President Barack Obama on Friday seemed to acknowledge that the determined effort by the White House and Congress to demonize Edward Snowden has not exactly worked. The White House has put pressure on many people in this town to make clear that Snowden is not to be praised in the media or by members of Congress. Various reporters and new organizations have held the line in mocking Snowden or refusing to call him a “whistleblower” rather than a “leaker.” After all, the fear seems to be that Snowden has to be a traitor or Obama would look like a tyrant. Even high-ranking members have been frog walked back before cameras for uttering a work of praise for Snowden. The problem is that it has convinced few people, even with alteration of Wikipedia and other sites to maintain the party line. Now Obama has come forward to assure people that Snowden is no patriot. No, I guess that title belongs to Obama and others who have engaged in warrantless surveillance and continue to mislead the public on the erosion of privacy and civil liberties. Those patriotic souls include John Clapper who lie under oath to mislead the public about the programs. He is not a perjurer but a patriot in America’s New Animal Farm. Notably, however, not a single reporter asked Obama about the perjury by Clapper. Instead, Obama laid out another set of meaningless measures designed to lull the public back into a comfortably and controllable sleep.
Obama seems to be going through the stages of KĂĽbler-Ross from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance. Last week, he was in denial and assuring the public that they are not being spied upon even as more stories appeared revealing even broader surveillance programs. He then attacked Snowden and now insists that he is no patriot for throwing away his life to disclose these massive surveillance programs. He ended the week with bargaining, telling the public that he would create a committee of hand-picked experts to review such surveillance — just like his committee ratifying his killing of citizens without charges or convictions.
Obama clearly wants to have unchecked power but not be thought of as authoritarian. He returned to the theme that he can create the due process and review within his own Administration that is obviously lacking in Congress or the courts. He went as far as to say that a simple committee of his making would have avoided the Snowden affair because the public would have accepted his word for the status of their rights and privacy. “There’s no doubt Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than if I had simply appointed this review board.” In other words, I messed up by not first creating a screen for the programs to give my allies cover. In the meantime, his Administration is moving to remove the greatest danger to their warrantless surveillance programs: people.
What was particularly galling was Obama’s statement that “[g]iven the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives.” However, his administration has been classifying even legal argument to prevent such questions from being asked and has pursued both reporters and their sources for any stories informing the public. His Administration is the most anti-whistleblower government in modern history and has abused national security laws in the pursuit of leakers to an extent that would make Richard Nixon blush.
Obama added as one of his great reforms on Friday that he would consider making the legal rationales for these programs more public despite the view that such classification was always ridiculous. So he will make legal arguments public and appoint his own committee to review his own policies.
Finally, he got away with telling the media that Snowden is not a whistleblower because he had “other avenues” to oppose the programs. Maintaining a straight face (and again without serious challenge from the press corp), Obama noted that “he can appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case.” First, by that definition, no one would be a whistleblower since they could all take the suicidal act of filing a public complaint or seeking judicial review. Second, if Snowden revealed the programs to an attorney, he would have been immediately charged. This is an Administration that put reporters under surveillance for speaking with leakers. It is also the Administration that has forced courts to dismiss dozens of public interest lawsuits by classifying the evidence needed to establish standing or the merits of the case. This includes the greatest victory of his Administration in killing the Clapper challenge (that’s right the same guy who lied to Congress recently). The Obama Administration succeeded in getting the Court to reject the standing of civil liberties groups and citizens to challenge the Obama Administration’s surveillance programs. President Obama has long been criticized for his opposition to such lawsuits and his Justice Department has continued a successful attack on the ability of citizens to challenge the unconstitutional actions of their government in the war on terror. The 5-4 opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. insulated such programs from judicial review in yet another narrowing of standing rules. (After claiming that such surveillance programs were too classified to be discussed in courts, they then a few months later discussed such programs in the public only after Snowden’s disclosures).
