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Posts Tagged ‘national security state’

The Quiet Merger Between Online Platforms and the National Security State Continues

Posted by M. C. on November 10, 2022

An eye opener from the Dark side.

At MintPress News, Alan McLeod has documented a virtual hiring spree by increasingly censorious social media platforms from among former national security employees ― including from the CIA, FBI, DHS, military intelligence, NATO, and others ― sometimes for positions directly related to regulating content. That includes at TikTok, Twitter, Google, and Facebook. 

https://jacobin.com/2022/11/dhs-big-tech-surveillance-censorship-mdm

BY BRANKO MARCETIC

The Department of Homeland Security is helping to coordinate tech company censorship efforts according to recent reporting. The line between tech firms and the national security state is only getting blurrier.

The steady march of the post-2016 tech censorship campaign has been picking up pace lately, and we’ve just learned of another leap forward. According to recent major reporting from the Intercept, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been involved in efforts aimed at corralling what it refers to as “MDM”: misinformation, disinformation, and “malinformation.”

Documents obtained and made publicly available by the news outlet show that the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been formulating a strategy to combat MDM regarding US elections and other matters. While seemingly unobjectionable on the surface ― who could be against combating false information, which is rife online? ― it raises serious questions about the extent of government involvement in the already-troubling phenomenon of tech censorship.

The conversations detailed in the documents show the federal government, and the DHS specifically, taking a more active role in tech companies’ efforts to suppress MDM. We’ve had some indications this was happening for a while, as when DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC in August that the government was “working with the tech companies” on “strengthen[ing] the legitimate use of their very powerful platforms and prevent[ing] harm from occurring,” and that it was doing so “across the federal enterprise” ― comments that were only reported in right-wing media.

The documents give us details about what that work has entailed. In these discussions, the government did not directly carry out censorship. Rather, they involved government agencies: doing “debunking” and “pre-bunking”; directing the press, local and state governments, and other stakeholders to “trusted resources”; carrying out “rumor control”; boosting “trusted authoritative sources”; giving financial support to its external partners; and improving information literacy. Much of the focus is on elections, with participants talking about using these resources to prevent people being misled about how, where, and when to vote, and stressing that CISA should strictly be a “resource” that at most uses its “convening power.”

But it’s not just election misinformation that’s the focus. Among the recommendations made by CISA is to target MDM that “undermines critical functions carried out by other key democratic institutions.” What are these institutions? It lists as examples the courts and, absurdly, the financial system which — besides not actually being one of our “democratic institutions” — is a notable broadening of what “fighting misinformation” involves. And yet a representative of JP Morgan Chase attended the discussions, and several emails suggest CISA is facilitating collaboration between Google and Facebook and the department of treasury on “social media and influence matters,” as one puts it.

So far we don’t have indications of any forthcoming plans for carrying out censorship by government agencies themselves, but in practice, what’s already been put in place ― and what’s envisioned in the documents ― is, in effect, state censorship done indirectly. 

See the rest here

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The Only ‘National Security’ Necessary Is the Elimination of the ‘National Security State’

Posted by M. C. on August 13, 2022

“The words ‘national’ and ‘security’ are like precursors for a binary chemical weapon: not overly dangerous by themselves, but capable of completely shutting down the brain and nervous system when used in combination.”

~ John Alejandro King a.k.a. The Covert Comic

By Gary D. Barnett

The Only ‘National Security’ Necessary Is the Elimination of the ‘National Security State’

“I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.”

~ Jim Garrison

“National Security” is just the excuse for every form imaginable of tyranny, totalitarianism, privacy destruction, abuse of freedoms, aggression, terror, and war. Every time I hear this deceptive and scurrilous term, I cringe knowing that lies, deceit, and horror are on the horizon. It is based completely on false fear; fear planted in the minds of the people in order to force (goad) them to run to government and the state for protection from fabricated enemies. It is the state’s go to argument when additional control is sought, and it has worked nearly every time it has been tried. It is currently the mainstay of this fascist state called America, and it is still effective. The term ‘national security’ is nothing more than sheer propaganda based on unwarranted fearmongering.

