Glenn Greenwald

The Pentagon Admits: The “War on Terror” Will Never End

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It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war – justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism – that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

– Glenn Greenwald from his recent article:  Washington Gets Explicit: Its “War on Terror” is Permanent 

So last Thursday at a hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee, we found out what many of us already knew.  That the “war on terror” is never going to end.  Indeed, it was never supposed to end.  This never-ending “war” on a fantastical enemy provides the American oligarch class with too much money and too much power to ever make it worthwhile for the establishment to shut down.  It matters not to them that this civil liberties destroying fraud has been going on for my entire post-college life and, if they have their way, for the remainder of it.  It matters not to them that the “war on terror” itself has done more to destroy the Constitution and vital essence of this nation than any terrorist act ever could.  No, it matters very little indeed.  What matters to them is money and power, and the “war on terror” provides them with boatloads of both.

My favorite excerpts from Glenn’s article are below:

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis for this “war” – the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) – should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how Wired’s Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US’s national security editor) described the most significant exchange:

“Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, ‘At least 10 to 20 years.’ . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today – atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America’s Thirty Years War.”

That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the “war on terror” will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week’s big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of “endless war”. Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war – justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism – that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

In response, I wrote that the “war on terror” cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of “terrorism”), and (2) the nation’s most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. Whatever else is true, it is now beyond doubt that ending this war is the last thing on the mind of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and those who work at the highest levels of his administration. Is there any way they can make that clearer beyond declaring that it will continue for “at least” another 10-20 years?

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No Joke…This is What the ACLU Received from the Government on Text Surveillance Policy

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Fifteen pages of black squares.  How’s that freedom tasting?  Take that terrorists! Most. Transparent. Ever. Like this post? Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G Follow me on Twitter.

Former FBI Agent: All Phone Conversations are Recorded and Stored

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So it seems the surveillance state just had its coming out party on CNN.  In this interview with Erin Burnett, former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente admits that the feds have access to pretty much everyone’s telephone conversations.  Also pay attention to the smirk on his face as he admits this disturbing reality.


Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian wrote an excellent piece yesterday on this exact topic.  Some of my favorite excerpts:

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN’s Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.

“All of that stuff” – meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant – “is being captured as we speak”.

Let’s repeat that last part: “no digital communication is secure”, by which he means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications – meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like – are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.

There have been some previous indications that this is true. FormerAT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had built a special network that allowed the National Security Agency full and unfettered access to data about the telephone calls and the content of email communications for all of their customers. Specifically, Klein explained “that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T” and that “contrary to the government’s depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists . . . much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic.” But his amazing revelations were mostly ignored and, when Congress retroactively immunized the nation’s telecom giants for their participation in the illegal Bush spying programs, Klein’s claims (by design) were prevented from being adjudicated in court.

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Targeted Killings: “It’s Ok if Obama Does it”

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In a YouGov poll of 1,000 voters last August, Tesler found significantly more support for targeted killing of suspected terrorists among white “racial liberals” (i.e., those liberal on issues of race) and African-Americans when they were told that Obama supported such a policy than when they were not told it was the president’s policy. Only 27 percent of white racial liberals in a control group supported the targeted killing policy, but that jumped to 48 percent among such voters who were told Obama had conducted such targeted killings.

– Joan Walsh’s recent article at Salon:  Targeted killings: OK if Obama does it?

Think about how troubling the above passage is.  Basically, a reasonably large percentage of the population of America will simply allow Barrack Obama to do whatever he wants because he is black and a member of their “Democrat” football team.  The irony is incredible, but believe me this fact is not lost upon the elites that want to perpetuate the warfare state indefinitely. They fully understand that Obama essentially neutralizes a large part of the “liberal” resistance simply because he is black and ostensibly “liberal.”

I came across the above information while reading Glenn Greenwald’s article about how MSNBC has finally make the total transformation into official government propaganda arm by hiring Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod.  His article is a scathing must-read.  Here are my favorite excerpts:

Last month, MSNBC’s Al Sharpton conducted a spirited debate about whether Obama belongs on Mount Rushmore or instead deserves a separate monument to his greatness (just weeks before replacing frequent Obama critic Cenk Uygur as MSNBC host, Sharpton publicly vowed never to criticize Barack Obama under any circumstances: a vow he has faithfully maintained).  

A Pew poll found that in the week leading up to the 2012 election, MSNBC did not air a single story critical of the President or a single positive story about Romney – not a single one – even as Fox aired a few negative ones about Romney and a few positive ones about Obama.

