Robert Parry — Pulling a J. Edgar Hoover on Trump

The decision by the U.S. intelligence community to include in an official report some unverified and salacious accusations against President-elect Donald Trump resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I’d sure hate to see end up in the press....

"Nice presidency you've got going there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it."

Consortium News
Pulling a J. Edgar Hoover on Trump

Robert Parry

Eric Dolan — Pennsylvania police chief: F*ck all you libtards out there, you take it in the a**

Pennsylvania police chief: F*ck all you libtards out there, you take it in the a** (via Raw Story )

The mayor of Gilberton, Pennsylvania is standing by her city’s police chief despite a series of profanity-laced and threatening videos. In a video that has received wide attention, police chief Mark Kessler repeatedly tells those upset by his use…

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Dennis J Bernstein — Bush's Foiled NSA Blackmail Scheme

More than a decade ago, President George W. Bush enlisted the National Security Agency in a blackmail scheme to dig up dirt to coerce UN Security Council members to approve his aggressive war against Iraq. But the plot was foiled by a brave British intelligence officer, Katharine Gun, as Dennis J. Bernstein reports.

Truthout
Bush's Foiled NSA Blackmail Scheme
Dennis J Bernstein, Consortium News | Interview

Surprise. Intelligence is used for more than intelligence.

J. Edgar Hoover reputedly had a file on "everyone." Whether he did or not, remains uncertain, but "everyone" knew he had files and no one was sure whether he didn't have a file on them. Result. Intimidation.

Total information awareness is fascism and leads to totalitarianism, where everyone feels watched all the time. This is an unacceptable tradeoff for false security.

See also Are They Allowed to Do That? A Breakdown of Selected Government Surveillance Programs by Staff, Brennan Center for Justice | News Analysis

Whistleblowing 2.0: From the Pentagon Papers to Bradley Manning to PRISM by Patrick McCurdy, Waging Nonviolence | Op-Ed

Chris Hedges calls "fascism"

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, said in a written statement about the released files: “This production [of information], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The FBI documents are not only a chilling example of how widespread this surveillance and obstruction has become, they are an explicit warning by the security services to all who consider dissent. Anyone who defies corporate power, even if he or she is nonviolent and acting within constitutional rights, is a suspect. These documents are part of the plan to make us fearful, compliant and disempowered. They mark, I suspect, a government attempt to end peaceful mass protests by responding with repression to the grievances of Americans. When the corporate-financed group FreedomWorks bused in goons to disrupt Democratic candidates’ town hall meetings about the federal health care legislation in August 2009, Eric Zuesse of the Business Insider notes, “there was no FBI surveillance of those corporate-organized disruptions of legitimate democratic processes. There also were no subsequent FreedomWorks applications for Freedom of Information Act releases of FBI files regarding such surveillance being used against them—because there was no such FBI campaign against them.”

The combination of intimidation tactics by right-wing fringe groups, which speak in the language of violence and hate, with the state’s massive intrusion into the personal affairs of the citizen is corporate fascism. And we are much farther down that road than many of us care to admit. [emphasis added]

Truthdig
Chris Hedges: New Documents on Activist Surveillance May Be "Just the Tip of the Iceberg"
Chris Hedges | News Analysi
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Yves Smith — Banks Deeply Involved in FBI-Coordinated Suppression of “Terrorist” Occupy Wall Street

The peculiar part of this overreaction is it says that banks and government officials see peaceful protests as a threat to their hold on power. It’s odd that they see their position as precarious, unless they have convinced themselves of their vulnerability as an excuse for clamping down even harder on the rest of us.

Naked Capitalism
Banks Deeply Involved in FBI-Coordinated Suppression of “Terrorist” Occupy Wall Street
Yves Smith

The same can be said of the hugely disproportional reaction of the US Establishment to 9/11, which continues into the present, depriving US citizens of civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed rights in the name of an amorphous and ill-defined "Global War on Terror."

