Turn Over That Rock And See What Crawls Out: #NSA & #AuditPentagon

Two events in truth revelation are dominating the news this week. The news Glenn Greenwald has promised from the Edward Snowden leaks will reveal who (could it be you?) the NSA has been spying upon. That one will happen, because it is citizen journalists like Laura Poitras and Greenwald who have been making NSA revelations happen all along.

The other attempt to turn over a rock and see what's crawling around under it will be a long haul: the call to audit the Pentagon. Never mind that it's supposed to be happening already since all government agencies that exist on the taxpayers' dime are supposed to account for their use of those funds. Never mind that hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake, well over half the budget Congress decides how to spend each year. 

The Burgess-Lee amendment to the whopping $600.7 billion FY15 Pentagon budget bill called for an audit; the amendment passed in the House, but it still must face the U.S. Senate, that billionaire's club of fat cats who take massive campaign donations from Pentagon contractors.

President Obama said in his annual speech at the West Point graduation ceremony for the empire's future warlords, "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being."

Word to Obama: the exceptionalism is all in the minds of your neoliberal speech writers. Every empire on this planet faltered and declined, mostly due to hubris, and largely due to overspending on wars. There is nothing exceptional about losing the consent of the governed, or about experiencing the karmic backlash from your own bad decisions.

Meanwhile, here's a longitudinal study that turned up some truth: boosting public school funding by 20% (pocket change to the Pentagon) appears to make a dramatic difference in outcomes for students from low income communities. Libby Nelson at Vox.com reported:

Additional money spent educating a child from a poor family made that child more likely to graduate high school, less likely to fall into poverty as an adult and more likely to complete an additional year of education, public policy researchers from Northwestern University and the University of California-Berkeley found.

The fact that the wealthiest country in the world spends so meagerly on children and education is what makes the U.S. truly exceptional. And not in a good way. 

Our child development index does not even place in the top ten. Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, the U.K. and Netherlands do, while spending a mere fraction of their national revenue funding a military. How's that for some truth?

"They Would Love To Put A Bullet In My Head" Snowden Interview Blacked Out In U.S. Media

CODEPINK's Alli McCracken in action at congressional intel hearings in Washington DC last week.

"They would love to put a bullet in my head," says Edward Snowden, repeating statements made by U.S. government officials in a BuzzFeed interview about his leaks on the doings of the NSA.

It has also been reported that each time the interview with Snowden by a Germany's Channel NDR pops up on YouTube, it is taken right down again. Nor were the contents of the interview reported in the U.S. corporate media, despite the fact that what he discusses is of grave concern to us all. Or perhaps because of that fact.

Do you think the powers that be are worried about gamers finding out the NSA hacked user data on games, like Angry Birds? You will be hard pressed to find any report of it in the U.S. mainstream media, though it's all over English language media elsewhere. Here, via Russia Today, is evidence of the reaction of Angry Hackers to that news:

Meanwhile, during the appearance of U.S. spy chiefs before Congress last week, Senators Susan Collins and Barbara Mikulski took the the opportunity for some Snowden-bashing. Because his leaks have scared the wits out of those in charge of what our vast and lumbering empire likes to think are its "intelligence" capabilities.

Claiming Snowden did "great damage" to the U.S. by sharing information about the NSA with the people who pay for it, Sen. Collins did not come off as particularly well-informed -- she called Snowden "Edwin" instead of Edward (Mikulski called him "Eric").

Here's the 30 minute interview (it's in English) as shared on the website LiveLeak.

#BecauseofBradleyManning We Know Truth Telling Is Dangerous #FreeBrad

The U.S. government and its corporate masters lashed out (again) at young soldier Bradley Manning today, with court martial Judge Denise Lind handing down a sentence of 35 years. He's already been detained for 1,294 days, and tormented plenty, but none of his punishment can change the fact that the information Manning provided changed history forever.

Keeping Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under house arrest at Ecuador's embassy in London will not halt the changes already underway. Information wants to be free, and Assange already helped Manning free a lot of it; historians thank them both.

Similarly, hours of airport detention of journalist Laura Poitras or of David Miranda, working as a courier between Poirtras and his partner, journalist Glenn Greenwald, cannot change the fact that the information they shared from NSA leaker Edward Snowden has changed history.

And will continue to do so.

Governments may fulminate, threaten, and symbolically smash hard drives containing leaked material (do they even know how digital information works? one has to wonder). They may ground airplanes hoping the faint of heart will cower before them, but real journalists respond by becoming even more determined to see that the truth gets out.