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Remembering Internet Prodigy and Activist Aaron Swartz (1986-2013): Your Life is an Inspiration

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It takes a person like Aaron Swartz to remind you how little you are actually doing to bring forth social, political and economic justice in this increasingly insane and sick world.  I’m not exaggerating when I say his life was an inspiration.   At 14 years old he helped start the RSS feed system, which so many now use to read content online.  He also co-founded Reddit, and its sale to Conde Nast is what afforded him the resources to dedicate his life to the defense of a free and open internet.  His most remarkable success in this regard was the creation of the organization Demand Progress, which was instrumental in defeating the internet censorship bill know as SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act).

He ran afoul of the law due to his actions in the fall of 2010 when he downloaded millions of academic journal articles from the nonprofit online database JSTOR.  While JSTOR could have pursued charges against Aaron for his activities, they decided against it.  However, our Federal Government was not so kind.  They decided to make an example of Aaron and charged him with multiple felonies.  Charges that carried up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.  Aaron was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment this past Friday, in an apparent suicide.

If you had asked me about Aaron Swartz three days ago I could have told you none of the above.  This is despite the fact that I now spend pretty much all of my time trying to read through news and understand the true nature of the world around me.  Even more pathetically, it is despite the fact that a close friend of mine had met Aaron this past summer and was trying to coordinate a time for us all to meet.  Sadly, we never connected.

As part of my tribute to Aaron, I will commit myself even more fully to the cause of freedom in America.  I spent the last 12 hours reading about him and I have compiled some of the most interesting excerpts from various sources below.  Please take the time.

First from the official statement from his family and partner:

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

Next from Lawrence Lessig, the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and friend of Aaron.  He writes:

Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured “appropriate” out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the “criminal” who we who loved him knew as Aaron.

From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The “property” Aaron had “stolen,” we were told, was worth “millions of dollars” — with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.

I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.

For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House — and where even those brought to “justice” never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled “felons.”

From the Huffington Post:

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Freedom of the Press Foundation Launches in the War on Censorship

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A really interesting organization launched last night called the Freedom of the Press Foundation, with a slew of prominent individuals involved.  For one, there is Glenn Greenwald, one of my favorite journalists active today who used to work for Salon and now writes for the UK’s Guardian.  Also on the board is Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame; John Perry Barlow a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Xeni Jardin of the Web site Boing Boing; and actor John Cusack.  The idea behind the organization is to support and fund unbiased journalism, particularly the kind that governments and intelligence organizations around the world may not like.  What really bothered all of the founders involved and served as a call to action was the way WikiLeaks was systematically cut off from the financial system.  The Huffington Post writes:

NEW YORK — Not long after WikiLeaks began publishing leaked diplomatic cables in November 2010, the anti-secrecy organization ran into trouble raising money.

Increased government scrutiny and criticism from lawmakers prompted several companies, including MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, to stop processing donations to the non-profit organization. WikiLeaks eventually suspended publication due to the “bank blockade.”

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Meet Liz Fowler: Architect of ObamaCare Jumps Ship to Johnson & Johnson

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Following the passage of ObamaCare, several of the smartest people I know claimed that the bill was actually written by and for the drug and insurance companies rather than “the people” as Obama had claimed.  My friend and orthopedic surgeon Dave Janda wrote an excellent piece that I published titled: Thoughts on Obamacare from a Surgeon and … Read more

Meet Amber Lyon: Former Reporter Exposes Massive Censorship at CNN

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I saw first-hand that these regime claims were lies, and I couldn’t believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government lies into my reporting.
– Amber Lyon

The Amber Lyon story is just the latest in a series of articles that expose the total Joseph Goebbels like censorship rampant in mainstream media today.  The first one I posted several weeks ago exposed how the NY Times basically just regurgitates whatever government officials tell them, while the other showcased how an NPR reporter covering D.C. had to leave and do her own thing out of frustration.  This is precisely why alternative media sites are taking off.  They provide the only outlets left for genuine journalism.

So back to Amber.  Back in March 2011, CNN sent a four person team to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring.  Once there, the crew was the subject of extreme intimidation amongst other things, but they were able to record some fantastic footage.  As Glenn Greenwald of the UK’s Guardian writes in his blockbuster article from today:

In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives’ abrupt disappearances. She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists. And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters. In sum, the early 2011 CNN segment on Bahrain presented one of the starkest reports to date of the brutal repression embraced by the US-backed regime.

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Obama’s War on Whistleblowers Accelerates: Science Itself is Now Contraband

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The Obama administration is evil.  Sorry, there is no other adjective to describe it at this point.  They know they are corrupt, they embrace their corruption and now they are doing everything possible to silence anyone who dares call them out on it.  The latest case of Obama’s war on whistleblowers relates to how the … Read more

NY Times Admits: Mainstream News is Basically Censored Propaganda

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Important article from the NY Times demonstrating how real journalism covering the criminal political elite in America is basically dead.  Even better, is Glenn Greenwald’s article at Salon slamming the complete joke that is the mainstream media, and he shows us all exactly why alternative media is taking over.  After all, only an incredible 21% … Read more