One has to wonder, given that this country has never been aggressively attacked on its home soil by any foreign aggressor state, how the term ‘national security’ ever became the default reasoning for any and every aggressive war waged by this government against countries around the world. It is not just war against other innocent countries that has been waged, aggression in the name of national security has been levied against the American population almost continually, whether in the case of desired war, disasters, ‘pandemics,’ bogus ‘climate change’ risks, state and federal emergencies, and any number of other deceptive means of control.

Before the letters start rolling in claiming that the sinking of the Lusitania, the Pearl Harbor attack, the Gulf of Tonkin false flag, and the 9/11 inside job were acts of pure aggression by outsiders, please refrain from such nonsense. They all, and many more, were set up and staged, and led to major wars of aggression by the U.S. against multiple foreign countries that had nothing to do with attacking America. In the process, freedom was destroyed. This has been written about by very many scholars for decades, and plenty of proof has been forthcoming. As I have stated over and over again, the United States has aggressively attacked many other countries, as well as Americans, and has prosecuted wars of aggression for 93% (an understatement in my estimation) of its entire history against those who never attacked or were a threat to this country; all under the pretext of ‘national security.’

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The Federal Bureau Of Tweets: Twitter Is Hiring An Alarming Number Of FBI Agents

Posted by M. C. on June 24, 2022

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Alan MacLeod via Mint Press News,

Twitter has been on a recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies. Studying a number of employment and recruitment websites, MintPress has ascertained that the social media giant has, in recent years, recruited dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the fields of security, trust, safety and content.

Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace. “The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies,” the “About” section of its website informs readers. “The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence [and] cyber crime,” it adds.

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US National Security State Imports Siege Tactics From Iraq for a New ‘War on Domestic Terror’ – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 24, 2021

Reading this post and and today’s Gannett…I mean Erie Times-News story about DHS creator Tom Ridge wanting to start a new anti-Trump political leaves me with an oddly unsettling feeling.
Imagine it. A political party created by the guy that elevated spying on honest citizens to unimaginable levels.

How precisely are “libertarian extremists” — or whatever buzzword de jour the corporate media has weaponized at the moment — defined? Unsurprisingly, loosely and conveniently, however the Deep State wishes to, with a broad, imaginative brushstroke to sweep up the maximum volume of political opponents possible:

“an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians”

This posturing against “right-wing extremists” (again, simply meaning any individual or group who challenges the dominant neoliberal power structure) is not new in DC rhetoric

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/05/no_author/us-national-security-state-imports-siege-tactics-from-iraq-for-a-new-war-on-domestic-terror/

By Ben Bartee

The Deep State has big plans for a very particular demographic among the US citizenry.

The terminologies tossed into the word salad vary (“domestic extremist,” “homegrown terrorist,” “right-wing fanatics,” “bitter clingers,”) but they all mean more or less the same thing: the conservative, Christian, gun-owning, mostly white, non-compliant remnants of the Middle America middle class.

Operating in lockstep, the apparatuses of the Deep State intelligence community/military-industrial complex—have set sights squarely on uncooperative “libertarian” elements inside the US.

How precisely are “libertarian extremists” — or whatever buzzword de jour the corporate media has weaponized at the moment — defined? Unsurprisingly, loosely and conveniently, however the Deep State wishes to, with a broad, imaginative brushstroke to sweep up the maximum volume of political opponents possible:

“an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians”

This posturing against “right-wing extremists” (again, simply meaning any individual or group who challenges the dominant neoliberal power structure) is not new in DC rhetoric, but it has intensified dramatically since the so-called “insurrection” of January 6th:

“Former CIA Director John Brennan made the statement that [the] Biden intel community [is] ‘moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about’ the pro-Trump ‘insurgency’… law enforcement, homeland security, intelligence, and even the defense officials are doing everything possible to root out what seems to be a very very serious and insidious threat to our democracy and our republic.”

