Silencing the Whistle - The Intercept Shutters Snowden Archive, Citing Cost

Comment: Confirming the limited hangout/psyops nonsense that is Edward Snowjob. Glenn Greenwald would sell his grandmother if he could.

---------------------- 

Mint Press News

The closing of The Intercept’s Snowden archive will likely mean the end of any future publications, unless Glenn Greenwald’s rather absurd promise of finding “the right partner … that has the funds to robustly publish” is fulfilled.

 

NEW YORK — On March 13, a report in the Daily Beast revealed that the New York-based outlet The Intercept would be shutting down its archive of the trove of government documents entrusted to a handful of journalists, including Intercept co-founders Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, by whistleblower Edward Snowden. However, that account did not include the role of Greenwald, as well as Jeremy Scahill — another Intercept co-founder, in the controversial decision to shutter the archive.

 

According to a timeline of events written by Poitras that was shared and published by journalist and former Intercept columnist Barrett Brown, both Scahill and Greenwald were intimately involved in the decision to close the Snowden archive. 

While other outlets — such as the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post and the New York Times — also possess much (though not all) of the archive, the Intercept was the only outlet with the (full) archive that had continued to publish documents, albeit at a remarkably slow pace, in recent years. In total, fewer than 10 percent of the Snowden documents have been published since 2013. Thus, the closing of the publication’s Snowden archive will likely mean the end of any future publications, unless Greenwald’s promise of finding “the right partner … that has the funds to robustly publish” is fulfilled.

Poitras told Brown that she first caught wind of the coming end of the Snowden archive on March 6, when Scahill and Intercept editor-in-chief Betsy Reed asked to meet with her “to explain how we’ve assessed our priorities in the course of the budget process, and made some restructuring decisions.” During the resulting two-hour meeting, which Poitras described as “tense,” she realized that they had “decided to eliminate the research department. I object to this on the grounds Field of Vision [Intercept sister company where Poitras works] is dependent [on the] research department, and the Snowden archive security protocols are overseen by them.”

Poitras later sent two emails opposing the research department’s elimination and, in one of those emails, argued that the research department should stay, as it represented “only 1.5% of the total budget” of First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, which is wholly owned by billionaire Pierre Omidyar. The last of those emails was sent on March 10 and Poitras told Brown:

Throughout these conversations and email exchanges, there was no mention of shutting down the archive. That was not on the table. That decision was made on either Monday March 11 or Tuesday March 12, again without my involvement or consent.”

Read more

See also:  Glenn Greenbacks Completes the Edward Snowjob

Celebrate Loud, Long And Unapologetically When Psychopath McCain Finally Dies

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
via Sott.net

Arizona Senator and murderous psychopath John McCain is rumored to be at death's door, and already the world is being admonished by high-profile empire loyalists not to voice any criticism of his blood-saturated, obnoxiously long career.

"Anti-McCain twitter seems to have reached new heights (or depths) of repulsiveness," tweeted Iraq-raping PNAC founder Bill Kristol to thunderous applause from #Resistance Twitter. "In the hope that a few of the haters see this, let me say: I'm proud to have voted for John McCain for president three times (2000 & 2008 primaries & 2008 general), and for Donald Trump...never."

"John McCain reminds us that American greatness is made by those who understand that character is the sum of one's hardest choices; that reality is not a TV show; that fame is mist but honor granite; that heroes don't need fixers on retainer," the Washington Post's David Von Drehle preemptively eulogized in a nauseating article titled "John McCain isn't the ideal messenger. He's the ideal message."

"STFU, Trumpites," scolded the somewhat less subtle Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast. "John McCain is 50 times the person you'll ever be."  

Other commentators have had other ideas.

"These repressive decrees prohibiting criticisms of John McCain as he dies are like those who insist gun control not be spoken of after mass shootings," tweeted journalist Glenn Greenwald. "Discussions of his life are inherently political. If you're going heap praise on & sanctify him, you can't also silence critics."

"Insisting on the right to convert every US political leader into a heroic & noble saint upon death, while condemning critics as gauche & classless, is propaganda," Greenwald added. "It's easy to dismiss all the deaths McCain has caused because they're distant and invisible, but they still matter."

Read more

Glenn Greenwald: Evidence That Assad Used Gas 'Overwhelming' - Amy Goodman Agrees!

Russia Insider

I was watching Amy Goodman's much admired 'Democracy Now' over bacon this morning, looking forward to Glenn Greenwald setting the nation straight, as he can usually be relied upon to do, and he explained to the credulous masses, that in fact, it seems to him that Assad had used chemical weapons, and that the evidence was 'overwhelming'. Goodman didn't blink, and then of all things, cut to video of Ben Cardin, the senator from the great state of AIPAC, saying the same thing and demanding war, to reinforce the point, in case some of the sheeple out there weren't getting her drift.

Please don't ask me why I was watching this uber-liberal show whose views on many things I find reprehensible. It is a tedious story of no importance. Goodman is good on some things, but terrible on most. She has been pushing the Russiagate lie, which is telling, but I suppose you could argue that if she didn't her whacko liberal base would drop her. Still, there is much admirable in her work.

[...]

