Washington's Blog

The intelligence services have been doing this forever in most countries. If you don't know about it you're not paying attention. Here is PJ O'Rourke writing about this in the 1960s in the US. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WEmN1ZKrYpsC&lpg=PA238&ot… People don't just don't care that much. It is worth worrying about though. With the NSA and computer surviellance we've created a 'turn-key tyranny'. And people have been worrying about that since at least the 1970s: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/04/influential-senator-warned-in-1…

I haven't finished reading it yet but this appears to be a good read with sources https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/generalwarrantsmemo.pdf It's linked to from this page which also may help http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/nsa-spying-is-exactly-the-kind-…

While I do think human rights are a good idea, the focus seems to be carefully selected to as to make "bad" countries look bad and western countries look good. For the US, it's OK to kill people as long as you do it a bit randomly in a war instead of being too targeted, or as long as you do it to foreigners not your own citizens and you try to kill them quickly instead of using deliberate torture. If you do use torture, it should be psychological (solitary confinement) rather than physical. It's also OK to kill people by leaving them in an unsafe environment surrounded by killers (poor neighborhoods) without providing enough security or enough income to buy their way out. It's also OK to kill them in the name of economic progress by allowing cars to drive at speeds which regularly cause death. Somehow we accept these things as tolerable or even necessary but we don't realize that classic "bad country tortures dissidents" human rights abuses are equally necessary - they do the same thing wars do - secure the positions of governments against people who want to take them over. Even the name "dissident" is misleading - If we called Falun Gong members "traitors", that might make them sound like bad people and engender less public sympathy. Cartoon about our patriotic biases: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/glorious-leader-wicked-despot.h… That said, it doesn't stop human rights abuses being wrong too.

How easy it is to change the policy adopted and executed for over 5 decades [0]. During this period both of the parties have sufficiently ruled Washington with same policy. Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11 [1] "General Wesley Clark … said the aim of this plot [to “destroy the governments in … Iraq, … Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”] was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?” [I]n the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya … with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South…

Obviously his comment was not very well thought out or supported by much of anything, and so warranted criticism, but lets not be blind to the substance behind his sentiment. The IRA and UVF, Hezbollah etc all have something in common. That is that they are responses to actions primarily done by imperialistic actions of other countries (the UVF was the counter to the IRA which was a response to British actions, while Hezbollah was largely a response to Israel's invasion of Beruit in 82 and America's support afterwards). ISIS was largely trained in Jordan and sent into Syria to topple Assad by the US, (despite the fact this has been covered up really well), and when they failed they shifted into Iraq and are performing the great task of keeping Iraq in a state of chaos. So first of all, lets stop pretending like the IRA, UVF, Hezbollah, or ISIS can be summarized so simply. That's not to justify them or whitewash their actions either though, I was shocked when I learned that the total deaths in the UVF/IRA conflict (which the Brits characteristically love to downplay by calling it "The Troubles") were close to 6,000 and that total casualties were close to 50,000. Those are number comparable to the first years of the US invasion of Iraq. So you're right that having naive ideas about community with such entities are dangerous, the real issue is that it is often the actions of the Imperialistic countries such as the US and UK that have caused many of these organizations to…

I think that at this point FB has proven that people will be nasty regardless of how not-anonymous they are. As such I'm doubtful this will change anything about peoples behavior. It's also quite scary how nonchalant many people here are arguing for this to stop "propaganda" which these days seems to be as easily defined as "Anything that doesn't conform with a Western/US-centric narrative". Because I have yet to see one of these "propaganda ban waves" be reasoned with anything but "Russia/Iranian/Chinese propaganda" like that's the only kind of "propaganda" that exists [0]. As such I consider these "propaganda bans" just another exercise in propaganda [1]. [0] https://washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/pentagon-admits-spending-millions-… [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time#Summary

> However, there are good things going on in Saudi Arabia right now... What is not given prominent coverage at the moment is MbS is the latest in the House of Saud attempting to prune back the Wahhabist power base [1]. There are whispers that Jamal Kashoggi might possibly be nefariously related to 9/11, and is at the least a "person of interest" [2]. It is extremely unlikely we will ever know the realpolitik behind-the-scenes story now, and going back to status quo ante becomes increasingly possible for the KSA the more days this drags on (it would be interesting to find out if the KSA has procured crisis management and/or PR expertise for this incident). [1] https://www.albawaba.com/news/saudi-arabia-turning-against-wahhabism-1… [2] https://washingtonsblog.com/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-where-the-road-to-…

American govt is helping or allowing it into the country. Their actions must be stopped first. U.S. Troops Patrolling/protecting poppy fields in Afghanistan. Yeah, go war on drugs.... https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-traffi… http://humansarefree.com/2015/02/overwhelming-evidence-that-cia-is.htm… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW2YWqVpT4E http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/14066.html

