Wikileaks exposes “shadow CIA”: Stratfor

See this new report on the most recent revelation by Wikileaks:

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today started to publish more than five million confidential emails from the global intelligence company Stratfor. . . . Among the allegations to emerge is that Stratfor's claim to be a media organisation providing a subscription intelligence newsletter is a front for 'running paid informants networks' and 'laundering those payments through the Bahamas, through Switzerland, through private credit cards'. Stratfor 'is monitoring Bhopal activists for Dow Chemicals, Peta activities for Coca-Cola', WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed at a press conference in London today. However, what could cause the greatest embarrassment for the U.S. government is his suggestion that information is also being gathered by paying contacts from agencies including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
It appears, then, that a for-profit enterprise engaged secret shady dealing is being exposed by the non-profit Wikileaks, whose mission is to make harmful information public. Many more stories are expected to emerge based on the release of five million emails from the private intelligence firm, Stratfor. Until today, I had never heard about Stratfor. That's about to change, big time, based on the Wikileaks releases. The suggestions that Stratfor has numerous ties to paid U.S. government sources is extremely troubling. We'll see what happens to those profiteers. As I recall, Bradley Manning never made a penny when he released U.S. cables, but he has been imprisoned ever since, and often tortured by the U.S. government.

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Expansion of police powers- now are you upset??

In the years since 9/11, America's police state has been expanding rapidly. The "Patriot Act" gave nominal legal approval to a vastly expanded surveillance and detention authority, but in some startling new cases, police are not even seeking legal justification for working in areas that are clearly illegal and unconstitutional. The latest abuses come courtesy of the New York Police Department. New reports indicate that the NYPD has been surveiling and profiling Jewish and Christian communities and individuals, often in areas that are far outside of NYPD's jurisdiction, including Buffalo, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. As always, the bogeyman of "terrorism" is cited as the justification for these acts. [More . . . ]

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The real reasons for the protests in Afghanistan

Are the people who live in Aghanistan taking their protests to the streets because they resent our "freedom"? Are they angry merely because of isolated infractions by American soliders? Glenn Greenwald says no.

[J]ust imagine what would happen if a Muslim army invaded the U.S., violently occupied the country for more than a decade, in the process continuously killing American children and innocent adults, and then, outside of a prison camp it maintained where thousands of Americans were detained for years without charges and tortured, that Muslim army burned American flags — or a stack of bibles — in a garbage dump. Might we see some extremely angry protests breaking out from Americans against them? Would American pundits be denouncing those protesters as blinkered, primitive fanatics?
We are spending $2 Billion dollars every week doing more of the same in Afghanistan, while claiming ten years of success in a campaign that lacks any discernible objectives other than serving as a make-work program for American military personnel and their high-priced private contractors. BTW, more than 400 of these American contractors died on the job last year. And then consider that the U.S. is propping up a massively corrupt regime in Afghanistan, we are (whether we like it or not) part of a system that distributes record amounts of opium and our own "infrastructure" money for Afghanistan has been largely wasted. To facilitate this unimaginably large waste of American taxpayer money, the U.S. military has fed Congress and the public an unceasing stream of lies that things are going well over there. When one also considers that dollars are fungible, and that these warmongering dollars could have been used to house, educate and feed Americans, the military occupation of Afghanistan ranks as one of the most immoral enterprises in the history of the United States.

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Matt Taibbi: GOP gets what it has coming

Matt Taibbi sums up what the GOP has been offering to America:

[W]hile watching the debates last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster. Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. They long ago became more about pointing fingers than about ideology, and it's finally ruining them.

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ABC furiously beating the drums for war against Iran

Glenn Greenwald points to yet another so-called news report designed to stir up unwarranted fear and to encourage war against Iran. The following is an excerpt from another excellent article in which Greenwald takes the so-called news media to task:

I just saw this two-minute ABC News report from Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross that sinks to even lower depths than what I highlighted yesterday. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s a perfect museum exhibit for how empty-headed American media stars uncritically recite whatever they are told by government officials, exaggerate or fabricate bad acts by the designated Enemy du Jour while ignoring and suppressing the precipitating acts of America and its client states, and just generally do whatever they can to keep fear levels and war thirst as high as possible. This is nothing short of irresponsible propagandistic trash . . . Note that this entire story is based on pure fabrication — not just by accepting as Truth the Israeli and American accusation that Iran is behind these attacks, but far worse, continuously warning about Iranian attacks on synagogues and other targets inside the U.S. There is literally zero evidence that any of that is happening. . . . the most destructive part of this state-subservient journalism is how it completely suppresses the actions of the U.S. and Israel that have precipitated all of this.
Here is ABC's "news" report to which Greenwald was referring: video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

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