The real boss at the CIA, Deputy Director Mike Morell, just retired. He looks fit, strong, nearly young. He was there 33 years. He also gave an interview to 60 minutes, Oct. 27. He concluded by telling what preoccupied him the most. The increasing division of society in the USA:
“What keeps me up at night is the inability of our government to make decisions that push out our economy and our society forward and one of the things that I learned looking at the world is that a country national security, any country national security is more dependent on the strength of its economy and the strength of its society than anything else.
We have change we can believe: ever more plutocracy. And this is the main enabler:
Leggy, Not Brainy
CIA Morell’s fear: “For some reason I do not understand there has been a change. Both parties are at each others’ throats to score political points. I don’t know why that occurred, and I don’t have a good understanding of why it’s so don’t know how to fix that but that is what needs to be fixed.”
In these later remarks, Mr. Morell is naïve, I will show.
As I have pointed out many times, the reason the Kaiserreich attacked the world in 1914 was the extreme division of German society at the time, with an increasingly active socialist party (SPD) revolting against the reigning plutocrats.
What worries me the most is the ignorance of people and their ardor to accept the lies which are served to them. All sorts of Obamacrap are recent examples.
The USA is the only country in the world where citizens are forced to enter a contract with for-profit companies. (OK, I did not carefully consider Zimbabwe.) USA: United Slaves of America? Yes, for profit. This would not have happened in, say, France: millions would have got to the streets.
Even the Lords, in the Middle Ages, were not for profit.
In Switzerland, where a sort of Obamacrap exists, the “caisses” (insurance) are not for profit. Anyway the Swiss, squeezed by France (complicated story) are moving towards a French like health care.
According to the New York Times, Obama himself directed strikes against civilians, using drones. That there were strikes against civilians who were obviously civilians, like repeated strikes against a grand-mother surrounded by grand children was detailed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (survivors were interviewed thoroughly).
This sort of premeditated “signature” strikes has no antecedent. It’s fundamentally different from even the way Genghis Khan’s generals were conducting their massacres. Mongol generals were always at war for cause. They gave fair ultimata: “surrender, and live, or else!”.
The USA is not at war against Yemen, or Pakistan. Or, for that matter, Sudan (when Clinton destroyed a pharma plant there).
The truth is that the leaders of the USA have been conducting systematic lying to their own population. Bin Laden was a major deputy of the CIA. he was recruited by the CIA, and led to lead a major army in a war of aggression against the Socialist Republic of Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden, a simple engineer and scion of plutocracy, came to hate his recruiters, not the least because they led him to commit crimes against civilians.
All of this was buried by thick propaganda.
If the NSA records 70 million French conversation in 20 days, it’s not because the USA’s security would be at risk otherwise. It’s because people at the NSA are making money from it. They probably sell the information to the likes of Musk, Boeing, nuclear plant makers, helicopter companies, whoever. France has state of the art industries in aerospace, nuclear, composites… Or even less well known areas like power lithium polymer batteries, software, or advanced microchips.
In the case of Obamacare, Obama exerted his usual level of care, characterized by neither oversight nor foresight. I have written dozens of pages on what would happen, 4 years ago. it’s happening.
In the case of intelligence, as in the financial sector neither oversight nor foresight is also the rule.
When the simultaneous attacks in Benghazi against the USA consulate and a CIA base a mile distant happened, the Obama administration did nothing. After an hour had passed and the well planned Al Qaeda attack was fully on, personnel under attack was told help would not be coming.
“For the people who go out, on to the edge, to represent our country, we believe that if we get in trouble, they’re coming to get us, that our back is covered. To hear that it’s not, that’s a terrible, terrible experience.” [— Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, on “60 Minutes,” Oct. 27, 2013.]
Why did not the administration ask, for example, the French to intervene? Supersonic Rafales could have been on the scene within an hour. French jets have exhibited extreme targeting precision. They did not even try.
Like Obama did not even try to extent Medicare by giving it the power of full negotiation. He could do it tomorrow. It’s legal, it would save money, both to the state, and the country, it would make health care more accessible.