The United States has been in a war or conflict in 55 of the last 60 years: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-yea…

> or preventing bomb attacks You're more likely to die by falling down the stairs than by being killed by a terrorist[0]. Bomb attacks are not something you should be concerned by. However much bomb attacks scare you, you should be ~100x more scared of living in a house that has more than one floor. [0] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/just-dangerous-terrorism-really…

The US has been in a state of armed conflict for all but 21 years of its existence: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-yea…

Pax Americana is kind of riddiculous name for the fact that US has started over 200 military conflicts since WW2. America is at war 93% of it's existence: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-yea…

Oh you're a fucking moron who can't read a thread. Listen to the hacked Nuland-Pyatt call https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k Ron Paul: U.S. State Dept. Conspired To Overthrow Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZwPy8ogGXc Ukraine’s Pres. Poroshenko Says Overthrow of Yanukovych Was a Coup http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/ukraines-pres-poroshenko-says-o…

Seems that way: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/eglin-air-force-base-busted-gam…

ZH is using [1] as it's source, which reprinted the article from [2] [1] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/64139.html [2] https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hac…

Looks like they learned from the US. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/head-stratfor-private-cia-says-… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#War.2C_2011.E2.8…

To your point. 51% of the American workforce makes less that 30 thousand dollars a year. That number is trending upward rapidly. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent…

It's very unlikely that Russia is behind this, it is very likely that the DNC wants Russia be behind it and William Binney stated some time ago that it is almost impossible that Russia was behind that, and very likely a disgruntled US intelligence officer. Or just your average script kiddie. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/07/russia-hillary-clinton-email-ha…

Btw. just for curiosity, there is a difference in the source of radiation as it pertains to how dangerous it is. Banana (potassium) radiation is mostly harmless to humans. Nuclear weapon or reactor radiation (for example caesium) is not. The Banana equivalent dose is therefore a bit of a misleading term, and I have sometimes seen it used to dismiss other more harmful radiation sources as harmless, because of this incorrect banana comparison. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/04/fake-science-alert-fukushima-ra… Here is an example of using the banana comparison in an incorrect manner: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/10/the-fukushima-radia…

It's Fear-of-Terror-Makes-People-Stupid time [0] all over again. Two thirds of the population approve this. [0] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-people-stu…

I'm probably opening myself to accusations of whataboutery but it's not like America has never partaken in state sponsored industrial espionage: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/nsa-busted-conducting-industria…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-ir… http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/newly-declassified-u-s-governme… https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-US-is-funding-ISIS

The Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/obama-has-sentenced-whistleblow…

47% of Americans cannot come up with $400 for an emergency room visit, much less moving to a different city. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/04/47-percent-americans-cannot-eve…

I kind of wonder if billg doesn't want the FBI bringing up all the previous work that Microsoft has done installing backdoors in their products for the US Government: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/microsoft-programmed-in-nsa-bac…

I believe they do. The Patriot Act/Homeland Security were planned and ready to go long before the September 11th attacks. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/ron-paul-%E2%80%9Cthe-patriot-a… The security/intelligence establishment were just waiting for an opportunity to put them into action and that act of terrorism provided all the justification. They are gross opportunists of the most obscene order.

Ex: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-soc… http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/eglin-air-force-base-busted-gam… https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1dz470/most_reddit_addict…

The big point of this article is, given all of the NSA spying and mass surveillance of pretty much all phone networks worldwide, they still failed to detect anything related to this attack. It shows two main things: 1) Mass drag-net style surveillance programs are not very effective. 2) Banning encryption will have minimal-to-no effect on improving mass drag-net style surveillance programs. This means, to date, the only "terrorist plot" thwarted by the NSA mass drag-net style surveillance program remains that one guy who tried to send $8,500 to the Taliban (and was promptly arrested)[1]. [1] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/nsa-spying-did-not-result-in-on…

> So at least police aren't killing more people than regular people? They're killing more people than terrorists though: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/youre-nine-times-likely-killed-… http://www.globalresearch.ca/increasing-police-brutality-americans-kil… http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-killed-polic… http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/youre-55-times-likely-killed-po… Yay?

>One of the major points made in the article is that nobody hears about the attacks that get prevented. The government would be shouting from the rooftops if they've prevented any attacks, if only to justify the surveillance. Pre-2015 there was a report that mass surveillance had not prevented a single attack. I'm not sure if that statistic is still true, but I imagine it is. It does them no favors to keep the attacks prevented hush-hush, as it leads citizens to believe it isn't working at all. Former NSA analyst, head of the spying program, calls it useless. [0] And more information/people-in-the-know [1]. [0] http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/10/what-do-they-know-about-you-an-inter… [1] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/the-fact-that-mass-surveillance…