"I believe the public has a right to know"
—Alexa O'Brien, journalist and unofficial civilian transcriber of the Bradley Manning trial

Here's something to know: NSA surveillance now in place can monitor about 75% of all Internet activity, as reported by mainstream news organization Reuters here.

Here's something else to know: the NSA is funded from the Pentagon budget, which gobbled up about 57% of the federal budget for 2013 and looks to do the same for 2014.

A place governments historically run into trouble is that they don't believe the public has a right to know, but they still insist that the public pay for what they can't know about. Like war crimes and dragnet spying, to give just two examples.

Tax revolt anyone?

Source: http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor/upload/5385/images/manningmm.jpg

Update: Manning has since admitted that he leaked the Collateral Murder video of war crimes in Iraq.

Stop Buying Spying! Fund Human Needs Instead

I just watched this video on the revolving door between national "security" posts in government, and highly lucrative posts in the for-profit sector that contracts with said government officials to do their unconstitutional dragnet spying.



Booz Allen Hamilton is, of course, just one of the many contractors feeding at the Pentagon trough. One remembers, for instance, DynCorp, which used taxpayer funds to hire underage dancing boys to entertain warlords in Afghanistan. Or Haliburton, which took taxpayer funds and failed to rebuild critical infrastructure in Iraq. I could keep going (Blackwater/Xe anyone?) but instead, I'd like to take a look at what we could have bought instead of all this corruption, graft and death-dealing.

It appears that Congress is going to ignore the sequester and give the boys at the Pentagon even more money than the Obama administration asked for in its fiscal year 2014 budget request, but let's use that lowball figure for now until we know just how enormous the final Dept. of "Defense" tab will be for next year.

For the $527 billion requested for the Pentagon -- which includes about $10 billion for Booz spying programs -- we could instead have a year's worth of all this:

ALL* U.S. households could be fitted with renewable solar-photovoltaic power
AND
50 million children from low-income families could receive health care
AND
5 million low-income adults could receive health care
AND

10 million preschoolers from low-income homes could be in Head Start

AND

1 million elementary school teachers could be employed

AND

7 million university students could receive one year scholarships

AND

1 million military veterans could receive V.A. benefits.

*114,761,359 households per the U.S. Census 2007-2011.

Source: the very excellent federal budget website NationalPriorities.org, where Interactive Data-Trade Offs looks at spending by state or congressional district, and allows citizens to see how many human needs that money could be supporting.

I view this information in light of news such as: Philadelphia is proposing to open its schools this fall so under-funded that parents are threatening a citywide boycott due to safety concerns. $50 million (instead of the $180 million barebones budget request) is all that is being offered for their K-12 education budget. NSA snoopers, listen up: I WANT MY TAXES SPENT ON EDUCATION, NOT ON SPYING AND PEOPLE DYING.

Upset yet? For action tools, visit CODEPINK's Bring Our War $$ Home campaign page. Join us in demanding that the federal government stop buying killing and spying, and start buying things people really want instead.

Spying Budget Secrets: #NSA Bloat In Pentagon Spending

More $$ for NSA contractors, sequester for the rest of us is the message emanating from our captive government. "Defense" and "security" spending ballooned after the events of 9/11 crashed into the national consciousness, and much of what continues to be funded by U.S. taxpayers is allegedly too secret to even talk about.

The budget we can see allocated 57% of federal discretionary spending to the Pentagon last year, and proposes to do so again in fiscal year 2014. The $598+ billion the House has already authorized for the coming year exceeded the sequester limit and included billions for the NSA (the precise figure is too secret to tell you, but experts estimate it's at least $10 billion per annum).

How does the NSA spend that money to keep us all safer? Edmund Snowden via the Guardian and Wikileaks pulled back the curtain to reveal that the man hiding there was collecting all our emails, all our cell phone calls, and much of our other online activity, then storing it for future searching. Without probable cause, without oversight, and while claiming that 100% of such communications are "relevant" to protecting the U.S. from acts of terrorism.

But not to worry. Forced into some kind of response by the outcry over dragnet surveillance of all citizens and indeed everyone on the planet who is online, the President announced an oversight committee. To be headed by an industry insider from leading security contractor Booz Allen Hamilton! More on them in a minute.

The government is so angry at Snowden for exposing these vastly disturbing secrets that it threatened him and anyone who helped him with all kinds of dire consequences.

