition to majority – and therefore Sunni – rule, not least Iran, which would see not only the loss of an important ally but also potentially a transit route for weapons to Hezbollah to maintain a kind of proxy strategic balance that threatens Israel's border.
And, unlike Gaddafi, Syria has split international opinion as to the nature of both the regime under Assad and the character of Assad himself, with a significant minority still believing that, despite everything, he can be manoeuvred on to the course of genuine reform that he has spoken about but never delivered.
It is this that explains the absence of Assad himself from the newly announced US sanctions against his state, explained officially as targeting those directly responsible for the violence.
It is a judgment predicated on one reading of Syria's dynamics – that Bashar al-Assad is less powerful than other figures around him, including his brother Maher.
Others, however, believe that, far from being the weak link, Bashar al-Assad is as powerful as his father in a regime which is no longer truly Ba'athist but – like Hosni Mubarak's was in Egypt – one bound together by close and corrupt financial interest.
And whatever the reality, by yesterday there was little evidence that the tactic of selective sanctions was working. A resident of the besieged southern Syrian city of Deraa said yesterday that more troops were being brought in a day after security forces reportedly shot dead dozens.
All of which confirms, for the likes of the Lebanese journalist Hisham Melhem, the naivety that has driven western foreign policy towards Syria for more than a decade.
Writing in Foreign Policy last week, he said: "Over the last 10 years many western politicians and scholars took the road to Damascus, holding out hope that the young Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would lead Syria out of the political wilderness and place it on the path of political and economic reform.
"There was a naive assumption that Bashar had the makings of a modern leader because he was in part western-educated, spoke relatively good English, and married a professional woman who worked as an investment banker in London."
It is the outcome the west is still betting on as the odds get daily longer.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/30/syria-shockwaves-sweep-middle-east.
Peter Beaumont
foreign affairs editor
guardian.co.uk
The Observer's encounter with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, was an oddly informal one in a country deeply suspicious of the foreign media. An interview with his British-born wife, Asma, had been arranged, but as it ended, an aide to the president invited me to coffee with Assad himself.
Sitting somewhat awkwardly on the vast plush sofas of his reception room in the "official palace" – a place, he explained, where he did not actually live – he asked as many questions as he answered. In a conversational tone, Assad said he wanted peace with Israel, talked about reform, discussed relations with the US, and reflected on his father's harsh line on Islamists.
Syria's new president seemed then, almost a decade ago, a plausible figure, uncertain and almost modest, an impression encouraged by themarketing of him in the west by the British PR agency Bell Pottinger. He had been president for two years, having in 2000 succeeded his authoritarian father Hafez al-Assad, the man who had founded Syria's Ba'athist republic after seizing power during a coup d'etat in 1970. That early image is one that Assad and his wife have continued to promote assiduously, most recently in an interview given by Syria's first lady to a gushing Vogue magazine, which included pictures of Assad playing with his sons.
It is an image that served the London-trained ophthalmologist well, securing him a state visit to London at a time when the government of Tony Blair – as well as other European governments – thought he was a different proposition to his father, who gained notoriety for ordering the deaths in 1982 of up to 20,000 in the town of Hama during a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood.
But in the last few weeks that early image has seemed sharply at odds with the acts carried out in Assad's name in a murderous clampdown on those demonstrating against the regime, which has so far claimed more than 400 lives as Syrian towns have been put under siege – an entire country locked down.
What is less clear now is who Assad really is and what he represents. Indeed, how powerful he really is. On Friday, when a "day of rage" was called to follow Friday prayers – this time endorsed by the banned Muslim Brotherhood – Assad had taken a leaf out of the book of deposed President Mubarak of Egypt and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, flooding the streets with armed security forces even as his opponents demonstrated in more than 50 locations.
Although protests have been taking place weekly after Friday prayers, last week felt different because for the first time, the Assad regime had offered no concessions the day before. There were also the resignations of several hundred members of Assad's Ba'ath party, and reports of clashes between members of the Syrian army's 4th Brigade, commanded by the president's younger brother Maher, and the 5th Brigade outside Deraa, the besieged town that has become the symbol of the Syrian uprising. And last week felt different because of the horrors that have taken place as the regime of Bashar al-Assad has opted for repression rather than concession.
As it has cracked down, so the regime has blamed the violence on a farcically broad range of culprits: armed gangs, Lebanese legislators, Saudis, Palestinian extremists – all with ominous overtones of the 1980s and Assad's father's most infamous massacre.
To underline the message of what might happen should the regime fall, state media and newly printed posters on the streets have pushed fears of chaos, especially of a sectarian nature.
In the coastal city of Latakia, gunmen believed to belong to the shabiha, an Alawite smuggling gang drawn from the extended Assad clan, have shot at Christian neighbourhoods with warnings of a Sunni takeover, before going to Alawite neighbourhoods and warning of Sunni revenge. (The minority Alawite sect, to which the Assads belong, is generally regarded as a branch of Shia Islam.)
But if the tactics used by the regime appear largely identical to that used by Gaddafi, the response by the international community has been markedly different. On Friday, as the US moved to apply sanctions, Assad was noticeably absent from the list of targets, although it named his younger brother Maher as well as his cousin Atif Najib and the Iranian al-Quds forces which the US accuses of channelling riot equipment to the regime. Noticeably absent too has been any threat of military action against a country which – unlike Libya – is seen as having a very well-equipped and trained army and powerful friends, not least Iran.
Officially, the opinion offered by analysts and diplomats in the last few days to explain this difference is that Syria matters in a way that Libya does not in regional and international affairs.
It is for that reason, perhaps, that Qatar, which led the charge against Libya, on Friday quietly absented itself from the UN Human Rights Council's deliberations on Syria.
For Assad, the survival of the police state founded by his father is a very personal affair which he has dressed up as a national necessity to "prevent" his country from slipping into civil war. For the wider region, how events will unfold in Syria is becoming equally pressing.
Gaddafi's regime in Libya has over the decades antagonised most in the Arab region. Syria, however, despite its poverty and waning importance as a leader in regional affairs – not least since its humiliating retreat from Lebanon in 2005 – remains a presence that has to be acknowledged.
It occupies a crucial location, bordering Iraq, Israel and Lebanon. And a Syria plunged into chaos, diplomats fear, would have profound consequences for all of those countries as well as for the Middle East peace process.
Damascus hosts the political bureau of Hamas, including its political leader Khaled Meshaal, although reports emerged yesterday – denied by Hamas – that it is now planning to relocate. Indeed, some have argued that Hamas's peace deal with its Palestinian rival Fatah was prompted by the fear of losing Syria as a patron.
Assad has also allowed weapons to pass over Syria's borders for the rearming of Hezbollah after the 2006 war between that group and Israel.
Despite western efforts to prise it apart from its alliance with Iran, Syria remains close to Tehran. And while Syria played host to a large number of Iraqis fleeing violence, it also allowed passage for foreign fighters travelling to fight the US-led coalition in Iraq.
Joshua Landis of the Middle East Centre at the University of Oklahoma told the Christian Science Monitor last week that Syria epitomised the split nature of the region, describing it as "the cockpit of the Middle East".
"On the one hand," he said, "it has always made a claim to be the beating heart of Arabism, calling for unity and secularism, and on the other, it is a deeply fragmented nation with a regime dominated by a religious minority."
Of most immediate concern to neighbouring countries last week was fear of a flood of migrants fleeing the violence. Cyprus's foreign minister, Markos Kyprianou, announced on Friday that the authorities there are drawing up plans on how to cope with a possible wave of migrants from crisis-hit Syria – a contingency being prepared by other nearby territories.
For others, such as Turkey, with which Syria came close to war at the end of the 1990s over Damascus providing a safe haven for Kurdish separatists, the violence in Syria is deeply embarrassing. These days, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is personally close to Assad, their families have holidayed together, and visa restrictions were lifted for Syrians travelling to Turkey under Ankara's "Zero Problems" foreign policy.
Mubarak and Gaddafi also tried to play on fear of the chaos that might follow the fall of their regimes, but Assad's warnings appear to have found a more receptive audience.
"It's messy," says Jane Kinninmont, researcher at the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House. "What makes it different, I think, is the particular nature of the uncertainty over what might follow Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.
"In Tunisia and Egypt it was known who the opposition were, although it is true that in Libya a recognisable opposition pulled itself together pretty quickly. What is more worrying in Syria, given its geographic position, is the prospect of civil war."
It is a fear that is shared by Syrians themselves. "No one can predict with certainty what would happen if Assad fell," says one Syrian analyst in the capital Damascus who asked for anonymity. "Those suspicions have been stoked by the government alone. We don't trust our neighbours not to be members of the security forces. But the conclusion that there will be chaos is an under-analysed scare tactic. The majority of Syrians want to live together in peace."
The fear of internal violence has been raised by rumours of clashes between different army units outside the key town of Deraa, which has become the symbol of Syria's uprising.
There are some in the region who might actually prefer that to a quick transition to majority – and therefore Sunni – rule, not least Iran, which would see not only the loss of an important ally but also potentially a transit route for weapons to Hezbollah to maintain a kind of proxy strategic balance that threatens Israel's border.
And, unlike Gaddafi, Syria has split international opinion as to the nature of both the regime under Assad and the character of Assad himself, with a significant minority still believing that, despite everything, he can be manoeuvred on to the course of genuine reform that he has spoken about but never delivered.
It is this that explains the absence of Assad himself from the newly announced US sanctions against his state, explained officially as targeting those directly responsible for the violence.
It is a judgment predicated on one reading of Syria's dynamics – that Bashar al-Assad is less powerful than other figures around him, including his brother Maher.
Others, however, believe that, far from being the weak link, Bashar al-Assad is as powerful as his father in a regime which is no longer truly Ba'athist but – like Hosni Mubarak's was in Egypt – one bound together by close and corrupt financial interest.
And whatever the reality, by yesterday there was little evidence that the tactic of selective sanctions was working. A resident of the besieged southern Syrian city of Deraa said yesterday that more troops were being brought in a day after security forces reportedly shot dead dozens.
All of which confirms, for the likes of the Lebanese journalist Hisham Melhem, the naivety that has driven western foreign policy towards Syria for more than a decade.
Writing in Foreign Policy last week, he said: "Over the last 10 years many western politicians and scholars took the road to Damascus, holding out hope that the young Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would lead Syria out of the political wilderness and place it on the path of political and economic reform.
"There was a naive assumption that Bashar had the makings of a modern leader because he was in part western-educated, spoke relatively good English, and married a professional woman who worked as an investment banker in London."
It is the outcome the west is still betting on as the odds get daily longer.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/30/syria-shockwaves-sweep-middle-east.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Egypt’s Internet Kill Switch: Coming To America
January 28, 2011
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
In response to widespread protests and mass unrest, the authoritarian Egyptian government has completely shut down the country’s access to the internet, eliminating the use of social networking websites, other effective tools of communication and organisation, and effectively sealing Egypt off from the rest of the world.
Internet intelligence authority Renesys has confirmed that “virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.”
“At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers.” Renesys’ analysis states.
Vodafone said in an emailed statement: “All mobile operators in Egypt have been instructed to suspend services in selected areas. Under Egyptian legislation, the authorities have the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to comply.”
Prior to the complete shut down, tweets and live mobile phone feeds from the Egyptian protests in Suez and Cairo were providing up to the minute coverage. Links to photos on Twitpic, videos on YouTube and postings on Facebook were aiding protesters organize their movements.
As The Electronic Freedom Foundation notes, “When protestors in Cario’s Tahir Square experienced an outage in cell phone data service, nearby residents reportedly opened their home Wi-Fii networks to allow protesters to get online.”
The Egyptian authorities could not stand for this. Following the revelation of Associated Press footage showing a protester being shot dead in the street, one of at least eight victims who have been killed since the uprising began, an apparent Internet kill switch was thrown.
The action is unprecedented in Internet history. It is clearly the action of a desperate tyrannical government on its last legs.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government is also reportedly arresting bloggers, attacking journalists, and rounding up anyone else the regime sees as dissidents.
Still, the Obama administration, which currently funnels $1.3 billion in military aid to the Egyptian government per year, refuses to condemn the Mubarak regime, and further more, is looking to embrace the exact same internet control mechanism in America.
Indeed, when Senator Joe Lieberman attempted to justify draconian legislation that would provide President Obama with a figurative kill switch to shut down parts of the Internet indefinitely, he cited the Communist Chinese system of Internet policing as model which America should move towards.
“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley last June.
Of course, the Chinese government routinely shuts down the already heavily filtered internet at any politically sensitive time, not only “in case of war” as Lieberman claims. Furthermore, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are all permanently banned.
News websites in China now require users to register their true identities in order to leave comments, so that any dissident can be tracked and appropriately dealt with. A truly frightening Orwellian reality you may think, yet this exact move towards abolishing Internet anonymity and creating a virtual ID card is a key centerpiece of the US government’s cybersecurity agenda.
The ‘Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act’ (PCNAA), which now includes a removal of all judicial oversight, is still circulating and will be voted on later this year. Lieberman has stated that the legislation should be made a top priority.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
The recent actions of the Egyptian government in the face of widespread public backlash, and the ongoing stifling of the free flow of information in China should provide a stark warning to Americans that such Internet control mechanisms are the tools of oppressive authoritarian governments and have no place in a free society.
Related Reading: New Bill Gives Obama ‘Kill Switch‘ To Shut Down The Internet
Related Reading: Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers
Related Reading: Lieberman’s Model For America: Purging The Internet of Dissent
—
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
In response to widespread protests and mass unrest, the authoritarian Egyptian government has completely shut down the country’s access to the internet, eliminating the use of social networking websites, other effective tools of communication and organisation, and effectively sealing Egypt off from the rest of the world.
Internet intelligence authority Renesys has confirmed that “virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.”
“At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers.” Renesys’ analysis states.
Vodafone said in an emailed statement: “All mobile operators in Egypt have been instructed to suspend services in selected areas. Under Egyptian legislation, the authorities have the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to comply.”
Prior to the complete shut down, tweets and live mobile phone feeds from the Egyptian protests in Suez and Cairo were providing up to the minute coverage. Links to photos on Twitpic, videos on YouTube and postings on Facebook were aiding protesters organize their movements.
As The Electronic Freedom Foundation notes, “When protestors in Cario’s Tahir Square experienced an outage in cell phone data service, nearby residents reportedly opened their home Wi-Fii networks to allow protesters to get online.”
The Egyptian authorities could not stand for this. Following the revelation of Associated Press footage showing a protester being shot dead in the street, one of at least eight victims who have been killed since the uprising began, an apparent Internet kill switch was thrown.
The action is unprecedented in Internet history. It is clearly the action of a desperate tyrannical government on its last legs.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government is also reportedly arresting bloggers, attacking journalists, and rounding up anyone else the regime sees as dissidents.
Still, the Obama administration, which currently funnels $1.3 billion in military aid to the Egyptian government per year, refuses to condemn the Mubarak regime, and further more, is looking to embrace the exact same internet control mechanism in America.
Indeed, when Senator Joe Lieberman attempted to justify draconian legislation that would provide President Obama with a figurative kill switch to shut down parts of the Internet indefinitely, he cited the Communist Chinese system of Internet policing as model which America should move towards.
“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley last June.
Of course, the Chinese government routinely shuts down the already heavily filtered internet at any politically sensitive time, not only “in case of war” as Lieberman claims. Furthermore, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are all permanently banned.
News websites in China now require users to register their true identities in order to leave comments, so that any dissident can be tracked and appropriately dealt with. A truly frightening Orwellian reality you may think, yet this exact move towards abolishing Internet anonymity and creating a virtual ID card is a key centerpiece of the US government’s cybersecurity agenda.
The ‘Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act’ (PCNAA), which now includes a removal of all judicial oversight, is still circulating and will be voted on later this year. Lieberman has stated that the legislation should be made a top priority.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
The recent actions of the Egyptian government in the face of widespread public backlash, and the ongoing stifling of the free flow of information in China should provide a stark warning to Americans that such Internet control mechanisms are the tools of oppressive authoritarian governments and have no place in a free society.
Related Reading: New Bill Gives Obama ‘Kill Switch‘ To Shut Down The Internet
Related Reading: Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers
Related Reading: Lieberman’s Model For America: Purging The Internet of Dissent
—
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Blackwater Resurfaces in Pakistan. Operatives to infiltrate key cities
Sunday, Aug 29, 2010
By Shahid R. Siddiqi. Axis of Logic
Axis of Logic
his notorious private contractor is spreading its tentacles in Pakistan for undercover activities on behalf of the US agencies
Not too long ago a wave of concern had swept through Pakistan when the local media began screaming about Blackwater's growing infiltration in the country and its dubious activities. The mounting pressure to expel this infamous US defence contractor put the Zardari government in a corner. It could neither ignore public pressure nor could it displease its benefactors in Washington. In the end it chose to vehemently deny these stories. Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, said publicly he will resign if Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan, as if his resignation would be a great loss for the people.
US Ambassador
Anne Patterson:
"Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan."
These stories were also denounced as false propaganda by US officials. Responding to accusations that the US Embassy was sponsoring Blackwater, the US Ambassador, Anne Patterson, insisted that "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan." She claimed that Pakistani journalists were "wildly incorrect," and blamed them for compromising the security of US personnel in Pakistan. Secretary Clinton during her visit shortly thereafter also dodged questions on the subject.
Blackwater is operating in Pakistan
The information that has now emerged proves the fear of the Pakistanis to be correct. Not only has Blackwater been working in Pakistan but it grows stronger by the day.
Who would know about Blackwater’s presence or absence in Pakistan better than the owner of Blackwater himself? The reclusive owner of infamous Blackwater empire, Eric Prince, was caught on audio tape by The Nation, a New York based magazine, acknowledging that his organization does work in Pakistan. He said this in a speech earlier this year at the University of Michigan.
In response to the debate on whether armed individuals working for Blackwater could be classified as ‘unlawful combatants’ being ineligible for protection under the Geneva Convention, Prince scornfully said, "You know, people ask me that all the time, 'Aren't you concerned that you folks aren't covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, 'Absolutely not,' because these people …… don't know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there."