The level of disingenuous arguments coming out of the Administration now amounts nothing short of open contempt for the public and its intelligence. With both parties working to support the effort, it could well succeed. However, the degree to which Obama feels free to make such transparent arguments show how little he has to fear from contradiction in the media or in Congress. It is simply a problem of optics with a public that still feels uncomfortable with the expanding Imperial President established in the last decade. It is hard to get a public back to sleep when they wake up in a nightmare. That is when you have to tell them soothing stories.
Source: CNN
Published on Tuesday, August 13, 2013 by Common Dreams
Snowden: NSA Story Needed the ‘Courage’ Major Media Outlets Have Abandoned
Profile of journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald reveals power and responsibility of “fearless” journalism
– Jon Queally, staff writer
full story:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/13-7
Execs From Apple, Google And AT&T Secretly Met With Obama To Discuss Surveillance
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/tim-cook-obama_n_3731630.html?utm_hp_ref=technology
Latest clarification from Whitehouse – “Who’s Clapper?”
Obama’s Clapper Mistake
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/08/obamas-clapper-mistake.html
“Does President Obama understand why what people have learned, thanks to Edward Snowden, about the National Security Agency makes them angry? Maybe not…………….
How does lying inspire confidence? I don’t get that.
Yes, fellow Crimestoppers, I feel a rush of confidence coming on. As others have noted in this forum and elsewhere, President Obama has convened a panel of “outside experts,” led by none other than the lying insider James Clapper, to study the U.S. government’s own illegal surveillance practices under the direction of James Clapper with the eventual goal of recommending doing nothing about the illegal surveillance that James Clapper has done, does, and will do but will swear under oath that he hasn’t, doesn’t, and won’t. Honest Injun.
Now I know whence the term “confidence man” derives.
Don’t You Know We’re at “Owmph”?
The Patriot Act.
Not war but A.U.M.F.
Death by acronym
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller”
President Obama seeks to make an example of whistle-blowers so that whistle-blowing will cease. Edward Snowden seeks to provide an example for whistle-blowers so that whistle-blowing may flourish. May Edward Snowden win and President Obama lose.
I reject utterly the entire bogus concept of “secret law,” an Orwellian oxymoron, and any government that attempts to impose such a totalitarian regime upon me does not derive its unjust powers from my consent, for I consent to nothing that my government claims I may not know.
The government may have its secrets or the nation may have its laws. But if we allow government secrecy to destroy our laws, then we have become nothing more than a nation of “men,” dependent for our lives and livelihoods upon the whims of an angel whom we have elected to protect and guide us. And since we suppose that this angel will always look with dispassionate equanimity upon his or her unlimited powers and reject the more odious of them because of his or her exemplary moral virtues, then what need have we of laws to restrain that which needs no restraining?
With all due respect to James Madison, an elected angel now governs men — in both the United States and the World it claims to dominate — so “neither external nor internal controls on government [are] necessary.” As the angelic President Obama himself has assured us, he provides the most rigorous restraints upon himself — in secret — and has devised “a process which he does” — in secret — that now defines what the constitution means by “due process.”
The government may have its secrets or the nation may have its laws, but only one of these implacable alternatives may live, and it may only do so if the other dies. So Edward Snowden must win and government secrecy must die.
SOTB, Thanks for the link and the information. I had read some links that couched the new committee in statements like ‘”introduced” to Congress’ and thought that the new appointments were made (with uncharacteristic speed) to the new committee. Apparently the authorization for a new committee were being introduced, not the members of the committee itself as I read today.
Since the new committee will be appointed by Clapper I have no doubt it’s job will be CYA , cover-up and recommending even more extensive surveillance. I’d bet money on that.
Thanks again for the assistance.
@LottaKatz – Clapper will play NO role in hiring the players nor overseeing them. They will report directly to the POTUS. Clapper’s role is an enigma to me but he is a spook so that makes sense kinda’ sorta’? 🙂
Clapper looks like an old-foggy to me… I can see how he got confused and “misstated” the NSA’s US domestic collection routines with other friendly nations.