Greenwald and Goodman have crossed every red line out there for any sane person on the left or the right with this obvious, transparent lie. I will not even try to speculate what they are thinking - are they in fact ZOG controlled opposition, or just trying to buy credibility with someone? Why would they try to give legitimacy to what is just another of a long line of false flags, which no longer work, because they have been so completely and emphatically exposed as such. For a truthful explanation of this latest CIA / Mossad caper, check out Syrian Girl's video of today. Now THAT is honest, independent journalism.

Read more

Cryptome’s searing critique of Snowden Inc.

"The current corporate media business model of celebrity as an income producer and celebrity as a sensationalizing, titillating device for increasing the value of content is something we stay away from. It’s deeply cynical to sensationalize this trusted transaction, when someone come to you with a document and puts it forward to you."— Deborah Natsios, Cryptome

Tim Shorrock / Money Doesn't Talk it Swears

This week, John Young and Deborah Natsios, the founders of Cryptome, one of the world’s oldest and best-known repositories of leaked intelligence documents, quietly posted a URL to an interview they conducted on February 6 during a conference in Berlin, Germany.

Young and Natsios are introduced, correctly, as “renowned figures within a larger community people interested in keeping governments and institutions accountable, and using documents to do that.” But they also offer deep insights into the media and how it has handled revelations about U.S. intelligence and the National Security Agency. And their remarks, such as the quote above, clearly catch their host by surprise.

In the 18^th minute, they issue a scathing rebuke of “celebrity” journalism as practiced, in their opinion, by The Intercept, the publication owned by Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media. The interview is worth hearing in its entirety, and I urge anyone who’s had questions and concerns about Edward Snowden and his relationship to The Intercept’s founding editors, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, to listen to it and carefully consider their arguments.

Why? Because Cryptome raises serious questions that nobody else on the left or in the media want to talk about, including how Omidar has created a business from Snowden’s cache; what exactly Snowden may have been doing while he was working for the CIA prior to his time at NSA (and what else he may have been doing at NSA itself); and why Snowden and The Intercept continue to proselytize for Tor, the anonymization tool, despite its massive funding from the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the national security state.

One of the most amazing moments comes when the host, Pit Shultz, grows nervous about how his questions are being answered. It’s a sad insight into how the libertarian left responds to any criticism of its heroes and the arrogance and vitriol that’s been thrown to people who’ve raised questions about Snowden, Tor or Omidyar’s operations. To his credit, Shultz soldiers on – but only after Natsios assures him that “robust debate” is crucial to democracy.

Cryptome’s critique, as expressed in the interview, is not new. Ever since Greenwald first wrote about Snowden’s documents in The Guardian in 2013, the organization has been keeping careful track of the glacial pace of the documents’ release and The Intercept’s almost-total control over the cache. Their latest tally, posted this week, is 6,318 pages of what The Guardian first reported as 58,000 files.

From the start, Young and Natsios made it clear that they strongly disapprove of the fact that this cache has not been made widely available to the public and posted for all to see – as they have done with the tens of thousands of intelligence files they have released since the late 1990s (and as Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers). Take a look at how Gawker, a publication very friendly to The Intercept, reported on Cryptome in June 2013:

When the Guardian and Washington Post published their blockbuster NSA reports based on Ed Snowden’s leaks, journalists lined up conga-style to congratulate them on the scoops. Not Cryptome. Instead, the secret-killing site blasted the Guardian and Post for only publishing 4 of the 41 slides that Snowden gave them about PRISM, the NSA’s system for spying on the internet.
“Mr. Snowden, please send your 41 PRISM slides and other information to less easily cowed and overly coddled commercial outlets than Washington Post and Guardian,” Cryptome wrote in a June 10th dispatch titled “Snowden Censored by Craven Media.”

To longtime followers of Cryptome, this response was unsurprising. Before Wikileaks, before Ed Snowden, there was Cryptome. Manhattan-based architects John Young and Deborah Natsios founded Cryptome.org in 1996 as a repository for documents no one else would publish, including lists of CIA assets, in-depth technical schematics of sensitive national security installations, and copyrighted material. As leaking has created a vibrant media ecosystem in recent years, complete with favored outlets, journalists and sources, Cryptome has positioned itself as its curmudgeonly ombudsman, quietly but blisteringly cutting down the hype and blather it sees in its competitors while advocating a form of radical transparency as straightforward as Cryptome.org’s bare-bones website.

Until now, however, I’ve never seen an analysis like this. What follows is my transcript of key parts of the interview.

Read more

Useful Idiots: The Clueless Gooberism of First Look’s Fallen Heroes

Comment: Floyd writes about the wasted opportunity of the Greenwald-Snowden-inspired First Look Media (The Intercept) that was launched on a tidal wave of hyperbole and rhetoric whilst being funded by a corporate fascist like Pierre Omidya. As for ground-breaking articles and reports that would rock the Establishment...Well, they are no better or worse than any other, though it has given Greenwald a lion's share of Snowden cables and book deals to hatch under that carefully cultivated nest. 

