CIA Covert Operations and U.S. Interventions

 ‘Special thx go out to Frank Dorell and all who contributed to this documentary (Posted 19 Jan 2012)’.  

 

War on Whistleblowers (2015)

‘With President Obama’s commitment to transparency and the passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, there was hope that whistleblowers would finally have more protection and encouragement to speak up. But according to the film, times have never been worse for national security whistleblowers. Obama’s administration has attacked more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined (28 May 2015)’.

America in the Hindu Kush: Obama’s Secret Plan to Stay the Course

‘President Obama has secretly extended the U.S. role in Afghanistan despite earlier promises to wind down America’s longest war. According to the New York Times, Obama has signed a classified order that ensures U.S. troops will have a direct role in fighting. In addition, the order reportedly enables American jets, bombers and drones to bolster Afghan troops on combat missions. And, under certain circumstances, it would apparently authorize U.S. air-strikes to support Afghan military operations throughout the country. The decision contradicts Obama’s earlier announcement that the U.S. military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year. Afghanistan’s new president Ashraf Ghani has also backed an expanded U.S. military role. Ghani, who took office in September [2014], has also reportedly lifted limits on U.S. airstrikes and joint raids that his predecessor Hamid Karzai had put in place. We go to Kabul to speak with Dr. Hakim, a peace activist and physician who has provided humanitarian relief in Afghanistan for the last decade. We are also joined by Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, who has just returned from Afghanistan (24 November 2014)’.

 

Drones, Drones, and More Drones: John Oliver

‘The United States has launched a huge number of drone strikes under President Obama. It’s widely accepted and extremely terrifying (28 September 2014)’.

TRNN: U.S. Foreign Policy and Jihadi Terror

‘Obama’s ISIS Speech on Wednesday, 10 September 2014, is more US Foreign Policy that is “falling down forward” (9 Sep 2014)’.

The Associated Press‘ Darlene Superville relates that “President Barack Obama will begin laying out a strategy this week to defeat Islamic State militants in the Middle East, meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday [9 September] and giving a speech Wednesday, the eve of the 13th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Obama disclosed his plans during an interview broadcast Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press“. The Prez said this: “I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we’re going to deal with it and to have confidence that we’ll be able to deal with it”, at the White House upon his return from the NATO summit in Wales.[1]

For her part, Superville continues that at “Obama’s direction, the U.S. military has conducted more than 130 airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq in the past month. In retaliation, the group recently beheaded two American journalists it had been holding hostage in Syria, where the organization also operates. Lawmakers have pressed Obama to expand the airstrikes into Syria. He has resisted so far, but said he has asked his military advisers for options for pursuing the group there. In the interview, Obama said the U.S. would not go after the Islamic State group alone, but would operate as part of an international coalition and continue airstrikes to support ground efforts that would be carried out by Iraqi and Kurdish troops. At the NATO summit, the U.S. and nine allies agreed to take on the militants because of the threat they pose to member countries. Obama restated his opposition to sending U.S. ground troops to engage in direct combat with the militants, who have laid claim to large swaths of territory in Iraq, targeted religious and ethnic minority groups, and threatened U.S. personnel and interests in the region”.[2]

 

 

[1] Darlene Superville, “Obama says he’ll give speech Wednesday on plan to combat Islamic State militant organization” AP (07 Sept 2014). http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2014/09/07/obama-to-give-speech-wednesday-on-islamic-state.

[2] Darlene Superville, “Obama says he’ll give speech Wednesday”.

