Posts Tagged ‘ERIK PRINCE’
ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BETSY DEVOS, BLACKWATER, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CENTERS FOR DISDEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC), CNN, CORONAVIRUS, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, ERIK PRINCE, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GRETCHEN WHITMER, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUNTINGTON BEACH, LUNG CANCER, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHIGAN CONSERVATIVE COALITION, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, NUREMBERG RALLIES, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RUSH LIMBAUGH, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, WONKETTE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on December 24, 2021 at 12:14 am
On April 17, 2020, more than 100 protesters converged on Huntington Beach, California, in a demonstration against the state’s Coronavirus stay-at-home order.
It was part of a series of national demonstrations organized by Right-wing groups.
Many of the protesters carried Donald Trump banners and American flags. Most were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing—keeping themselves at least six feet apart from others. And they defied scientific findings and medical experts’ warnings, as if daring the virus to “come and get me.”
“I don’t think there’s any reason for us to be on lockdown now,” said 62-year-old Paula Doyle. “We didn’t have any dangers; we have no danger in our hospitals now of overflowing.”
That’s because California’s quick closure of businesses and its order that residents stay home had temporarily prevented Coronavirus from reaching epic proportions in the state. Many hospitals had been left largely empty, waiting for a surge that had yet to come.
On April 18, when more than 31,000 Americans lay dead of the Coronavirus, and more than 90% of the country was under stay-at-home orders. demonstrations erupted across the United States.
Anti-lockdown demonstration at the Ohio Statehouse
Becker1999 from Grove City, OH, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
More than 250 people showed up at Austin, Texas. Other protests occurred at the capitols of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia. An estimated 400 people gathered in Concord, New Hampshire. A rally outside Maryland’s statehouse in Annapolis drew about 200 protesters.
President Donald Trump had been the primary instigator of such protests. He said he favored a quick return to normal practices and the reopening of businesses across the country.
But what he favored most of all was a return to his Nuremberg-like political rallies, where he could bask in the worship of his fanatical base and hurl slanders at virtually everyone he hated. And he couldn’t do that so long as mass demonstrations were banned—and people must stand at least six feet apart.
There are two factors to these protests that are truly astounding.
First, many of the protesters attacked the governors who had issued stay-at-home orders as fascists. This is a hallmark of Right-wing politics—accusing their opponents of being what they are themselves.
One protester at the Huntington Beach demonstration carried a sign that read: “Defy Fascist Lockdown.”
COVID-19 virus
And Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had defied the Republican legislature by extending her stay-at-home order, was denounced as a Nazi, with protesters displaying signs like “Heil Whitmer.”
Second, the protesters utterly rejected the rising death-toll caused by the virus. At that time, this stood at 80,574.
Medical experts universally warned that stopping the chain of transmission to avoid overwhelming medical systems was the only way to buy time while treatments and vaccines could be developed.
Yet for these protesters, it’s as if the rising body count wasn’t happening.
Some of the rallies were being pushed by Republican-allied groups in battleground states with Democratic governors.
The April 30 protest at the Michigan Capitol Building featured treasonous Confederate flags and hangman’s nooses. Some signs displayed swastikas. Many of the demonstrators were armed with AK-47s.
That protest was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, a group co-founded by a GOP state representative and his wife, who was on the advisory board for an official Trump campaign group called Women for Trump and was the co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans.
Another of the event’s promoters, Greg McNeilly, was a longtime political adviser to the wealthy DeVos family, which included then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her brother, Erik Prince, founder of the notorious Blackwater mercenary group.
On May 1, 2020, Trump tweeted in support of the Michigan demonstrators. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”
Republicans’ disdain for education in general—and science in particular—has led to the following: In March, 2020, an NBC News poll found that only 30% of Republicans said that they would actually listen to the advice of doctors to stay away from large, crowded areas to avoid Coronavirus.
