CIA

Chris Hedges calls out the “vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying Wikileaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange.”

According to Hedges, on Hans Crescent Street in London is a red-brick building housing the Ecuadorean Embassy and in some of its rooms lives the “world’s best-known political refugee.”

Julian Assange was offered sanctuary there beginning last June. Read below the fold...

The two Boston bombings of April 15th killed 3 people and wounded over 170. The two suspects are 19-year od Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s and his deceased older brother Tamerlan, who died after a shootout with the police.

Bill Van Auken of wsws: Read below the fold...

The CIA Director will be John Brennan.

Norman Pollack in “Architect of Terror” points out some of the dimensions of Brennan’s oversight (familiar territory already to him): armed drones, targeted assassinations, rendition, black holes, subsidies to domestic fascist groups for breaking up "radical" rallies, and other “cloak and dagger” sadism.

Pollack also writes: “In Obama, the Agency, along with JSOC, has its impressario, cheerleader, and now tactical adviser, rolled in one.” Read below the fold...

CLICK HERE TO SEE RAND PAUL’S FILIBUSTER, LIVE ON CSPAN-2:

Ashley Parker of the NYT writes: Read below the fold...

Norman Pollack in an article entitled “Democrats’ Complicity in Political Murder” morally “calls out” Obama and Democrats. Pollack writes: Read below the fold...

From the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness....”

Read below the fold...

NATO ministers met in Brussels today, December 5th, to approve Turkey’s request for Patriot missiles and for foreign and US troops to be deployed to their border with Syria.

The US/NATO War-machine plows onward in the attempted illegitimate overthrow of Syria, much as it did with its successful illegitimate overthrow of Libya.

Turkey has offered geographical strategic assistance to the US- and NATO-backed so-called “rebels” trying to overthrow Assad’s Syrian regime. Turkey now offers itself as a flimsy fig-leaf for craven powerful western intervention into Syria. Read below the fold...

It is tempting to focus on the bizarre and titillating details of what Pepe Escobar calls a “bedroom farce” or Arthur Silber calls a “cheap slut scenario” given as the explanation for CIA Director General Petraeus’ resignation last week.

I am sure I am not the only citizen who feels “played” once again by a craven administration and corporate media. The sirens of cognitive dissonance are blaring, not only with the timing of the resignation, so close after the election and a week before Petraeus was to give testimony in Congress over the details of the Benghazi attack in Libya. Read below the fold...

Paul Craig Roberts recently suggested an archly apt bumper sticker: “Be nice to America or we will bring democracy to your country.”

Our government does not bring democracy to countries. Raise your hand if you are naive enough to believe it does. Especially after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were launched (still ongoing). Those two countries are two of the five most corrupt countries in the world thanks to our craven "involvement" -- involvement a profoundly understating word. Read below the fold...

RE-POST from 5/11/11

[Hugh's Obama's Scandals List]

What is JSOC? Joint Special Operations Command.

I got that it was some kind of secret U.S. SWAT-team-like paramilitary program, ever growing and being unleashed onto scores of nations. I can't begin to imagine the breathtaking “black budget” it must suck up both crippling the welfare of the US citizenry and enabling it to wreak horror among non-US populations.

JSOC. Frontline addressed JSOC somewhat tonight about capture/kill operations in Afghanistan but not critically enough by a long shot. (Is it me or is Frontline getting more and more “careful” in its explorations?) I decided to do some fast googling. Read below the fold...

Bill Quigley has taken a hard and well-researched look at Obama’s continuation and escalation of what Quigley terms the “draconian domestic civil liberties intrusions pioneered under the Bush administration” (involving freedoms of speech, of assembly of association, to privacy, to a fair trial, of religion, etc.).

Quigley's article is a strong rejoinder to so much of the myopic, Obamacrat hype about Obama being the lesser of two evils. He only appears to be the lesser of two evils in the hypocritical talk Obama talks and guaranteed will be talking much more of in his ever-intensifying “Lucy and the football” campaign mode. Read below the fold...

First Amendment: Protects the freedom of religion, speech, and the press, as well as the right to assemble and petition the government

Fourth Amendment: Prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets out requirements for search warrants based on probable cause

Read below the fold...

(553 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)

Pepe Escobar of Asia Times suggests the motivation for the alleged take-OUT not take-down of Osama Bin Ladin:

The hero, fully equipped, pumped up, is face to face with the real Osama bin Laden, unarmed, just out of bed, trapped in a drab room. There's no possible escape; the whole compound is "secured". This is it - the moment America has been dreaming about since September 11, 2001.

[snip] Read below the fold...

On April 26, 2011, it was reported that there would be a major reshuffling of the neocon deck chairs in the Obama Administration's military and intelligence apparatus. Leon Panetta will be nominated to replace Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Panetta is currently CIA director. As DCI, Panetta did nothing to reform the CIA. Indeed he was a strong proponent of covering up Bush era illegalities there. Read below the fold...