I really don’t understand what the Obama-Dissenters want. They can’t have their cake and eat it too. Either you want bad-guys to go away or you want them to attack Americans over there and here. The CD (collateral damage) is really unfortunate but you have heard of the “fog of war”? Do we want more American boys and girls to loose their lives over there or do you want flying robots to do it? I could care less if they shoot down one of our drones.
How can we stop the bad-guys from running into buildings with human shields? They anticipate that the USA war dogs will be called off if they do this. They underestimate the war dogs. These flying robots (aka Drones) are NOT stealthy any more. They know when they are coming. They are noisy and can be seen in a cloudless SW Asian sky.
There are no non-military aircraft or common birds in these empty skies for obvious reasons. So it’s easy to spot a drone coming. When they see them they signal on their American made 2-way radios and they scamper for their human shields. If anything Mr. Obama should figure out how to use a more stealthy drone with less KA-BOOM factor. An AGM-114 Hellfire seems like overkill (literally). When the MQ1’s Predators are sent in they only laser-paint the target. The REAPER is the one with the missile. It can fire from a long way away and surgically follow the laser. But the KA-BOOM is the problem for the CD’s ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO0DWj2X790 )..
So the PREDATOR is the weak link. It could use some anti-sound suppression and simple nylon-stocking over the lens turret to suppress solar glare/glint. And why not replace the AGM-114 with a remote control gun from Israel like this: http://tinyurl.com/tanin-alligator ?
The Carlyle Group, integrated by the Bush and bin Laden families awarded a billion dollar contract to “rebuild” Iraq:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/NEW304A.html
“The financial assets of the Saudi Binladen Corporation (SBC) are also managed by the Carlyle Group. The SBC is headed up by members of Osama bin Ladenďż˝s family, who played a principle role in helping George W. Bush win petroleum concessions from Bahrain when he was head of the Texan oil company, Harken Energy Corporation – a deal that was to make the Bush family millions of dollars. Salem, Osama bin Ladenďż˝s brother, was represented on Harkenďż˝s board of directors by his American agent, James R. Bath.
The connection between the Bush and bin Laden families can also be traced to the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in the 1990s. Members of the Anglo Pakistani bankďż˝s board of directors included Richard Helms and William Casey, business partners of George Bush senior and former CIA agents. During their time at BCCI both Helms and Casey worked alongside fellow director, Adnan Khasshoggi, who also represented the bin Laden familyďż˝s interests in the US.”
Snowden IS a Patriot AND an Authentic American Hero!
Major General Smedley Butler said in 1935 about the MIC (decades before Eisenhower coined the phrase):
General Butler was the equivalent General Martin E. Dempsey (JCS) today. He was approached by Wall Street flunkies who had connections to the Bush Family (via US Senator Prescott Bush (R-CT)). He was asked to OVERTHROW the FDR White House by military force! Later Bush and others were indicted under the TRADING WITH THE ENEMY ACT as they were working with Hitler sending light arms rifles to Germany before WW2. Of course not one of them ever was sentenced.
Big money is POWERFUL even today! And people here are worried about the NSA listening to their calling sex chat lines! 🙂
http://rense.com/general21/gf.htm
The Carlyle Group – Crony
Capitalism Goes Global
By Tim Shorrock The Nation.com
3-26-2
“By hiring enough former officials to fill a permanent shadow cabinet, Carlyle has brought political influence to a new level and created a twenty-first-century version of capitalism that blurs any line between politics and business.”
“Although the fund claims to operate like any other investment bank, it’s undeniable that its stable of statesmen-entrepreneurs have the ability to tap into networks in government and commerce, both at home and abroad, for advance intelligence about companies about to be sold and spun off, or government budgets and policies about to be implemented, and then transform that knowledge into investment strategies that dovetail nicely with US military foreign and domestic policy.”
http://venture-capital.entrepreneur.com/l/913/Carlyle-Group-The-Dubai-United-Arab-Emirates
http://www.wnd.com/2007/09/43646/
Abu Dhabi takes ownership stake in Carlyle Group
Arab emirate’s investment ties with Bush family deepen
Published: 09/21/2007 at 1:00 AM
“The Financial Times announced last night the government of Abu Dhabi has made an investment in the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private investment firm with close ties to former President George H. W. Bush and his family, as well as to top government officials in the Reagan and Clinton administrations.”