These are the same people who get their version of reality from Right-wing sources like Fox News Network and Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On his March 27 show, Limbaugh dismissed Coronavirus as “the common cold,” then added: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know.
“And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and they’re at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and they’re up, well—yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there.”
In 2015, Limbaugh said: “Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does. Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots.”
Five years later, on February 17, 2021, Limbaugh—a longtime and heavy cigar smoker—died of Stage Four lung cancer.
And today, thanks to the legacy of Trump and his Republican allies, more than 800,000 Americans are dead of COVID.
Like this:
Like Loading...
9/11, ABC NEWS, ACADEMI, AFGHANISTAN, ALTERNET, ANDROID, AP, APPLE IOS, BARACK OBAMA, BLACKWATER, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, CNN, COFER BLACK, COLD WAR, CONTRACT EMPLOYEES, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DONALD TRUMP, EDWARD SNOWDEN, ENRIQUE PRADO, ERIK PRINCE, FACEBOOK, GEORGE W. BUSH, GREEN BERETS, IRAQ, LEGACY OF ASHES (BOOK), LOCKHEED MARTIN, MERCENARIES, MICROSOFT WINDOWS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NAVY SEALS, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PAUL BREMER, POLITICO, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT RICHER, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SMARTPHONES, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PENTAGON, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIM WEINER, TIME, TORTURE, TOTAL INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE, UNITED STATES ARMY, UPI, USA TODAY, WIKILEAKS, XE SERVICES
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 30, 2021 at 12:05 am
The United States had been fighting in Afghanistan for almost 16 years—and between 2001 and 2017 had spent an estimated $714 billion.
Still, there was no end in sight.
Then Erik Prince suggested a remedy: Mercenaries—via his private company, Academi.
For $3.5 billion in taxpayer monies, he claimed that he could vin a victory that had eluded the United States Air Force, Army (including Green Berets) and Navy SEALs.
Erik Prince
By Miller Center [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1997, Prince created Blackwater, a private security company providing support to military and police agencies.
In August, 2003, Blackwater got the first of a series of Federal contracts to deploy its forces in Iraq. For $21 million, it safeguarded Paul Bremer, America’s proconsul running the occupation.
Ultimately, Blackwater got $1 billion to provide security for American officials and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to human rights organizations, Blackwater abused Iraqis and engaged in torture to obtain information.
In September, 2007, Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 more in a Baghdad traffic circle.
Five guards were charged with murder. Three were convicted in October, 2014, of 14 manslaughter charges and in April 2015 sentenced to 30 years in prison. These sentences were deemed unfair upon appeal and await re-sentencing.
Owing to its highly controversial activities in Iraq, Prince renamed the company Xe Services in 2009 and then Academi in 2011.
By 2018, against opposition by the Pentagon, Prince lobbied President Donald Trump to let Academi privatize the war in Afghanistan.
Ultimately, his company did not become the sole American military force in Afghanistan—despite his sister, Betsy Devos, being the Secretary of Education.
Since the end of the Cold War, the American military and Intelligence communities have grown increasingly dependent on private contractors.
In his 2007 bestseller, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner writes:
“Patriotism for profit became a $50-billion-a-year business….The [CIA] began contracting out thousands of jobs to fill the perceived void by the budget cuts that began in 1992.
“A CIA officer could file his retirement papers, turn in his blue identification badge, go to work for a much better salary at a military contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Booz Allen Hamilton, then return to the CIA the next day, wearing a green badge….”
Much of the CIA became totally dependent on mercenaries. They appeared to work for the agency, but their loyalty was actually to their private–and higher-paying—companies.
Writes Weiner: “Legions of CIA veterans quit their posts to sell their services to the agency by writing analyses, creating cover for overseas officers, setting up communications networks, and running clandestine operations.”
One such company was Total Intelligence Solutions, founded in 2007 by Cofer Black, who had been the chief of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center on 9/11. His partners were Robert Richer, formerly the associate deputy director of operations at the CIA, and Enrique Prado, who had been Black’s chief of counter-terror operations at the agency.
