When The S*** Hits the Fan

#CIA ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed 6,700 Page #Torture Report? #Snowden Calls Bullshit

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(ANTIMEDIA) The world’s most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden, took Twitter by storm when he created an account last year. Since, he has criticized everyone from the FBI to Google, so his latest post on the CIA should come as no surprise.

Commenting on revelations the CIA “inadvertently” destroyed a copy of the 6,700-page torture report, Snowden questioned the agency’s official story.

“I worked @CIA. I wrote the Emergency Destruction Plan for Geneva. When CIA destroys something, it’s never a mistake,” he tweeted Wednesday, openly challenging the CIA’s claim. He also shared an article detailing the news.

Snowden previously worked for the CIA and as an NSA contractor before leaking documents revealing the U.S. government’s extensive mass surveillance programs and subsequently fleeing the country. He has been an outspoken voice against government overreach and privacy issues ever since.

On Monday, Yahoo News reported on the CIA’s apparent fumble that inspired Snowden’s Wednesday tweet:

“The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it ‘mistakenly’ destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee was reportedly informed of the ‘mistake’ last summer, but it was never disclosed to the public, nor to the federal judge presiding over a Freedom of Information Act case seeking access to the lengthy document.

Douglas Cox, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law, who specializes in “tracking the preservation of federal records,” commented on the CIA’s self-described mistake. “It’s breathtaking that this could have happened, especially in the inspector general’s office — they’re the ones that are supposed to be providing accountability within the agency itself,” he said. “It makes you wonder what was going on over there.”

The clandestine organization came under fire for its use of torture after 9/11 (and before, though it’s lesser-known), as exposed by a Senate investigation in December 2014. Following embarrassing reports of everything from sexual assault and forced rectal feeding to beatings, sleep deprivation, and other degrading practices, the CIA has since tried to clean up its image. Amid presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s calls to implement waterboarding and more torture, in general, CIA Director John Brennan disavowed the agency’s infamous practice. “I will not agree to have any CIA officer carry out waterboarding again,” he said in April.

But the CIA has a track record of deception, and has had at least one issue with destroyed documents before — that time concerning records on the agency’s coup in Iran in 1953.

The 2014 Senate report “relied on the CIA’s own records to document a pattern of an agency consistently understating the brutality of the techniques used on detainees and overstating the value of the information they produced,” the Associated Press reported in 2014.

“This is a tremendous amount of CIA misrepresentation. It is difficult to read these pages and wonder whether a system of accountability can work,” Mother Jones observed, in a thorough article examining the many ways the CIA deceived lawmakers and multiple federal agencies about its torture program.

As Democratic Senator Mark Udall flatly said, “The CIA lied.”

No doubt, according to Snowden, the CIA continues to lie — and his tweet highlights growing mistrust of establishment narratives as Americans increasingly lose faith in government and other institutions.

Read Snowden’s recent article on political resistance here.

This article (CIA ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed 6,700 Page Torture Report? Snowden Calls Bullshit) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

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#Leaked Documents Could Spell End of the Road for #TTIP

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Michaela Whitton

May 5, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Amid mass speculation that a shock leak of documents could spell the end of the road for the toxic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP/TTP), even European leaders have begun distancing themselves from the much-hated deal. Angela Merkel has voiced strong opposition to the state of the negotiations, given that only a minority of Germans agree the E.U. should negotiate trade agreements on Germany’s behalf. At the same time, French president Francois Hollande has stated France will reject the partnership at this stage because the country is opposed to “unregulated” free trade.

According to campaign group, War on Want, the European Commission slapped a 30-year ban on public access to the negotiation texts back in 2013 — knowing they would not survive the outcry once the public glimpsed the extent of the deal. The group noted that in the past, campaigners called for a ‘Dracula strategy’ against the highly secretive trade agreement, knowing it would die when dragged into the light.

Seemingly, that is exactly what is happening. Responding to the leak earlier this week, Executive Director of War on Want, John Hilary wrote: “Today the door has been flung open and the first rays of sunlight shone on TTIP. The EU negotiators will never be able to crawl back into the shadows again.”