So I'm taking my life in my hands by revealing some related secrets about where taxes actually go after the government snatches them from a worker's paycheck. Just for reference, that's where 80% of U.S. tax revenues come from. Certainly not from the mega corporations who employ tax experts and lawyers to make sure they pay nothing, even in years with record profits.

A great deal of the Pentagon portion of national security is contracted out. The poster child for this practice would have to be Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton.

Here's an illuminating Business Week infographic on how much in public funds Booz has been guzzling in the decade since 9/11.

That's a lot of information, but here's the bit that jumped out at me: 99% of Booz revenue in fiscal year 2013 came from the federal government.  That's 99% of $5.8 billion. Which is $5,742,000,000 just for a year.

What else would $5,742,000,000 buy? More than 800,000 low-income preschoolers could attend Head Start for a year. More than 2.5 million homes could be outfitted with solar powered electricity. And so on.

A budget is a moral document. And the U.S. is going to hell in a handbasket.

Truth Leaking Through All Over The Place

source: The Young Turks

Bombshell news of the week that the National "Security"Admistration (NSA) had successfully accessed all the calling and browsing records of all the customers of Verizon, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, Skype,YouTube, PalTalk and Apple for years -- under a top secret program called PRISM the corporations deny any knowledge of -- surprised some citizens less than others.

If you woke up to realize that you lived under government of, by and for corporations would you really still think that civil liberties for mere people were intact?

I still use all of those corporate services to connect with others concerned about the state of our world, and to share information. It occurred to me years ago that the powers that be allowed me access to these nifty tools for networking and research because those same tools made it so convenient for their surveillance of me.

Since I have nothing to hide and I'm proud of being willing to dissent and to organize resistance, I go along with the plan -- until the day my corporate government shuts down the Internet, and disaffected citizens go to the streets and stay there. (Maybe I should start right now raising carrier pigeons?)

Some of the other truths worthy of notice that leaked into my view this week:

Anonymous responded by leaking a bunch of NSA documents "including seriously important stuff like the US Department of Defense's 'Strategic Vision' for controlling the internet" according to Chris Mills on Gizmodo.

The New York Times published a side by side comparison of the food warning labels and ingredient disclosures of staple comfort food Kraft mac & cheese. According to food watchdog website Food Babe, buyers in the UK see these warnings that buyers in the USA do not:

Warning #1: This Product May Cause Adverse Effects On Activity And Attention In Children (This warning label is required because The US version of Kraft Mac & Cheese has artificial food dyes yellow #5 and yellow #6 which are proven to be linked to hyperactivity in children.) 

Warning #2: GMO Declaration: Made from genetically modified wheat. (May contain GMO) (This warning label is required because the US version of Kraft Mac & Cheese contains GMOs.)

The Environmental "Protection" Agency (EPA) drastically reduced protections to be offered in case of radioactive release events. According to a Reader Supported News article on the EPA's Protective Action Guides (PAG):

The new PAGs eliminate requirements to evacuate people in the face of high projected thyroid, skin, or lifetime whole body doses; recommend dumping radioactive waste in municipal garbage dumps not designed for such waste; propose five options for drinking water, which would dramatically increase the permitted concentrations of radioactivity in drinking water, by as much as 27,000 times, compared to EPA's current Safe Drinking Water Act limits; and suggest markedly relaxing long-term cleanup standards. 

"In essence the government is now saying nuclear power accidents could produce such widespread contamination and produce such high radiation levels that the government should abandon efforts to clean it up and instead force people to live with radiation-induced cancer risks orders of magnitude higher than ever considered acceptable," said Daniel Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap.

This news saddened but also failed to surprise me because of 1) the tepid response of the corporate controlled Japanese government in response to the continuously unfolding nuclear pollution disaster at Fukushima (of an earthquake damaged reactor built by mega corporation General Electric) and 2) the non-existent response of the corporate controlled U.S. government to the continuously unfolding nuclear pollution disaster in New Mexico on tribal territory of the Navajo nation. The uncontained effect of years of radioactive groundwater on the nation's -- and the planet's -- wheat supply was ably chronicled this week by Dr. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese in "America's Secret Fukushima Poisoning the Breadbasket of the World."

Kevin and Margaret are two of the folks I will be training my carrier pigeons to stay in contact with when the Dept. of "Defense" or some other entity shuts down my online access. For now, their news website is on my often-read list: PopularResistance.org.