This also brings up the disproportional reaction to possession and trafficking of illegal drugs under the rubric, "War on Drugs" that has resulted in a disproportional swelling of the US prison population and the expansion of a privately owned and operated prison industry at government expense.

This is exactly what the Founding Fathers drafted the US Constitution and Bill of Rights to prevent being repeated in America.

And no, I don't buy the Rothbardian-Libertarian argument that this is all the predictable result of "Keynesianism" and that all we need to do to fix this morass is privatize the monetary system and get government out of the way.

Meanwhile, the TBTF (to big to fail) bankers are now found to be TBTJ (to big to jail).

This is a constitutional crisis rocking the very foundations of the nation and threatening the Great Experiment with failure. The nation needs the leadership of a constitutional lawyer. Oh, wait!

Whistleblower John Kiriakou, long-time former C.I.A. official and case officer, the next Bradley Manning and Julian Assange??

Dear Friends and Colleagues: 

We write to ask you to join us in supporting, protecting and materially helping our friend and colleague, John Kiriakou, a long-time former C.I.A. official and case officer. Incredibly, John has been accused by the Department of Justice of crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act, a charge historically reserved for persons who betrayed their country to foreign governments for money. 

Why? The prosecutors have not claimed that John talked to any foreign government, passed any government documents or accepted funds from anyone hostile to the United States. Instead, according to the facts asserted in the indictment, he committed the "crime" of responding honestly to a query from the New York Times related to the agency's interrogation program under the Bush Administration, which included waterboarding.

We know the government wants to send a signal to the lawyers representing prisoners at Guantanamo that the U.S. is intent on protecting its secrets from disclosure in cases relating to torture, and wants to chill further disclosures by anyone. But this is a case that should never have been brought anywhere - let alone in a country that values free speech and the protections of the First Amendment.

Journalists covering national security issues understand the stakes here, and what this case represents. A recent New York Times column described how the White House press secretary opened a briefing by honoring Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid for having sacrificed their lives "in order to bring truth" while reporting in Syria. Referring to John Kiriakou, the White House correspondent for ABC News asked in response how the administration could square supporting journalism in distant lands while "aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?"

While no one involved in the waterboarding of terror suspects has ever faced criminal charges, John now stands in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice for the "crime" of having talked honestly to journalists about what happened and who did it.

If convicted, John could be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison. The irony is extraordinary. For more than 14 years, John worked in the field and at home, under conditions of great peril and stress and at great personal sacrifice, dedicating himself to protecting America and Americans from harm at home and abroad.The Justice Department's actions have created huge pressures on John and his family. John and Heather have five children - the youngest less than a year old - and face the challenge of raising them while simultaneously fighting the people at the CIA, FBI and Justice Department who are determined to send John to prison 

John's defense will cost more than half a million dollars, even as John and Heather struggle to hold onto their home and maintain their family. To help them, we have established a trust for theJohn Kiriakou Legal Defense Fund. 

Every contribution is a gift -- please consider making a contribution today. All donors and donation amounts will be kept strictly confidential.

Every penny of your contribution will help make it possible for John Kiriakou to defend himself and to stand up for the principle that in the United States, no one should go to jail for answering questions from a New York Times reporter about torture.Friends of John Kiriakou

Defend John Kriakou
via Twitter

Way over the top. TPTB know that even if not convicted, Kiriakou and his family will be ruined personally by the extreme stress of the situation and financial pressure of mounting a defense. At the same time, the US is condemning President Putin for the "disproportionate" sentence of Pussy Riot, as it also persecutes as well as prosecutes Bradley Manning and is working behind the scenes to secure the same fate for Julian Assange. President Obama's soft soft fascism is now taking on an increasing hard edge. The cards on the table.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder gave Wall Street crooks a free pass, while they are criminalizing political dissent and criticism of the US government.

This is not simply political repression of a courageous individual that served his country for many years honorably, but also a blatant attempt to intimidate anyone who would confront the absolute authority of the power structure. This is absolutism, not liberal democracy.