A New Leaker or Revealing Obama’s Secretive Activities

On Tuesday, 5 August 2014, RT reported that the ‘United States government has concluded that a new leaker has been supplying members of the media with classified documents, CNN reported on Tuesday [, 5 August]. Earlier that day, The Intercept published a new article based off of disclosures provided to them by an unnamed source pertaining to the US government’s use of watchlists to monitor known and suspected terrorists. Previously, The Intercept has worked closely with top-secret National Security Agency documents admittedly provided to journalists by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA. Tuesday’s leak, however, is of a document dated August 2013 — weeks after Snowden chose to identify himself as the source of the NSA leak and had already arrived in Moscow where he later received asylum and remains today”.[1]

On The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux disclose that these “documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush”.[2]

 

RT summarizes that “[a]ccording to the journalists’ report, more than 40 percent of the 680,000 individuals listed in the US Terrorist Screening Database shared with local police agencies, contractors and governments around the globe — or around 280,000 people — have ‘no recognized terrorist group affiliation’. Additionally, the documents reveal that the number of people barred from flying in the US — entrees on the infamous ‘no-fly list’ — has increased by 10-times since President Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009 to a total of around 47,000 . . . Tuesday’s Intercept story contains a trove of previously unreported details concerning the administering of federal watchlists and its massive expansion under the Obama administration. As of 2013, the website reported, the main terrorism database operated by the US contains more than 860,000 biometric files on 144,000 people, who are but a sliver of the 680,000 individuals on the lists”.[3]

Scahill and Devereaux, for their part, explain that the “classified documents were prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to international terrorism. Stamped “SECRET” and “NOFORN” (indicating they are not to be shared with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date. Among the revelations:

• The second-highest concentration of people designated as ‘known or suspected terrorists’ by the government is in Dearborn, Mich.—a city of 96,000 that has the largest percentage of Arab-American residents in the country.
• The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.
• The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract data to add to the watchlists”.

Going on to say that a “U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with watchlisting data told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. The government official told The Intercept that was a misinterpretation of the data. ‘The list has grown somewhat since that time, but is nowhere near the 1.5 million figure cited in recent news reports’, he said. He added that the statistics cited by the Associated Press do not just include nominations of individuals, but also bits of intelligence or biographical information obtained on watchlisted persons”.[4]

17 Jan 2014

 

 

[1] “US officials: New leaker compromised national security documents after Snowden” RT (05 August 2014). http://rt.com/usa/178232-us-national-security-leaker-snowden/.

[2] Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, “Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers” The Intercept (05 August 2014). https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/.

[3] “US officials: New leaker compromised national security documents after Snowden”.

[4] Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, “Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers”.

#BringBackOurGirls

 

‘The First Lady’s attempt to put the horror of some 200 school girls taken hostage by the terrorist organization Boko Haram in Nigeria into hashtag. The symbolic social media stunt FAILS and gets fierce feedbac (15 May 2014)’.

As days and nights go on without the 200-plus abducted Nigerian girls safely back in their homes, the international community is raising their virtual voices through various viral statements. “Bring back our girls,” director of a division in the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women ( UN Women), Gulden Turkoz-Cosslett, said . . .

And then are those who say that the whole thing is a scam, as related by the Nigerian journalist Samuel Agada: the ‘Founder of the now rested Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Alhaji Asari Dokubo has described the hullabaloo generated as a result of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls as a scam’.[1]

 

[1] Samuel Agada, ” No girls are missing, Chibok abduction is a scam – Asari Dokubo” Daily Post (08 May 2014). http://dailypost.ng/2014/05/08/girls-missing-chibok-abduction-scam-asari-dokubo/.

Obama’s State of the Union 2014

‘Watch PBS NewsHour coverage of President Obama’s 5th State of the Union. Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks will join Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill for the address to Congress, and the Republican response (28 Jan 2014)’.

About ‎China, President Obama said that “For the first time in over a decade, business leaders around the world have declared that China is no longer the world’s number one place to invest, America is”. And on ‎Afghanistan he stated the following: “While our relationship with Afghanistan will change, one thing will not: our resolve that terrorists do not launch attacks against our country”. Turning to more pressing affairs and Syria, the POTUS said that “[i]n Syria, we’ll support the opposition that rejects the agenda of terrorist networks”. Then turning eastward, Barrack Obama declared that “We are clear-eyed about Iran’s support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, which threaten our allies; and the mistrust between our nations cannot be wished away. But these negotiations do not rely on trust; any long-term deal we agree to must be based on verifiable action that convinces us and the international community that Iran is not building a nuclear bomb”.