The CIA is by no means alone in its efforts – this is a carefully coordinated, tightly choreographed operation spanning multiple federal agencies (the so-called “alphabet boys” for their myriad acronyms), including:

  • The FBI
  • Department of Defense
  • Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
  • Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
  • Homeland Security
  • NSA
  • US Department of Justice

The US Department of Justice, the enormously powerful agency tasked with enforcing federal law, recently requested an 11% overall budget increase to “combat domestic extremism, racial inequality, environmental degradation and gender violence”:

“Attorney General Merrick B. Garland told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Justice Department needs more money for Biden administration priorities including combating domestic extremism.… Mr. Garland has prioritized efforts to fight domestic terrorism and protect civil rights over the department’s focus during the Trump administration on street crime and gangs…
The department is also seeking an additional $101 million to address the rising threat of domestic terrorism.”

One of the major priorities of the Deep State’s “counter-extremism” operations is disarming the American population. In its plea for more resources for the cause, the DOJ submitted a “request for an additional $232 million to curb gun violence”:

“The additional funding would be used to… support improved background checks and more comprehensive red-flag laws, which allow the police to temporarily confiscate firearms from people who are deemed a danger to themselves or others.”

———

In a nation whose schoolchildren learned real lessons from history and the tenants of civilized society, none of this would be tolerated. Unfortunately, instead, 21st-century children of American public schools learn about gender pronouns and critical race theory from lobotomized education majors fresh out of their indoctrination camps in the liberal social sciences.

What is afoot is the American Empire crumbling in on itself, the comeuppance of decades of public indifference to immoral foreign occupations, of millions of dead civilians overseas, all in the service of advancing the interests of a tiny globalist elite that benefits from war.

The citizenry did nothing to stop the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, and now the ruling elite’s tools of external control and subjugation of far-away populations have been turned inward.

Consequently, normal Americans – even non-violent, relatively apolitical ones who go to work, love their families, and just want to be left alone — are now in the crosshairs of a murderous, bloodthirsty national security state.

—————–

Again, the phenomenon of a government directing its violence onto the population it theoretically exists to protect is not an overnight development.

Since the heyday of the Bush-era neocons’ Orwellian, unwinnable “War on Terror,” civil liberty activists have warned that the siege tactics employed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other immoral foreign wars would inevitably be imported onto US soil for use on the American population.

“This ain’t police work. No, it ain’t. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun up on them corners and jack a crew and grab vials. But policing? I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a fucking enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your fucking enemy. And soon the neighborhood that you’re supposed to be policing, that’s just occupied territory.”

– Maj. Howard ‘Bunny’ Colvin, The Wire

The new “War on Domestic Terror” waged by the Deep State – aided and abetted by the corporate media —  is not about “liberation” or protecting democracy, just as the previous “War on Terror” at the turn of the century was not about those things in the far-off regions where it was waged.

Instead, what we are witnessing is an unprecedented attempt to assert domination and control over an uncompliant US populace increasingly frustrated with the unrepresentative federalized forces that occupy their land – only this time, the battlefields will be Nebraska and Mississippi, not Fallujah, and the “insurgents” are average Americans, not Iraqis.

When they are met with force, and agents of the repressive federal state killed, as will inevitably occur, it will not be the Nebraska corn farmer who is to blame. Self-defense is an inalienable right of free people everywhere.

Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Contact him via his blog, Armageddon Prose.

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Of Two Minds – Deep State to Powell: Stop Goosing Stocks Higher Or You’ll Re-Elect Trump

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2020

The pressure on the Fed to turn off the money-printing that’s goosing stocks ever higher will be increasing as the election draws ever closer. The Deep State has lost every gambit so far in a humiliating string of failures, and killing the soaring stock market is the last best chance to torpedo Trump’s re-election.

https://oftwominds.cloudhostedresources.com/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lewrockwell.com%2F&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oftwominds.com%2Fblogjune20%2Fstop-rally6-20.html

Charles Hugh Smith

Come on, Jay, you can always goose stocks back to new highs after the election.