[meanwhile]
“WND reported yesterday Dubai, in a complex set of transactions, is moving to acquire 19.9 percent of the Nasdaq stock market in New York, in the first equity transaction which would place a Middle Eastern government in an ownership position in a key U.S. stock exchange.
As a result of the transaction, Dubai will also acquire 28 percent of the London Stock Exchange, one of the oldest and largest stock exchanges in the world.
The transaction is being made through Borse Dubai, a holding company 100 percent owned by the government of the Emirate of Dubai and controlled by Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the head of the Dubai ruling family.”
Jun 13, 2013 … Edward Snowden’s revelations have shown the incestuous intertwining of two Washington, D.C. firms: Booz Allen Hamilton and its parent…Carlyle;
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group
Thursday, 13 June 2013 09:59
Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group
Written by Bob Adelmann
“…of all companies to perform audits on a secret surveillance program, it would be difficult to find one less objective and more intertwined with the U.S. government security establishment.”
“The light of day now causing public relations problems for Booz Allen Hamilton and its parent, The Carlyle Group, began with the decision by Booz Allen Hamilton employee Edward Snowden to warn Americans of the dangers to their privacy.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2013/06/10/the-carlyle-group-has-made-2-billion-off-of-booz-allen/
“In 2008, the Carlyle Group made a large $910 million investment to buy a majority stake in Booz Allen’s government consulting business. The deal saw Booz Allen’s big government advisory unit, which produced most of the firm’s revenue, split off from its corporate consulting group, on the eve of the financial crisis.
But Washington-based Carlyle, which has a long and successful history doing deals involving government contractors, has really made the Booz Allen deal work. It has been an amazing transaction for Carlyle. The private equity firm has made $2 billion in realized and unrealized profits on the Booz Allen Hamilton deal so far. Its $910 million investment is now worth $3 billion.:
6/10/2013 @ 12:24PM |
The Carlyle Group Has Made $2 Billion Off Of Booz Allen
@Bruce E. Woych – The Carlyle Group puts the “M” in MIC! (i.e. Military Industrial Complex). President Eisenhower tried to warn the nation about this eventuality and now it’s here! They make the Israeli global weapons marketing (a/k/a “gun running”) look tame. Who do you think was behind all of those AK-47’s earmarked for Iraq and Afghanistan troops got “MISPLACED”? Where do you think that $9B (USD) went “walk-about” under the CPA deal in Iraq? Rumsfeld, Bremmer, and Foley will never say… (unless we apply some of that good old fashion Obama torture maybe? D’oh!)
I don’t know why “sheeple” can’t smell the coffee! The Bushes are STILL large and in charge. Just listen to cousin Billy Bush praise HWB on ACCESS HOLLYWOOD. He said he formerly didn’t want to associate with them (why?) but now things are different (why?). He then shows a picture of old man Bush in a wheelchair with all of his men standing behind him with very dark Foster-Grants on. It appears HWB has a heart* unlike his son who just had one put in last week (OK just a stint… but the humor was irresistible) 🙂
*It was in honor of his USSS guy who’s son had the big C. It appears poppa Bush has a heart for people who are loyal to him. Lok what happens to people who were not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Hnnk9c97c (Warning: gruesome at time stamp 01:40)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlyle_Group ( a “wealth” of information)
see the section: “Notable employees and advisors”
read all; selected excerpt:
“In September 2007, Mubadala Development Company, an investment vehicle for the government of Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates, purchased a 7.5% stake for $1.35 billion.[55][56] California legislators targeted Carlyle and Mubdala in February 2008, proposing a bill that would have barred CalPERS from investing money “with private-equity firms that are partly owned by countries with poor records on human rights.” The bill, which was intended to draw attention to the connection between Carlyle and Mubadala Development was later withdrawn.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carlyle_Group
“The Carlyle Group describes itself as “a global alternative asset manager with more than $157 billion in assets under management across 101 funds and 64 fund of funds vehicles. Founded in 1987 in Washington, DC, Carlyle has grown into one of the world’s largest and most successful investment firms, with more than 1,300 professionals operating in 32 offices in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Japan, Asia and Australia.”[1]
Ties to Pete Peterson’s “Fix the Debt”
The Campaign to Fix the Debt is the latest incarnation of a decades-long effort by former Nixon man turned Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson to slash earned benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare under the guise of fixing the nation’s “debt problem.”