Future CIA hires followed suit: Serve for five years, win that prized CIA “credential” and sign up with a private security company to enrich yourself.
This situation met with full support from Right-wing “pro-business” members of Congress and President George W. Bush.
They had long championed the private sector as inherently superior to the public one. And they saw no danger that a man dedicated to enriching himself might put greed ahead of safeguarding his country.
But there are dangers to hiring men whose first love is profit. Recent examples include:
- Edward Snowden deliberately joined Booz Allen Hamilton to secure a job as a computer systems administrator at the National Security Agency (NSA). This gave him access to thousands of highly classified documents—which, in 2013, he began publicly leaking to a wide range of news organizations.
- His motive, he claimed, was to warn Americans of the privacy-invading dangers posed by their own Intelligence agencies.
- On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks published a “data dump” of 8,761 documents codenamed “Vault 7.”
- The documents exposed that the CIA had found security flaws in software operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Android and Apple iOS. These allowed an intruder—such as the CIA—to seize control of a computer or smartphone. The owner could then be photographed through his iPhone camera and have his text messages intercepted.
- According to anonymous U.S. Intelligence and law enforcement sources, the culprits were CIA contract employees.
But there are others who have offered a timely warning against the use of mercenaries. One of these is Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman of the Renaissance.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In The Prince, Machiavelli writes:
“Mercenaries…are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure. For they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal. They are brave among friends; among enemies they are cowards.
“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to man, and destruction is deferred only as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.
“The cause of this is that they have no love or other motive to keep them in the field beyond a trifling wage, which is not enough to make them ready to die for you.”
Centuries after Machiavelli’s warning, Americans are realizing the bitter truth of it firsthand.
Like this:
Like Loading...
ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BEN DORR, BETSY DEVOS, BLACKWATER, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CENTERS FOR DISDEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC), CNN, CORONAVIRUS, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, ERIK PRINCE, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GRETCHEN WHITMER, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUNTINGTON BEACH, LUNG CANCER, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHIGAN CONSERVATIVE COALITION, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, NUREMBERG RALLIES, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RUSH LIMBAUGH, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, WISCONSONITES AGAINST EXCESSIVE QUARANTINE, WONKETTE
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 11, 2020 at 12:06 am
On April 17, more than 100 protesters converged on Huntington Beach, California, in a demonstration against the state’s Coronavirus stay-at-home order.
It was part of a series of national demonstrations organized by Right-wing groups.
Many of the protesters carried Trump banners and American flags. Most were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing—keeping themselves at least six feet apart from others. And they defied scientific findings and medical experts’ warnings, as if daring the virus to “come and get me.”
“I don’t think there’s any reason for us to be on lockdown now,” said 62-year-old Paula Doyle. “We didn’t have any dangers; we have no danger in our hospitals now of overflowing.”
That’s because California’s quick closure of businesses and its order that residents stay home has prevented Coronavirus from reaching epic proportions in the state. Many hospitals have been left largely empty, waiting for a surge that has yet to come.
On April 18, when more than 31,000 Americans lay dead of the Coronavirus, and more than 90% of the country was under stay-at-home orders. demonstrations erupted across the United States.
An estimated 400 people gathered in Concord, New Hampshire. A rally outside Maryland’s statehouse in Annapolis drew about 200 protesters.
More than 250 people showed up at Austin, Texas. Other protests occurred at the capitols of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia.
President Donald Trump has been the primary instigator of such protests. He says he favors a quick return to normal practices and the reopening of businesses across the country.
But what he favors most of all is a return to his Nuremberg-like political rallies, where he can bask in the worship of his fanatical base and hurl slanders at virtually everyone he dislikes. And he can’t do that so long as mass demonstrations are banned—and people must stand at least six feet apart.
There are two factors to these protests that are truly astounding.