The chair of the Senate intelligence committee is California’s senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein. “It is my understanding that President Obama was not aware Chancellor Merkel’s communications were being collected since 2002,” Feinstein said. “That is a big problem. With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of US allies – including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany – let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed,”
It is indeed a big problem. In 2010 the spying machinery comprised 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in more than 10,000 locations in the United States. The USA intelligence community as a whole includes in particular 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances. In ten years and real dollars the budget has augmented by at least a third. And kept on augmenting briskly under unawares Obama.
Vice President Dick Cheney declared to CNN: “We do collect a lot of intelligence. Without speaking about any particular target or group of targets, that intelligence capability is enormously important to the United States, to our conduct in foreign policy, to defense matters, economic matters, and I’m a strong supporter of it,”
Translation: the USA is turning into the USSR. Case closed. As usual, the White House denied, but some of what it denied last week, now Feinstein herself says it’s the truth. And one does not spy on up to seven million French conversations a day of French economic actors without those economic reasons thieves have. The evidence is incontrovertible.
Obama has been going through his presidency, unawares. Or worse, claiming to be unawares. That was a big problem.
This was made possible because his supporters have been also unawares. Or claiming to be unaware. This was, and is, an even bigger problem. Instead of proposing immediately ways to progress positively, all they do, those pseudo-progressives, is to criticize the Tea Party, as if Obama were the president of the Tea Party.
The extreme right wing of the Republican Party is for No Government. Very bad, indeed. My question: how does that differ from Obama’s practice? So is Obama president of the Tea Party? Why not? Watch what they do, instead of listening to what they say they do. Before you scream, remember; a ten million dollar a year banker in Obama’s cabinet suggested sequestration. even the Tea Party did not dream of that one.
So let me help Mr. CIA, Mike Morell. In truth, there is just one party in the USA. The strife between the two parties is just theater, kabuki. In truth, there is just one party, the plutocratic party. This is what “being at each other’s throats” hides.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
1) Morell also said “president” Karzai of Afghanistan got direct cash payments of 100 million dollars. His associates and family also got their own considerable payments. Well worth dying for.
2) Cheney also said: “When people say torture, that may be their opinion, but with respect to the attorneys and the lawyers that are charged with reviewing what we do, it was not torture. I don’t believe it was torture,” Well, I know some of these attorneys. I was actually invited for dinner at the home of the leading one, John Yoo. I believe Yoo is just criminally wrong, and mad a career of it. The Nazis also had lawyers and judges to justify all they did. Not many, but enough. (The worst of them unfortunately died in an air raid in February 1945, so there no trial of torturous justice. Unfortunately no one has arrested Yoo yet.)
Tags: Economic Espionage, Feinstein, NSA, Obama
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
October 29, 2013 at 11:08 pm |
Dear sir,
FYI
http://www.lopinion.fr/29-octobre-2013/ecoutes-francais-cooperent-etroitement-etats-unis-qu-ils-espionnent-aussi-5573
rgds
Hug
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October 29, 2013 at 11:59 pm |
Very interesting and welcome to the comments, Hughes! It was obvious all along that the French official protests were more about legalese than anything else. Some French ministers, with a smug sardonic smile on their faces, said they would hope that France could defend herself already.
Yet, it’s clear that the NSA is used for economic advantage, and that the DGSE (Direction Generale Securite’ Exterieure) does not do such economic spying, at least not at anything approaching the same scale.
By the way there is also the French Military Intelligence service, which is distinct (the article seems unaware of that; similarly all USA intelligence agencies the 17 of them or so, are, since Reagan together in one agency, so what the article says about NSA and CIA being distinct is a bit irrelevant).
The DGSE sticks to its guns, literally. Presenting a real danger to France is pretty much a one way trip to the Great Beyond. Whereas Cheney, and others admitted that the NSA is used for economic advantage, and this use of USA intelligence is at least 35 years old, leaks in France show that very secret French services are rather used to shorten the lifespans of otherwise useless characters.
It’s also clear to me that the French spy, say, on Silicon Valley. Years back, I was struck by the beehive activity at the French Consulate in San Francisco. Once, quite a while ago, I came through the backdoor, and I had the impression I stepped inside MI5 with lots of young dashing types not found at all around the front door.
Yet, French law forbids systematic spying without cause of honest to goodness citizens. As the EU and the USA are negotiating a free trade accord (now stopped until December for cause of USA gov failure), it will be important to enforce the French law, as USA citizens seem unable to do so for themselves.