This article is part of the Center for Media and Democracy’s investigation of Pete Peterson’s Campaign to “Fix the Debt.” Please visit our main SourceWatch page on Fix the Debt.”
————————————————–
“Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson’s astroturf supergroup, the Campaign to Fix the Debt, won’t have much to celebrate this Independence Day after missing its goal of achieving a “Grand Bargain” on austerity by July 4, 2013.
Fix the Debt embraces the Simpson-Bowles $4 trillion austerity package. EPI has estimated that implementation of the deal would result in the loss of some 4 million jobs. Simpson-Bowles makes damaging cuts to Social Security even though the program does not add a dime to the federal deficit and is fully solvent for at least two more decades. Fix the Debt leader Maya MacGuineas once championed the privatization of Social Security.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Portal:Fix_the_Debt
It’s because you were using the wrong search string. Try: “Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board” it’s headed up by David Medine. It’s staffed by 4 others: Rachel Brand, Elizabeth Cook, Patrica Wald, and James Dempsey – all lawyers not a spook among ’em!
This was the article you were probably looking for:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-27/a-privacy-board-was-supposed-to-protect-americans-from-nsa-spies
@Bruce E. Woych – Your “revelation” that Snowden’s Booze Allen is owned by CARLYLE GROUP puts a different spin on things. You do realize that the BUSH FAMILY are on the BoD? You know the Carlye Group is now part of BaE in UK? Now why would a Bush Family company pull up roots and move to another country? To escape something? Perhaps US DoJ scrutiny? What do the Bush’s have to hide? I guess PRISM can help us there? Uhhh maybe not… (i.e. Snowden is a patriot-hero ya’ know)
I think I smell another rat; possibly in the Bush Family litany?
Sorry HWB, you and your son were the WORST POTUSes EVER – bar none! Your legacies make President Andrew Johnson look like a patriot-hero like Snowden? IMHO Mr. Obama’s hands are not as dirty as yours… What Bush shenanigans are on the agenda now?
And this was in 2004…Now? This is only the surface!
Book Description (Amazon page)
“The Carlyle Group is one of the largest private equity firms in the world with over $13 billion in funds. Carlyle’s investments include everything from defense contractors to telecommunications and aerospace companies. But there is more to this company than meets the eye. Carlyle’s executives include heavyweights from the worlds of business and politics, such as former secretary of defense and CIA deputy director Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, former President George Bush, former UK Prime Minister John Major, and former chairman of the SEC Arthur Levitt. Osama Bin Laden’s estranged family was personally invested in the group until recently.”
[Excerpt: Inside flap]
Witness how the Carlyle Group:
Profited from the September 11th terrorist attacks and continues to profit from the ongoing war on terrorism
Pried open the wallets of Saudi Arabia and South Korea through the whirlwind business trips of former President George Bush
Liquidated holdings from the estranged family of Osama bin Laden only after news reports revealed the company’s association with the family
Went into overdrive to save the outdated Crusader howitzer which was being built by United Defense–a Carlyle company
Was born through the Great Eskimo Tax Scam–a tax loophole used by cofounders Stephen Norris and David Rubenstein that has since been sewn up
Found what would become their identity–defense contracting–with the help of former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci
The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group
Dan Briody
http://www.amazon.com/The-Iron-Triangle-Inside-Carlyle/dp/0471660620
@Maddog 1, August 13, 2013 at 1:26 am
“We need a new political party in America now.”
…How about the “BLOCK PARTY”