First, many of the protesters attack the governors who have issued stay-at-home orders as fascists. This is a hallmark of Right-wing politics—accusing their opponents of being what they are themselves.
One protester at the Huntington Beach demonstration carried a sign that read: “Defy Fascist Lockdown.”
And Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has defied the Republican legislature by extending her stay-at-home order, has been denounced as a Nazi, with protesters displaying signs like “Heil Whtmer.”
Second, the protesters have utterly rejected the rising death-toll caused by the virus. At present, this stands at 80,574. It’s a certainty to reach 100,000 before the end of May.
Medical experts universally say that stopping the chain of transmission to avoid overwhelming medical systems is the only way to buy time while treatments and vaccines are developed.
Yet for these protesters, it’s as if the rising body count isn’t happening.
Some of the rallies are being pushed by Republican-allied groups in battleground states with Democratic governors. The April 30 protest at the Michigan Capitol Building featured treasonous Confederate flags and hangman’s nooses. Some signs displayed swastikas. Many of the demonstrators were armed with AK-47s.
That protest was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, a group co-founded by a GOP state representative and his wife, who is on the advisory board for an official Trump campaign group called Women for Trump and is also the co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans.
Another of the event’s promoters, Greg McNeilly, is a longtime political adviser to the wealthy DeVos family, which includes Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her brother, Erik Prince, founder of the notorious Blackwater mercenary group.
On May 1, President Trump tweeted in support of the Michigan demonstrators. Just as German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler blamed his opponents for the violence he stoked, so did Trump: “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”
Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine was created by Ben Dorr. He leads Minnesota Gun Rights. He has promoted Facebook groups protesting the guidelines.
Republicans’ disdain for education in general—and science in particular—has led to the following: In March, an NBC News poll found that only 30% of Republicans said that they would actually listen to the advice of doctors to stay away from large, crowded areas to avoid Coronavirus.
These are the same people who get their version of reality from Right-wing sources like Fox News Network and Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On his March 27 show, Limbaugh dismissed Coronavirus as “the common cold,” then added: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know.
“And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and they’re at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and they’re up, well—yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there.”
In 2015, Limbaugh said: “Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does. Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots.”
Five years later, in February, 2020, Limbaugh—a longtime and heavy cigar smoker—announced that he had Stage Four lung cancer.
Like this:
Like Loading...
9/11, ABC NEWS, ACADEMI, AFGHANISTAN, ALTERNET, ANDROID, AP, APPLE IOS, BARACK OBAMA, BLACKWATER, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, CNN, COFER BLACK, COLD WAR, CONTRACT EMPLOYEES, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DONALD TRUMP, EDWARD SNOWDEN, ENRIQUE PRADO, ERIK PRINCE, FACEBOOK, GEORGE W. BUSH, GREEN BERETS, IRAQ, LEGACY OF ASHES (BOOK), LOCKHEED MARTIN, MERCENARIES, MICROSOFT WINDOWS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NAVY SEALS, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PAUL BREMER, POLITICO, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT RICHER, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SMARTPHONES, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PENTAGON, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIM WEINER, TIME, TORTURE, TOTAL INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE, UNITED STATES ARMY, UPI, USA TODAY, WIKILEAKS, XE SERVICES
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 27, 2018 at 12:07 am
The United States has been fighting in Afghanistan for almost 17 years—with no end in sight.
Between 2001 and 2017, America spent an estimated $714 billion on this conflict.
Now Blackwater founder Erik Prince claims he can attain a victory that has eluded the United States Air Force, Army (including Green Berets) and Navy SEALs.
His proposed solution: His private army of mercenaries—and $3.5 billion in taxpayer monies.
Erik Prince
By Miller Center [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1997, Prince created Blackwater, a private security company providing support to military and police agencies.
In August, 2003, Blackwater got the first of a series of Federal contracts to deploy its forces in Iraq. For $21 million, it would safeguard Paul Bremer, the proconsul running the American occupation in Iraq.