Could Prince have been clearer on this issue? One wonders how Pakistan’s interior minister or Ambassador Patterson could prove him wrong. One wonders also if it is time for the interior minister to abide by his promise to resign and Ambassador Anne Patterson to apologize to the people of Pakistan for making false statements.
"[People] are convinced that this notorious private contractor is spreading its tentacles in Pakistan for undercover operations on behalf of the US agencies."
The reality is that the stories were true and hence have refused to go away. The people of Pakistan neither took the US Ambassador seriously, given their distrust for the US and its self serving policies, nor did they give any credence to denials of their own government, knowing full well where these came from. They are convinced that this notorious private contractor is spreading its tentacles in Pakistan for undercover operations on behalf of the US agencies. There is a growing fear that Pakistan could soon witness Iraq and Afghanistan like situations at the hands of Blackwater agents.
Blackwater, described as the most notorious mercenary army which recently underwent rebranding as ‘Xe Services LLC’ in response to legal complications owing to its unlawful activities, has played a crucial role in the American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. From the beginning of Bush’s ‘war on terror’ it has undertaken secret and illegal operations that CIA, Pentagon or State Department could not themselves undertake due to Congressional restrictions.
Blackwater paramilitaries do what would be illegal for the U.S. military
Blackwater earns multimillion dollars revolving contracts because it enables them to circumvent Congressional restrictions and achieve their goals without deploying uniformed soldiers in these countries due to political sensitivities. As Eric Prince put it: “…the private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint". And on top of, it there was no fear of accountability. Blackwater operatives are usually deployed under cover, for instance as aid workers.
In Pakistan, as in other countries, Blackwater is honeycombed with CIA, US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Pentagon and State Department in conducting a variety of operations. Additionally, it is also perceived by the people and the media to be involved in supporting the agenda of destroying the fabric of Pakistan’s nationhood through suicide bombings, fanning religious extremism and supporting nationalist and separatist movements, using Pakistanis whose loyalties are up for sale.
In Pakistan, Blackwater operatives are reportedly positioned in key locations for spying and watching US interests. Jeremy Scahill is the author of the NYT Best Seller, Blackwater. In his article The Secret US War in Pakistan, he states:
“At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, 'snatch and grabs' of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan."
He goes on to say that the Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus”. Quoting a military intelligence source, he says: “the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan”.
Jeremy Scahill also reports of Pentagon having contracted a Pakistani company owned by influential Pakistanis having close links with Eric Prince, for ground transportation of large Afghanistan-bound arms shipments from Port Qasim in Karachi. Interestingly, security of the consignments has been entrusted to Blackwater operatives working under disguise.
Holding up economic assistance to force granting of visas
With the Zardari government cornered in the wake of Blackwater scandal last year, the Americans found to their dislike the Pakistan foreign office dragging its feet over issuance of unlimited number of visas, unlike their past practice. This time the foreign office refused issuance of visas to an unusually large batch of 300 non-diplomatic staff listed as ‘defence officials’ without first examining their purpose of entry and antecedents. The foreign office was also reluctant to meet US demand of granting diplomatic visas to them and allowing privileges like exemption of baggage from customs inspections. Not only was this against the rules but raised suspicions about nature of the cargo these personnel intended bringing into Pakistan.
"Pakistan’s foreign office eventually capitulated to Washington’s demands."
Washington justified these unusually large numbers saying these personnel were being assigned to process the aid that was being given to Pakistan. “….We just need more visas to put the people in place to help work with Pakistan and to make progress on economic issues, security issues, and agricultural issues,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. Then to prove its point, it held up disbursement of the promised economic assistance. It went further and also held up routine visas for Pakistani diplomats on transfer to Washington.
Pakistan’s foreign office eventually capitulated to Washington’s demands, the crunch apparently coming after the visit of Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Holbrooke to Islamabad, who promised to ‘clear ways for assistance projects’ in exchange for the visas.
The insistence by the US State Department for visas for personnel who did not initially qualify in the judgment of Pakistan’s foreign office makes these personnel appear dubious. They appear even more dubious because reportedly the information given on their visa applications was found incomplete and evasive. This underscored the perception that under the cover of diplomatic visas, more employees of American ‘private contractors’ were being smuggled into Pakistan.
Reportedly, about 180 US Cobra operatives, including Xe personnel, have recently been secretly positioned in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, and Quetta and that more are expected to join them. The US intelligence agencies think that a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are hiding in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar. There are also reports that about 650 US nationals, including 200 US Marines, are either on their way or have arrived already on multiple entry visas granted by Pakistan Embassy in Washington under special authority given to Pakistan’s Ambassador Haqqani by President Zardari. There was no need for any special authority if the US visa requests qualified under the existing rules. Clearly the rules had to be bended.
Amid fears that the CIA, JSOC, Pentagon and the State Department would not hesitate to pass off their private contractors’ operatives as ‘defence officials’, the bending of visa rules and giving a carte blanche to the US Embassy is a grave folly. If anything, this is an indicator of how far the sovereignty and the security of the state are being compromised by the Zardari government for the sake of economic assistance that the Americans cannot really stop indefinitely. Why does President Zardari forget that the Americans need Pakistan badly and giving economic assistance to Pakistan is in America’s own interest, as much as taking it is in the interest of Pakistan?
By Shahid R. Siddiqi. Axis of Logic
Axis of Logic
his notorious private contractor is spreading its tentacles in Pakistan for undercover activities on behalf of the US agencies
Not too long ago a wave of concern had swept through Pakistan when the local media began screaming about Blackwater's growing infiltration in the country and its dubious activities. The mounting pressure to expel this infamous US defence contractor put the Zardari government in a corner. It could neither ignore public pressure nor could it displease its benefactors in Washington. In the end it chose to vehemently deny these stories. Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, said publicly he will resign if Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan, as if his resignation would be a great loss for the people.
US Ambassador
Anne Patterson:
"Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan."
These stories were also denounced as false propaganda by US officials. Responding to accusations that the US Embassy was sponsoring Blackwater, the US Ambassador, Anne Patterson, insisted that "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan." She claimed that Pakistani journalists were "wildly incorrect," and blamed them for compromising the security of US personnel in Pakistan. Secretary Clinton during her visit shortly thereafter also dodged questions on the subject.
Blackwater is operating in Pakistan
The information that has now emerged proves the fear of the Pakistanis to be correct. Not only has Blackwater been working in Pakistan but it grows stronger by the day.
Who would know about Blackwater’s presence or absence in Pakistan better than the owner of Blackwater himself? The reclusive owner of infamous Blackwater empire, Eric Prince, was caught on audio tape by The Nation, a New York based magazine, acknowledging that his organization does work in Pakistan. He said this in a speech earlier this year at the University of Michigan.
In response to the debate on whether armed individuals working for Blackwater could be classified as ‘unlawful combatants’ being ineligible for protection under the Geneva Convention, Prince scornfully said, "You know, people ask me that all the time, 'Aren't you concerned that you folks aren't covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, 'Absolutely not,' because these people …… don't know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there."
Could Prince have been clearer on this issue? One wonders how Pakistan’s interior minister or Ambassador Patterson could prove him wrong. One wonders also if it is time for the interior minister to abide by his promise to resign and Ambassador Anne Patterson to apologize to the people of Pakistan for making false statements.
"[People] are convinced that this notorious private contractor is spreading its tentacles in Pakistan for undercover operations on behalf of the US agencies."
The reality is that the stories were true and hence have refused to go away. The people of Pakistan neither took the US Ambassador seriously, given their distrust for the US and its self serving policies, nor did they give any credence to denials of their own government, knowing full well where these came from. They are convinced that this notorious private contractor is spreading its tentacles in Pakistan for undercover operations on behalf of the US agencies. There is a growing fear that Pakistan could soon witness Iraq and Afghanistan like situations at the hands of Blackwater agents.
Blackwater, described as the most notorious mercenary army which recently underwent rebranding as ‘Xe Services LLC’ in response to legal complications owing to its unlawful activities, has played a crucial role in the American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. From the beginning of Bush’s ‘war on terror’ it has undertaken secret and illegal operations that CIA, Pentagon or State Department could not themselves undertake due to Congressional restrictions.
Blackwater paramilitaries do what would be illegal for the U.S. military
Blackwater earns multimillion dollars revolving contracts because it enables them to circumvent Congressional restrictions and achieve their goals without deploying uniformed soldiers in these countries due to political sensitivities. As Eric Prince put it: “…the private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint". And on top of, it there was no fear of accountability. Blackwater operatives are usually deployed under cover, for instance as aid workers.
In Pakistan, as in other countries, Blackwater is honeycombed with CIA, US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Pentagon and State Department in conducting a variety of operations. Additionally, it is also perceived by the people and the media to be involved in supporting the agenda of destroying the fabric of Pakistan’s nationhood through suicide bombings, fanning religious extremism and supporting nationalist and separatist movements, using Pakistanis whose loyalties are up for sale.
In Pakistan, Blackwater operatives are reportedly positioned in key locations for spying and watching US interests. Jeremy Scahill is the author of the NYT Best Seller, Blackwater. In his article The Secret US War in Pakistan, he states:
“At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, 'snatch and grabs' of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan."
He goes on to say that the Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus”. Quoting a military intelligence source, he says: “the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan”.
Jeremy Scahill also reports of Pentagon having contracted a Pakistani company owned by influential Pakistanis having close links with Eric Prince, for ground transportation of large Afghanistan-bound arms shipments from Port Qasim in Karachi. Interestingly, security of the consignments has been entrusted to Blackwater operatives working under disguise.
Holding up economic assistance to force granting of visas
With the Zardari government cornered in the wake of Blackwater scandal last year, the Americans found to their dislike the Pakistan foreign office dragging its feet over issuance of unlimited number of visas, unlike their past practice. This time the foreign office refused issuance of visas to an unusually large batch of 300 non-diplomatic staff listed as ‘defence officials’ without first examining their purpose of entry and antecedents. The foreign office was also reluctant to meet US demand of granting diplomatic visas to them and allowing privileges like exemption of baggage from customs inspections. Not only was this against the rules but raised suspicions about nature of the cargo these personnel intended bringing into Pakistan.
"Pakistan’s foreign office eventually capitulated to Washington’s demands."
Washington justified these unusually large numbers saying these personnel were being assigned to process the aid that was being given to Pakistan. “….We just need more visas to put the people in place to help work with Pakistan and to make progress on economic issues, security issues, and agricultural issues,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. Then to prove its point, it held up disbursement of the promised economic assistance. It went further and also held up routine visas for Pakistani diplomats on transfer to Washington.
Pakistan’s foreign office eventually capitulated to Washington’s demands, the crunch apparently coming after the visit of Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Holbrooke to Islamabad, who promised to ‘clear ways for assistance projects’ in exchange for the visas.
The insistence by the US State Department for visas for personnel who did not initially qualify in the judgment of Pakistan’s foreign office makes these personnel appear dubious. They appear even more dubious because reportedly the information given on their visa applications was found incomplete and evasive. This underscored the perception that under the cover of diplomatic visas, more employees of American ‘private contractors’ were being smuggled into Pakistan.
Reportedly, about 180 US Cobra operatives, including Xe personnel, have recently been secretly positioned in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, and Quetta and that more are expected to join them. The US intelligence agencies think that a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are hiding in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar. There are also reports that about 650 US nationals, including 200 US Marines, are either on their way or have arrived already on multiple entry visas granted by Pakistan Embassy in Washington under special authority given to Pakistan’s Ambassador Haqqani by President Zardari. There was no need for any special authority if the US visa requests qualified under the existing rules. Clearly the rules had to be bended.
Amid fears that the CIA, JSOC, Pentagon and the State Department would not hesitate to pass off their private contractors’ operatives as ‘defence officials’, the bending of visa rules and giving a carte blanche to the US Embassy is a grave folly. If anything, this is an indicator of how far the sovereignty and the security of the state are being compromised by the Zardari government for the sake of economic assistance that the Americans cannot really stop indefinitely. Why does President Zardari forget that the Americans need Pakistan badly and giving economic assistance to Pakistan is in America’s own interest, as much as taking it is in the interest of Pakistan?
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Food safety bill invokes Codex harmonization and grants FDA authority to police food safety of foreign nations
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) Of all the talk about S.510, virtually no one has actually read the language in the bill -- especially not those lawmakers who voted for it. The more you read from this bill, the more surreal it all becomes. For example, did you know there's a global FDA power grab agenda hidden in the Food Safety Modernization Act? Keep reading and I'll quote text straight out of the bill itself.
Section 305 is entitled "BUILDING CAPACITY OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS WITH RESPECT TO FOOD SAFETY" and it gives the FDA authority to set up offices in foreign countries and then dictate the food safety plans of foreign governments. It says, specifically, on page 217 of the bill (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-...):
SEC. 308. FOREIGN OFFICES OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION.
(a) IN GENERAL. - The Secretary shall establish offices of the Food and Drug Administration in foreign countries selected by the Secretary.
It then goes on to say:
(a) The Secretary shall, not later than 2 years of the date of enactment of this Act, develop a comprehensive plan to expand the technical, scientific, and regulatory food safety capacity of foreign governments, and their respective food industries, from which foods are exported to the United States.
Huh? The FDA is now going to run the food safety programs of foreign governments? Look out, world: I'm from the FDA and I'm here to help!
Homeland Security and U.S. Treasury also involved
So who is involved in creating this? Believe it or not, the global "food safety" plan is to be developed under consultation to the Department of Homeland Security as well as the U.S. Treasury. As the bill states:
(b) Consultation - In developing the plan under subsection (a), the Secretary shall consult with the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Trade Representative, and the Secretary of Commerce, representatives of the food industry, appropriate foreign government officials, nongovernmental organizations that represent the interests of consumers, and other stakeholders.
You might reasonably wonder "What does the Department of Homeland Security have to do with the FDA's food safety plan?" Or "Why is the U.S. Treasury involved in the food supply?" Learn more about the Federal Reserve and you'll have the answers to these questions. I don't have space for all the details here, but read Ed Griffin's book and visit http://www.realityzone.com if you really want to know what's behind a lot of this.
Codex harmonization, data sharing and more
So what does this global food safety plan actually entail? It's all spelled out right in the language of the law. You can view this yourself on page 195 of the bill text in the PDF file at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-...
(c) Plan - The plan developed under subsection (a) shall include, as appropriate, the following:
• "Provisions for secure electronic data sharing."
This is so that the FDA can electronically track and monitor the food production activities of foreign nations. That way, if somebody in Spain tries to sell raw almonds to the USA, the FDA can make sure those almonds get irradiated or fumigated with chemicals first. Because raw almonds are so dangerous they have actually been outlawed in America (http://www.naturalnews.com/021776.html).
• "Training of foreign governments and food producers on United States requirements for safe food."
This is designed to shove the FDA's "dead food" agenda down the throats of other nations. The FDA, you see, believes that the only safe food is dead food -- that's why, along with the USDA, they have declared war on raw milk, raw almonds and many raw vegetables (http://www.naturalnews.com/023015_f...).
Now, with this law, the FDA will begin pushing its dead foods agenda globally, essentially exporting the FDA's agenda of death and disease by making sure other nations destroy the nutritive qualities of their food supply in the same way the U.S. is doing. It's all great for the global Big Pharma profiteers, of course. The more disease they can spread around the world, the more money they'll make from selling medications.
Codex Alimentarius is also promoted in the bill
The "Plan" described in this bill continues with the following:
• "Recommendations on whether and how to harmonize requirements under the Codex Alimentarius."
This is included so that the FDA will "harmonize" the U.S. food and dietary supplement industries with global Codex requirements which outlaw virtually all healthy doses of vitamins and minerals. Under full Codex "harmonization," America will be left with a dead food supply and the health food stores will be virtually stripped bare of dietary supplements. Selling vitamin D at a reasonable dose such as 4,000 IU per capsule will be criminalized and products will be seized and destroyed by FDA agents who recruit local law enforcement to bring in the firepower.
All this will, of course, ensure a diseased, nutritionally-deficient U.S. population. This actually seems to be the goal the FDA has been trying to achieve all along because the more diseased the population, the more money gets collected by Big Pharma for "treating" sick people with medication and chemotherapy.
It's all right in the bill!
The text mentioned in this article is taken straight from the bill itself. You can search for it at http://thomas.loc.gov by searching for "S.510" as the bill number.
It makes me wonder why some food book authors so wholeheartedly supported this bill. Why were so many progressives on the left so enamored with this law? Didn't they realize this was a huge FDA power expansion that would destroy many small farms and put farmers out of business while subjecting the USA to possible Codex harmonization?
Did they even know the FDA is now on a global food-killing agenda that will seek to pasteurize, fumigate, cook or kill virtually every piece of food that enters the United States?
Did they not know that the bill does absolutely nothing to limit the use of chemical pesticides on imported food? According to the FDA's stance on all this, foods laced with DDT and other pesticides are perfectly "safe" for human consumption, but foods teeming with probiotics -- such as raw milk -- are deadly and dangerous! (Seriously...)
How is it that popular food book authors and food documentary producers could possibly support this bill? Do they also think small dairy farmers who sell raw milk should be criminalized? Do they agree with the Codex harmonization agenda? Do they think the FDA should run the world's food safety systems and that the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Treasury should be shaping our global food safety agenda?
You really just have to shake your head and wonder about the true intentions of some people. I just have to ask: Were the supporters of this bill really so naive that they could somehow believe the FDA would actually seek to protect small, local organic farms? What about raw milk producers? What about the single-family farms that must now apply to the FDA for exemption status by authoring research reports, collecting tax returns and producing a pile of documentation the FDA will soon require?
Let me just say it bluntly: The Food Safety Modernization Act is the destroyer of local organic farming. It will gut small farms and local farms, greatly increasing the price of local organic food while decreasing America's food security. Farmers' Markets will be targeted by FDA agents who raid the operations of local farmers and imprison them for not having the right paperwork. Families will be destroyed, and those who have been successful at local food production will scale back their operations in a desperate effort to duck under the $500,000 / year rule (which can easily be surpassed by producing just ten acres of organic carrots, by the way).
The real agenda behind the bill
From another point of view, however, this bill is doing exactly what it was supposed to do: Destroy small farms, wipe out family farm operations, imprison raw milk producers and centralize food production in the hands of the big corporate food producers whose operations are steeped in pesticides and soil degradation.