--------------------------------

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

I don’t really want to go too far down the road on this when there are far more important things happening in the world, but really, take just a moment to look at the language in the Ken Silverstein piece on the world-historical tragedy of him finding out that it was less than ideal to work for a rapacious, dodgy billionaire:

“[Matt Taibbi] hired some incredible writers, including Alex Pareene, Edith Zimmerman and other insanely talented people [for the oligarch-funded vehicle called Racket] …. During my short time at Racket, we talked about how we should have the courage to write whatever we wanted—and not to worry about whether First Look management liked what we did or whether we offended potential future employers. At bottom, that is the true formula to produce fearless, independent journalism. You will never produce fearless, independent journalism if you live in fear of angering your media boss or to please your sources or even your friends.”

I mean, just look at that phrasing. All of Silverstein’s pals at racket were not just good journalists, they weren’t just talented people; no, they had to be INSANELY talented. They were all (him included) people endowed with talent beyond all normal measuring.

And then, in those deep, soulful conversations he reports having with Taibbi and the other god-like creatures assembled at Racket, Silverstein talks of the “fearless, independent journalism” (a phrase repeated in two successive sentences) they were all courageously pledged to create, no matter what the oligarch who was giving them tens of millions of dollars might think.

But really: who on god’s green earth talks about themselves in this way? Who beats their chests and shouts about how FEARLESS and INDEPENDENT they are, how INSANELY TALENTED all their colleagues are? Who, who actually was fearless and independent, would sign up with a bloated billionaire techno-oligarch in the first place? And what genuinely talented person needs to proclaim anxiously to all the world how talented — sorry, not just talented but INSANELY talented — they and their friends are?

And again, really: Alex Parene, INSANELY talented? You might, at a stretch, say that Tolstoy or Shakespeare were INSANELY talented; that is, that their talents seem to exceed those of most other writers. But some guy who used to write pieces for Salon? He’s incomprehensibly talented, is he? Couldn’t he be, like, just talented, or even less hyperbolically, just a good writer? Is that not good enough?

And again, as with Glenn Greenwald, who famously declared that he took no interest at all in Omidyar’s background or politics before he took his multimillion dollar checks, Silverstein too declares that he “knew little” about Omidyar when he took the oligarch’s money, and that the oligarch — whatever he did or stood for — “wasn’t a big part of my decision-making.”

Not to belabor the point, but again we are talking about self-proclaimed FEARLESS INDEPENDENT journalists — Greenwald and Silverstein — who freely admit that they did virtually no due diligence, no FEARLESS investigation, of the oligarch who was waving fat wads of money at them. They just took the money. And now we are supposed to feel sorry for Silverstein and Taibbi and the other INSANELY TALENTED FEARLESS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS who discovered that working on Petey’s Farm was not the utopia they thought it would be. I suppose being INSANELY TALENTED and FEARLESSLY INDEPENDENT doesn’t preclude you from being MONUMENTALLY STUPID and WILFULLY IGNORANT. But such glaring evidence of the latter does tend to tarnish somewhat one’s savvy, dissident cred, does it not?

So what is the upshot of the whole Omidyar FUBAR? The end result has been 1) to shut down for months on end some of the few ‘dissident’ writers able to publish in the mainstream media; and 2) undermine their credibility and make them all look like stupid, self-aggrandizing, money-grubbing goobers. If you had deliberately designed a scheme to cripple the already minuscule portion of mildly oppositional stances toward our militarist empire allowed to surface on the margins of the national discourse, you could not have been more effective than the long slow-motion train wreck of First Look Media.

Je suis Charlie: Or, "I'm a racist pervert too!"

Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept

 

Defending free speech and free press rights, which typically means defending the right to disseminate the very ideas society finds most repellent, has been one of my principal passions for the last 20 years: previously as a lawyer and now as a journalist. So I consider it positive when large numbers of people loudly invoke this principle, as has been happening over the last 48 hours in response to the horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Usually, defending free speech rights is much more of a lonely task. For instance, the day before the Paris murders, I wrote an article about multiple cases where Muslims are being prosecuted and even imprisoned by western governments for their online political speech - assaults that have provoked relatively little protest, including from those free speech champions who have been so vocal this week.

I've previously covered cases where Muslims were imprisoned for many years in the U.S. for things like translating and posting "extremist" videos to the internet, writing scholarly articles in defense of Palestinian groups and expressing harsh criticism of Israel, and even including a Hezbollah channel in a cable package. That's all well beyond the numerous cases of jobs being lost or careers destroyed for expressing criticism of Israel or (much more dangerously and rarely) Judaism. I'm hoping this week's celebration of free speech values will generate widespread opposition to all of these long-standing and growing infringements of core political rights in the west, not just some. 

Read more

Snowden, Brian Williams: staged amateur night for the suckers

Jon Rappoport 
www.nomorefakenews.com
 
You could call it a completely incompetent interview, but Brian Williams is supposed to be incompetent. That’s his job.

Don’t take a Snowden comment and drill down into it. Don’t connect dots. Don’t delve into Snowden’s history. Don’t ask serious questions about the NSA. 

Just make the interview seem important. That’s all that counts. Give the impression that the interview is an Event.

When Snowden suddenly told Williams he was trained as a spy, he wasn’t just an analyst, when he said he’d worked under false names at false jobs he didn’t really have, for the CIA, NSA, and DIA…that’s a show-stopper.

Hold everything. “Really, Ed? What did you do? What kind of thing? You worked for the DIA? 