Ultimately, Blackwater got $1 billion to provide security for American officials and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to human rights organizations, Blackwater abused Iraqis and engaged in torture to obtain information.
In September, 2007, Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 more in a Baghdad traffic circle.
Five guards were charged with murder. Three were convicted in October, 2014, of 14 manslaughter charges and in April 2015 sentenced to 30 years in prison. These sentences were deemed unfair upon appeal and await re-sentencing.
As a result of its highly controversial activities in Iraq, Prince renamed the company Xe Services in 2009 and then Academi in 2011.
Now, against opposition by the Pentagon, Prince is pressing Trump to let Academi privatize the war in Afghanistan.
Since the end of the Cold War, the American military and Intelligence communities have grown increasingly dependent on private contractors.
In his 2007 bestseller, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner writes:
“Patriotism for profit became a $50-billion-a-year business….The [CIA] began contracting out thousands of jobs to fill the perceived void by the budget cuts that began in 1992.
“A CIA officer could file his retirement papers, turn in his blue identification badge, go to work for a much better salary at a military contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Booz Allen Hamilton, then return to the CIA the next day, wearing a green badge….”
Much of the CIA became totally dependent on mercenaries. They appeared to work for the agency, but their loyalty was actually to their private–and higher-paying—companies.
Writes Weiner: “Legions of CIA veterans quit their posts to sell their services to the agency by writing analyses, creating cover for overseas officers, setting up communications networks, and running clandestine operations.”
One such company was Total Intelligence Solutions, founded in 2007 by Cofer Black, who had been the chief of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center on 9/11. His partners were Robert Richer, formerly the associate deputy director of operations at the CIA, and Enrique Prado, who had been Black’s chief of counter-terror operations at the agency.
Future CIA hires followed suit: Serve for five years, win that prized CIA “credential” and sign up with a private security company to enrich themselves.
This situation met with full support from Right-wing “pro-business” members of Congress and President George W. Bush.
They had long championed the private sector as inherently superior to the public one. And they saw no danger that a man dedicated to enriching himself might put greed ahead of safeguarding his country.
But there are dangers to hiring men whose first love is profit. Recent examples include:
- Edward Snowden deliberately joined Booz Allen Hamilton to secure a job as a computer systems administrator at the National Security Agency (NSA). This gave him access to thousands of highly classified documents—which, in 2013, he began publicly leaking to a wide range of news organizations.
- His motive, he has claimed, was to warn Americans of the privacy-invading dangers posed by their own Intelligence agencies.
- On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks published a “data dump” of 8,761 documents codenamed “Vault 7.”
- The documents exposed that the CIA had found security flaws in software operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Android and Apple iOS. These allowed an intruder—such as the CIA—to seize control of a computer or smartphone. The owner could then be photographed through his iPhone camera and have his text messages intercepted.
- According to anonymous U.S. Intelligence and law enforcement sources, the culprits were CIA contract employees.
But there are those who have offered a timely warning against the use of mercenaries. One of these is Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman of the Renaissance.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In The Prince, Machiavelli writes:
“Mercenaries…are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure. For they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal. They are brave among friends; among enemies they are cowards.
“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to man, and destruction is deferred only as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.
“The cause of this is that they have no love or other motive to keep them in the field beyond a trifling wage, which is not enough to make them ready to die for you.”
Centuries after Machiavelli’s warning, Americans are realizing the bitter truth of it firsthand.
Like this:
Like Loading...