It will probably happen, as France was recently able to subject, submit and thoroughly humiliate Switzerland itself about all sorts of tax and health related issues (the USA, Germany and Italy will probably follow suit in the future, on the ground that, if France got these prerogatives, why not them?).
PA
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October 30, 2013 at 7:21 pm |
Let’s try not to be too naive. On second inspection, and after listening TVs from several countries (and what the local leaders said), and reading various sources, it seems the NSA is engaging in the big lie technique, dear to Hitler. Here it is, straight from the French government:
“Mercredi après-midi, la porte-parole du gouvernement français, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, a rejeté les déclarations du général Keith Alexander. «Les dénégations du directeur de la NSA ne me semblent pas vraisemblables», a déclaré Vallaud-Belkacem lors du compte-rendu du Conseil des ministres, parlant de la «gravité des faits qui semblent plus qu’établis». «Le président de la République l’a rappelé ce matin, il y a une nécessité de faire davantage la clarté sur les pratiques des services secrets américains et c’est pour cela qu’au Conseil européen (des 24 et 25 octobre) il a insisté pour prendre cette initiative avec l’Allemagne en particulier», a-t-elle ajouté.
«Ce qui a été décidé est que les services responsables puissent travailler avec les services américains pour déterminer un code de bonne conduite», a-t-elle expliqué. «Il faut faire la lumière sur les pratiques du passé et veiller à l’avenir à ce que les choses se déroulent pour le mieux (…) nous ne pouvons pas laisser le doute s’installer entre partenaires», a-t-elle insisté. «Cela ne concerne pas simplement les instances politique mais aussi le monde économique, industriel et un enjeu de protection des données personnelles des citoyens», a-t-elle poursuivi. A ce titre, «la France a insisté pour qu’une réglementation européenne sur cette question puisse voir le jour début 2015, ce qui devrait être le cas».
PA
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October 31, 2013 at 12:42 am |
Some speak of the “end of the industrial age”. That’s beyond silly. Industry is the solution and industrial production has never been higher.
We have a plutocratic crisis, a collapse of morality among the elites, obsessed by power, greed and money. It has happened to all civilizations before. But, this time, because of our giant industrial production and impact, collapse of civilization is entangled with collapse of the biosphere.
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October 31, 2013 at 6:56 am |
“The USA is the only country in the world where citizens are forced to enter a contract with for-profit companies.”
One more of your boring lies.
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October 31, 2013 at 7:16 am |
John The Insulter: I observe that the New York Times has promoted shills such as you to a special status “Trusted Commenters”, while frantically censoring someone like me (a full subscriber for decades), and allowing people such as you to insult me in public. Even answering an Insulter of your quality is forbidden by the so called “Times”.
I have consulted with a lawyer about this, who told me it was defamation, and I could sue. To tell that someone is a liar and to say why, is one thing, to just spew insults without justification, something else. Pure defamation.
It reminds me exactly of what happened ten years ago, during the invasion of Iraq. When the Times spewed lies in the service of Bush and invasion. Those obvious lies were demonstrated in the meantime.
Contempt is not enough of a concept to serve you and the Times.
PA
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October 31, 2013 at 1:13 pm |
John: please see the four basic models of healthcare systems as we know it today. In case of USA, it is the out of pocket system or for profit system.
http://www.pnhp.org/single_payer_resources/health_care_systems_four_basic_models.php
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October 31, 2013 at 4:50 pm |
Dear Hugh: I read the paper, thanks. Very interesting. I have only one reservation: they assimilate the French system to a Bismarck system. It’s sort of true for Alsace and Lorraine, which were allowed to keep the positive features of their Bismarck system (they were occupied by the German fascists and Nazis in 1871-1918 and 1940-1944).
However the normal French system is different. It has two layers: all basic fundamentally state of the art health care is public. It’s the best system in the world. For example the public category III university hospital in Grenoble developed deep brain stimulation, which, among other things, has been applied to hundreds of thousands of people to cure from Parkison. For years American specialists were trekking to Grenoble to learn the technique (which is complex: after implantation, the computer, in the following weeks, has to be adjusted.)