This bill should have been called the "Big Agriculture Monopoly Act" because that's what it does. It will ensure that America's food supply will be controlled by Monsanto, DuPont and other agricultural giants who have been at odds with small organic farms for years.
The global food control agenda is a conspiracy, not a theory
It's all part of the global food control agenda that we now know to be 100% true based on the leaked Wikileaks cables which revealed that the U.S. government conspired to push GMOs into Europe and "create a retaliatory target list" for any nation that resisted GMOs (such as France). Read that full report right here on NaturalNews: http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_G...
Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that the global GMO conspiracy is quite real. It's something that U.S. diplomats and government officials scheme on in order to appease their corporate masters in the agriculture industry. Now, with the Food Safety Modernization Act, this global conspiracy extends beyond GMOs and encompasses the global food supply, too.
It has become clear that U.S. lawmakers and bureaucrats will not stop until they have killed the entire global food supply, rendering living foods, raw foods and dietary supplements illegal or impossibly difficult to grow. You can thank your U.S. Congresspeople and Senators for all this, of course. In the end, every Senator in office today caved in and voted to pass this bill. You can also thank those who publicly promoted this bill even while having no real idea of the horrors they were supporting.
Such begins a new era of global food destruction headed by what can only be called the most dangerous government agency in North America: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If they do to your food what they've done to prescription drugs, annual food deaths will increase to over 100,000 a year.
Watch for the FDA to now set up enforcement offices in nations all around the world and start outlawing living foods on a global scale (if they can get away with it).
Also, watch for a new push for Codex harmonization which is a truly evil agenda to criminalize healing foods and nutritional supplements that prevent and even reverse chronic disease.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030863_food_safety_bill_Codex_Alimentarius.html#ixzz19Wjcz0B2
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) Of all the talk about S.510, virtually no one has actually read the language in the bill -- especially not those lawmakers who voted for it. The more you read from this bill, the more surreal it all becomes. For example, did you know there's a global FDA power grab agenda hidden in the Food Safety Modernization Act? Keep reading and I'll quote text straight out of the bill itself.
Section 305 is entitled "BUILDING CAPACITY OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS WITH RESPECT TO FOOD SAFETY" and it gives the FDA authority to set up offices in foreign countries and then dictate the food safety plans of foreign governments. It says, specifically, on page 217 of the bill (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-...):
SEC. 308. FOREIGN OFFICES OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION.
(a) IN GENERAL. - The Secretary shall establish offices of the Food and Drug Administration in foreign countries selected by the Secretary.
It then goes on to say:
(a) The Secretary shall, not later than 2 years of the date of enactment of this Act, develop a comprehensive plan to expand the technical, scientific, and regulatory food safety capacity of foreign governments, and their respective food industries, from which foods are exported to the United States.
Huh? The FDA is now going to run the food safety programs of foreign governments? Look out, world: I'm from the FDA and I'm here to help!
Homeland Security and U.S. Treasury also involved
So who is involved in creating this? Believe it or not, the global "food safety" plan is to be developed under consultation to the Department of Homeland Security as well as the U.S. Treasury. As the bill states:
(b) Consultation - In developing the plan under subsection (a), the Secretary shall consult with the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Trade Representative, and the Secretary of Commerce, representatives of the food industry, appropriate foreign government officials, nongovernmental organizations that represent the interests of consumers, and other stakeholders.
You might reasonably wonder "What does the Department of Homeland Security have to do with the FDA's food safety plan?" Or "Why is the U.S. Treasury involved in the food supply?" Learn more about the Federal Reserve and you'll have the answers to these questions. I don't have space for all the details here, but read Ed Griffin's book and visit http://www.realityzone.com if you really want to know what's behind a lot of this.
Codex harmonization, data sharing and more
So what does this global food safety plan actually entail? It's all spelled out right in the language of the law. You can view this yourself on page 195 of the bill text in the PDF file at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-...
(c) Plan - The plan developed under subsection (a) shall include, as appropriate, the following:
• "Provisions for secure electronic data sharing."
This is so that the FDA can electronically track and monitor the food production activities of foreign nations. That way, if somebody in Spain tries to sell raw almonds to the USA, the FDA can make sure those almonds get irradiated or fumigated with chemicals first. Because raw almonds are so dangerous they have actually been outlawed in America (http://www.naturalnews.com/021776.html).
• "Training of foreign governments and food producers on United States requirements for safe food."
This is designed to shove the FDA's "dead food" agenda down the throats of other nations. The FDA, you see, believes that the only safe food is dead food -- that's why, along with the USDA, they have declared war on raw milk, raw almonds and many raw vegetables (http://www.naturalnews.com/023015_f...).
Now, with this law, the FDA will begin pushing its dead foods agenda globally, essentially exporting the FDA's agenda of death and disease by making sure other nations destroy the nutritive qualities of their food supply in the same way the U.S. is doing. It's all great for the global Big Pharma profiteers, of course. The more disease they can spread around the world, the more money they'll make from selling medications.
Codex Alimentarius is also promoted in the bill
The "Plan" described in this bill continues with the following:
• "Recommendations on whether and how to harmonize requirements under the Codex Alimentarius."
This is included so that the FDA will "harmonize" the U.S. food and dietary supplement industries with global Codex requirements which outlaw virtually all healthy doses of vitamins and minerals. Under full Codex "harmonization," America will be left with a dead food supply and the health food stores will be virtually stripped bare of dietary supplements. Selling vitamin D at a reasonable dose such as 4,000 IU per capsule will be criminalized and products will be seized and destroyed by FDA agents who recruit local law enforcement to bring in the firepower.
All this will, of course, ensure a diseased, nutritionally-deficient U.S. population. This actually seems to be the goal the FDA has been trying to achieve all along because the more diseased the population, the more money gets collected by Big Pharma for "treating" sick people with medication and chemotherapy.
It's all right in the bill!
The text mentioned in this article is taken straight from the bill itself. You can search for it at http://thomas.loc.gov by searching for "S.510" as the bill number.
It makes me wonder why some food book authors so wholeheartedly supported this bill. Why were so many progressives on the left so enamored with this law? Didn't they realize this was a huge FDA power expansion that would destroy many small farms and put farmers out of business while subjecting the USA to possible Codex harmonization?
Did they even know the FDA is now on a global food-killing agenda that will seek to pasteurize, fumigate, cook or kill virtually every piece of food that enters the United States?
Did they not know that the bill does absolutely nothing to limit the use of chemical pesticides on imported food? According to the FDA's stance on all this, foods laced with DDT and other pesticides are perfectly "safe" for human consumption, but foods teeming with probiotics -- such as raw milk -- are deadly and dangerous! (Seriously...)
How is it that popular food book authors and food documentary producers could possibly support this bill? Do they also think small dairy farmers who sell raw milk should be criminalized? Do they agree with the Codex harmonization agenda? Do they think the FDA should run the world's food safety systems and that the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Treasury should be shaping our global food safety agenda?
You really just have to shake your head and wonder about the true intentions of some people. I just have to ask: Were the supporters of this bill really so naive that they could somehow believe the FDA would actually seek to protect small, local organic farms? What about raw milk producers? What about the single-family farms that must now apply to the FDA for exemption status by authoring research reports, collecting tax returns and producing a pile of documentation the FDA will soon require?
Let me just say it bluntly: The Food Safety Modernization Act is the destroyer of local organic farming. It will gut small farms and local farms, greatly increasing the price of local organic food while decreasing America's food security. Farmers' Markets will be targeted by FDA agents who raid the operations of local farmers and imprison them for not having the right paperwork. Families will be destroyed, and those who have been successful at local food production will scale back their operations in a desperate effort to duck under the $500,000 / year rule (which can easily be surpassed by producing just ten acres of organic carrots, by the way).
The real agenda behind the bill
From another point of view, however, this bill is doing exactly what it was supposed to do: Destroy small farms, wipe out family farm operations, imprison raw milk producers and centralize food production in the hands of the big corporate food producers whose operations are steeped in pesticides and soil degradation.
This bill should have been called the "Big Agriculture Monopoly Act" because that's what it does. It will ensure that America's food supply will be controlled by Monsanto, DuPont and other agricultural giants who have been at odds with small organic farms for years.
The global food control agenda is a conspiracy, not a theory
It's all part of the global food control agenda that we now know to be 100% true based on the leaked Wikileaks cables which revealed that the U.S. government conspired to push GMOs into Europe and "create a retaliatory target list" for any nation that resisted GMOs (such as France). Read that full report right here on NaturalNews: http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_G...
Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that the global GMO conspiracy is quite real. It's something that U.S. diplomats and government officials scheme on in order to appease their corporate masters in the agriculture industry. Now, with the Food Safety Modernization Act, this global conspiracy extends beyond GMOs and encompasses the global food supply, too.
It has become clear that U.S. lawmakers and bureaucrats will not stop until they have killed the entire global food supply, rendering living foods, raw foods and dietary supplements illegal or impossibly difficult to grow. You can thank your U.S. Congresspeople and Senators for all this, of course. In the end, every Senator in office today caved in and voted to pass this bill. You can also thank those who publicly promoted this bill even while having no real idea of the horrors they were supporting.
Such begins a new era of global food destruction headed by what can only be called the most dangerous government agency in North America: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If they do to your food what they've done to prescription drugs, annual food deaths will increase to over 100,000 a year.
Watch for the FDA to now set up enforcement offices in nations all around the world and start outlawing living foods on a global scale (if they can get away with it).
Also, watch for a new push for Codex harmonization which is a truly evil agenda to criminalize healing foods and nutritional supplements that prevent and even reverse chronic disease.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030863_food_safety_bill_Codex_Alimentarius.html#ixzz19Wjcz0B2
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Is the NSA Conducting Electronic Warfare On Americans?
May 19, 2006 CHRONICLE ARTICLE
Jonas Holmes
Russ Tice, former NSA intelligence officer and current Whistleblower, was to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. Apparently the testimony, Mr. Tice wanted to give, makes General Hayden’s phone surveillance program look like very small potatoes. Mr. Tice’s testimony is expected to reveal further illegal activity overseen by General Michael Hayden which even loyal and patriotic NSA employees view as unlawful. I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them.IT’S PRETTY HARD TO BELIEVE, Tice said. I hope that they’ll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn’t exist right now. According to Mr. Tice, what has been disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg.What in the world could Russ Tice be talking about! To figure it out let us take a look at Russ Tice’s work at the NSA. According to the Washington Times and numerous other sources, Mr. Tice worked on special access programs related to electronic intelligence gathering while working for the NSA and DIA, where he took part in space systems communications, non-communications signals, electronic warfare, satellite control, telemetry, sensors, and special capability systems. Special Access Programs or SAPs refer to Black Budgets or Black Operations. Black means that they are covert and hidden from everyone except the participants.Feasibly there would be no arena with a greater potential for abuse and misuse than Special Access Programs. Even now Congress and the Justice Department are being denied the ability to investigate these programs because they don’t have clearance. To put it in CNN’s Jack Cafferty’s words a top secret government agency, the NSA, the largest of its kind in the world, is denying oversight or investigation by the American people because investigators lack clearance. To add a layer of irony to the Black Ops cake this travesty is occurring in America, the supposed bastion of Freedom and Democracy, which we are currently trying to export to Iraq.
It just gets scarier. The Black Ops that Mr. Tice was involved in related to electronic intelligence gathering via space systems communications, non-communications signals, electronic warfare, satellite control, telemetry, sensors, and special capability systems.For greater insight as to the impact of these programs readers should review decades old FOIA authenticated programs such as MKULTRA, BLUEBIRD, COINTELPRO and ARTICHOKE. Radar based Telemetry involves the ability to see through walls without thermal imaging. Electronic Warfare is even scarier if we take a look at the science. NSA Signals Intelligence Use of EMF Brain Stimulation. NSA Signals Intelligence uses EMF Brain Stimulation for Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM) and Electronic Brain Link (EBL). EMF Brain Stimulation has been in development since the MKUltra program of the early 1950's, which included neurological research into "radiation" (non-ionizing EMF) and bioelectric research and development. The resulting secret technology is categorized at the National Security Archives as "Radiation Intelligence," defined as "information from unintentionally emanated electromagnetic waves in the environment, not including radioactivity or nuclear detonation." Signals Intelligence implemented and kept this technology secret in the same manner as other electronic warfare programs of the U.S. government. The NSA monitors available information about this technology and withholds scientific research from the public. There are also international intelligence agency agreements to keep this technology secret. The NSA has proprietary electronic equipment that analyzes electrical activity in humans from a distance. NSA computer-generated brain mapping can continuously monitor all the electrical activity in the brain continuously. The NSA records and decodes individual brain maps (of hundreds of thousands of persons) for national security purposes. EMF Brain Stimulation is also secretly used by the military for Brain-to-computer link. (In military fighter aircraft, for example.) For electronic surveillance purposes electrical activity in the speech center of the brain can be translated into the subject's verbal thoughts. RNM can send encoded signals to the brain's auditory cortex thus allowing audio communication direct to the brain (bypassing the ears). NSA operatives can use this to covertly debilitate subjects by simulating auditory hallucinations characteristic of paranoid schizophrenia. Without any contact with the subject, Remote Neural Monitoring can map out electrical activity from the visual cortex of a subject's brain and show images from the subject's brain on a video monitor. NSA operatives see what the surveillance subject's eyes are seeing. Visual memory can also be seen. RNM can send images direct to the visual cortex. bypassing the eyes and optic nerves. NSA operatives can use this to surreptitiously put images in a surveillance subject's brain while they are in R.E.M. sleep for brain-programming purposes. Individual citizens occasionally targeted for surveillance by independently operating NSA personnel NSA personnel can control the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals in the U.S. by using the NSA's domestic intelligence network and cover businesses. The operations independently run by them can sometimes go beyond the bounds of law. Long-term control and sabotage of tens of thousands of unwitting citizens by NSA operatives is likely to happen. NSA Domint has the ability to covertly assassinate U.S. citizens or run covert psychological control operations to cause subjects to be diagnosed with ill mental health. National Security Agency Signals Intelligence Electronic Brain Link Technology NSA SigInt can remotely detect, identify and monitor a person's bioelectric fields. The NSA's Signals Intelligence has the proprietary ability to remotely and non-invasively monitor information in the human brain by digitally decoding the evoked potentials in the 30-50 hz,.5 milliwatt electro-magnetic emissions from the brain. Neuronal activity in the brain creates a shifting electrical pattern that has a shifting magnetic flux. This magnetic flux puts out a constant 30-50 hz, .5 milliwatt electromagnetic (EMF) wave. Contained in the electromagnetic emission from the brain are spikes and patterns called "evoked potentials." Every thought, reaction, motor command, auditory event, and visual image in the brain has a corresponding "evoked potential" or set of "evoked potentials." The EMF emission from the brain can be decoded into the current thoughts, images and sounds in the subject's brain. NSA SigInt uses EMF-transmitted Brain Stimulation as a communications system to transmit information (as well as nervous system messages) to intelligence agents and also to transmit to the brains of covert operations subjects (on a non-perceptible level). EMF Brain Stimulation works by sending a complexly coded and pulsed electromagnetic signal to trigger evoked potentials (events) in the brain, thereby forming sound and visual images in the brain's neural circuits. EMF Brain Stimulation can also change a person's brain-states and affect motor control. Two-way Electronic Brain-Link is done by remotely monitoring neural audio-visual information while transmitting sound to the auditory cortex (bypassing the ears)and transmitting faint images to the visual cortex (bypassing the optic nerves and eyes, the images appear as floating 2-D screens in the brain). Two-Way Electronic Brain Link has become the ultimate communications system for CIA/NSA personnel. Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM, remotely monitoring bioelectric information in the human brain) has become the ultimate surveillance system. It is used by a limited number of agents in the U.S. Intelligence Community. RNM requires decoding the resonance frequency of each specific brain area. That frequency is then modulated in order to impose information in That specific brain area. The frequency to which the various brain areas respond varies from 3 Hz to 50 Hz. Only NSA Signals Intelligence modulates signals in this frequency band.
An example of EMF Brain Stimulation:
Brain Area Bioelectric ResonanceFrequency Information InducedThrough Modulation
Motor Control Cortex 10 HZ Motor Impulse Co-ordination
Auditory Cortex 15 HZ Sound which bypasses the ears
Visual Cortex 25 HZ Images in the brain, bypassing the eyes
Somatosensory Cortex 09 HZ Phantom Touch Sense
Thought Center 20 HZ Imposed Subconscious Thoughts
This modulated information can be put into the brain at varying intensities from subliminal to perceptible. Each person's brain has a unique set of bioelectric resonance/entrainment frequencies. Sending audio information to a person's brain at the frequency of another person's auditory cortex would result in that audio information not being perceived. Additionally, A 1994 congressional hearing reported that nearly half a million Americans were subjected to some kind of cold war era tests, often without being informed and without their consent.In addition, experimentation law is well grounded in constitutional and international law. It is an under-reported fact that two major reports on human rights and torture in the U.S. recently listed illegal radiation experiments. Many more facts are documented below. Therefore, human research subject protections should be a high priority and are just as significant as current issues of torture and illegal wiretapping. It is time for America to wake up. It is time for America to protect its Whistleblowers who are our last line of defense against dictatorship and despotism. It is time for America to take responsibility for oversight of its tax dollars and elect leaders who will assume such responsibility now. Yes, the war on terrorism is important. It is even more important and fearful if the terrorism is from within and unknowingly funded by hard working American citizens. There is no Special Access Program beyond the oversight of political leaders elected by the people and for the people. If these political leaders jeopardize national security then that shall be handled in a court of law. But to tell America, to tell the American people, to tell the political leaders elected by the American people that America does not deserve to know what happening in the NSA’s dark, black rooms, with billions of dollars, behind closed doors, when we know that privilege has already been abused; that is the true definition of terrorism. That is the true definition of Communism and a Police State, no oversight. So fellow Americans, you may hem and haw in the face of truth but know that one day you will realize that your country has been usurped from the very principles upon which it was founded.
Godspeed, Russ Tice, the Patriots are with you.
Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, “The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.” [includes rush transcript]
We turn now to the growing controversy over President Bush’s decision to order the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens inside the country without the legally required court warrants. Bush’s decision was first revealed in the New York Times in mid-December. The Times published the expose after holding the story for more than a year under pressure from the White House. The paper reportedly first uncovered the illegal order prior to the 2004 election. When the editors at the Times decided last month to go ahead with the article, President Bush personally summoned the paper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, and executive editor, Bill Keller, to the Oval Office in an attempt to talk them out of running the story. Since the story broke, calls for Congressional hearings and the possible impeachment of the president have intensified. Conservative legal experts have even admitted Bush may have committed an impeachable offense by ordering the NSA to break the law. On Sunday, the New York Times revealed there was dissent within the upper echelon of the Bush administration over the legality of the president’s order. According to the Times, Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top deputy, James Comey, refused to sign on to the continuation of the secret program in 2004 amid concerns about its legality and oversight. At the time, Comey was serving in place of then Attorney General John Ashcroft while Ashcroft was hospitalized for a medical condition. Comey’s refusal prompted senior Presidential aides Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to visit Ashcroft in his hospital room to grant the approval. The Times reports Ashcroft expressed reluctance to sign on to the program. It is unclear if he eventually relented. Both Ashcroft and Comey’s concerns appear to have led to a temporary suspension of parts of the program for several months. But the administration has repeatedly defended its actions. • President Bush, speaking on Sunday: “If somebody from al-Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties as am I. This is is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America–and I repeat limited. It is limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States. But, they are of known numbers of known al Qaeda members or affiliates. I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy is thinking. And that’s what we are doing. We’re at war with a bunch of cold blooded killers who will kill in a moment’s notice. I have a responsibility to act within the law which I am doing. The program has been reviewed constantly by Justice Department officials. A program to which the Congress has been briefed. A program that is in my judgment necessary to win this war and to protect the American people.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that the NSA passed on records of intercepted email and phone calls to other government agencies including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. This news come on the heels of several other reports that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, military intelligence and local police departments have all been engaged in monitoring peaceful groups including Greenpeace, PETA–the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Catholic Worker, anti-war groups and even bicyclists in New York City. During the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists. It was this domestic surveillance that led Congress to intervene and pass Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 in order to prevent future such abuses. The statute permits domestic intelligence surveillance with the approval of a court order from the FISA court. In 1975, Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, said, “We have a particular obligation to examine the NSA, in light of its tremendous potential for abuse. . . . The interception of international communications signals sent through the air is the job of NSA; and, thanks to modern technological developments, it does its job very well. The danger lies in the ability of the NSA to turn its awesome technology against domestic communications.” Now Congress is considering holding a new round of hearings on Bush’s domestic spying program. A bipartisan group series of Senators have already issued their public support including several top Republicans including Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Two weeks ago, a former NSA intelligence officer publicly announced that he wants to testify before Congress. His name is Russell Tice. For the past two decades he has worked in the intelligence field both inside and outside government, most recently with the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. He was fired in May 2005 after he spoke out as a whistleblower. In his letter, Tice wrote, “It is with my oath as a US intelligence officer weighing heavy on my mind that I wish to report to Congress acts that I believe are unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.” • Russell Tice, former intelligence agent at the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. He worked at the NSA up until May 2005. Rush Transcript This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, More... AMY GOODMAN: This is President Bush speaking on Sunday.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I can say that if somebody from al-Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat: limited. And it’s limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States. But, they are of known numbers of known al Qaeda members or affiliates. And I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy is thinking. And that’s what we are doing. We’re at war with a bunch of cold-blooded killers who will kill on a moment’s notice. And I have a responsibility, obviously, to act within the law, which I am doing. It’s a program has been reviewed constantly by Justice Department officials, a program to which the Congress has been briefed, and a program that is in my judgment necessary to win this war and to protect the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Bush speaking Sunday. Meanwhile, The Washington Post is reporting the N.S.A. passed on records of intercepted email and phone calls to other government agencies, including the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the C.I.A. and the Department of Homeland Security. This news comes on the heels of several other reports that the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, military intelligence and local police departments have all been engaged in monitoring peaceful groups, including Greenpeace, PETA (the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the Catholic Worker antiwar groups, and even cyclists in New York City. During the 1960s and 1970s, the military used N.S.A. intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists. It was this domestic surveillance that led Congress to intervene and pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, in order to prevent future such abuses. The statute permits domestic intelligence surveillance with the approval of a court order from the FISA court. In 1975, Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, said, quote, “We have a particular obligation to examine the N.S.A. in light of its tremendous potential for abuse. The interception of international communications signals sent through the air is the job of N.S.A., and thanks to modern technological developments, it does its job very well. The danger lies in the ability of the N.S.A. to turn its awesome technology against domestic communications,” Church said. Congress is now considering holding a new round of hearings on Bush’s domestic spying program. A bipartisan group of senators have already issued their public support, including several top Republicans, including Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. This is Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: This warrant-less eavesdropping program is not authorized by the PATRIOT Act, it’s not authorized by any act of Congress, and it’s not overseen by any court. According to the reports it’s being conducted under a secret presidential order, based on secret legal opinions by the same Justice Department, lawyers, the same ones who argued secretly that the President could order the use of torture. Mr. President, it is time to have some checks and balances in this country. We are a democracy. We are a democracy. Let’s have checks and balances, not secret orders and secret courts and secret torture, and on and on.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Two weeks ago, a former N.S.A. intelligence officer publicly announced he wants to testify before Congress. His name is
Russell Tice. For the past two decades he has worked in the intelligence field, both inside and outside of government, most recently with the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was fired in May 2005, after he spoke out as a whistleblower. In his letter, Tice wrote, quote, “It’s with my oath as a U.S. intelligence officer weighing heavy on my mind that I wish to report to Congress acts I believe are unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.” Russell Tice joins us now in our Washington studio. Welcome to Democracy Now! RUSSELL TICE: Good morning. AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. RUSSELL TICE: Thank you. AMY GOODMAN: What made you decide to come forward? You worked for the top-secret agency of this government, one that is far larger and even more secret than the C.I.A. RUSSELL TICE: Well, the main reason is, you know, I’m involved with some certain aspects of the intelligence community, which are very closely held, and I believe I have seen some things that are illegal. Ultimately it’s Congress’s responsibility to conduct oversight in these things. I don’t see it happening. Another reason is there was a certain roadblock that was sort of lifted that allowed me to do this, and I can’t explain, but I will to Congress if allowed to. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the letter you have written to Congress, your request to testify? RUSSELL TICE: Well, it’s just a simple request under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, which is a legal means to contact Congress and tell them that you believe that something has gone wrong in the intelligence community. AMY GOODMAN: Can you start off by talking overall? Since most people until recently, until this latest story of President Bush engaging in these wiretaps of American citizens, as well as foreign nationals in this country, perhaps hadn’t even heard of the N.S.A., can you just describe for us what is the National Security Agency? How does it monitor these communications? RUSSELL TICE: Well, the National Security Agency is an agency that deals with monitoring communications for the defense of the country. The charter basically says that the N.S.A. will deal with communications of—overseas. We’re not allowed to go after Americans, and I think ultimately that’s what the big fuss is now. But as far as the details of how N.S.A. does that, unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say that. I don’t want to walk out of here and end up in an F.B.I. interrogation room. AMY GOODMAN: Russell Tice, you have worked for the National Security Agency. Can you talk about your response to the revelations that the Times, you know, revealed in—perhaps late, knowing the story well before the election, yet revealing it a few weeks ago—the revelation of the wiretapping of American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, as far as an intelligence officer, especially a SIGINT officer at N.S.A., we’re taught from very early on in our careers that you just do not do this. This is probably the number one commandment of the SIGINT Ten Commandments as a SIGINT officer. You will not spy on Americans. It is drilled into our head over and over and over again in security briefings, at least twice a year, where you ultimately have to sign a paper that says you have gotten the briefing. Everyone at N.S.A. who’s a SIGINT officer knows that you do not do this. Ultimately, so do the leaders of N.S.A., and apparently the leaders of N.S.A. have decided that they were just going to go against the tenets of something that’s a gospel to a SIGINT officer. AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Russell Tice. We will go to break and come back to him. He’s a former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked at the N.S.A. up until May of this past year, May of 2005. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We talk to Russell Tice, former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency, formerly with the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked with the N.S.A. up until May 2005. Russell Tice, what happened then? What happened in May 2005? RUSSELL TICE: Well, basically I was given my walking papers and told I was no longer a federal employee. So— AMY GOODMAN: Why? RUSSELL TICE: Some time ago I had some concerns about a co-worker at D.I.A. who exhibited the classic signs of being involved in espionage, and I reported that and basically got blown off by the counterintelligence office at D.I.A. and kind of pushed the issue, because I continued to see a pattern of there being a problem. And once I got back to N.S.A., I pretty much dropped the issue, but there was a report that came across my desk in April of 2003 about two F.B.I. agents that were possibly passing secret counterintelligence information to a Chinese double agent, Katrina Leung, and I sent a secure message back to the D.I.A. counterintelligence officer, and I said I think the F.B.I. is incompetent, and the retaliation came down on me like a ton of bricks. AMY GOODMAN: What would you say to those who say you are speaking out now simply because you are disgruntled? RUSSELL TICE: Well, I guess that’s a valid argument. You know, I was fired. But, you know, I’ve kind of held my tongue for a long time now, and basically, you know, I have known these things have been going on for a while. The classification level of the stuff I deal with, basically what we call black world programs and operations, are very, very closely held. And you know, whether you think this is retaliation or not, I have something important to tell Congress, and I think they need to hear it. I’d like to think my motives aren’t retaliation, but, you know, after what I have been through, I can understand someone’s argument to think I have been jaded. AMY GOODMAN: What about the risks you take as a whistleblower? I wanted to play a clip of F.B.I. whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds. She was working for the F.B.I. after 9/11 as a translator, translating intercepts, and ultimately she lost her job. And I asked her if she was afraid of speaking out. SIBEL EDMONDS: There are times that I am afraid, but then again, I have to remind myself that this is my civic duty and this is for the country, because what they are doing by pushing this stuff under this blanket of secrecy, what they are hiding is against the public’s welfare and interest. And reminding that to myself just helps me, to a certain degree, overcome that fear.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Sibel Edmonds. Russell Tice, you are a member of her group, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. RUSSELL TICE: That, I am. National Security Whistleblower Coalition is basically put together of people who are in sort of the same boat that I am in, that have brought whistleblower concerns to the public or to their perspective chain of supervisors and have been retaliated against. And the intelligence community, all of the whistleblower protection laws are—pretty much exempt the intelligence community. So the intelligence community can put forth their lip service about, ‘Oh, yeah, we want you to put report waste fraud abuse,’ or ‘You shall report suspicions of espionage,’ but when they retaliate you for doing so, you pretty much have no recourse. I think a lot of people don’t realize that. And Sibel has basically started this organization to bring these sort of concerns out into the public and ultimately to get Congress to start passing some laws to protect folks that are going to be in a position to let the public or just, you know, to let Congress know that crimes are being committed. And that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a crime here. So, you know, all of this running around and looking for someone who dropped the dime on a crime is a whole lot different than something like the Valerie Plame case. AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the Justice Department launching an investigation into the leak, who leaked the fact that President Bush was spying on American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, I think this is an attempt to make sure that no intelligence officer ever considers doing this. What was done to me was basically an attempt to tell other intelligence officers, ‘Hey, if you do something like this, if you do something to tick us off, we’re going to take your job from you, we’re gonna do some unpleasant things to you.’ So, right now, the atmosphere at N.S.A. and D.I.A., for that matter, is fear. The security services basically rule over the employees with fear, and people are afraid to come forward. People know if they come forward even in the legal means, like coming to Congress with a concern, your career is over. And that’s just the best scenario. There’s all sorts of other unfortunate things like, perhaps, if someone gets thrown in jail for either a witch-hunt or something trumping up charges or, you know, this guy who is basically reporting a crime. AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think of the news that the National Security Agency spying on American citizens without a court order and foreign nationals is now sharing this information with other agencies like, well, the other agency you worked for, the Defense Intelligence Agency? RUSSELL TICE: Intelligence officers work with one another all the time. As an analyst, you might have a problem. Everybody gets together. It’s just common sense to find out what everybody knows, you know, come to a consensus as to what the answer is. It’s sort of like a puzzle, you know, chunks of the puzzle. And maybe you have a few chunks as a SIGINT officer, and the C.I.A. has a few chunks in their arena and D.I.A. has a few elements of it, and everybody gets together and does a little mind meld to try to figure out what’s going on. So it’s not unusual for the intelligence community to share information. But when we’re talking about information on the American public, which is a violation of the FISA law, then I think it’s even something more to be concerned about. AMY GOODMAN: Were you ever asked to engage in this? RUSSELL TICE: No, no, and if I did so, I did so unwittingly, which I have a feeling would be the case for many of the people involved in this. More than likely this was very closely held at the upper echelons at N.S.A., and mainly because these people knew—General Hayden, Bill Black, and probably the new one, Keith Alexander, they all knew this was illegal. So, you know, they kept it from the populace of N.S.A., because every N.S.A. officer certainly knows this is illegal. AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean if you did so, you did so unwittingly? RUSSELL TICE: Well, there are certain elements of the aspects of what is done where there are functionaries or technicians or analysts that are given information, and you just process that information. You don’t necessarily know the nitty gritty as to where the information came from or the—it’s called compartmentalization. It’s ironic, but you could be working on programs, and the very person sitting next to you is not cleared for the programs you’re working on, and they’re working on their own programs, and each person knows to keep their nose out of the other person’s business, because everything’s compartmentalized, and you’re only allowed to work on what you have a need to know to work on. AMY GOODMAN: What about the telecoms, the telecommunications corporations working with the Bush administration to open up a back door to eavesdropping, to wiretapping? RUSSELL TICE: If that was done and, you know, I use a big “if” here, and, remember, I can’t tell you what I know of how N.S.A. does its business, but I can use the wiggle words like “if” and scenarios that don’t incorporate specifics, but nonetheless, if U.S. gateways and junction points in the United States were used to siphon off information, I would think that the corporate executives of these companies need to be held accountable, as well, because they would certainly also know that what they’re doing is wrong and illegal. And if they have some sort of court order or some sort of paper or something signed from some government official, Congress needs to look at those papers and look at the bottom line and see whose signature is there. And these corporations know that this is illegal, as well. So everyone needs to be held accountable in this mess. AMY GOODMAN: When you come on board at these intelligence agencies, as at the National Security Agency, what are you told? I mean, were you aware of the Church hearings in the 1970s that went into the illegal spying on monitoring, of surveilling, of wiretapping of American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, that’s something that’s really not drummed in your head. That’s more of a history lesson, I think. And the reasoning, ultimately, for the FISA laws and for what’s called USSID 18, which is sort of the SIGINTer’s bible of how they conduct their business, but the law itself is drilled into your head, as well as the tenets of USSID 18, of which the number one commandment is ‘Thou shalt not spy on Americans.’ AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Russell Tice, former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency, worked at the N.S.A. up until May of 2005. What is data mining? RUSSELL TICE: Data mining is a means by which you—you have information, and you go searching for all associated elements of that information in whatever sort of data banks or databases that you put together with information. So if you have a phone number and you want to associate it with, say, a terrorist or something, and you want to associate it with, you know, ‘Who is this terrorist talking to?’ you start doing data on what sort of information or what sort of numbers does that person call or the frequency of time, that sort of thing. And you start basically putting together a bubble chart of, you know, where everybody is. Lord help you if you’ve got a wrong phone call from one of these guys, a terrorist overseas or something, and you’re American. You’re liable to have the F.B.I. camping out your doorstep, apparently, from everything that’s going on. But it’s basically a way of searching all of the data that exists, and that’s things like credit card records and driver’s license, anything that you can get your hands on and try to associate it with some activity. I think if we were doing that overseas with known information, it would be a good thing if we’re pinning them down. But ultimately, when we’re using that on—if we’re using that with U.S. databases, then ultimately, once again, the American people are—their civil rights are being violated. AMY GOODMAN: Do you expect you are being monitored, surveilled, wiretapped right now? RUSSELL TICE: Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, in—you know, sometimes you just don’t know. And being, you know—what they’ve basically accused me of, I can’t just walk around thinking that everybody is looking at my heels and are following me around. But in one scenario I turned the tables on someone I thought was following me, and he ducked into a convenience store, and I just walked down there—and I saw him out of my peripheral vision—and I basically walked down to where he ducked into and in the store, I walked up behind him. He was buying a cup of coffee, and he had a on his hip and his F.B.I. badge. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on there. AMY GOODMAN: The National Security Agency, or I should say the United Nations Security Council, there was a scandal a year or two ago about the monitoring of the diplomats there. It was in the lead up to the invasion, the U.S. wanting to know and put pressure on these Security Council ambassadors to know what they were saying before any kind of vote. What is the difference between that kind of monitoring and the monitoring of American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, if the monitoring was done against foreigners and the monitoring was done overseas, as far as I know, that’s perfectly legal. It’s just a matter of who you are monitoring and where you’re doing the monitoring. If it’s done at home and they’re Americans, then you have a different scenario. And we’re all trained that, you know, hands off. If you inadvertently run across something like that in the conduct of what you’re doing, you immediately let someone know; if it’s involved in something being recorded, it’s immediately erased. So, you know, it’s something that we all know you just don’t do. Overseas, okay; here at home, not so okay. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you the clip that we ran of President Bush earlier and get your response. This is President Bush on Sunday. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I can say that if somebody from al-Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat: limited. And it’s limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States. But, they are of known numbers of known al Qaeda members or affiliates. And I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy is thinking. And that’s what we are doing. We’re at war with a bunch of cold-blooded killers who will kill on a moment’s notice. And I have a responsibility, obviously, to act within the law, which I am doing. It’s a program has been reviewed constantly by Justice Department officials, a program to which the Congress has been briefed, and a program that is in my judgment necessary to win this war and to protect the American people. AMY GOODMAN: President Bush. Russell Tice, you’re with the National Security Agency, or you were until May 2005. If al-Qaeda’s calling, the U.S. government wants to know. Your response? RUSSELL TICE: Well, that’s probably a good thing to know. But that’s why we have a FISA court and FISA laws. The FISA court—it’s not very difficult to get something through a FISA court. I kinda liken the FISA court to a monkey with a rubber stamp. The monkey sees a name, the monkey sees a word justification with a block of information. It can’t read the block, but it just stamps “affirmed” on the block, and a banana chip rolls out, and then the next paper rolls in front of the monkey. When you have like 20,000 requests and only, I think, four were turned down, you can’t look at the FISA court as anything different. So, you have to ask yourself the question: Why would someone want to go around the FISA court in something like this? I would think the answer could be that this thing is a lot bigger than even the President has been told it is, and that ultimately a vacuum cleaner approach may have been used, in which case you don’t get names, and that’s ultimately why you wouldn’t go to the FISA court. And I think that’s something Congress needs to address. They need to find out exactly how this system was operated and ultimately determine whether this was indeed a very focused effort or whether this was a vacuum cleaner-type scenario. AMY GOODMAN: Did you support the President, Russell Tice? Did you vote for President Bush? RUSSELL TICE: I am a Republican. I voted for President Bush both in the last election and the first election where he was up for president. I’ve contributed to his campaign. I get a post—I mean, a Christmas card from the White House every year, I guess, because of my nominal contributions. But—so, you know, it’s not like, you know—I think you’re going to find a lot of folks that are in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community are apt to be on the conservative side of the fence. But nonetheless, we’re all taught that you don’t do something like this. And I’m certainly hoping that the President has been misled in what’s going on here and that the true crux of this problem is in the leadership of the intelligence community. AMY GOODMAN: You’re saying in the leadership of your own agency, the National Security Agency? RUSSELL TICE: That’s correct, yeah, because certainly General Alexander and General Hayden and Bill Black knew that this was illegal. AMY GOODMAN: But they clearly had to have authorization from above, and Bush is not contending that he did not know. RUSSELL TICE: Well, that’s true. But the question has to be asked: What did the President know? What was the President told about this? It’s just—there’s just too many variables out there that we don’t know yet. And, ultimately, I think Congress needs to find out those answers. If the President was fed a bill of goods in this matter, then that’s something that has to be addressed. Or if the President himself knew every aspect of what’s going on, if this was some sort of vacuum cleaner deal, then it is ultimately, I would think, the President himself that needs to be held responsible for what’s going on here. AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think should happen to him? RUSSELL TICE: Well, you know, it’s certainly not up to me, but I’ve heard all of the talk about impeachment and that sort of thing. You know, I saw our last president get impeached for what personally I thought should have been something between his wife and his family, and the big guy upstairs. It’s not up to me, but if the President knew, if this was a vacuum cleaner job and the President knew exactly what was going on—and ultimately what we’re hearing now is nothing but a cover-up and a whitewash—and we find that to be the case, then I think it should cause some dire consequences for even the President of the United States, if he indeed did know exactly what was going on and if it was a very large-scale, you know, suck-up-everything kind of operation. AMY GOODMAN: This investigation that the Justice Department has launched—it’s interesting that Alberto Gonzales is now Attorney General of the United States—the latest story of The New York Times: Gonzales, when he was White House Counsel, when Andrew Card, chief of staff, went to Ashcroft at his hospital bedside to get authorization for this. Can he be a disinterested party in investigating this now, as Attorney General himself? RUSSELL TICE: Yeah, I think that for anyone to say that the Attorney General is going to be totally unbiased about something like this, I think that’s silly. Of course, the answer is “No.” He can’t be unbiased in this. I think that a special prosecutor or something like that may have to be involved in something like this, otherwise we’re just liable to have a whitewash. AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the term “police state”? RUSSELL TICE: Well, anytime where you have a situation where U.S. citizens are being arrested and thrown in jail with the key being thrown away, you know, potentially being sent overseas to be tortured, U.S. citizens being spied on, you know, and it doesn’t even go to the court that deals with these secret things, you know, I mean, think about it, you could have potentially somebody getting the wrong phone call from a terrorist and having him spirited away to some back-alley country to get the rubber hose treatment and who knows what else. I think that would kind of qualify as a police state, in my judgment. I certainly hope that Congress or somebody sort of does something about this, because, you know, for Americans just to say, ‘Oh, well, we have to do this because, you know, because of terrorism,’ you know, it’s the same argument that we used with communism years ago: take away your civil liberties, but use some threat that’s, you know, been out there for a long time. Terrorism has been there for—certainly before 9/11 we had terrorism problems, and I have a feeling it’s going to be around for quite some time after whatever we deem is a victory in what we’re doing now in the Middle East. But, you know, it’s just something that has to be addressed. We just can’t continue to see our civil liberties degraded. Ultimately, as Ben Franklin, I think, had said, you know, those who would give up their essential liberties for a little freedom deserve neither liberty or freedom, and I tend to agree with Ben Franklin. AMY GOODMAN: And your colleagues at the N.S.A. right now, their feelings, the National Security Agency? RUSSELL TICE: Boy, I think most folks at N.S.A. right now are just running scared. They have the security office hanging over their head, which has always been a bunch of vicious folks, and now they’ve got, you know, this potential witch hunt going on with the Attorney General. People in the intelligence community are afraid. They know that you can’t come forward. You have no protections as a whistleblower. These things need to be addressed. AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean you have no protection? RUSSELL TICE: Well, like I said before, as a whistleblower, you’re not protected by the whistleblower laws that are out there. The intelligence community is exempt from the whistleblower protection laws. AMY GOODMAN: So why are you doing it? RUSSELL TICE: Well, ultimately, I don’t have to be afraid of losing my job, because I have already lost my job, so that’s one reason. The other reason is because I made an oath when I became an intelligence officer that I would protect the United States Constitution, not a president, not some classification, you know, for whatever, that ultimately I’m responsible to protect the Constitution of the United States. And I think that’s the same oath the President takes, for the most part. So, something like—imagine if something—if we were like, I don’t know, taking Americans and assassinating them for suspicions of suspicions of terrorism, and then we just put some classification on it and said, ‘Well, this is super top secret, so no one can say anything about that.’ Well, at what point do you draw the line and say enough is enough. We have to say something here. AMY GOODMAN: What was your classification? How high up was your clearance? RUSSELL TICE: Well, clearances go up to the top secret level. But once you get to the top secret level, there are many caveats and many programs and things that can happen beyond that point. I specialized in what’s known as black world operations and programs that are very closely held, things that happen in operations and programs in the intelligence community that are closely held, and for the most part these programs are very beneficial to ultimately getting information and protecting the American people. But in some cases, I think, classification levels at these special—we call them special access programs, SAPs—could be used to mask, basically, criminal wrongdoing. So I think that’s something ultimately Congress needs to address, as well, because from what I can see, there is not a whole lot of oversight when it comes to some of these deep black programs. AMY GOODMAN: Russell Tice, did you know anyone within the N.S.A. who refused to spy on Americans, who refused to follow orders? RUSSELL TICE: No. No, I do not. As far as—of course, I’m not witting of anyone that was told they will spy on an American. So, ultimately, when this was going on, I have a feeling it was closely held at some of the upper echelon levels. And you’ve got to understand, I was a worker bee. I was a guy that wrote the reports and did the analysis work and—you know, the detail guy. At some point, your reports have to get sent up up the line and then, you know, the management takes action at some point or another, but at my level, no, I was not involved in this. AMY GOODMAN: Has Congress responded to your letter offering to testify as a former employee of the National Security Agency? RUSSELL TICE: Not yet. Of course, the holidays—you know, we just had the holidays here, so everybody is out of town. I can’t condemn Congress too much yet, because I faxed it out on, I do believe, the 18th of December, and we’re just getting into the new year. AMY GOODMAN: And who did you send it to? RUSSELL TICE: I sent it to the chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, the SSCI and the HPSCI. AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Is there anything else that you would like to add? RUSSELL TICE: Well, I can’t think of a whole lot, except ultimately I think the American people need to be concerned about allegations that the intelligence community is spying on Americans. You know, one of my fears is that this would cause, just going into the N.S.A. and just tearing the place up and making the good work that’s being done at the N.S.A. ineffective, because the N.S.A. is very important to this country’s security. And I certainly hope that some bad apples, even if these bad apples were at the top of N.S.A., don’t ultimately destroy the capabilities of N.S.A.’s ability to do a good job protecting the American people. AMY GOODMAN: Russell Tice, former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked for the N.S.A. up until May of last year. Thanks for joining us.
RUSSELL TICE: Thank you.
Link: http://www.mireilletorjman.com/.
Jonas Holmes
Russ Tice, former NSA intelligence officer and current Whistleblower, was to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. Apparently the testimony, Mr. Tice wanted to give, makes General Hayden’s phone surveillance program look like very small potatoes. Mr. Tice’s testimony is expected to reveal further illegal activity overseen by General Michael Hayden which even loyal and patriotic NSA employees view as unlawful. I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them.IT’S PRETTY HARD TO BELIEVE, Tice said. I hope that they’ll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn’t exist right now. According to Mr. Tice, what has been disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg.What in the world could Russ Tice be talking about! To figure it out let us take a look at Russ Tice’s work at the NSA. According to the Washington Times and numerous other sources, Mr. Tice worked on special access programs related to electronic intelligence gathering while working for the NSA and DIA, where he took part in space systems communications, non-communications signals, electronic warfare, satellite control, telemetry, sensors, and special capability systems. Special Access Programs or SAPs refer to Black Budgets or Black Operations. Black means that they are covert and hidden from everyone except the participants.Feasibly there would be no arena with a greater potential for abuse and misuse than Special Access Programs. Even now Congress and the Justice Department are being denied the ability to investigate these programs because they don’t have clearance. To put it in CNN’s Jack Cafferty’s words a top secret government agency, the NSA, the largest of its kind in the world, is denying oversight or investigation by the American people because investigators lack clearance. To add a layer of irony to the Black Ops cake this travesty is occurring in America, the supposed bastion of Freedom and Democracy, which we are currently trying to export to Iraq.
It just gets scarier. The Black Ops that Mr. Tice was involved in related to electronic intelligence gathering via space systems communications, non-communications signals, electronic warfare, satellite control, telemetry, sensors, and special capability systems.For greater insight as to the impact of these programs readers should review decades old FOIA authenticated programs such as MKULTRA, BLUEBIRD, COINTELPRO and ARTICHOKE. Radar based Telemetry involves the ability to see through walls without thermal imaging. Electronic Warfare is even scarier if we take a look at the science. NSA Signals Intelligence Use of EMF Brain Stimulation. NSA Signals Intelligence uses EMF Brain Stimulation for Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM) and Electronic Brain Link (EBL). EMF Brain Stimulation has been in development since the MKUltra program of the early 1950's, which included neurological research into "radiation" (non-ionizing EMF) and bioelectric research and development. The resulting secret technology is categorized at the National Security Archives as "Radiation Intelligence," defined as "information from unintentionally emanated electromagnetic waves in the environment, not including radioactivity or nuclear detonation." Signals Intelligence implemented and kept this technology secret in the same manner as other electronic warfare programs of the U.S. government. The NSA monitors available information about this technology and withholds scientific research from the public. There are also international intelligence agency agreements to keep this technology secret. The NSA has proprietary electronic equipment that analyzes electrical activity in humans from a distance. NSA computer-generated brain mapping can continuously monitor all the electrical activity in the brain continuously. The NSA records and decodes individual brain maps (of hundreds of thousands of persons) for national security purposes. EMF Brain Stimulation is also secretly used by the military for Brain-to-computer link. (In military fighter aircraft, for example.) For electronic surveillance purposes electrical activity in the speech center of the brain can be translated into the subject's verbal thoughts. RNM can send encoded signals to the brain's auditory cortex thus allowing audio communication direct to the brain (bypassing the ears). NSA operatives can use this to covertly debilitate subjects by simulating auditory hallucinations characteristic of paranoid schizophrenia. Without any contact with the subject, Remote Neural Monitoring can map out electrical activity from the visual cortex of a subject's brain and show images from the subject's brain on a video monitor. NSA operatives see what the surveillance subject's eyes are seeing. Visual memory can also be seen. RNM can send images direct to the visual cortex. bypassing the eyes and optic nerves. NSA operatives can use this to surreptitiously put images in a surveillance subject's brain while they are in R.E.M. sleep for brain-programming purposes. Individual citizens occasionally targeted for surveillance by independently operating NSA personnel NSA personnel can control the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals in the U.S. by using the NSA's domestic intelligence network and cover businesses. The operations independently run by them can sometimes go beyond the bounds of law. Long-term control and sabotage of tens of thousands of unwitting citizens by NSA operatives is likely to happen. NSA Domint has the ability to covertly assassinate U.S. citizens or run covert psychological control operations to cause subjects to be diagnosed with ill mental health. National Security Agency Signals Intelligence Electronic Brain Link Technology NSA SigInt can remotely detect, identify and monitor a person's bioelectric fields. The NSA's Signals Intelligence has the proprietary ability to remotely and non-invasively monitor information in the human brain by digitally decoding the evoked potentials in the 30-50 hz,.5 milliwatt electro-magnetic emissions from the brain. Neuronal activity in the brain creates a shifting electrical pattern that has a shifting magnetic flux. This magnetic flux puts out a constant 30-50 hz, .5 milliwatt electromagnetic (EMF) wave. Contained in the electromagnetic emission from the brain are spikes and patterns called "evoked potentials." Every thought, reaction, motor command, auditory event, and visual image in the brain has a corresponding "evoked potential" or set of "evoked potentials." The EMF emission from the brain can be decoded into the current thoughts, images and sounds in the subject's brain. NSA SigInt uses EMF-transmitted Brain Stimulation as a communications system to transmit information (as well as nervous system messages) to intelligence agents and also to transmit to the brains of covert operations subjects (on a non-perceptible level). EMF Brain Stimulation works by sending a complexly coded and pulsed electromagnetic signal to trigger evoked potentials (events) in the brain, thereby forming sound and visual images in the brain's neural circuits. EMF Brain Stimulation can also change a person's brain-states and affect motor control. Two-way Electronic Brain-Link is done by remotely monitoring neural audio-visual information while transmitting sound to the auditory cortex (bypassing the ears)and transmitting faint images to the visual cortex (bypassing the optic nerves and eyes, the images appear as floating 2-D screens in the brain). Two-Way Electronic Brain Link has become the ultimate communications system for CIA/NSA personnel. Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM, remotely monitoring bioelectric information in the human brain) has become the ultimate surveillance system. It is used by a limited number of agents in the U.S. Intelligence Community. RNM requires decoding the resonance frequency of each specific brain area. That frequency is then modulated in order to impose information in That specific brain area. The frequency to which the various brain areas respond varies from 3 Hz to 50 Hz. Only NSA Signals Intelligence modulates signals in this frequency band.
An example of EMF Brain Stimulation:
Brain Area Bioelectric ResonanceFrequency Information InducedThrough Modulation
Motor Control Cortex 10 HZ Motor Impulse Co-ordination
Auditory Cortex 15 HZ Sound which bypasses the ears
Visual Cortex 25 HZ Images in the brain, bypassing the eyes
Somatosensory Cortex 09 HZ Phantom Touch Sense
Thought Center 20 HZ Imposed Subconscious Thoughts
This modulated information can be put into the brain at varying intensities from subliminal to perceptible. Each person's brain has a unique set of bioelectric resonance/entrainment frequencies. Sending audio information to a person's brain at the frequency of another person's auditory cortex would result in that audio information not being perceived. Additionally, A 1994 congressional hearing reported that nearly half a million Americans were subjected to some kind of cold war era tests, often without being informed and without their consent.In addition, experimentation law is well grounded in constitutional and international law. It is an under-reported fact that two major reports on human rights and torture in the U.S. recently listed illegal radiation experiments. Many more facts are documented below. Therefore, human research subject protections should be a high priority and are just as significant as current issues of torture and illegal wiretapping. It is time for America to wake up. It is time for America to protect its Whistleblowers who are our last line of defense against dictatorship and despotism. It is time for America to take responsibility for oversight of its tax dollars and elect leaders who will assume such responsibility now. Yes, the war on terrorism is important. It is even more important and fearful if the terrorism is from within and unknowingly funded by hard working American citizens. There is no Special Access Program beyond the oversight of political leaders elected by the people and for the people. If these political leaders jeopardize national security then that shall be handled in a court of law. But to tell America, to tell the American people, to tell the political leaders elected by the American people that America does not deserve to know what happening in the NSA’s dark, black rooms, with billions of dollars, behind closed doors, when we know that privilege has already been abused; that is the true definition of terrorism. That is the true definition of Communism and a Police State, no oversight. So fellow Americans, you may hem and haw in the face of truth but know that one day you will realize that your country has been usurped from the very principles upon which it was founded.
Godspeed, Russ Tice, the Patriots are with you.
Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, “The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.” [includes rush transcript]
We turn now to the growing controversy over President Bush’s decision to order the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens inside the country without the legally required court warrants. Bush’s decision was first revealed in the New York Times in mid-December. The Times published the expose after holding the story for more than a year under pressure from the White House. The paper reportedly first uncovered the illegal order prior to the 2004 election. When the editors at the Times decided last month to go ahead with the article, President Bush personally summoned the paper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, and executive editor, Bill Keller, to the Oval Office in an attempt to talk them out of running the story. Since the story broke, calls for Congressional hearings and the possible impeachment of the president have intensified. Conservative legal experts have even admitted Bush may have committed an impeachable offense by ordering the NSA to break the law. On Sunday, the New York Times revealed there was dissent within the upper echelon of the Bush administration over the legality of the president’s order. According to the Times, Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top deputy, James Comey, refused to sign on to the continuation of the secret program in 2004 amid concerns about its legality and oversight. At the time, Comey was serving in place of then Attorney General John Ashcroft while Ashcroft was hospitalized for a medical condition. Comey’s refusal prompted senior Presidential aides Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to visit Ashcroft in his hospital room to grant the approval. The Times reports Ashcroft expressed reluctance to sign on to the program. It is unclear if he eventually relented. Both Ashcroft and Comey’s concerns appear to have led to a temporary suspension of parts of the program for several months. But the administration has repeatedly defended its actions. • President Bush, speaking on Sunday: “If somebody from al-Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties as am I. This is is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America–and I repeat limited. It is limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States. But, they are of known numbers of known al Qaeda members or affiliates. I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy is thinking. And that’s what we are doing. We’re at war with a bunch of cold blooded killers who will kill in a moment’s notice. I have a responsibility to act within the law which I am doing. The program has been reviewed constantly by Justice Department officials. A program to which the Congress has been briefed. A program that is in my judgment necessary to win this war and to protect the American people.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that the NSA passed on records of intercepted email and phone calls to other government agencies including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. This news come on the heels of several other reports that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, military intelligence and local police departments have all been engaged in monitoring peaceful groups including Greenpeace, PETA–the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Catholic Worker, anti-war groups and even bicyclists in New York City. During the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists. It was this domestic surveillance that led Congress to intervene and pass Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 in order to prevent future such abuses. The statute permits domestic intelligence surveillance with the approval of a court order from the FISA court. In 1975, Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, said, “We have a particular obligation to examine the NSA, in light of its tremendous potential for abuse. . . . The interception of international communications signals sent through the air is the job of NSA; and, thanks to modern technological developments, it does its job very well. The danger lies in the ability of the NSA to turn its awesome technology against domestic communications.” Now Congress is considering holding a new round of hearings on Bush’s domestic spying program. A bipartisan group series of Senators have already issued their public support including several top Republicans including Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Two weeks ago, a former NSA intelligence officer publicly announced that he wants to testify before Congress. His name is Russell Tice. For the past two decades he has worked in the intelligence field both inside and outside government, most recently with the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. He was fired in May 2005 after he spoke out as a whistleblower. In his letter, Tice wrote, “It is with my oath as a US intelligence officer weighing heavy on my mind that I wish to report to Congress acts that I believe are unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.” • Russell Tice, former intelligence agent at the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. He worked at the NSA up until May 2005. Rush Transcript This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, More... AMY GOODMAN: This is President Bush speaking on Sunday.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I can say that if somebody from al-Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat: limited. And it’s limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States. But, they are of known numbers of known al Qaeda members or affiliates. And I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy is thinking. And that’s what we are doing. We’re at war with a bunch of cold-blooded killers who will kill on a moment’s notice. And I have a responsibility, obviously, to act within the law, which I am doing. It’s a program has been reviewed constantly by Justice Department officials, a program to which the Congress has been briefed, and a program that is in my judgment necessary to win this war and to protect the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Bush speaking Sunday. Meanwhile, The Washington Post is reporting the N.S.A. passed on records of intercepted email and phone calls to other government agencies, including the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the C.I.A. and the Department of Homeland Security. This news comes on the heels of several other reports that the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, military intelligence and local police departments have all been engaged in monitoring peaceful groups, including Greenpeace, PETA (the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the Catholic Worker antiwar groups, and even cyclists in New York City. During the 1960s and 1970s, the military used N.S.A. intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists. It was this domestic surveillance that led Congress to intervene and pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, in order to prevent future such abuses. The statute permits domestic intelligence surveillance with the approval of a court order from the FISA court. In 1975, Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, said, quote, “We have a particular obligation to examine the N.S.A. in light of its tremendous potential for abuse. The interception of international communications signals sent through the air is the job of N.S.A., and thanks to modern technological developments, it does its job very well. The danger lies in the ability of the N.S.A. to turn its awesome technology against domestic communications,” Church said. Congress is now considering holding a new round of hearings on Bush’s domestic spying program. A bipartisan group of senators have already issued their public support, including several top Republicans, including Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. This is Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: This warrant-less eavesdropping program is not authorized by the PATRIOT Act, it’s not authorized by any act of Congress, and it’s not overseen by any court. According to the reports it’s being conducted under a secret presidential order, based on secret legal opinions by the same Justice Department, lawyers, the same ones who argued secretly that the President could order the use of torture. Mr. President, it is time to have some checks and balances in this country. We are a democracy. We are a democracy. Let’s have checks and balances, not secret orders and secret courts and secret torture, and on and on.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Two weeks ago, a former N.S.A. intelligence officer publicly announced he wants to testify before Congress. His name is
Russell Tice. For the past two decades he has worked in the intelligence field, both inside and outside of government, most recently with the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was fired in May 2005, after he spoke out as a whistleblower. In his letter, Tice wrote, quote, “It’s with my oath as a U.S. intelligence officer weighing heavy on my mind that I wish to report to Congress acts I believe are unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.” Russell Tice joins us now in our Washington studio. Welcome to Democracy Now! RUSSELL TICE: Good morning. AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. RUSSELL TICE: Thank you. AMY GOODMAN: What made you decide to come forward? You worked for the top-secret agency of this government, one that is far larger and even more secret than the C.I.A. RUSSELL TICE: Well, the main reason is, you know, I’m involved with some certain aspects of the intelligence community, which are very closely held, and I believe I have seen some things that are illegal. Ultimately it’s Congress’s responsibility to conduct oversight in these things. I don’t see it happening. Another reason is there was a certain roadblock that was sort of lifted that allowed me to do this, and I can’t explain, but I will to Congress if allowed to. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the letter you have written to Congress, your request to testify? RUSSELL TICE: Well, it’s just a simple request under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, which is a legal means to contact Congress and tell them that you believe that something has gone wrong in the intelligence community. AMY GOODMAN: Can you start off by talking overall? Since most people until recently, until this latest story of President Bush engaging in these wiretaps of American citizens, as well as foreign nationals in this country, perhaps hadn’t even heard of the N.S.A., can you just describe for us what is the National Security Agency? How does it monitor these communications? RUSSELL TICE: Well, the National Security Agency is an agency that deals with monitoring communications for the defense of the country. The charter basically says that the N.S.A. will deal with communications of—overseas. We’re not allowed to go after Americans, and I think ultimately that’s what the big fuss is now. But as far as the details of how N.S.A. does that, unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say that. I don’t want to walk out of here and end up in an F.B.I. interrogation room. AMY GOODMAN: Russell Tice, you have worked for the National Security Agency. Can you talk about your response to the revelations that the Times, you know, revealed in—perhaps late, knowing the story well before the election, yet revealing it a few weeks ago—the revelation of the wiretapping of American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, as far as an intelligence officer, especially a SIGINT officer at N.S.A., we’re taught from very early on in our careers that you just do not do this. This is probably the number one commandment of the SIGINT Ten Commandments as a SIGINT officer. You will not spy on Americans. It is drilled into our head over and over and over again in security briefings, at least twice a year, where you ultimately have to sign a paper that says you have gotten the briefing. Everyone at N.S.A. who’s a SIGINT officer knows that you do not do this. Ultimately, so do the leaders of N.S.A., and apparently the leaders of N.S.A. have decided that they were just going to go against the tenets of something that’s a gospel to a SIGINT officer. AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Russell Tice. We will go to break and come back to him. He’s a former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked at the N.S.A. up until May of this past year, May of 2005. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We talk to Russell Tice, former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency, formerly with the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked with the N.S.A. up until May 2005. Russell Tice, what happened then? What happened in May 2005? RUSSELL TICE: Well, basically I was given my walking papers and told I was no longer a federal employee. So— AMY GOODMAN: Why? RUSSELL TICE: Some time ago I had some concerns about a co-worker at D.I.A. who exhibited the classic signs of being involved in espionage, and I reported that and basically got blown off by the counterintelligence office at D.I.A. and kind of pushed the issue, because I continued to see a pattern of there being a problem. And once I got back to N.S.A., I pretty much dropped the issue, but there was a report that came across my desk in April of 2003 about two F.B.I. agents that were possibly passing secret counterintelligence information to a Chinese double agent, Katrina Leung, and I sent a secure message back to the D.I.A. counterintelligence officer, and I said I think the F.B.I. is incompetent, and the retaliation came down on me like a ton of bricks. AMY GOODMAN: What would you say to those who say you are speaking out now simply because you are disgruntled? RUSSELL TICE: Well, I guess that’s a valid argument. You know, I was fired. But, you know, I’ve kind of held my tongue for a long time now, and basically, you know, I have known these things have been going on for a while. The classification level of the stuff I deal with, basically what we call black world programs and operations, are very, very closely held. And you know, whether you think this is retaliation or not, I have something important to tell Congress, and I think they need to hear it. I’d like to think my motives aren’t retaliation, but, you know, after what I have been through, I can understand someone’s argument to think I have been jaded. AMY GOODMAN: What about the risks you take as a whistleblower? I wanted to play a clip of F.B.I. whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds. She was working for the F.B.I. after 9/11 as a translator, translating intercepts, and ultimately she lost her job. And I asked her if she was afraid of speaking out. SIBEL EDMONDS: There are times that I am afraid, but then again, I have to remind myself that this is my civic duty and this is for the country, because what they are doing by pushing this stuff under this blanket of secrecy, what they are hiding is against the public’s welfare and interest. And reminding that to myself just helps me, to a certain degree, overcome that fear.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Sibel Edmonds. Russell Tice, you are a member of her group, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. RUSSELL TICE: That, I am. National Security Whistleblower Coalition is basically put together of people who are in sort of the same boat that I am in, that have brought whistleblower concerns to the public or to their perspective chain of supervisors and have been retaliated against. And the intelligence community, all of the whistleblower protection laws are—pretty much exempt the intelligence community. So the intelligence community can put forth their lip service about, ‘Oh, yeah, we want you to put report waste fraud abuse,’ or ‘You shall report suspicions of espionage,’ but when they retaliate you for doing so, you pretty much have no recourse. I think a lot of people don’t realize that. And Sibel has basically started this organization to bring these sort of concerns out into the public and ultimately to get Congress to start passing some laws to protect folks that are going to be in a position to let the public or just, you know, to let Congress know that crimes are being committed. And that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a crime here. So, you know, all of this running around and looking for someone who dropped the dime on a crime is a whole lot different than something like the Valerie Plame case. AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the Justice Department launching an investigation into the leak, who leaked the fact that President Bush was spying on American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, I think this is an attempt to make sure that no intelligence officer ever considers doing this. What was done to me was basically an attempt to tell other intelligence officers, ‘Hey, if you do something like this, if you do something to tick us off, we’re going to take your job from you, we’re gonna do some unpleasant things to you.’ So, right now, the atmosphere at N.S.A. and D.I.A., for that matter, is fear. The security services basically rule over the employees with fear, and people are afraid to come forward. People know if they come forward even in the legal means, like coming to Congress with a concern, your career is over. And that’s just the best scenario. There’s all sorts of other unfortunate things like, perhaps, if someone gets thrown in jail for either a witch-hunt or something trumping up charges or, you know, this guy who is basically reporting a crime. AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think of the news that the National Security Agency spying on American citizens without a court order and foreign nationals is now sharing this information with other agencies like, well, the other agency you worked for, the Defense Intelligence Agency? RUSSELL TICE: Intelligence officers work with one another all the time. As an analyst, you might have a problem. Everybody gets together. It’s just common sense to find out what everybody knows, you know, come to a consensus as to what the answer is. It’s sort of like a puzzle, you know, chunks of the puzzle. And maybe you have a few chunks as a SIGINT officer, and the C.I.A. has a few chunks in their arena and D.I.A. has a few elements of it, and everybody gets together and does a little mind meld to try to figure out what’s going on. So it’s not unusual for the intelligence community to share information. But when we’re talking about information on the American public, which is a violation of the FISA law, then I think it’s even something more to be concerned about. AMY GOODMAN: Were you ever asked to engage in this? RUSSELL TICE: No, no, and if I did so, I did so unwittingly, which I have a feeling would be the case for many of the people involved in this. More than likely this was very closely held at the upper echelons at N.S.A., and mainly because these people knew—General Hayden, Bill Black, and probably the new one, Keith Alexander, they all knew this was illegal. So, you know, they kept it from the populace of N.S.A., because every N.S.A. officer certainly knows this is illegal. AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean if you did so, you did so unwittingly? RUSSELL TICE: Well, there are certain elements of the aspects of what is done where there are functionaries or technicians or analysts that are given information, and you just process that information. You don’t necessarily know the nitty gritty as to where the information came from or the—it’s called compartmentalization. It’s ironic, but you could be working on programs, and the very person sitting next to you is not cleared for the programs you’re working on, and they’re working on their own programs, and each person knows to keep their nose out of the other person’s business, because everything’s compartmentalized, and you’re only allowed to work on what you have a need to know to work on. AMY GOODMAN: What about the telecoms, the telecommunications corporations working with the Bush administration to open up a back door to eavesdropping, to wiretapping? RUSSELL TICE: If that was done and, you know, I use a big “if” here, and, remember, I can’t tell you what I know of how N.S.A. does its business, but I can use the wiggle words like “if” and scenarios that don’t incorporate specifics, but nonetheless, if U.S. gateways and junction points in the United States were used to siphon off information, I would think that the corporate executives of these companies need to be held accountable, as well, because they would certainly also know that what they’re doing is wrong and illegal. And if they have some sort of court order or some sort of paper or something signed from some government official, Congress needs to look at those papers and look at the bottom line and see whose signature is there. And these corporations know that this is illegal, as well. So everyone needs to be held accountable in this mess. AMY GOODMAN: When you come on board at these intelligence agencies, as at the National Security Agency, what are you told? I mean, were you aware of the Church hearings in the 1970s that went into the illegal spying on monitoring, of surveilling, of wiretapping of American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, that’s something that’s really not drummed in your head. That’s more of a history lesson, I think. And the reasoning, ultimately, for the FISA laws and for what’s called USSID 18, which is sort of the SIGINTer’s bible of how they conduct their business, but the law itself is drilled into your head, as well as the tenets of USSID 18, of which the number one commandment is ‘Thou shalt not spy on Americans.’ AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Russell Tice, former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency, worked at the N.S.A. up until May of 2005. What is data mining? RUSSELL TICE: Data mining is a means by which you—you have information, and you go searching for all associated elements of that information in whatever sort of data banks or databases that you put together with information. So if you have a phone number and you want to associate it with, say, a terrorist or something, and you want to associate it with, you know, ‘Who is this terrorist talking to?’ you start doing data on what sort of information or what sort of numbers does that person call or the frequency of time, that sort of thing. And you start basically putting together a bubble chart of, you know, where everybody is. Lord help you if you’ve got a wrong phone call from one of these guys, a terrorist overseas or something, and you’re American. You’re liable to have the F.B.I. camping out your doorstep, apparently, from everything that’s going on. But it’s basically a way of searching all of the data that exists, and that’s things like credit card records and driver’s license, anything that you can get your hands on and try to associate it with some activity. I think if we were doing that overseas with known information, it would be a good thing if we’re pinning them down. But ultimately, when we’re using that on—if we’re using that with U.S. databases, then ultimately, once again, the American people are—their civil rights are being violated. AMY GOODMAN: Do you expect you are being monitored, surveilled, wiretapped right now? RUSSELL TICE: Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, in—you know, sometimes you just don’t know. And being, you know—what they’ve basically accused me of, I can’t just walk around thinking that everybody is looking at my heels and are following me around. But in one scenario I turned the tables on someone I thought was following me, and he ducked into a convenience store, and I just walked down there—and I saw him out of my peripheral vision—and I basically walked down to where he ducked into and in the store, I walked up behind him. He was buying a cup of coffee, and he had a on his hip and his F.B.I. badge. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on there. AMY GOODMAN: The National Security Agency, or I should say the United Nations Security Council, there was a scandal a year or two ago about the monitoring of the diplomats there. It was in the lead up to the invasion, the U.S. wanting to know and put pressure on these Security Council ambassadors to know what they were saying before any kind of vote. What is the difference between that kind of monitoring and the monitoring of American citizens? RUSSELL TICE: Well, if the monitoring was done against foreigners and the monitoring was done overseas, as far as I know, that’s perfectly legal. It’s just a matter of who you are monitoring and where you’re doing the monitoring. If it’s done at home and they’re Americans, then you have a different scenario. And we’re all trained that, you know, hands off. If you inadvertently run across something like that in the conduct of what you’re doing, you immediately let someone know; if it’s involved in something being recorded, it’s immediately erased. So, you know, it’s something that we all know you just don’t do. Overseas, okay; here at home, not so okay. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you the clip that we ran of President Bush earlier and get your response. This is President Bush on Sunday. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I can say that if somebody from al-Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat: limited. And it’s limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States. But, they are of known numbers of known al Qaeda members or affiliates. And I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy is thinking. And that’s what we are doing. We’re at war with a bunch of cold-blooded killers who will kill on a moment’s notice. And I have a responsibility, obviously, to act within the law, which I am doing. It’s a program has been reviewed constantly by Justice Department officials, a program to which the Congress has been briefed, and a program that is in my judgment necessary to win this war and to protect the American people. AMY GOODMAN: President Bush. Russell Tice, you’re with the National Security Agency, or you were until May 2005. If al-Qaeda’s calling, the U.S. government wants to know. Your response? RUSSELL TICE: Well, that’s probably a good thing to know. But that’s why we have a FISA court and FISA laws. The FISA court—it’s not very difficult to get something through a FISA court. I kinda liken the FISA court to a monkey with a rubber stamp. The monkey sees a name, the monkey sees a word justification with a block of information. It can’t read the block, but it just stamps “affirmed” on the block, and a banana chip rolls out, and then the next paper rolls in front of the monkey. When you have like 20,000 requests and only, I think, four were turned down, you can’t look at the FISA court as anything different. So, you have to ask yourself the question: Why would someone want to go around the FISA court in something like this? I would think the answer could be that this thing is a lot bigger than even the President has been told it is, and that ultimately a vacuum cleaner approach may have been used, in which case you don’t get names, and that’s ultimately why you wouldn’t go to the FISA court. And I think that’s something Congress needs to address. They need to find out exactly how this system was operated and ultimately determine whether this was indeed a very focused effort or whether this was a vacuum cleaner-type scenario. AMY GOODMAN: Did you support the President, Russell Tice? Did you vote for President Bush? RUSSELL TICE: I am a Republican. I voted for President Bush both in the last election and the first election where he was up for president. I’ve contributed to his campaign. I get a post—I mean, a Christmas card from the White House every year, I guess, because of my nominal contributions. But—so, you know, it’s not like, you know—I think you’re going to find a lot of folks that are in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community are apt to be on the conservative side of the fence. But nonetheless, we’re all taught that you don’t do something like this. And I’m certainly hoping that the President has been misled in what’s going on here and that the true crux of this problem is in the leadership of the intelligence community. AMY GOODMAN: You’re saying in the leadership of your own agency, the National Security Agency? RUSSELL TICE: That’s correct, yeah, because certainly General Alexander and General Hayden and Bill Black knew that this was illegal. AMY GOODMAN: But they clearly had to have authorization from above, and Bush is not contending that he did not know. RUSSELL TICE: Well, that’s true. But the question has to be asked: What did the President know? What was the President told about this? It’s just—there’s just too many variables out there that we don’t know yet. And, ultimately, I think Congress needs to find out those answers. If the President was fed a bill of goods in this matter, then that’s something that has to be addressed. Or if the President himself knew every aspect of what’s going on, if this was some sort of vacuum cleaner deal, then it is ultimately, I would think, the President himself that needs to be held responsible for what’s going on here. AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think should happen to him? RUSSELL TICE: Well, you know, it’s certainly not up to me, but I’ve heard all of the talk about impeachment and that sort of thing. You know, I saw our last president get impeached for what personally I thought should have been something between his wife and his family, and the big guy upstairs. It’s not up to me, but if the President knew, if this was a vacuum cleaner job and the President knew exactly what was going on—and ultimately what we’re hearing now is nothing but a cover-up and a whitewash—and we find that to be the case, then I think it should cause some dire consequences for even the President of the United States, if he indeed did know exactly what was going on and if it was a very large-scale, you know, suck-up-everything kind of operation. AMY GOODMAN: This investigation that the Justice Department has launched—it’s interesting that Alberto Gonzales is now Attorney General of the United States—the latest story of The New York Times: Gonzales, when he was White House Counsel, when Andrew Card, chief of staff, went to Ashcroft at his hospital bedside to get authorization for this. Can he be a disinterested party in investigating this now, as Attorney General himself? RUSSELL TICE: Yeah, I think that for anyone to say that the Attorney General is going to be totally unbiased about something like this, I think that’s silly. Of course, the answer is “No.” He can’t be unbiased in this. I think that a special prosecutor or something like that may have to be involved in something like this, otherwise we’re just liable to have a whitewash. AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the term “police state”? RUSSELL TICE: Well, anytime where you have a situation where U.S. citizens are being arrested and thrown in jail with the key being thrown away, you know, potentially being sent overseas to be tortured, U.S. citizens being spied on, you know, and it doesn’t even go to the court that deals with these secret things, you know, I mean, think about it, you could have potentially somebody getting the wrong phone call from a terrorist and having him spirited away to some back-alley country to get the rubber hose treatment and who knows what else. I think that would kind of qualify as a police state, in my judgment. I certainly hope that Congress or somebody sort of does something about this, because, you know, for Americans just to say, ‘Oh, well, we have to do this because, you know, because of terrorism,’ you know, it’s the same argument that we used with communism years ago: take away your civil liberties, but use some threat that’s, you know, been out there for a long time. Terrorism has been there for—certainly before 9/11 we had terrorism problems, and I have a feeling it’s going to be around for quite some time after whatever we deem is a victory in what we’re doing now in the Middle East. But, you know, it’s just something that has to be addressed. We just can’t continue to see our civil liberties degraded. Ultimately, as Ben Franklin, I think, had said, you know, those who would give up their essential liberties for a little freedom deserve neither liberty or freedom, and I tend to agree with Ben Franklin. AMY GOODMAN: And your colleagues at the N.S.A. right now, their feelings, the National Security Agency? RUSSELL TICE: Boy, I think most folks at N.S.A. right now are just running scared. They have the security office hanging over their head, which has always been a bunch of vicious folks, and now they’ve got, you know, this potential witch hunt going on with the Attorney General. People in the intelligence community are afraid. They know that you can’t come forward. You have no protections as a whistleblower. These things need to be addressed. AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean you have no protection? RUSSELL TICE: Well, like I said before, as a whistleblower, you’re not protected by the whistleblower laws that are out there. The intelligence community is exempt from the whistleblower protection laws. AMY GOODMAN: So why are you doing it? RUSSELL TICE: Well, ultimately, I don’t have to be afraid of losing my job, because I have already lost my job, so that’s one reason. The other reason is because I made an oath when I became an intelligence officer that I would protect the United States Constitution, not a president, not some classification, you know, for whatever, that ultimately I’m responsible to protect the Constitution of the United States. And I think that’s the same oath the President takes, for the most part. So, something like—imagine if something—if we were like, I don’t know, taking Americans and assassinating them for suspicions of suspicions of terrorism, and then we just put some classification on it and said, ‘Well, this is super top secret, so no one can say anything about that.’ Well, at what point do you draw the line and say enough is enough. We have to say something here. AMY GOODMAN: What was your classification? How high up was your clearance? RUSSELL TICE: Well, clearances go up to the top secret level. But once you get to the top secret level, there are many caveats and many programs and things that can happen beyond that point. I specialized in what’s known as black world operations and programs that are very closely held, things that happen in operations and programs in the intelligence community that are closely held, and for the most part these programs are very beneficial to ultimately getting information and protecting the American people. But in some cases, I think, classification levels at these special—we call them special access programs, SAPs—could be used to mask, basically, criminal wrongdoing. So I think that’s something ultimately Congress needs to address, as well, because from what I can see, there is not a whole lot of oversight when it comes to some of these deep black programs. AMY GOODMAN: Russell Tice, did you know anyone within the N.S.A. who refused to spy on Americans, who refused to follow orders? RUSSELL TICE: No. No, I do not. As far as—of course, I’m not witting of anyone that was told they will spy on an American. So, ultimately, when this was going on, I have a feeling it was closely held at some of the upper echelon levels. And you’ve got to understand, I was a worker bee. I was a guy that wrote the reports and did the analysis work and—you know, the detail guy. At some point, your reports have to get sent up up the line and then, you know, the management takes action at some point or another, but at my level, no, I was not involved in this. AMY GOODMAN: Has Congress responded to your letter offering to testify as a former employee of the National Security Agency? RUSSELL TICE: Not yet. Of course, the holidays—you know, we just had the holidays here, so everybody is out of town. I can’t condemn Congress too much yet, because I faxed it out on, I do believe, the 18th of December, and we’re just getting into the new year. AMY GOODMAN: And who did you send it to? RUSSELL TICE: I sent it to the chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, the SSCI and the HPSCI. AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Is there anything else that you would like to add? RUSSELL TICE: Well, I can’t think of a whole lot, except ultimately I think the American people need to be concerned about allegations that the intelligence community is spying on Americans. You know, one of my fears is that this would cause, just going into the N.S.A. and just tearing the place up and making the good work that’s being done at the N.S.A. ineffective, because the N.S.A. is very important to this country’s security. And I certainly hope that some bad apples, even if these bad apples were at the top of N.S.A., don’t ultimately destroy the capabilities of N.S.A.’s ability to do a good job protecting the American people. AMY GOODMAN: Russell Tice, former intelligence agent with the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked for the N.S.A. up until May of last year. Thanks for joining us.
RUSSELL TICE: Thank you.
Link: http://www.mireilletorjman.com/.
Monday, December 6, 2010
ALL EYES ON LEBANON
06. Dec, 2010
By: Rannie Amiri
While the world’s eyes are busy reading WikiLeaks cables, Middle Eastern eyes are focused squarely on Lebanon.
If the past week of frenzied diplomacy is any reflection of the region’s anxiety over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) upcoming indictment in the February 2005 assassination of the late premier Rafiq al-Hariri, imagine the mood in Beirut.
The Lebanese daily Ad-Diyar reported the country’s foreign ministry had received word via its ambassador to the Netherlands, Zaidan as-Saghir, that the STL’s verdict would be issued Dec. 2. Al-Manar TV said Dec. 4 or 5. Others say not until March. The date may be uncertain, but an imminent ruling is not.
Lebanon has been on-edge since it became known that the STL will likely implicate high-ranking Hezbollah officials in Hariri’s murder, despite credible evidence linking Tel Aviv to the crime.
The Hezbollah-led, opposition March 8 Coalition has sought to cut the STL’s funding as Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah called on the government to boycott the tribunal entirely, which he dismissed as an “Israeli project.” Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his Sunni and Christian allies in the ruling March 14 Coalition, on the other hand, have vowed to stand by the court and its judgment. It should be noted that a sizable segment of the Maronite Christian community throws its weight behind former general and current MP Michel Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement is a significant March 8 Coalition member and has likewise called for the STL to be sidelined.
The impetus behind the week’s diplomatic flurry was not only that the diametrically opposed positions could lead to government paralysis (which some contend is already the case) but spillover into sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni supporters of the rival coalitions.
Fear over the potential negative fallout from the STL’s report caused Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani to fly into Beirut on a surprise (emergency?) visit to assuage frayed nerves, just hours before Lebanese President Michel Suleiman boarded a plane for Qatar to meet with the emir and inaugurate the new headquarters of the Lebanese embassy in Doha.
Qatar’s role in resolving disputes between Lebanese parties is legendary; the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, famously brokered the May 2008 Doha Accord that led to the formation of a national unity government and ended an 18-month political stalemate before the near outbreak of civil war. He also helped finance reconstruction of southern Lebanon, devastated in the wake of Israel’s brutal July 2006 offensive, and was the first visiting Arab head-of-state to tour area he helped rebuild during a July stopover.
Days later came Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogen who hoped to raise his country’s profile as regional peacemaker. Whereas Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was accorded a hero’s welcome by Lebanese Shia when he visited in October, Erdogen was unable to engender the same enthusiasm from Sunnis (and certainly not among Lebanese-Armenians). He nonetheless stressed the need for peace and unity between Lebanon’s many confessional groups.
Still angered by Israel’s May 31 commando assault on the Gaza-bound relief vessel Mavi Marmara that killed nine Turkish activists—and even more miffed at the lack of a forthcoming apology—Erdogen pledged Turkey would not let Israel attack Lebanon without serious repercussions:
“Does [Israel] think it can enter Lebanon with the most modern aircraft and tanks to kill women and children, and destroy schools and hospitals, and then expect us to remain silent?”
Soon after Erdogen left Beirut, Hariri embarked on his first state visit to Iran. Appearing decidedly uncomfortable, he sought to secure the regime’s assistance in tempering Hezbollah’s response to the expected indictment.
All this shuttle diplomacy comes against the backdrop of an alleged Saudi-Syrian “umbrella” over Lebanon, courtesy of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and President Bashar al-Assad’s mediation efforts. The two leaders’ unprecedented joint visit to Beirut in July aimed to placate the coalitions they backed—March 14 and March 8 respectively—and symbolically reinforce the country’s stability. Whether they ultimately agreed on a practical mechanism to avert a crisis after the STL’s findings are announced remains unknown.
The precarious nature of Hariri’s government and predictions of its eventual collapse parallel the misplaced trust and confidence March 14 Coalition members have in the Netherlands-based tribunal.
Indeed, the STL has neglected to consider several key developments: the exposure of Israeli espionage rings operating in Lebanon resulting in the arrest of more than 100 people on charges of collaborating with the Mossad; the captured agents’ confessions detailing the collusion, including one who said his Israeli handlers instructed him to delude the late prime minister into thinking Hezbollah was out to kill him (Hariri) and so allow the agent to alter the route Hariri’s motorcade would take that fateful February day; Hezbollah’s assertion that its telecommunications network had been infiltrated by Israel, compromising all its communications and causing bogus text messages to be sent.
Earlier this year, four spies were apprehended at Alfa, one of Lebanon’s mobile service providers. One admitted to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters on Israel’s behalf.
This is important because the STL is expected to rely heavily on phone records and other telecommunication data in drawing its conclusions. Evidently neither Hezbollah’s latest disclosure nor Israeli agents known to have operated in the critical telecom sector merits further investigation.
In addition, during an August press conference, Nasrallah displayed video footage intercepted from Israeli reconnaissance planes detailing the route of Hariri’s motorcade and the assassination site the same day a bomb detonated underneath it, killing him and 21 others.
Also unaddressed by the STL is the issue of “false witnesses”; those persons who provided information incriminating Syria in Hariri’s murder but whose testimony was later found to have been fabricated (but not before four Lebanese generals spent four years in jail as a result). Without a follow-up judicial inquiry, how can testimony of those now accusing Hezbollah be trusted?
Regional arbitration and reconciliation efforts between March 8 and March 14 are welcome endeavors. It will be for naught, however, unless all Lebanese parties and well-intentioned Arab and non-Arab states recognize the flawed, politicized nature of the STL, the deliberate oversight of Israel’s motive to kill Hariri, the political and military benefits it reaped from his death and the myriad of ways it could have manipulated evidence to frame Hezbollah.
Until those determined to know the truth behind Hariri’s assassination renounce the STL and its wayward path, justice, peace and stability will have no place in Lebanon.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
By: Rannie Amiri
While the world’s eyes are busy reading WikiLeaks cables, Middle Eastern eyes are focused squarely on Lebanon.
If the past week of frenzied diplomacy is any reflection of the region’s anxiety over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) upcoming indictment in the February 2005 assassination of the late premier Rafiq al-Hariri, imagine the mood in Beirut.
The Lebanese daily Ad-Diyar reported the country’s foreign ministry had received word via its ambassador to the Netherlands, Zaidan as-Saghir, that the STL’s verdict would be issued Dec. 2. Al-Manar TV said Dec. 4 or 5. Others say not until March. The date may be uncertain, but an imminent ruling is not.
Lebanon has been on-edge since it became known that the STL will likely implicate high-ranking Hezbollah officials in Hariri’s murder, despite credible evidence linking Tel Aviv to the crime.
The Hezbollah-led, opposition March 8 Coalition has sought to cut the STL’s funding as Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah called on the government to boycott the tribunal entirely, which he dismissed as an “Israeli project.” Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his Sunni and Christian allies in the ruling March 14 Coalition, on the other hand, have vowed to stand by the court and its judgment. It should be noted that a sizable segment of the Maronite Christian community throws its weight behind former general and current MP Michel Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement is a significant March 8 Coalition member and has likewise called for the STL to be sidelined.
The impetus behind the week’s diplomatic flurry was not only that the diametrically opposed positions could lead to government paralysis (which some contend is already the case) but spillover into sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni supporters of the rival coalitions.
Fear over the potential negative fallout from the STL’s report caused Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani to fly into Beirut on a surprise (emergency?) visit to assuage frayed nerves, just hours before Lebanese President Michel Suleiman boarded a plane for Qatar to meet with the emir and inaugurate the new headquarters of the Lebanese embassy in Doha.
Qatar’s role in resolving disputes between Lebanese parties is legendary; the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, famously brokered the May 2008 Doha Accord that led to the formation of a national unity government and ended an 18-month political stalemate before the near outbreak of civil war. He also helped finance reconstruction of southern Lebanon, devastated in the wake of Israel’s brutal July 2006 offensive, and was the first visiting Arab head-of-state to tour area he helped rebuild during a July stopover.
Days later came Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogen who hoped to raise his country’s profile as regional peacemaker. Whereas Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was accorded a hero’s welcome by Lebanese Shia when he visited in October, Erdogen was unable to engender the same enthusiasm from Sunnis (and certainly not among Lebanese-Armenians). He nonetheless stressed the need for peace and unity between Lebanon’s many confessional groups.
Still angered by Israel’s May 31 commando assault on the Gaza-bound relief vessel Mavi Marmara that killed nine Turkish activists—and even more miffed at the lack of a forthcoming apology—Erdogen pledged Turkey would not let Israel attack Lebanon without serious repercussions:
“Does [Israel] think it can enter Lebanon with the most modern aircraft and tanks to kill women and children, and destroy schools and hospitals, and then expect us to remain silent?”
Soon after Erdogen left Beirut, Hariri embarked on his first state visit to Iran. Appearing decidedly uncomfortable, he sought to secure the regime’s assistance in tempering Hezbollah’s response to the expected indictment.
All this shuttle diplomacy comes against the backdrop of an alleged Saudi-Syrian “umbrella” over Lebanon, courtesy of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and President Bashar al-Assad’s mediation efforts. The two leaders’ unprecedented joint visit to Beirut in July aimed to placate the coalitions they backed—March 14 and March 8 respectively—and symbolically reinforce the country’s stability. Whether they ultimately agreed on a practical mechanism to avert a crisis after the STL’s findings are announced remains unknown.
The precarious nature of Hariri’s government and predictions of its eventual collapse parallel the misplaced trust and confidence March 14 Coalition members have in the Netherlands-based tribunal.
Indeed, the STL has neglected to consider several key developments: the exposure of Israeli espionage rings operating in Lebanon resulting in the arrest of more than 100 people on charges of collaborating with the Mossad; the captured agents’ confessions detailing the collusion, including one who said his Israeli handlers instructed him to delude the late prime minister into thinking Hezbollah was out to kill him (Hariri) and so allow the agent to alter the route Hariri’s motorcade would take that fateful February day; Hezbollah’s assertion that its telecommunications network had been infiltrated by Israel, compromising all its communications and causing bogus text messages to be sent.
Earlier this year, four spies were apprehended at Alfa, one of Lebanon’s mobile service providers. One admitted to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters on Israel’s behalf.
This is important because the STL is expected to rely heavily on phone records and other telecommunication data in drawing its conclusions. Evidently neither Hezbollah’s latest disclosure nor Israeli agents known to have operated in the critical telecom sector merits further investigation.
In addition, during an August press conference, Nasrallah displayed video footage intercepted from Israeli reconnaissance planes detailing the route of Hariri’s motorcade and the assassination site the same day a bomb detonated underneath it, killing him and 21 others.
Also unaddressed by the STL is the issue of “false witnesses”; those persons who provided information incriminating Syria in Hariri’s murder but whose testimony was later found to have been fabricated (but not before four Lebanese generals spent four years in jail as a result). Without a follow-up judicial inquiry, how can testimony of those now accusing Hezbollah be trusted?
Regional arbitration and reconciliation efforts between March 8 and March 14 are welcome endeavors. It will be for naught, however, unless all Lebanese parties and well-intentioned Arab and non-Arab states recognize the flawed, politicized nature of the STL, the deliberate oversight of Israel’s motive to kill Hariri, the political and military benefits it reaped from his death and the myriad of ways it could have manipulated evidence to frame Hezbollah.