The huge leak of TTIP documents orchestrated by Greenpeace Netherlands spans 13 of the 17 chapters of the proposals. Greenpeace trade expert Jergen Knirsch told a Berlin news conference that the talks were made public to ignite a debate. Claiming the leak shows negotiations should be halted, Knirsch added, “The best thing the E.U. Commission can do is to say ‘Sorry, we’ve made a mistake’.”

Launched by Barack Obama in 2013, the first round of secret negotiations between the European Commission and U.S. officials took place in the same year. The most recent negotiations were held last week and it was reiterated that both sides hoped to reach a deal in the second half of the year.

In the past, officials have acknowledged the purpose of the treaty is not to stimulate trade by removing tariffs between the E.U. and the U.S., but to remove regulatory ‘barriers’ restricting the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of these ‘barriers’ are in fact, standards and environmental regulations including labour rights, food safety rules — including restrictions on GMOs — as well as regulations on the use of toxic chemicals, digital privacy laws, and banking safeguards.

As War on Want has said, the stakes could not be higher.

Subjects covered in the leaked 248 pages include E.U. food safety standards and include details of more specific threats, such as the United States’ plan to end Europe’s ban on genetically modified foods. The documents also reveal that U.S. corporations will be granted unprecedented powers over any public health or safety regulations introduced in the future.

More chillingly,  if European governments do bring in laws to raise standards, TTIP grants U.S. investors the right to sue for loss of profits in corporate court systems — which will be unavailable to domestic firms or governments.

Essentially, companies can sue governments but governments cannot sue companies.

The texts also uncover how the European Commission is paving the way to open up the economy to competition from giant U.S. corporations. Official statistics suggest at least a million jobs will be lost as a direct result of TTIP — and you can double that if the full deal goes through.

“Yet we can now see that EU negotiators are preparing to trade away whole sectors of our economies in TTIP, with no care for the human consequences,” Hilary wrote.

Adamant that the contempt shown by TTIP negotiators to Europeans is a potent reminder of the democratic deficit at the heart of E.U. institutions — particularly for those of in the thick of the E.U referendum — Hilary added:

“Today’s leak of the TTIP text leaves the leaders of the European Union with a choice. Either they abandon the TTIP negotiations immediately or they risk seeing the entire European project come crashing down about their ears. They have until 23 June to decide.”

This article (Leaked Documents Could Spell End of the Road for TTIP) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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#Obama Admin Denies Saying “No Boots on the Ground” in #Syria After Saying It 16 Times | #TRUMP

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Claire Bernish
April 29, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United States — What does a government do when it’s caught in a flagrant lie? If you are the U.S. government, you simply tell another lie — and laugh at anyone who tries to call out your hypocrisy.

Setting aside his oft-parroted no-boots-on-the-ground imperative, President Obama announced Monday the U.S. would be quintupling the number of special forces troops deployed to Syria to fight Daesh (the so-called Islamic State). In fact, the announcement was made later on the same day Obama claimed to have “ruled out” the deployment of ground troops.

Though this reneging on stated foreign policy has become somewhat par for the course, State Department spokesman John Kirby not only missed the hypocritical move, he flatly and bafflingly denied the Obama administration’s repeated claim there would be “no boots on the ground.”

In fact, instead of taking responsibility for initiating military maneuvers the public might find displeasing, the Obama administration has developed an apparent affinity for nitpicking semantics.

In a press conference, this farcical denial of reality reached stupefying proportions when Kirby was asked by an Associated Press reporter about this stark reversal of policy. All emphasis has been added to highlight the absurdities.

“I’m just curious if this is, like, part of some kind of devious grand strategy to say one thing and then do the complete opposite of it,” the reporter queried.

“I just — I don’t see it that way,” Kirby responded. “There was never this ‘no boots on the ground.’ I don’t know where this keeps coming from.”