Never heard that before. When? Why haven’t you said you were a spy before? Why hasn’t Greenwald mentioned this? Does the New York Times know this? The Washington Post? When you took that last systems-analyst job for NSA in Hawaii, as a contractor for Booz Allen, you’d already been a deep-cover spy for NSA? What exactly was your job at NSA in Hawaii, Ed?”

And that’s just for starters.

Once you open up that subject, who knows where it might lead?

And how about this: “Okay, Ed, we’ve heard you took anywhere from 20,000 to 1.7 million NSA documents. What’s the real number? I’m asking this, in part, because at the rate those documents are being released, by your press friends, we’ll all be long dead before the full cache is made public.”

And then: “Let’s talk turkey here, Ed, about NSA internal security. This is the biggest, richest, most brilliant spy agency in the world. And yet we’re supposed to believe they overlooked one little thing in their structure: they just forgot to secure their own data. Oops. They just forgot. All these years. Therefore, as you’ve said on several occasions, any employee of the Agency with ordinary access could stroll in and steal the farm. Really? Is that what you’re selling?”

Read more

 

Skyrockets in Flight: The Profitable Spectacle of Stylized Dissent

Empire Burlesque/Chris Floyd

As we all know, Glenn Greenwald recently revealed that he is saving the biggest revelations from the Snowden NSA archive until last, likening his journalistic process to a fireworks show a that builds up to a grand finale. This is, of course, the very opposite of any kind of actual journalism, which leads with the most important information first.

The traditional method would seem even more imperative in this case, as we are dealing with material which exposes vast crimes and deeply sinister actions by a tyrannical government. Greenwald himself has incessantly told us how important this material it is, how dangerous the government’s depredations have become, how urgent it is that we learn of this danger and do something about it. And yet he admits — no, he boasts — that he has been withholding information about the most dangerous activities, the greatest threats to liberty, for more than a year … solely in order to make a big splash, “where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues.”

If the threat is so great, should we not know the worst up front, in order to recognize the scale of the danger and take action more quickly? But if “the finale, a big missing piece” can wait for more than a year to be revealed, then how “big” can it be? Or turn the question around: if the finale really is that big and important, then what does it say about Greenwald’s constantly self-trumpeted concern for liberty that he would blithely wait more than a year before letting us know of this major threat — timing the sky-filling extravaganza with the release of his new book. A cynic might suspect that self-aggrandizement has trumped the love of freedom in this instance.

There is much to say about Greenwald’s astonishing admission, and I wanted to address a few more key points. But various matters have kept me away from the keyboard of late, and now I find that many if not most of the salient points I wanted to address are covered in a post at Rancid Honeytrap, especially in the long comment thread, where readers have unpacked the rest of the GQ story in which the fireworks impresario revealed his distorted vision of journalism. 

Read more

 

Spying Is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, Not Catch Terrorists

Washington's Blog

While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about what’s really going on. 

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes:

Image: NSA HQ (Wiki Commons).

The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. “Doing something wrong” in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.

The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all “doing something wrong”: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.

The FBI’s domestic counterintelligence programme, Cointelpro, was first exposed by a group of anti-war activists who had become convinced that the anti-war movement had been infiltrated, placed under surveillance and targeted with all sorts of dirty tricks. Lacking documentary evidence to prove it and unsuccessful in convincing journalists to write about their suspicions, they broke into an FBI branch office in Pennsylvania in 1971 and carted off thousands of documents.

Files related to Cointelpro showed how the FBI had targeted political groups and individuals it deemed subversive and dangerous, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, black nationalist movements, socialist and communist organizations, anti-war protesters and various rightwing groups. The bureau had infiltrated them with agents who, among other things, attempted to manipulate members into agreeing to commit criminal acts so that the FBI could arrest and prosecute them.
Those revelations led to the creation of the Senate Church Committee, which concluded: “[Over the course of 15 years] the bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilate operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of first amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

These incidents were not aberrations of the era. During the Bush years, for example, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed, as the group put it in 2006, “new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups“. The Pentagon was “keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database”. The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who “have done something wrong” should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing.

The opportunity those in power have to characterise political opponents as “national security threats” or even “terrorists” has repeatedly proven irresistible. In the past decade, the government, in an echo of Hoover’s FBI, has formally so designatedenvironmental activists, broad swaths of anti-government rightwing groups, anti-war activists, and associations organised around Palestinian rights. Some individuals within those broad categories may deserve the designation, but undoubtedly most do not, guilty only of holding opposing political views. Yet such groups are routinely targeted for surveillance by the NSA and its partners.

One document from the Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012, chillingly underscores the point. It revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express “radical” ideas and who have a “radicalising” influence on others.

***

The NSA explicitly states that none of the targeted individuals is a member of a terrorist organisation or involved in any terror plots. Instead, their crime is the views they express, which are deemed “radical“, a term that warrants pervasive surveillance and destructive campaigns to “exploit vulnerabilities”.