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, AP, BARACK OBAMA, BBC, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CIA, CLINTON WATTS, CNN, CYBERWARFARE, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR, ERIC TRUMP, ERIK PRINCE, ESPIONAGE, EUROPEAN UNION (EU), FACEBOOK, FBI, GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS, GRU, HILLARY CLINTON, JAMES B. COMEY, JAMES R. CLAPPER, JARED KUSHNER, JEFF SESSIONS, MICHAEL COHEN, MICHAEL T. FLYNN, MIKE PENCE, MOSCOW PROJECT, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (NATO), NPR, PAUL MANAFORT, POLITICO, RAW STORY, REUTERS, REX TILLERSON, RICK GATES, ROBERT S. MUELLER, RUSSIA, SALLY YATES, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIKILEAKS
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 26, 2018 at 12:08 am
More than a year and a half after taking office, President Donald Trump remains haunted by “the Russian connection.”
Throughout 2016, the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) found numerous ties between officials of the Trump Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
And many of those he has appointed to office have strong ties to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of these was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In 2013, as the chief executive of ExxonMobil, he was presented with the 2013 Order of Friendship award. He had just signed deals with the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft. Its chief, Igor Sechin, is a loyal Putin lieutenant.
Rex Tillerson
Another such official is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. During the 2016 campaign, Sessions—then serving as a surrogate for Donald Trump’s campaign—twice spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
But during his Senate nomination hearings, Sessions denied that he had had “communications with the Russians” during the campaign.
The discovery of numerous contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian Intelligence agents led the FBI to investigate Russia’s efforts to subvert the 2016 Presidential election. That investigation is still ongoing.
So did the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
On March 30, 2017, Clinton Watts, an expert on cyber warfare, testified before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. As part of his testimony, he presented a prepared statement on “Disinformation: A Primer In Russian Active Measures And Influence Campaigns.”
FROM WATTS’ STATEMENT: Russia certainly seeks to promote Western candidates sympathetic to their worldview and foreign policy objectives. But winning a single election is not their end goal.
Russian Active Measures hope to topple democracies….from the inside out [by] creating political divisions….
[Their ultimate goals are] the dissolution of the European Union and the break up of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO).
Achieving these two victories against the West will allow Russia to reassert its power globally and pursue its foreign policy objectives bilaterally through military, diplomatic and economic aggression.
On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Early reports traced the leak to Russian hackers.
On July 27, at a press conference in Doral, Florida, Trump declared: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing—I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
This was nothing less than treason—calling upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.
On numerous occasions, Trump has fiercely denied any Russian connections. For example:
July 27, 2016: “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.”
January 11, 2017: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
February 7, 2017: “I don’t know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy.”
Yet, in 2008, Donald Trump, Jr. said at a New York real estate conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. Say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
And Trump’s son, Eric, has been quoted as saying in 2014: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”
The Moscow Project is an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Its objective: “Analyzing the facts behind Trump’s collusion with Russia and communicating the findings to the public.”
According to its March 21, 2018 report (updated on July 10): “In total, we have learned of 80 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives, including at least 23 meetings.
“And we know that at least 24 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisors were aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them….
“The Trump campaign issued at least 15 blanket denials of contacts with Russia, all of which have been proven false.”
Members of the Trump team who had contacts with Russians during the campaign or transition include:
- Michael Cohen
- Roger Stone
- Donald Trump Jr.
- Jeff Sessions
- Paul Manafort
- Jared Kushner
- Carter Page
- Michael Flynn
- Erik Prince
- George Papadopoulos
- Anthony Scaramucci
- Rick Gates
Flynn and Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to making false statements about their contacts with Russians to investigators.
Manafort faces trial for money-laundering relating to his work for the government of Putin-supported government of Ukraine.
In July, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller charged 12 officers of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, with crimes committed to the high-profile hacking and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.
As trials begin and indicted men begin to sweat, expect more revelations to come.
Like this:
Like Loading...