Indulge me for a moment in some backroom speculation. It’s absurdly obvious that the unelected, permanent, ever-expanding National Security State, a.k.a the Deep State, and its Democratic Party allies have been attempting to torpedo Donald Trump since the 2016 election took them by surprise. (Imagine doing everything that worked so well in the past and failing at the last minute. Ouch. Revenge is best served cold, n’est pas ?)

The comedy-of-errors RussiaGate collapsed in a foul heap, the impeachment backfired, and so what’s left in the Deep State quiver other than its usual bag of, ahem, accidents ?

Some might argue that urban riots and civil unrest might be enough to cause Trump to lose the election in November, but this strategy can backfire just as easily as the previous Deep State strategies.

Assuming Americans will ultimately vote their pocketbook as in the past, the only sure way to sink Trump is to crash the stock market , the jewel in Trump’s crown. This is blinding obvious, but the Deep State’s political allies have been wary of shrinking the bloated wealth of their donors, and wary of a backlash from the wealthy who want to see Trump lose but not if it requires the personal sacrifice of surrendering any of the $548 billion they’ve gained in the recent stock market melt-up.

But with the election just months away, the pressure is now so intense that the Deep State is demanding Powell and the Fed stop the money-printing that’s goosing stocks higher. Hints have been elevated to suggestions which are about to become demands.

Jay, we’re sure you understand the importance of this election for the country, and so you’ll understand why we need to see new lows in the stock market by September, October at the latest. Can you do your duty, or do we need to find someone else willing to serve the national interest at this critical time?

The Deep State has tapped Powell on the shoulder, and Jay has likely hedged his bets , demanding some political-economic cover for stopping the money-printing that’s been goosing stocks to new highs (tech stocks) or gains for 2020 (S&P 500).

Presto, the bogus jobs reports is issued: good news! OK, Powell responds, that’s good but not enough. So we can anticipate the wheels are busy turning in the appropriate agencies to issue a surprisingly hot inflation number. A sudden spike in inflation would provide the additional cover the Fed needs to withdraw the stock market’s free-money lifeline.

Barring a hot inflation number, the Fed can always fall back on some other pretexts to turn off the money spigot and let the stock market start sliding into late October.

We can also imagine the Deep State tapping on other shoulders in town, reminding them of various skeletons in the closet and suggesting it’s time to take one for the Deep State team . After all, what’s a couple hundred billion dollars between friends?

Come on, Jay, you can always goose stocks back to new highs after the election. If Jay hesitates, fearing for his reputation as the rock-solid guarantor of new all-time highs in stocks, well, pressure can be applied on other players in various ways. Or it might even be suggested that Jay’s health is looking rather iffy, what with the stress and all, and perhaps a resignation for health reasons can be arranged.

The pressure on the Fed to turn off the money-printing that’s goosing stocks ever higher will be increasing as the election draws ever closer. The Deep State has lost every gambit so far in a humiliating string of failures, and killing the soaring stock market is the last best chance to torpedo Trump’s re-election.

This is for all the marbles, kiddies, and the gloves are about to come off. If the tap on the shoulder wasn’t persuasive, a punch in the gut might bring hearts and minds around to the desired perspective. After all, accidents can happen to just about anyone.

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Abolish the CIA – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2019

No entity with the CIA’s extreme history of violence, espionage, torture, assassination and covert operations should possibly be allowed to continue to operate in good faith. But again, facts don’t matter.