Among the information collected about the individuals, at least one of whom is a “US person”, are details of their online sex activities and “online promiscuity” – the porn sites they visit and surreptitious sex chats with women who are not their wives. The agency discusses ways to exploit this information to destroy their reputations and credibility.
The NSA’s treatment of Anonymous, as well as the vague category of people known as “hacktivists”, is especially troubling and extreme. That’s because Anonymous is not actually a structured group but a loosely organised affiliation of people around an idea: someone becomes affiliated with Anonymous by virtue of the positions they hold. Worse still, the category “hacktivists” has no fixed meaning: it can mean the use of programming skills to undermine the security and functioning of the internetbut can also refer to anyone who uses online tools to promote political ideals. That the NSA targets such broad categories of people is tantamount to allowing it to spy on anyone anywhere, including in the US, whose ideas the government finds threatening.

Greenwald told Democracy Now yesterday:

People are aware of J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses. The nature of that series of events is that the United States government looks at people who oppose what they do as being, quote-unquote, “threats.” That’s the nature of power, is to regard anybody who’s a threat to your power as a broad national security threat.

***

There has already been reporting that shows that—the document, for example, in the book that shows the NSA plotting about how to use information that it collected against people it considers, quote, “radicalizers.” These are people the NSA itself says are not terrorists, do not belong to terrorist organizations, do not plan terrorist attacks. They simply express ideas the NSA considers radical. The NSA has collected their online sexual activity, chats of a sexual nature that they’ve had, pornographic websites that they visit, and plans, in the document, on how to use this information publicly to destroy the reputations or credibility of those people to render them ineffective as advocates. There are other documents showing the monitoring of who visits the WikiLeaks website and the collection of data that can identify who they are. There’s information about how to use deception to undermine people who are affiliated with the online activism group Anonymous.

Recent stories show that Greenwald is right:

• In 1972, the CIA Director Relabeled “Dissidents” As “Terrorists” So He Could Continue Spying On Them … And Nothing Has Changed

• 500 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is ALWAYS Aimed at Crushing Dissent

• “These Programs Were Never About Terrorism: They’re About Economic Spying, Social Control, and Diplomatic Manipulation. They’re About Power”

And it’s not just spying …

The government may treat anyone who challenges its policies as terrorists.  For example:

• The former head of the NSA and CIA compared privacy advocates to terrorists

• Peaceful protest may be treated as terrorism by the FBI

• Questioning war may be considered terrorism

The indefinite detention law may be used against American dissenters. Specifically, the trial judge in the lawsuit challenging the law had asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and thenwriting about bad guys.   The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.

Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead writes:

No matter what the Obama administration may say to the contrary, actions speak louder than words, and history shows that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes. What the NDAA does is open the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists, that technically applies to anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government.

Daniel Ellsberg notes that Obama’s claim of power to indefinitely detain people without charges or access to a lawyer or the courts is a power that even King George – the guy we fought the Revolutionary War against – didn’t claim.  (And former judge and adjunct professor of constitutional law Andrew Napolitano points out that Obama’s claim that he can indefinitely detain prisoners even after they are acquitted of their crimes is a power that even Hitler and Stalin didn’t claim.)

And the former top NSA official who created NSA’s mass surveillance system says, “We are now in a police state“.

Huffington, Greenwald and the Birth of the Purple Pill Media

Vigilant Citizen Forum
Paul W. Marko PhD.

In order to neuter the raging cobra of the alternative media, the globalists seem to be launching several new platforms of their newest mongoose, what I will call the “purple pill media.” This most recent ploy aims to make the outrageous behaviors of the ruling class (like possibly staging 9/11, the moon landings, the Kennedy assassinations, multiple false flag operations, etc.) food for polite discussions rather than the shameful affronts to humanity and civilization that they really are.

Based on a conceptualization hatched by brilliant Irish thinker and artist, Thomas Sheridan,[1] his notion of the “purple pill” is a take off of the red pill and blue pill idea birthed in the original Matrix movie. Thomas astutely observed that when new ideas, edgy trends or expressions of authentic rage emerge organically from the populace (the red pill of reality), the movements are quickly infiltrated, watered down and sterilized by the powers that be. As an example, the hippie, anti war movement of the 60’s, a true awakening by a generation that were no longer willing to swallow the hypocrisy of the American dream (red pill), became swiftly co-opted and diluted into politically acceptable, anti war goop, ushering many into the purple pill of loyal opposition to war and causing still others in the flock to double back into the blue pill of the mainstream conservative society. Other examples range from the original hip hop music to the sincere beginning of the Black Power movement; the strategy is to infiltrate, twist and water down the message, such that it no longer has teeth, cannot mobilize action or threaten the establishment.

Over the past few weeks, major globalist money has been thrown into partnerships with media trendies and supposed “pals of the people,” to begin new “alternative” media networks. Arianna Huffington, the famous conservative turned liberal and Glamour Magazine’s woman of the year, signed a deal with billionaire Nicolas Berggruen to start a new media company, World Post news website.[2]  Berggruen is the founder, benefactor and inspirational leader of the Institute on Governance, an organization dedicated to solving the problems of globalization in the 21^st century.[3] At the same time Glenn Greenwald, internationally known journalist and releaser (excruciatingly slow – 1% revealed so far) of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, signed a $250 million dollar deal with Pierre Omidyar, owner of Pay Pal corporation, to start a media vehicle.[4] Greenwald said that it was his dream to have an outlet like this to “promote in-depth reporting.”⁴ 

Likely not too in-depth on some subjects, however, since his “Angel Investor’s” company has been and still is a compliant party to the NSA spying program exposed in the Snowden leaks.[5] Just to assure you that these are not unrelated coincidences, Omidyar is on the editorial board of the new World Post news website.[6] These new “alternative media” funded by globalists and fronted by celebrities, I propose, will form the basis for the purple pill media or just the purple media.

