Archive for the 'Covert Operations' Category
Still Think It’s About the Bonuses? The Big Takeover
March 22nd, 2009Via: Rolling Stone: It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced […]
Obama Administration: Constitution Does Not Protect Cell-Site Records
March 19th, 2009In my case, there’s no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it; no one at the Times should ever learn about these things. —Russell Tice, Former NSA SIGINT Officer All of these […]
The Long and Sadistic History Behind the CIA’s Torture Techniques
March 18th, 2009Via: Slate: In the 20th century, there were two main traditions of clean torture—the kind that doesn’t leave marks, as modern torturers prefer. The first is French modern, a combination of water- and electro-torture. The second is Anglo-Saxon modern, a classic list of sleep deprivation, positional and restraint tortures, extremes of temperature, noise, and beatings. […]
Obama May Widen Drone War Over Pakistan
March 18th, 2009Via: Wired: Six times in the last two months, the new administration has used unmanned aircraft to strike at Taliban camps in the largely-ungoverned tribal wildlands on Pakistan. That could be just the start, however. New York Times reports that President Obama’s national security team is considering an expansion the target set, to include the […]
Kenya: Wikileaks Related Human Rights Lawyers Assassinated
March 18th, 2009Via: Wikileaks: On Thursday afternoon, Oscar Kamau Kingara, director of the Kenyan based Oscar legal aid Foundation, and its programme coordinator, John Paul Oulo, were both shot dead at close range in their car less than a mile from President Kibaki’s residence. The two were on their way to a meeting at the Kenyan National […]
The More Roundup the U.S. Sprays on Colombia, the More Coca is Grown
March 14th, 2009How can this be? Monsanto’s Roundup product should wipe out the coca plans, right? The Mystery of the Coca Plant That Wouldn’t Die is a fascinating read. I’m going to post the spoiler ending below, but I encourage you to read the whole thing: Four weeks later, the scientist sends me an email saying that […]
Frightening Google Stories Du Jour
March 12th, 2009First up, Google is going to start using behavioral targeting technology to serve ads: Google has long resisted the emerging but controversial method of showing ads to Web surfers based on the kinds of sites they’ve previously visited. The company appears to have gotten over its reservations. On Mar. 11, Google said it will begin […]
U.S. Special Forces ‘Executive Assassination Ring’ Reported Directly to Cheney
March 12th, 2009Via: MinnPost: At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: “And do they continue to happen to this day?” Replied Hersh: “Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought […]
Treasury Official Who Let AIG Cook Books Is Allowed to Retire
March 10th, 2009Via: ABC News: The man at the center of a fraud scandal at the Treasury Department has been allowed to quietly quit and retire from his job as a government regulator, despite allegations that he allowed a bank to falsify financial records and amidst outcries from investigators who say the case shows how cozy government […]
Obama Looking at Military Options in Mexico
March 10th, 2009Translation: The upstarts need to be taken out so that sanctioned “Agency” narcotics can flow into the U.S. in a more orderly manner. The current arrangement is too messy. If they were really interested in stopping this, they would look at legalization or decriminalization, but increased militarization serves two main purposes. First, it will drive […]