Via Operation Mockingbird, Langley sought to essentially take control of the media and control the flow of information Americans receive. Though it is unclear exactly how many journalists Langley compromised, the pile of lies incessantly pushed by these supposed journalists tells us many have been.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/12/no_author/abolish-the-cia/

By Charlie Donovan

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd delivered an Academy Award winning performance for Best Actor as he grilled the perennially ineffective and overmatched Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. “Are you at all concerned you are doing Russian intelligence work here?” asked Todd. If you didn’t know Todd otherwise, you would think he genuinely believed the inanity he was selling.

As has been the case from day one, the response from Republicans against the baseless, incessant accusations that they are stooges of the KGB has been pathetic. Just as bought by the Military Industrial Complex and the National Security State as any Democrat (if not more so), Republicans cannot afford to criticize these entities openly lest they lose their political office.  The typical retort of Republicans against accusations of being useful idiots of the Kremlin is to point out the many instances in which Trump has been quite hard on Russia. It is true that Trump has been much more aggressive against Russia than Obama and even George W. Bush. Bush refused to intervene on behalf of Georgia (a country most Americans don’t even know is a country), and Obama rightfully resisted intense bi-partisan pressure to arm the Ukraine with weapons.

The defense of Trump’s aggressive policies against Moscow misses the point – which is that facts are irrelevant. Mainstream media knows very well it is they who are pushing “disinformation” on the American people. Chuck Todd and company are not “crazy,” they’re just doing their jobs. Mainstream media has been pushing this disinformation in the service of the National Security State and particularly the king of them all, Langley for years. Via Operation Mockingbird, Langley sought to essentially take control of the media and control the flow of information Americans receive. Though it is unclear exactly how many journalists Langley compromised, the pile of lies incessantly pushed by these supposed journalists tells us many have been. As the brilliant Caitlin Johnstone as noted, narrative control is essential to the media and the State. Langley recognized this years ago. The narrative that alternative media outlets and brave politicians like Tulsi Gabbard are using Kremlin talking points without even knowing it serves as an important purpose for the National Security State’s shills in the mainstream media. It enables them to throw around this accusation to anyone who disagrees with the National Security State and its hegemonic goals. Further, you can’t invent evidence of Russia against every ordinary Americans. But you sure can call what just happens to be the increasingly rare breed of critical thinkers possessing some knowledge of history “useful idiots.”

It actually is true that there is an active disinformation campaign against the American people. But that campaign is not coming from Moscow, it is coming from Langley. A history lesson is in order. Since its evolution from the OSS, the CIA has been overthrowing countless governments for corporations and imperial hegemony. Bolivia is just the latest example in a long line. Furthermore, Langley experimented (re – tortured) countless American and Canadian citizens via MK Ultra (lawsuits against Ottawa by many Canadian victims and their families are pending to this day). They operated black sites in numerous countries to torture “suspects” without any due process. They have been and continue to utilize mass surveillance on American citizens. These are not conspiracy theories. This information is readily available to anyone who has access to Google. But most Americans couldn’t even point to Russia on a world map, let alone the countries torn to shreds by Langley in the Middle East and Latin America. You expect them to know anything about, say, the Church Commission? Not a chance. Not as long as mainstream media holds the megaphone.

No entity with the CIA’s extreme history of violence, espionage, torture, assassination and covert operations should possibly be allowed to continue to operate in good faith. But again, facts don’t matter. When the Clinton campaign dug up audio of Bernie Sanders heroically calling for the abolishment of the CIA in the early 70s, Langley’s shills in the media pounced on Bernie, and he quickly backtracked. Langley’s wretched history didn’t matter.  To rub salt in the wound, Clinton’s campaign laughably claimed that the Cold War would not have ended without the CIA. This is patently false as anyone with even a modicum of history knowledge understands. Langley did everything they could to undermine JFK’s attempts to reach peace with Moscow. They additionally tried and failed to overthrow Castro in Cuba countless times. JFK was vehemently opposed to what he termed “Pax Americana” and believed that mankind could put an end to war. JFK further committed the mortal sin of wanting to get along with the Soviet Union.