But what can we expect to find on these venues?

Since the idea is to make the outrageous, criminal acts of the globalists mainstream and easy to swallow, “conspiracy theories” will be acknowledged and investigated in stories that will fully express the facts in the story. This article will be likely answered by an establishment expert, someone with a mountain of credentials but no scruples, assuring the public that although the facts of the case are true, there is no danger involved and many logical reasons why the situation exists. After which, the matter will be debated on a public forum, in a civilized manner and then filed under interesting but irrelevant. For example, a story that reveals that chemtrails exist and governments throughout the world are spray aluminum, barium and strontium particles on the earth in vast amounts in combination with various viruses and nano-technology could emerge on these websites. The original article (red pill) will be followed by an article interviewing a leading expert on everything in the sky explaining that the program does exist and indeed it is spraying those particular particulates, but not to worry, these measures are important to save the planet from global warming (purple pill). The publication will then move to the next subject leaving the “informed” readers to make up their minds on this controversy, thereby converting the red pill of global genocide from the sky into the purple pill of a cocktail party topic for discussion. 

If I am correct the purple pill media will likely expand their platforms into television outlets with game shows like the old Wheel of Fortune, with questions like, “Now for the bonus round and chance to come back next week…Who ordered the Norad stand-down on 9/11? There could be a reality show called “Escape from Abu Ghraib” where the public will get used to the prisoner and captor roles and consider them quite purpulishly normal.

These new outlets are a very expensive chess move on the part of the globalists that we can easily counter by knowing the aim and sticking with the red pill of truth and outrage.

---

Notes 

[1] “The Purple Pill Cometh,” October 28, 2013, http://thomassheridanofficialblog.blogspot.ie/2013/10/the-purple-pill-cometh.html

[2] Dominic Rushe, “Arianna Huffington announces launch of World Post news website,” The Guardian, January 9, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/08/world-post-news-website-launches-huffington

[3] “Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust,” http://nicolasberggruentrust.com/

[4]  “Glenn Greenwald and the $250 Million “Angel Investor,” Jonathan Franklin, October 28, 2013, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36601.htm

[5] “BFP Breaking News – Omidyar’s PayPal Corporation Said to be Implicated in Withheld NSA Documents,” Sibel Edmonds, Dec. 11, 2013, http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/11/bfp-breaking-news-omidyars-paypal-corporation-said-to-be-implicated-in-

[6] “Arianna Huffington Courts Global Elite in Effort to Undermine Alternative Media,” Kurt Nimmo, January 9, 2014, http://www.infowars.com/arianna-huffington-courts-global-elite-in-effort-to-undermine-alternative-media/

Change Agents: The Curious Case of the "Responsible" NSA Revelations

 

Edward Snowden: Hero or State-sponsored change agent?

  "I continue to be shocked at the way these revelations are being handled -- kept tightly under the control of a handful of responsible figures who happily submit them to "government stakeholders," while effectively repressing 98 percent of the evidence of criminality and moral turpitude on the part of those same "government stakeholders."

- Chris Floyd

Comment: So refreshing to see a few journalists from the "alternative media" seeing through the Glenn Greenwald/Ed Snowden Psyops. It took me a while to see it I'll admit, but once you smell the coffee, what a worthless crock it really all is.

Snowden has done his job.

And Greenwald seems to have chosen to buy the whole charade for notoriety and dosh. Very sad indeed.

Those that believe that this is anything other than a limited hangout funnelling awareness of the surveillance society into a cul de sac of self-satisfaction and complacency - well, heads need examining... 

But I'll leave Chris Floyd to do that.

------------------------------


Empire Burlesque
Chris Floyd

Has it only been 10 months since Edward Snowden's NSA revelations changed the world? Can you even remember what the world was like, before he gave 50,000 -- no, 200,000 -- no, wait, 2 million-- secret documents to Glenn Greenwald: smoking guns that exposed Washington's global surveillance state, which far outstripped the wildest, wettest dreams of the Stasi, of Stalin, yea of Orwell himself?

Try to recall those dark days -- now long since banished, thank God! -- when the American imperium thrust its grubby hands and greedy eyes into every single digital pie available, scarfing up emails, URLs, locations, even webcam shots, of anybody and everybody, then storing them all in gargantuan data silos, to sift through and fondle for years on end. Remember that? Remember how this surveillance state, this über-Stasi, was put to the service of a regime that was actually going all over the world and murdering people -- without charges, without due process, without defense, without warning. Just circling the world, blowing up a wedding party here, a couple of teenagers there, a village, a funeral, a farm, an apartment block, day after day, week after week, year after year? Innocent people, "guilty" people; guilty of something or other, that is -- maybe just behaving in a "suspicious manner" in the eyes of unaccountable officials acting arbitrarily in secret, on the basis of screenshots sent by back by robots, and rumors and vendettas gathered, for pay, by secret agents.