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, AP, BBC, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CIA, CLINTON WATTS, CNN, CYBERWARFARE, DAILY KOS, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR, ERIC TRUMP, ERIK PRINCE, ESPIONAGE, EUROPEAN UNION (EU), FACEBOOK, FBI, GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS, GRU, JAMES B. COMEY, JAMES R. CLAPPER, JARED KUSHNER, JEFF SESSIONS, MICHAEL COHEN, MICHAEL T. FLYNN, MOSCOW PROJECT, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (NATO), NPR, PAUL MANAFORT, POLITICO, RAW STORY, REUTERS, REX TILLERSON, RICK GATES, ROBERT S. MUELLER, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIKILEAKS
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 25, 2018 at 12:09 am
On July 16, President Donald Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin in Helsinki
“Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016,” Associated Press Reporter Jonathan Lemire said to Trump. “Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?”
Trump chose to attack Democrats and the FBI as partners in a conspiracy: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server, why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
“…Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying….
“I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”
Clinton Watts is a consultant and researcher on cyberwarfare. He has served as
- An FBI Special Agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF);
- The Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC); and
- As a consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division (CTD) and National Security Branch (NSB).
In a statement he prepared for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Watts outlined cyberwarfare measures that Russia used to subvert the 2016 Presidential campaign.
He delivered this on March 30. 2017. Part of this reads as follows:
Through the end of 2015 and start of 2016, the Russian influence system….began pushing themes and messages seeking to influence the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election.
Russia’s overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views toward the Kremlin. The final months leading up to the election have been the predominate focus of Russian influence discussions to date.
Clinton Watts
However, Russian Active Measures were in full swing during both the Republican and Democratic primary season and may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed.
The final piece of Russia’s modern Active Measures surfaced in the summer of 2016 as hacked materials from previous months were strategically leaked.
On 22 July 2016, Wikileaks released troves of stolen communications from the Democratic National Committee and later batches of campaign emails. Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks revealed hacked information from a host of former U.S. government officials throughout July and August 2016.
For the remainder of the campaign season, this compromising material powered the influence system Russia successfully constructed in the previous two years.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump—as the Republican nominee for President—steadfastly refused to acknowledge the efforts of Vladimir Putin’s government to ensure his election:
October 24, 2016: “I have nothing to do with Russia, folks, I’ll give you a written statement.”
December 11, 2016 “They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. I mean, they have no idea.”
On December 16, 2016, then-FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House.
Even after the release of this Intelligence statement, Trump continued to deny that Russia had played a role in his election.
On February 16, 2017, as President, he tweeted: “The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story – RUSSIA. Fake news!”
FROM WATTS’ STATEMENT: This pattern of Russian falsehoods and social media manipulation of the American electorate continued through Election Day and persists today.
Many of the accounts we watched push the false Incirlik story in July now focus their efforts on shaping the upcoming European elections, promoting fears of immigration or false claims of refugee criminality.
They’ve not forgotten about the United States either. This past week, we observed social media campaigns targeting Speaker of the House Paul Ryan hoping to foment further unrest amongst U.S. democratic institutions, their leaders and their constituents.
As we noted two days before the Presidential election in our article describing Russian influence operations, Russia certainly seeks to promote Western candidates sympathetic to their worldview and foreign policy objectives.
But winning a single election is not their end goal. Russian Active Measures hope to topple democracies through the pursuit of five complementary objectives:
- Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance;
- Foment and exacerbate divisive political fractures;
- Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions;
- Popularize Russian policy agendas within foreign populations;
- Create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
From these objectives, the Kremlin can crumble democracies from the inside out creating political divisions resulting in two key milestones:
- The dissolution of the European Union and
- The break up of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO).
Like this:
Like Loading...
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BETSY DEVOS, BLACKWATER, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CENTERS FOR DISDEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC), CNN, CORONAVIRUS, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, ERIK PRINCE, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GRETCHEN WHITMER, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUNTINGTON BEACH, LUNG CANCER, MEDIA MATTERS, MICHIGAN CONSERVATIVE COALITION, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, NUREMBERG RALLIES, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RUSH LIMBAUGH, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, WONKETTE
DOWN WITH SCIENCE! GIVE ME DEATH!