This battle to reclaim our government and make it by and for the people cannot be won while the National Security State remains intact. In order to defeat it, some serious intestinal fortitude will be needed. It won’t be easy to take on Langley – just ask Chuck Schumer about that. It will be brutal. But history is on our side, not on Langley’s side.  The United States will never cease its imperial ways nor its overthrowing of sovereign governments while the stench that emanates from Langley is allowed to continue unchallenged. It is long overdue to undo the horrific mistake Truman made in 1947, and abolish the CIA once and for all.

 

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State Secrets and the National Security State | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2019

I’ve got a better idea: Let’s just dismantle America’s decades-long, nightmarish Cold War-era experiment with the totalitarian structure known as a national-security state and restore a limited-government republic to our land.

Jacob Hornberger is has thrown his hat in the Libertarian presidential candidate ring.

https://mises.org/wire/state-secrets-and-national-security-state

Inadvertently released federal documents reveal that U.S. officials have apparently secured a secret indictment against Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks who released secret information about the internal workings of the U.S. national-security establishment. In any nation whose government is founded on the concept of a national-security state, that is a cardinal sin, one akin to treason and meriting severe punishment.

Mind you, Assange isn’t being charged with lying or releasing false or fraudulent information about the U.S. national-security state. Everyone concedes that the WikiLeaks information was authentic. His “crime” was in disclosing to people the wrongdoing of the national-security establishment. No one is supposed to do that, even if the information is true and correct.

It’s the same with Edward Snowden, the American contractor with the CIA and the NSA who is now relegated to living in Russia. If Snowden returns home, he faces federal criminal prosecution, conviction, and incarceration for disclosing secrets of the U.S. national-security establishment. Again, his “crime” is disclosing the truth about the internal workings of the national-security establishment, not disseminating false information.

Such secrecy and the severe punishment for people who disclose the secrets to the public were among the things that came with the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state.

Recall that when the U.S. government was called into existence by the Constitution, it was a type of governmental structure known as a limited-government republic. Under that type of governmental structure, the federal government’s powers were extremely limited. The only powers that federal officials could lawfully exercise were those few that were enumerated in the Constitution itself.

Under the republic form of government, there was no enormous permanent military establishment, no CIA, and no NSA, which are the three components of America’s national-security state. That last thing Americans wanted was that type of government. In fact, if Americans had been told that the Constitution was going to bring into existence a national-security state, they never would have approved the deal and would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a type of governmental system where the federal government’s powers were so few that it didn’t even have the power to tax.

Under the republic, governmental operations were transparent. There was no such thing as “state secrets” or “national security.” Except for the periodic backroom deals in which politicians would make deals, things generally were open and above-board for people to see and make judgments on.

That all changed when the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II. Suddenly, the federal government was vested with omnipotent powers, so long as they were being exercised by the Pentagon, the CIA, or the NSA in the name of “national security.”

Interestingly enough, the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state was not done through constitutional amendment. Nonetheless, the federal judiciary has long upheld or simply deferred to the exercise of omnipotent powers by the national-security establishment.

An implicit part of the conversion was that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA would be free to exercise their omnipotent powers in secret. Secrecy has always been a core element in any government that is structured as a national-security state, especially when it involves dark, immoral, and nefarious powers that are being exercised for the sake of “national security.”

One action that oftentimes requires the utmost in secrecy involves assassination, which is really nothing more than legalized murder. Not surprisingly, many national-security officials want to keep their role in state-sponsored murder secret. Another example is coups initiated in foreign countries. U.S. officials bend over backwards to hide their role in such regime-change operations. And then there are the surveillance schemes whereby citizens are foreigners are spied up and monitored. Kidnapping, indefinite detention, and torture are still more examples.