Do you remember how this brutal, barbaric, ugly, inhuman regime would then go around the world condemning other nations for not being moral, holy, freedom-loving and strictly adherent to international law? Do you remember the base, sickening hypocrisy of it all? State murderers -- proud state murderers, murderers who would go before legislators and under oath to God Almighty swear how proud they were to be murdering people -- telling other nations how to order their affairs according to the principles of law and justice and human rights?

Isn't it wonderful how much has changed since those days, when we discovered the spine and musculature of the surveillance regime that undergirded this ghastly system of murder and corruption and domination?

What? What do you mean nothing's changed? What do you mean that this barbaric system is still firing on all cylinders? What do you mean that the surveillance state has not been crippled or even slowed for a single instant by all these world-changing revelations? What are you saying? That those who facilitated the exposure of the NSA documents, like Greenwald, are now working for techno-oligarchs who fund rapacious, elite-enriching, regime-changing "philanthropic" enterprises all over the world? Whose companies actually helped strangulate Wikileaks in its greatest hour of need by cutting off its venues of funding?

Are you trying to tell me that even Snowden himself -- who risked so much to bring these crimes to light -- now declares forthrightly "that spying serves a vital purpose and must continue"? That he has taken great pains to declare that his incendiary material should only be "safely disclosed to responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders," as Arthur Silber pointedly points out? In coordination with "government stakeholders?" The same "government stakeholders" who are murdering people around the world and sticking their webcams into our underwear? Is that what you're trying to tell me?

What next? Are you going to tell me that even Jeremy Scahill, Greenwald's partner in the oligarch-funded venture, First Look, which is going to transform journalism as we know it for all time to come, has also declared that their transformative operation will dutifully submit its work to government scrutiny -- with the caveat, of course, that they may not follow the government's advice on how 'dangerous' it might be to publish the dutifully submitted material? (Which is, of course, the same way that every other non-transformed journalistic entity in the Western world operates.)

Is that what you're trying to say? That the murder goes on, the surveillance goes on, the crime goes on, and that even our most cutting-edge, transformative, dangerous and subversive journalists and whistleblowers are committed to acting "responsibly" in "coordination with government stakeholders."

Well, if I may once again quote the great Mel Brooks quoting the great Joe Schrank: "I can hardly believe my hearing aid!"

Maybe I need new batteries for this thing. Everywhere I hear unstinting -- and unquestioning -- praise for these developments; but nowhere do I see any genuine effect. I mean, yes, of course, it's good to see "progressive" hero Rachel Maddow expressing umbrage at the revelations that Barack Obama's Stasi-State is now brazenly spying on their own putative Congressional overseers. Maddow even goes so far as to call this "End of the Republic stuff." But is this followed by a call for the impeachment of a president that is "ending the Republic" with a security apparat run amok? Of course not. The main progressive goal, as always, is to express a bit of marginal outrage while devoting one's main energies to ensuring that whatever "centrist" suit of clothes the bought-and-sold Democratic establishment puts up as a candidate is elected. (Next up: Hilary "Annihilate the Iranians" Clinton in 2016.)

But what of these 2 million documents that Snowden has bequeathed to a few chosen journalists who maintain their iron grip on the revelations, doling them out as they alone see fit - after, of course, submitting them to the scrutiny of "government stakeholders"? Let us return to a salient fact that Arthur Silber keeps pointing out: that only 1% to 2% of this vast trove has ever been seen:

Given all the publicly available evidence, when reporting on the Snowden documents is completed, the general public will have seen only 1% to 2% of all the documents involved. I've analyzed in detail how deeply problematic this is. That's putting it mildly, and with excessive politeness. In fact, this highly selective publishing of leaks is insulting, disgusting, and profoundly offensive ...

In short, the methodology adopted by Snowden and the favored journalists is leading straight to complete and utter disaster.

It is also necessary to mention that many of the published documents are offered only with redactions, which are sometimes substantial. Not only that but, as a rule, no explanation is offered as to why particular information has been redacted. Similarly, we are offered only the most general of explanations, if that, for why roughly 98% of the documents will never see the light of day. This presents the general public -- for whose benefit all this heroic work is allegedly undertaken -- with an insurmountable problem of evaluation and understanding.

Well, hold on there a minute, Arthur, you incorrigible skeptic you. What about the latest revelation from The Intercept, the flagship enterprise of First Look? Just last weekend, the Interceptors dug into this vast trove of criminality to inform us that ... the NSA's newsletter has its own Dear Abby column (or "agony aunt," as the Brits would say). Now how about that! The NSA has an internal advice column offering tidbits on personnel issues. Now that's transformative journalism with a vengeance!  Just think how many innocent lives now doomed to die from Washington's surveillance state-supported death squads will now be saved because of this revelation!

Back to Silber:

Snowden has always been at pains to assure everyone -- and most particularly, to assure the State -- that he doesn't want to threaten the State in any serious way. And even though his major concern is with mass surveillance, that, too, would be acceptable to him in general terms, provided it is sanctioned by "informed public consent," and even though he himself would choose differently.