In the Washington Post, Robert Costa and Paul Kane report that the “official Republican rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address was delivered by Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), the House GOP’s highest-ranking woman, who asserted that Obama was making it tougher for a lot of Americans. “Right now, the president’s policies are making people’s lives harder. Republicans have plans to close the gap,” she said”. Costa and Kane remark further that “[o]n health care, McMorris Rodgers said Republicans will continue to fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act [aka Obamacare], and she knocked the administration for the rocky rollout of the president’s signature law”.[1]

Continuing Costa and Kane state that “McMorris Rodgers spoke from a quiet room inside the Capitol, where she sat on a gold couch with an American flag, triangularly folded, displayed on a shelf behind her. Her manner was relaxed, her style straightforward and scripted. Over the past week, aides to McMorris Rodgers and other House GOP leaders have been busy promoting her, using her prominent perch as part of a counteroffensive to Democrats, who have aggressively criticized the party’s approach to women’s issues”.[2]

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[1] Robert Costa and Paul Kane, “Flurry of GOP responses to State of the Union address reflects party’s ideological rivalries” The Washington Post (28 Jan 2014). http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/multiple-gop-responses-to-state-of-the-union-are-they-a-sign-of-party-division/2014/01/28/0d1c68c0-883b-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html.

[2] Robert Costa and Paul Kane, “Flurry of GOP responses to State of the Union address reflects party’s”.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jody Williams: On Mines and Killer Robots

‘What was science fiction a couple of decades ago is now everyday reality. But it’s not only computers and smartphones — the progress has brought us new war machines — unmanned drones striking from the skies are no surprise for anyone today. But what has the progress of warfare prepared for us in the coming years? Today Sophie Shevardnadze speaks to Jody Williams, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning woman, who has fought against landmines — and won. Now she is on a crusade against the new deadly threat — killer robots (13 Jan 2014)’.

Listening Post – feature: Behind Dirty Wars

‘The Blackwater journalist, Jeremy Scahill, on drone strikes and America’s undeclared wars – or as he calls them, ‘dirty wars’ (01 Dec 2013)’.

Last October, Mediaite’s Matt Wilstein wrote that “Jeremy Scahill, best known for his national security reporting in The Nation and the recent documentary Dirty Wars, will be joining . . . Glenn Greenwald and the filmmaker Laura Poitras in their new journalism venture backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. In a new interview with the German show Jung & Naiv, Scahill revealed new details about the still nascent plans for the website. Scahill said that while he, Greenwald and Poitras have all worked for disparate news outlets, they have been discussing for some time a way to create a “place where we could do more quick response journalism, to put things out in more detail.” He clarified that the venture would be much more than a “blog” and instead described it as a “serious investigative journalism site” that will employ both “really exciting young journalists” and “veteran journalists . . . We all deal in the world of leaks. Someone leaked that we were doing this,” Scahill said of the initial reports. “I have no idea who it was. I’m not happy about it, but I don’t have the power to prosecute them like Obama does.” He cautioned that the project is still in the “strategic” stage and has a ways to go before it goes live. Greenwald and Poitras rose to a new level of prominence with the stories based off of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks over the past several months. While Scahill has not been as closely associated with that story, he has been an equally critical voice against President Obama’s foreign policy, speaking out against the drone program as well as the NSA’s surveillance tactics”.[1]

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[1] Matt Wilstein, “Jeremy Scahill Reveals New Details About Journalism Project with Glenn Greenwald” Mediaite (17 October 2013). http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jeremy-scahill-reveals-new-details-about-journalism-project-with-glenn-greenwald/.