I have a cadillac health plan in the USA. Yet after problems during pregnancy and at a distance help from the French doctors (!!!!!! 24/7) we flew from the Bay Area (!!!!!!) to a category one public hospital in the Alps for the rest of the difficult pregnancy. Without this, I would not have a daughter. They were amazingly decisive from the first face to face interview coming off the plane.
BTW, the Italian system is very similar to the French one, and the two systems interchange doctors, etc.
Above the basic public thing is a private system which complements nicely, for profit. For example, the state will pay $200 for a functional but bland fake tooth, and a private insurance will boost that for a perfect pearly white at $800…
People like John are, I strongly suspect, paid by the insurance industry. Not once has the NYT allowed me to reply to John, however politely. I thought about writing a “New York Pravda” article. I have not seen this for 10 years…
I am of course way more “left” whatever that means, than the NYT, and I have been involved in the debate Medicare For All versus “Obamacare”. I was for the former, which required very little Congress input.
Obama actually at some point nearly fell for my arguments, but then he went back to the Obamacare madness, and, well, things are unfolding exactly as I expected.
I am not sanguine about the political consequences…
PA
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October 31, 2013 at 4:58 pm |
“The USA is the only country in the world where citizens are forced to enter a contract with for-profit companies. (OK, I did not carefully consider Zimbabwe.) USA: United Slaves of America? Yes, for profit. This would not have happened in, say, France: millions would have got to the streets.
Even the Lords, in the Middle Ages, were not for profit. ”
Hello? Auto insurance? Flood insurance? Liability insurance? The government has mandated a number of private contractual relationships.
#Epic Fail
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October 31, 2013 at 5:03 pm |
j groth:
actually none of the above are mandated
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October 31, 2013 at 5:08 pm |
Hello Jerome The Excited:
1) You do not have to drive a car by law. It’s not mandated.
2) There is non profit auto insurance. Not just in the USA, but also in Europe.
Neither do you have to get flood or liability insurance. A fortiori not if you live in the desert, or your job is to sweep the floor.
Now, in Europe, systematically, by law there are “Mutuals” (French: mutuelles), that cover all possible insurance situations. They are non profit. Users just pool their resources. By law, one cannot force a free individual into a private contract.
Only taxes can be enforced. Hence the dodge of the USSC.
Germany and Switzerland have mandated insurance with NON PROFIT companies. The essence of the “Bismarck” system, more than 150 years old. The Obama people don’t speak German, and never got to that point in the translation.
Of course national health plans, are, like Medicare, public non profit. The only difference with Medicare is that they have the capability to negotiate prices with health care providers as they see fit.
It is not a coincidence that individuals have been forced into becoming slaves of private insurance companies. Why? Because the Franks made slavery unlawful in 650 CE. A millennium later, American colonists reintroduced it.
Then slavery was outlawed (again!) in December 1865. Yet this country apparently considers slavery a given.
It is understandable that a “black” man with a voodoo like cult following would have been chosen to reintroduce slavery… Again!
Learn about public versus private. A Res PUBLICA is not a res PRIVATA.
Some advice, if you want to achieve something epic: plug the brain first!
PA
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October 31, 2013 at 5:38 pm |
An amusing factor are the awkward lies of the highly embarrassed European allies and victims of the USA.
Why so embarrassed? Because most of them, the political parties and administrations in power are willing Washington pawns… in violation of their laws… And they knew it, they just had not been caught with their pants down. Now they have.
They have gone along with the surveillance since the early Cold War. Then the U.S. joined with its predominantly white Anglo-Saxon Christian allies – Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – the so-called “five eyes”, to create a world-wide electronic surveillance network called Echelon. At this point the nature of the spying changed.
Originally created to check on the Soviet Bloc and never officially acknowledged, Echelon and its spin-offs have increasingly become a tool for commercial and industrial espionage.
However the spying of the USA on European citizens is in violation of national laws in the EU. As the gig is up, France and Germany are pushing for EU wide legislation that would generalize Franco-German law in this respect.
PA
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October 31, 2013 at 7:38 pm |
ACA is not what is called “socialism” in Europe. ACA (Atrocious Care Act?) is just crony capitalism boosted by generalized slavery.
After calling insurance companies “bad apples”, for years Obama turned around, and said all Americans, by law, ought to eat these “bad apples”, which were, suddenly great.
No money, no turn. Lots of money: change we can believe.
PA
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