But look again at those concluding remarks to the EU. "[T]here are many other undisclosed programs that would impact EU citizens' rights..." Many other undisclosed programs that affect tens of millions of people. Maybe they'll find out about them, maybe they won't. And Snowden himself won't make that decision. "Responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders" will decide. We've witnessed this game for nine months; we know how it's played. The "responsible journalists" and "government stakeholders" will allow us to see perhaps 2% of all the documents Snowden gathered up. With redactions, and without explanations of the redactions or explanations, even in general terms, of what we will never be told.

But honestly, it's more than slightly ridiculous to parse these statements further. Snowden's formulation, and the adoption of his methodology by the "responsible journalists" involved, mean only one thing: these are, ultimately, State-sanctioned leaks. This is State-sanctioned whistleblowing. Whatever dangers much wider, and much more rapid, disclosure might have carried have been entirely obliterated. What remains constitutes no threat of any remotely serious kind to the States implicated. Yes, there will be hearings, some "reforms," and life for the States will go almost exactly as before. Your life, on the other hand ... well, who gives a damn about your life.

Of course, we are glad to have any little fragment of truth we can get our hands on in these dystopian times. As T.S. Eliot said: "these fragments I have shored against my ruins." And most assuredly, we are in ruins. But I continue to be amazed at the nugatory effect of the Snowden revelations. I continue to be shocked at the way these revelations are being handled -- kept tightly under the control of a handful of responsible figures who happily submit them to "government stakeholders," while effectively repressing 98 percent of the evidence of criminality and moral turpitude on the part of those same "government stakeholders." So I agree with Silber's conclusion, with which I'll conclude here:

I have one request, in the nature of truth in advertising. I want to see all future stories relying on the Snowden documents accompanied by a stamp in which appear the following words. We are provided similar guarantees in connection with food and drugs, for example, and I see no reason not to adapt the practice to "journalism," given what that term now appears to mean. Each such story should carry this ironclad assurance:

This story contains those facts, and only those facts, that we and the State have determined it is safe for you to know. We will never tell you anything else, and we will most certainly never tell you anything more.

Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show

Pando Daily

Just hours after last weekend’s ouster of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, one of Pierre Omidyar’s newest hires at national security blog “The Intercept,” was already digging for the truth.
 
Marcy Wheeler, who is the new site’s “senior policy analyst,” speculated that the Ukraine revolution was likely a “coup” engineered by “deep” forces on behalf of “Pax Americana”:

“There’s quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is.”

These are serious claims. So serious that I decided to investigate them. And what I found was shocking.

Wheeler is partly correct. Pando has confirmed that the American government – in the form of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – played a major role in funding opposition groups prior to the revolution. Moreover, a large percentage of the rest of the funding to those same groups came from a US billionaire who has previously worked closely with US government agencies to further his own business interests. This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but clear evidence shows that US investment was a force multiplier for many of the groups involved in overthrowing Yanukovych.

But that’s not the shocking part.

What’s shocking is the name of the billionaire who co-invested with the US government (or as Wheeler put it: the “dark deep force” acting on behalf of “Pax Americana”).

Step out of the shadows…. Wheeler’s boss, Pierre Omidyar.

Yes, in the annals of independent media, this might be the strangest twist ever: According to financial disclosures and reports seen by Pando, the founder and publisher of Glenn Greenwald’s government-bashing blog,“The Intercept,” co-invested with the US government to help fund regime change in Ukraine.

[Update: Wheeler has responded on Twitter to say that her Tweets were taken out of context, but would not give specifics. Adam Colligan, with whom Wheeler was debating, commented on Pando that "while Wheeler did raise the issue of external interference in relation to a discussion about a coup, it was not really at all in the manner that you have portrayed." Further "[Pax Americana] appeared after the conversation had shifted from the idea of whether a coup had been staged by the Ukrainian Parliament to a question about the larger powers’ willingness to weaken underlying economic conditions in a state.” Neither Wheeler or Colligan has commented on the main subject of the story: Pierre Omidyar’s co-investment in Ukrainian opposition groups with the US government.]

* * * *

When the revolution came to Ukraine, neo-fascists played a front-center role in overthrowing the country’s president. But the real political power rests with Ukraine’s pro-western neoliberals. Political figures like Oleh Rybachuk, long a favorite of the State Department, DC neocons, EU, and NATO—and the right-hand man to Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko.

Read more

 

The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program

Comment: Not convinced at all by Edward Snowden or Glenn Greenwald sad to say, though I was initially cheerleading along with every other alternative blogger at first.

Then reality sunk in ... 

Whether the media grouping will deliver some REAL news remains to be seen. Snowden has yet to reveal anything that wasn't known already and that implies that this is nothing more than a limited hangout. 

We'll see where this goes and how far it rocks the boat - if at all. Either way, the First Look media venture and The Intercept is up and running care of Greenwald and Omidyar.

---------------------------

Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press.

The Intercept

The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.

One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”

As a result, even when the agency correctly identifies and targets a SIM card belonging to a terror suspect, the phone may actually be carried by someone else, who is then killed in a strike. According to the former drone operator, the geolocation cells at the NSA that run the tracking program – known as Geo Cell –sometimes facilitate strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cell phone or SIM card is in fact the intended target of the strike.

Read more