Of course, these are the types of things that we ordinarily identify with totalitarian regimes. The reason for that is that a national-security state governmental system is inherent to totalitarian regimes. For example, the Nazi government, which was a national-security state too, had an enormous permanent military establishment and a Gestapo, which wielded the powers of assassination, indefinite detention, torture, and secret surveillance. And not surprisingly, to disclose the secrets of German’s national-security state involved severe punishment.

But it’s not just Nazi Germany. There are many other examples of totalitarian regimes that are based on the concept of national security and structured as a national-security state. Chile under Pinochet. The Soviet Union. Communist China. North Korea. Vietnam. Egypt. Pakistan. Iraq. Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Myanmar. And the United States. The list goes on and on.

And every one of those totalitarian regimes has a state-secrets doctrine, the same doctrine that the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA have.

A newspaper in Vietnam, which of course is ruled by a communist regime, reported that a Vietnamese citizen named Phan Van Anh Vu was sentenced to 9 years in prison for “deliberately disclosing state secrets.”

A website for the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that the Chinese communist regime charged a Chinese journalist named Yang Xiuqiong with “illegally providing state secrets overseas.” The Chinese Reds have also charged a prominent environmental activist named Liu Shu with “revealing state secrets related to China’s counterespionage work.”

The military dictatorship in Myanmar convicted two Reuters reporters for violating the country’s law that prohibits the gathering of secret documents to help an enemy.

RT reports that the Russian military will “launch obligatory courses on the protection of state secrets starting next year.

US News reports that the regime in Turkey is seeking the extradition from Germany of Turkish journalist Can Dunbar, who was convicted of revealing state secrets.

Defenders of Assange and Snowden and other revealers of secrets of the U.S. national security state point to the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of the press to justify their disclosures.

I’ve got a better idea: Let’s just dismantle America’s decades-long, nightmarish Cold War-era experiment with the totalitarian structure known as a national-security state and restore a limited-government republic to our land.

Originally published by the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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The Realist Report: (Israeli trained) Police State in America

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Ending the Pentagon’s Long Con – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on May 1, 2019

In short, the U.S. spends staggering sums annually, essentially stolen from a domestic economy and infrastructure that’s fraying at the seams, on what still passes for “defense.” The result: botched wars in distant lands that have little, if anything, to do with true defense, but which the Pentagon uses to justify yet more funding, often in the name of “rebuilding” a “depleted” military. Instead of a three-pointed pyramid scheme, you might think of this as a five-pointed Pentagon scheme, where losing only wins you ever more, abetted by lies that just grow and grow.

The Pentagon will never be forced to make significant reforms until Americans stop believing in (and consenting to) its comforting lies.

https://original.antiwar.com/william_astore/2019/04/30/ending-the-pentagons-long-con/

by and

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

Consider it a conundrum. Both parties in Congress and the president simply can’t pour enough money into the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state. As a result, theirs has been a cumulative trillion-dollar budget for years and it’s still on the rise. On the other hand, the domestic basics are increasingly being starved. When the president’s long-delayed infrastructure plan finally made it to Congress, two years late, it disappeared without a trace. Meanwhile, the country’s roads, rail networks, dams, schools, and so on are in increasingly poor shape. (In reality, the only infrastructure being built up is the Pentagon’s.) Meanwhile, Medicare is now slated to become insolvent in 2026, three years earlier than previously expected. As for the Social Security system, according to the latest government report, its costs will exceed its income next year and it’s expected to become insolvent in 2035. The result: retirement payments are likely to diminish and healthcare costs for aging Americans rise.

I sometimes imagine bringing back my long-dead parents and trying to explain to them what this country now does and doesn’t invest in. They would, I know, be genuinely shocked and that sense of shock, so appropriate for their time and experience, should be no less appropriate now. After all – and here’s that conundrum I mentioned – Washington is no longer eager to invest in what actually works in this country, while politicians from both parties and the president are filled with enthusiasm for a vast and growing military system that doesn’t work at all. From ridiculous sums going into weaponry that’s superfluous or unlikely to function as advertised to ridiculous sums going into distant wars that never end, the U.S. military has in the twenty-first century been a misfire machine of the first order. And unlike infrastructure, Medicare, or Social Security, the less it all works, the more eager Congress and the president are to dump your tax dollars into it.