Until those determined to know the truth behind Hariri’s assassination renounce the STL and its wayward path, justice, peace and stability will have no place in Lebanon.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Economist Ha-Joon Chang on Currency Wars, the G20, and Why "There’s No Such Thing As a Free Market"
November 19, 2010
Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at the University of Cambridge and is the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. "Obama] has to buy time to restructure the economy without creating a recession by sustaining this deficit spending, because otherwise our other option is going back to the 1930s," Chang says. "Don’t forget that in the 1930s a lot of countries started cutting this deficit as soon as things looked slightly better, and many of them went back into recession."
Ha-Joon Chang, teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. His previous book was titled, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has just left again for Portugal. He just came back from his 10-day Asian trip where he emerged from the G-20 summit in Seoul, South Korea saying the countries at the summit had agreed to "Get the global economy back on the path of recovery."
But critics have pointed to Obama’s failure to secure a free trade agreement with South Korea and the lack of progress between the United States and China on currency issues. Before leaving Seoul, Obama defended the $600 billion move by the Federal Reserve to buy up government bonds and rejected claims that the U.S. is waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. Meanwhile, although the U.S. has accused China of artificially manipulating the price of the yuan for economic gain, Obama failed to win international backing for his effort to pressure China to raise its currency value.
JUAN GONZALEZ: For more on the currency wars, capitalism, and the free market, I spoke to the Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang last week. He teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. He’s the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. His previous book was titled, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. I began by asking him for his assessment of President Obama’s visit to Seoul.
HA-JOON CHANG: Currency, I think was unrealistic to expect any concrete agreement there. Both countries have such different views about what is the right way forward; they have all very different interests. So I think it was quite unrealistic to expect anything on that account.
But I think that there was probably a more realistic expectation of the Korea-U.S.A. free trade agreement. But once again, the problem is that the deal was already agreed and then the Americans are asking for more. The South Korean government is actually quite keen to sign this agreement, although I personally oppose it. But even they couldn’t quite stomach it because they had made all the concessions – well they thought they had – and then now the U.S. is coming back, “We want more.”
JUAN GONZALEZ: What were some of those concessions? Because the president portrayed it as an attempt to get more protections for American workers in a renegotiated part of the deal.
HA-JOON CHANG: Yes, that is the fundamental problem with bilateral free trade agreements because when you open up trade in this kind of way, a lot of people on both sides are going to get hurt and none of the countries have come up with an adequate compensation mechanism. It’s understandable that the Korean farmers or U.S. auto workers – people who are going to get hurt – want to protect themselves and oppose these agreements.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the currency debate, clearly, the United States now and other countries in the world for more than several years have been claiming that China is refusing to peg its currency at what it’s really worth now on the international scene.
And now suddenly though the tide – especially after the Federal Reserve action in the past week, to begin to buy up more bonds and in effect drive the currency value of the U.S. dollar down – now the charges are being leveled against the United States. Who is right here? And what is the role not only of the emerging Third World countries, but also of the European Union in this debate?
HA-JOON CHANG: Well, you know, it is quite understandable why Americans are frustrated by the slowness in the adjustment of the Chinese currency. Let’s get the facts right. It has been adjusted, only very, very slowly. So it is not like China is absolutely refusing to move, but yes, given the imbalances that the U.S. is facing, it looks painfully slow.
But on the Chinese side, you have to understand. First of all, they don’t want the kind of abrupt adjustment that Japan had to make to its own currency in the 1980s in the so-called Plaza Accord, which then created this huge financial bubble and destroyed the Japanese economy. So the Chinese want to do it slowly. Secondly, it’s not just China who manipulates currency value. As you just said, the Fed flooding America with this money is also currency manipulation, so the Chinese are rightly upset.
But on the other hand, yes, the problem is that since the 1970s, we have lived under the notion that only the deficit countries have to make adjustments. Surplus countries have to make adjustments, too. But in the last 30 years, the reigning orthodoxy has been that anyone who is spending beyond his means has to be punished. This is exactly the logic behind the punishment of Third World countries in the debt crisis and later, the Asian economies and Argentine economy.
So in that sense, actually, the very thing the U.S. has tried to impose on the world is coming to haunt itself. If the U.S. has been on the forefront of this logic that it’s only the deficit countries that have to make adjustments, and now other countries are logically saying, “Well, why don’t you then, do the same?”
JUAN GONZALEZ: But in terms of the currency, in terms of this flood now of American capital that is heading overseas now because the government has driven interest rates down here so drastically, several of the emerging economies – certainly Brazil, India, and others – are increasingly looking at how to prevent this entrance into their economies of basically, speculative capital.
What is your sense of how this will develop? And again, how Europe, which is this other huge power force in the world economic scene, how Europe will react to the debate between the emerging countries and the United States over currency controls?
HA-JOON CHANG: Well, first of all, let’s put this into perspective. The reason why the Fed has to engage in this massive quantitative easing is because of the inability of the American political system to agree on continued deficit spending. So although the brunt of adjustment is put on monetary policy, this is at the root of the problem. In a way, monetary easing wouldn’t be as big if the American political scene is such that it can continue the stimulus package. But it is not going to happen.
So we’re stuck with the situation now. Given the low interest rate and a huge amount of liquidity released into the system, a lot of money is flowing into the so-called emerging economies – that is, middle-level developing countries – and they are really desperate. I mean, some of these countries have seen huge appreciation of their currency values which is making their export difficult.
Now, most of them are beginning to put capital controls in place. This is quite amazing because until recently, it was a mortal sin. Now, in certain countries, even the IMF is saying, maybe you should put capital controls in so that the speculative capital wouldn’t destabilize your economy.
JUAN GONZALEZ: By capital controls, you mean what, precisely? The taxing of investments, of financial investments that are coming in from abroad? Restrictions on their leaving?
HA-JOON CHANG: Yes, well, there are a range of measures. The most kind of draconian measures will be that you have to get government approval when you are bringing money, you have to get approval when you are bringing it out. That is still where a lot of countries are putting, for example, deposit requirements. When you’re bringing money in, you deposit, say, the equivalent of 30% to 50% of the money, which you will get back when and if you leave after, say, a year or two, but if you leave earlier, then you lose the money. So this is to –
JUAN GONZALEZ: To curb speculation.
HA-JOON CHANG: Exactly, yes. Some other countries have studied taxing capital gains from this speculative flows. So a range of measures are being used, but the direction is clear: these speculative inflows cannot be managed through market mechanisms.
Just put it into perspective, even the biggest stock markets in the developing countries are less than 1% or 2% of the U.S. stock market. So a tiny drop flowing out of the U.S. is a flood for these economies so that they need these kind of protective mechanisms.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ever since the financial collapse a couple of years ago, first, all the governments tried to engage in some sort of stimulus of their economies, but now the clear debate is over is the way forward to reduce deficits and to impose austerity on government spending? Or is it to continue to stimulate economies and promote economic growth? Obviously, you fall clearly on one side or another – could you explain why?
HA-JOON CHANG: Yes. Look, one thing that has to be made clear at the very beginning is that the main reason for these large deficits is not excessive government spending, but falling tax revenue through the collapse in private sector demand. So if we are in a full implement situation, cutting government spending might create room for the private sector to come and create jobs and so on.
But the very reason why we have this deficit is the private sector is not investing, and cutting deficits is not going to make them invest because the root cause of their unwillingness to invest is the problems with their balance sheets. This cut is not going to solve the problem.
But more importantly, in the short run, that is viewed that it is the best if you cut the deficit as much and as quickly as possible. There’s no economic logic. The British government, you know, says to cut the deficit down to basically zero in four years’ time. But four years makes sense in calendar terms, but in economic terms, it doesn’t make any sense.
If you want to cut this deficit, you have to cut to the state of the economy. So maybe in some cases, you can cut it in two years, maybe in some cases it will have to be 12. Unfortunately a lot of deficit hawks have a hidden agenda. They basically want to rollback the welfare state and they’re using it as an excuse to do it.
JUAN GONZALEZ: As Naomi Klein says, “Disaster capitalism is the opportunity to implement policies that you have always wanted to do.”
HA-JOON CHANG: Exactly and then the kind of political sleight of hand they have deployed is quite remarkable. All this crises that have basically been generated by the bankers and other financiers, I mean, these people are still paying themselves billions of bonuses while the poorest people are asked to make the adjustment. I mean, this is outrageous.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now you are seeing one country after another – Greece, France, England with its austerity measures – and now, of course, the United States, the Debt Commission recommending potentially huge cuts in Social Security and Medicare here in the United States. How do you see President Obama’s policies so far in terms of the way he’s handling this crisis, since he got into office?
HA-JOON CHANG: Well, luckily the U.S. still hasn’t yet given into the deficit hawks, but with the Republican victory in the midterm elections and the Debt Commission, it’s coming. But he has to resist it. He has to, if possible, buy time to restructure the economy, without creating a recession, by sustaining this deficit spending.
Otherwise, the other option is going back to the 1930s. Don’t forget that in the 1930s, a lot of countries started cutting the deficit as soon as things looked slightly better and many of them went back into recession. It is already happening in Ireland. They started cutting the deficit, now they are in bigger trouble.
AMY GOODMAN: Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang speaking to Juan Gonzalez. He teaches economics at the University of Cambridge in Britain; the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism; his previous book, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.
Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at the University of Cambridge and is the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. "Obama] has to buy time to restructure the economy without creating a recession by sustaining this deficit spending, because otherwise our other option is going back to the 1930s," Chang says. "Don’t forget that in the 1930s a lot of countries started cutting this deficit as soon as things looked slightly better, and many of them went back into recession."
Ha-Joon Chang, teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. His previous book was titled, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has just left again for Portugal. He just came back from his 10-day Asian trip where he emerged from the G-20 summit in Seoul, South Korea saying the countries at the summit had agreed to "Get the global economy back on the path of recovery."
But critics have pointed to Obama’s failure to secure a free trade agreement with South Korea and the lack of progress between the United States and China on currency issues. Before leaving Seoul, Obama defended the $600 billion move by the Federal Reserve to buy up government bonds and rejected claims that the U.S. is waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. Meanwhile, although the U.S. has accused China of artificially manipulating the price of the yuan for economic gain, Obama failed to win international backing for his effort to pressure China to raise its currency value.
JUAN GONZALEZ: For more on the currency wars, capitalism, and the free market, I spoke to the Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang last week. He teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. He’s the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. His previous book was titled, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. I began by asking him for his assessment of President Obama’s visit to Seoul.
HA-JOON CHANG: Currency, I think was unrealistic to expect any concrete agreement there. Both countries have such different views about what is the right way forward; they have all very different interests. So I think it was quite unrealistic to expect anything on that account.
But I think that there was probably a more realistic expectation of the Korea-U.S.A. free trade agreement. But once again, the problem is that the deal was already agreed and then the Americans are asking for more. The South Korean government is actually quite keen to sign this agreement, although I personally oppose it. But even they couldn’t quite stomach it because they had made all the concessions – well they thought they had – and then now the U.S. is coming back, “We want more.”
JUAN GONZALEZ: What were some of those concessions? Because the president portrayed it as an attempt to get more protections for American workers in a renegotiated part of the deal.
HA-JOON CHANG: Yes, that is the fundamental problem with bilateral free trade agreements because when you open up trade in this kind of way, a lot of people on both sides are going to get hurt and none of the countries have come up with an adequate compensation mechanism. It’s understandable that the Korean farmers or U.S. auto workers – people who are going to get hurt – want to protect themselves and oppose these agreements.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the currency debate, clearly, the United States now and other countries in the world for more than several years have been claiming that China is refusing to peg its currency at what it’s really worth now on the international scene.
And now suddenly though the tide – especially after the Federal Reserve action in the past week, to begin to buy up more bonds and in effect drive the currency value of the U.S. dollar down – now the charges are being leveled against the United States. Who is right here? And what is the role not only of the emerging Third World countries, but also of the European Union in this debate?
HA-JOON CHANG: Well, you know, it is quite understandable why Americans are frustrated by the slowness in the adjustment of the Chinese currency. Let’s get the facts right. It has been adjusted, only very, very slowly. So it is not like China is absolutely refusing to move, but yes, given the imbalances that the U.S. is facing, it looks painfully slow.
But on the Chinese side, you have to understand. First of all, they don’t want the kind of abrupt adjustment that Japan had to make to its own currency in the 1980s in the so-called Plaza Accord, which then created this huge financial bubble and destroyed the Japanese economy. So the Chinese want to do it slowly. Secondly, it’s not just China who manipulates currency value. As you just said, the Fed flooding America with this money is also currency manipulation, so the Chinese are rightly upset.
But on the other hand, yes, the problem is that since the 1970s, we have lived under the notion that only the deficit countries have to make adjustments. Surplus countries have to make adjustments, too. But in the last 30 years, the reigning orthodoxy has been that anyone who is spending beyond his means has to be punished. This is exactly the logic behind the punishment of Third World countries in the debt crisis and later, the Asian economies and Argentine economy.
So in that sense, actually, the very thing the U.S. has tried to impose on the world is coming to haunt itself. If the U.S. has been on the forefront of this logic that it’s only the deficit countries that have to make adjustments, and now other countries are logically saying, “Well, why don’t you then, do the same?”
JUAN GONZALEZ: But in terms of the currency, in terms of this flood now of American capital that is heading overseas now because the government has driven interest rates down here so drastically, several of the emerging economies – certainly Brazil, India, and others – are increasingly looking at how to prevent this entrance into their economies of basically, speculative capital.
What is your sense of how this will develop? And again, how Europe, which is this other huge power force in the world economic scene, how Europe will react to the debate between the emerging countries and the United States over currency controls?
HA-JOON CHANG: Well, first of all, let’s put this into perspective. The reason why the Fed has to engage in this massive quantitative easing is because of the inability of the American political system to agree on continued deficit spending. So although the brunt of adjustment is put on monetary policy, this is at the root of the problem. In a way, monetary easing wouldn’t be as big if the American political scene is such that it can continue the stimulus package. But it is not going to happen.
So we’re stuck with the situation now. Given the low interest rate and a huge amount of liquidity released into the system, a lot of money is flowing into the so-called emerging economies – that is, middle-level developing countries – and they are really desperate. I mean, some of these countries have seen huge appreciation of their currency values which is making their export difficult.
Now, most of them are beginning to put capital controls in place. This is quite amazing because until recently, it was a mortal sin. Now, in certain countries, even the IMF is saying, maybe you should put capital controls in so that the speculative capital wouldn’t destabilize your economy.
JUAN GONZALEZ: By capital controls, you mean what, precisely? The taxing of investments, of financial investments that are coming in from abroad? Restrictions on their leaving?
HA-JOON CHANG: Yes, well, there are a range of measures. The most kind of draconian measures will be that you have to get government approval when you are bringing money, you have to get approval when you are bringing it out. That is still where a lot of countries are putting, for example, deposit requirements. When you’re bringing money in, you deposit, say, the equivalent of 30% to 50% of the money, which you will get back when and if you leave after, say, a year or two, but if you leave earlier, then you lose the money. So this is to –
JUAN GONZALEZ: To curb speculation.
HA-JOON CHANG: Exactly, yes. Some other countries have studied taxing capital gains from this speculative flows. So a range of measures are being used, but the direction is clear: these speculative inflows cannot be managed through market mechanisms.
Just put it into perspective, even the biggest stock markets in the developing countries are less than 1% or 2% of the U.S. stock market. So a tiny drop flowing out of the U.S. is a flood for these economies so that they need these kind of protective mechanisms.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ever since the financial collapse a couple of years ago, first, all the governments tried to engage in some sort of stimulus of their economies, but now the clear debate is over is the way forward to reduce deficits and to impose austerity on government spending? Or is it to continue to stimulate economies and promote economic growth? Obviously, you fall clearly on one side or another – could you explain why?
HA-JOON CHANG: Yes. Look, one thing that has to be made clear at the very beginning is that the main reason for these large deficits is not excessive government spending, but falling tax revenue through the collapse in private sector demand. So if we are in a full implement situation, cutting government spending might create room for the private sector to come and create jobs and so on.
But the very reason why we have this deficit is the private sector is not investing, and cutting deficits is not going to make them invest because the root cause of their unwillingness to invest is the problems with their balance sheets. This cut is not going to solve the problem.
But more importantly, in the short run, that is viewed that it is the best if you cut the deficit as much and as quickly as possible. There’s no economic logic. The British government, you know, says to cut the deficit down to basically zero in four years’ time. But four years makes sense in calendar terms, but in economic terms, it doesn’t make any sense.
If you want to cut this deficit, you have to cut to the state of the economy. So maybe in some cases, you can cut it in two years, maybe in some cases it will have to be 12. Unfortunately a lot of deficit hawks have a hidden agenda. They basically want to rollback the welfare state and they’re using it as an excuse to do it.
JUAN GONZALEZ: As Naomi Klein says, “Disaster capitalism is the opportunity to implement policies that you have always wanted to do.”
HA-JOON CHANG: Exactly and then the kind of political sleight of hand they have deployed is quite remarkable. All this crises that have basically been generated by the bankers and other financiers, I mean, these people are still paying themselves billions of bonuses while the poorest people are asked to make the adjustment. I mean, this is outrageous.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now you are seeing one country after another – Greece, France, England with its austerity measures – and now, of course, the United States, the Debt Commission recommending potentially huge cuts in Social Security and Medicare here in the United States. How do you see President Obama’s policies so far in terms of the way he’s handling this crisis, since he got into office?
HA-JOON CHANG: Well, luckily the U.S. still hasn’t yet given into the deficit hawks, but with the Republican victory in the midterm elections and the Debt Commission, it’s coming. But he has to resist it. He has to, if possible, buy time to restructure the economy, without creating a recession, by sustaining this deficit spending.
Otherwise, the other option is going back to the 1930s. Don’t forget that in the 1930s, a lot of countries started cutting the deficit as soon as things looked slightly better and many of them went back into recession. It is already happening in Ireland. They started cutting the deficit, now they are in bigger trouble.
AMY GOODMAN: Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang speaking to Juan Gonzalez. He teaches economics at the University of Cambridge in Britain; the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism; his previous book, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.
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