Pressing the point, the reporter expounded, “For months and months and months, the mantra — from the President and … everyone else in the Administration — has been ‘no boots on the ground,’ and now —”

“That is not true,” Kirby interrupted.

“What?!” the reporter exclaimed — apparently as baffled as the rest of the press, heard murmuring in similar disbelief around the room.

“It’s just not true,” Kirby persisted, appearing almost smug, leaning on the podium. “It’s just not true.”

Of course, it is true — and Kirby’s semantic gymnastics to justify such a brazen lie added an Orwellian twist to the already Kafkaesque press conference. And that truth is written in black and white — even on the White House website, at least as far back as August 2013, when Obama stated:

“[I]n no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground; that would involve a long-term campaign.”

On August 31, 2013, Obama asserted from the Rose Garden:

“After careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets … We would not put boots on the ground.”

Then, on September 10, 2013 — once again, as found in print on the White House site — he reiterated:

“First, many of you have asked, won’t this put us on a slippery slope to another war?

“My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.”

On September 3, 2013, he again said:

“[The U.S. involvement in Syria] does not involve boots on the ground.”

September 9, 2013, brought the same statement from the president, in an interview with PBS Newshour:

“Tomorrow, I’ll speak to the American people. I’ll explain this is not Iraq; this is not Afghanistan; this is not even Libya. We’re talking about — not boots on the ground.”

Again, Obama repeated on September 7, 2014, as the Intercept noted:

“In Syria, the boots on the ground have to be Syrian.”

Though after the last statement, Obama’s characterization of ‘no boots on the ground’ began a subtle shift in language — evidencing mission creep — he sustained the narrative troops would not be deployed on the ground.

At the White House on February 11, 2015, reported USA Today, Obama remarked:

“The resolution we’ve submitted today does not call for the deployment of U.S. ground combat forces to Iraq or Syria.”

It’s arguable the United States populace could handle an honest statement outlining policy many may not agree with — such as the deployment of boots on the ground — if the plan were forthrightly presented.

But for Obama and other officials to repeatedly claim as much, and to then have the State Department act as if the people, themselves, have collectively lost their minds when pointing out the mendacious gaffe, is downright laughable — if not profoundly insulting.

It has become clear the United States mission to fight Daesh — with the secondary goal to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — will involve boots on the ground. But it’s questionable whether the Obama administration with ever manage to admit to as much.

This article (Obama Admin Denies Saying “No Boots on the Ground” in Syria After Saying It 16 Times) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Afghanistan Matters. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

The Video That Could Bring Down #Hillary #Clinton’s Campaign

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Claire Bernish
April 20, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) After New York’s stunningly disorganized and questionable primary results proved, yet again, our elections are rigged to ensure establishment darling Hillary Clinton garners the Democratic nomination, a new video from Abby Martin’s Empire Files could topple Clinton’s entire campaign.

Evidence of said rigging isn’t difficult to find — it’s written directly into the electoral process in superdelegates, whose 700 “unpledged” votes remain uncommitted to a candidate until the nomination. This is “to ensure nominees are hand-picked party insiders,” as Martin explains in the video.

“The single vote of a superdelegate is worth thousands of ours,” Martin notes. “Many of these people are current and former members of Congress, and dozens more are literally corporate lobbyists working on behalf of every industry from healthcare to private prisons.”

In fact, the employment of superdelegates was initiated precisely for situations when the people’s choice doesn’t align with the establishment’s — such as the current overwhelming popularity of Bernie Sanders.

But the web of corporate media executives and insiders contributing directly to Hillary Clinton’s campaign couldn’t possibly explain the extreme bias, lack of criticism, and virtual media blackout on Sanders’ success, right? And her campaign, dripping with corporate lobbying cash, wouldn’t concern the American voting public, even though lobbyists literally act as superdelegates — would it?

Watch Empire Files: Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents to see the proof the establishment doesn’t want you to discover.

This article (The Video That Could Bring Down Hillary Clinton’s Campaign) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Gage Skidmore. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team