Consider it a first-class puzzle, one that, in his own striking fashion, TomDispatch regular William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian, takes on today as he considers how the Pentagon has conned us all. ~ Tom

How the Pentagon Took Ownership of Donald Trump

By William J. Astore

Donald Trump is a con man. Think of Trump University or a juicy Trump steak or can’t-lose casinos (that never won). But as president, one crew he hasn’t conned is the Pentagon. Quite the opposite, they’ve conned him because they’ve been at the game a lot longer and lie (in Trump-speak) in far biglier ways.

People condemn President Trump for his incessant lying and his con games – and rightly so. But few Americans condemn the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state, even though we’ve been the victims of their long con for decades now. As it happens, from the beginning of the Cold War to late last night, they’ve remained remarkably skilled at exaggerating the threats the U.S. faces and, believe me, that represents the longest con of all. It’s kept the military-industrial complex humming along, thanks to countless trillions of taxpayer dollars, while attempts to focus a spotlight on that scam have been largely discredited or ignored.

One thing should have, but hasn’t, cut through all the lies: the grimly downbeat results of America’s actual wars. War by its nature tells harsh truths – in this case, that the U.S. military is anything but “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known.” Why? Because of its almost unblemished record of losing, or at least never winning, the wars it engages in. Consider the disasters that make up its record from Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s to, in the twenty-first century, the Iraq War that began with the invasion of 2003 and the nearly 18-year debacle in Afghanistan – and that’s just to start down a list. You could easily add Korea (a 70-year stalemate/truce that remains troublesome to this day), a disastrous eight-year-old intervention in Libya, a quarter century in (and out and in) Somalia, and the devastating U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, among so many other failed interventions…

And this endless long con of the Pentagon’s was all the more effective because so many of its lies were sold by self-serving politicians. Exhibit one was, of course, John F. Kennedy’s embrace of that false missile gap in winning the 1960 presidential election. Still, the Pentagon was never shy in its claims. Take the demand of the Air Force then for 10,000 – yes, you read that right! – new ICBMs to counter a Soviet threat that then numbered no more than a few dozen such missiles (as Daniel Ellsberg reminds us in his recent book, The Doomsday Machine).

To keep the Air Force happy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara settled on a mere 1,000 land-based Minuteman missiles to augment the 54 older Titan II ICBMs in that service’s arsenal, a figure I committed to memory as a teenager in the 1970s. And don’t forget that some of those missiles were MIRVed, meaning they had multiple nuclear warheads that could hit many targets. It all added up to the threat of what, in those years, came to be called “mutually assured destruction,” better known by its all-too-apt acronym, MAD.

And the Pentagon’s version of madness never ends. Think, for instance, of the planned three-decade $1.7 trillion “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear triad now underway, justified in the name of “overmatching” China and Russia, “near-peer” rivals in Pentagon-speak. No matter that America’s current triad of land-based, submarine-based, and air-deployed nukes already leave the arsenals of those two countries in the shade.

Reason doesn’t matter when the idea of a new cold war with those two former enemies couldn’t be more useful in justifying the through-the-ceiling $750 billion defense budget requested by President Trump for 2020. The Democrats have pushed back with a still-soaring budget of $733 billion that accepts without question the “baseline” minimum demanded by Pentagon officials, a level of spending Trump once called “crazy.” Talk about resistance being futile!

In other words, when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, the Washington establishment of both parties has essentially been assimilated into the Pentagon collective. The national security state, that (unacknowledged) fourth branch of government, has in many ways become the most powerful of all, siphoning off more than 60% of federal discretionary spending, while failing to pass a single audit of how it uses such colossal sums….

Be seeing you

graveyard

 

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