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on December 24, 2021 at 12:14 amOn April 17, 2020, more than 100 protesters converged on Huntington Beach, California, in a demonstration against the state’s Coronavirus stay-at-home order.
It was part of a series of national demonstrations organized by Right-wing groups.
Many of the protesters carried Donald Trump banners and American flags. Most were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing—keeping themselves at least six feet apart from others. And they defied scientific findings and medical experts’ warnings, as if daring the virus to “come and get me.”
“I don’t think there’s any reason for us to be on lockdown now,” said 62-year-old Paula Doyle. “We didn’t have any dangers; we have no danger in our hospitals now of overflowing.”
That’s because California’s quick closure of businesses and its order that residents stay home had temporarily prevented Coronavirus from reaching epic proportions in the state. Many hospitals had been left largely empty, waiting for a surge that had yet to come.
On April 18, when more than 31,000 Americans lay dead of the Coronavirus, and more than 90% of the country was under stay-at-home orders. demonstrations erupted across the United States.
Anti-lockdown demonstration at the Ohio Statehouse
Becker1999 from Grove City, OH, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
More than 250 people showed up at Austin, Texas. Other protests occurred at the capitols of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia. An estimated 400 people gathered in Concord, New Hampshire. A rally outside Maryland’s statehouse in Annapolis drew about 200 protesters.
President Donald Trump had been the primary instigator of such protests. He said he favored a quick return to normal practices and the reopening of businesses across the country.
But what he favored most of all was a return to his Nuremberg-like political rallies, where he could bask in the worship of his fanatical base and hurl slanders at virtually everyone he hated. And he couldn’t do that so long as mass demonstrations were banned—and people must stand at least six feet apart.
There are two factors to these protests that are truly astounding.
First, many of the protesters attacked the governors who had issued stay-at-home orders as fascists. This is a hallmark of Right-wing politics—accusing their opponents of being what they are themselves.
One protester at the Huntington Beach demonstration carried a sign that read: “Defy Fascist Lockdown.”
COVID-19 virus
And Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had defied the Republican legislature by extending her stay-at-home order, was denounced as a Nazi, with protesters displaying signs like “Heil Whitmer.”
Second, the protesters utterly rejected the rising death-toll caused by the virus. At that time, this stood at 80,574.
Medical experts universally warned that stopping the chain of transmission to avoid overwhelming medical systems was the only way to buy time while treatments and vaccines could be developed.
Yet for these protesters, it’s as if the rising body count wasn’t happening.
Some of the rallies were being pushed by Republican-allied groups in battleground states with Democratic governors.
The April 30 protest at the Michigan Capitol Building featured treasonous Confederate flags and hangman’s nooses. Some signs displayed swastikas. Many of the demonstrators were armed with AK-47s.
That protest was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, a group co-founded by a GOP state representative and his wife, who was on the advisory board for an official Trump campaign group called Women for Trump and was the co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans.
Another of the event’s promoters, Greg McNeilly, was a longtime political adviser to the wealthy DeVos family, which included then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her brother, Erik Prince, founder of the notorious Blackwater mercenary group.
On May 1, 2020, Trump tweeted in support of the Michigan demonstrators. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”
Republicans’ disdain for education in general—and science in particular—has led to the following: In March, 2020, an NBC News poll found that only 30% of Republicans said that they would actually listen to the advice of doctors to stay away from large, crowded areas to avoid Coronavirus.
These are the same people who get their version of reality from Right-wing sources like Fox News Network and Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On his March 27 show, Limbaugh dismissed Coronavirus as “the common cold,” then added: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know.
“And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and they’re at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and they’re up, well—yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there.”
In 2015, Limbaugh said: “Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does. Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots.”
Five years later, on February 17, 2021, Limbaugh—a longtime and heavy cigar smoker—died of Stage Four lung cancer.
And today, thanks to the legacy of Trump and his Republican allies, more than 800,000 Americans are dead of COVID.
Share this:
Like this: