Watch Scott Noble’s Counter Intelligence (full film)

Intro by Brasscheck TV

A detailed and fascinating authoritative history of the CIA. How it came to be, who started it, and what it really does.

Counter Intelligence I: The Company, a Scott Noble film, Metanoia-Films.org, (2012, 119 mins)

“National Security”… The justification for:

- sabotage
- assassination
- coups

Wait, Wait: Ohio law against lies meets 1st Amendment

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

Is a Supreme Court brief ever gut-splitting funny? It is when satirist P. J. O’Rourke writes it.

Having served as a paralegal for a couple decades, and later as a writer who follows Supreme Court decisions on food and other matters, like most of the public, I’ve found their rulings inordinately dry, even amid their life-changing effects. So, when a friend passed on a link to a Friend-of-the-Court (amicus) brief in a recent First Amendment case against an Ohio law that criminalizes political lies, I expected more snooze material.

I was delightedly wrong. O’Rourke, who’s often a guest on NPR’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me, was assisted in the amicus brief by the CATO Institute, which promotes “individual liberty, free markets, and limited government.”

Top Documentary Films picks up Vox Populi

By COTO Report

The online film site, Top Documentary Films, has picked up Vox Populi: Methods of Manipulation by COTO Report’s Megan ‘Verb’ Kargher.

USA’s Poison Values

By Robert C. Koehler
COTO Report

Poison gas is not only a “moral obscenity” — one the United States stockpiled for decades after its use was banned in warfare — but a metaphor for human recklessness and wasted science.

Like it or not, we’re forced to think about it these days, since it’s still an enticing pretext for war. And the more I think about it, the more I marvel at the persistent insanity of its existence. The “red line” that the so-called civilized world crossed over a century ago was not in the use of poison gas but in its creation, because it’s lethal whether it’s used or not. Attempting to get rid of it — by burying it, burning it, dumping it — has consequences almost as deadly as firing it off in battle.

Libya in Anarchy Two Years after NATO Humanitarian Liberation

By F. William Engdahl
Global Research

In 2011 when Muhammar Qaddafi refused to leave quietly as ruler of Libya, the Obama Administration, hiding behind the skirts of the French, launched a ferocious bombing campaign and a “No Fly” zone over the country to aid the so-called fighters for democracy.

The US lied to Russia and China with help of the (US-friendly) Gulf Cooperation Council about the Security Council Resolution on Libya and used it to illegally justify the war. The doctrine, “responsibility to protect” was used instead, the same doctrine Obama wants to use in Syria. It’s useful top look at Libya two years after the NATO humanitarian intervention.

Scientific consensus fetishism in climate politics

By Denis G. Rancourt

It pains me to have to write this. It would pain me more to let it go without some kind of a fight.

In this post, I pick up a recent “blowhard” peer-reviewed experts’ article [1] published by a most prestigious publisher and show that its two presumed-established starting assumptions — that global warming is directly perceivable in increasing extreme weather events, and that there is a scientific consensus on global warming — are at best groundless, and wrong, if the evidence matters at all.

HAARP goes under cover: Begich on Coast2Coast

By COTO Report

George Noory quickly covers several newsworthy items on his July 17 Coast to Coast radio show, including illegal license plate surveillance funded by DHS, India food poisoning linked to pesticide, Noory’s renewed “long-term” contract with Clear Channel, and of particular interest to COTO readers, a furlough for Alaska weather modification system, HAARP.  Noory interviews professor Nick Begich, author of Angels Don’t Play This HAARP.

This will save the military about $300,000 a month, says Begich, while they look for a private contractor to run the place. Because private contractors are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, “the real story is that they’re going deeper.”

Watch Counter-Intelligence: A 5-Film Series by Scott Noble

Written and Directed by Scott Noble
Narrated by Mikela Jay
Metanoia Films

From the director of Psywar and Human Resources comes a 5-film series covering the über police state created and developed by America’s secret government. Students of current events get a crash course in the dismantling of what these pathological rulers call quaint: the US Constitution.

Counter-Intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations includes original interviews with:

Bradley Manning Trial: Is Our Future an Orwellian Nightmare Or Information Anarchy?

By Drew Mendelson
Policy Mic

At its core, the ongoing military trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the admitted conveyer of three-quarters of a million classified U.S. government documents to Wikileaks, is about the evolution of big data into a relentless and almost certainly unstoppable social force. Pfc. Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst arrested in May 2010 and charged with 22 offenses involving the passing of information to Wikileaks, is seen by many as a whistleblower whose actions revealed mendacious covert actions of the U.S. government in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and elsewhere.

How to Keep Your Info Private (Even from the NSA)

By Dan Schointuch
Money Talk News

Thwarting the efforts of a billion-dollar super-secret government spy agency — or anyone else who wants access to your personal information — is not that difficult.

With the recent revelations that the NSA and other agencies have been tapping into corporate streams of data that can provide them with massive amounts of private information about U.S. citizens, now is a good time to start thinking about how best to keep your private information private.

Measuring Up As Men

By Volaar

“I call on men and boys everywhere to take a stand against the mistreatment of girls and women. It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.”  — Desmond Tutu, November, 2012

Not three months prior to Tutu’s statement, two teenage boys brutally assaulted, humiliated and traumatized a sixteen year old girl who was inebriated past the point of being able to take care of herself, let alone call for help from others.

To this very day, the victim’s family and the victim continue to receive death threats and threats of bodily harm from the victim’s teenage peers in the Ohio town of Steubenville, population under 19,000.

How Congress let Monsanto off the hook

By Michael Collins
COTO Report

Not many people like the messes Congress makes but everybody should see how they’re made.

This article takes a close look at the legislation just passed by Congress and signed by President Obama allowing the Secretary of Agriculture to issue executive orders that bypass regulations, safety, and science for the purpose of speeding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered seeds (GE) and crops to market.  The way the law is written, Secretary Tom Vilsack can lift restrictions on GMOs for a set period and, it appears, do so without hindrance from the courts.

The People Say Stop the XL Pipeline – Will Obama Listen? Does He Care?

By Michael Collins

(Washington, DC 1/17)  The nation’s capital hosted over 40,000 citizens assembled to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  The crowd urged President Obama to bring to reality his lofty words on climate change in the inaugural address just days ago.  By stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the president would deal a blow to the rogue energy companies who, by their actions, are ready to sacrifice everything to transport oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands, across the United States, for refinement in Houston, Texas and shipment to China.

The broader concern of the gathered citizens and march sponsors, 350.org, and the Sierra Club, represents the existential issue of our time.  We need to get very real, very soon on the manifest threat to the earth’s climate posed by fossil fuels and the threat to the human species embodied by insane ventures like the Canadian tar sands project.  The verdict of science is clear.  As leading climate scientist James E. Hansen said, the full exploitation of tar sands oil and use by China, or any nation, is “game over for the climate.”

Gary Webb: An American Hero

By Volaar

Eight years ago, December 10, 2004, respected and award-winning investigative journalist Gary Webb was murdered by a conspiracy of an apathetic citizenry, corporate malfeasance and government corruption.  The Sacramento County coroner, Robert Lyons, publically, if hastily, characterized the gunshot wounds in Gary Webb’s head three times before finally ruling the double-gunshot wound to Webb’s face a “suicide,” noting the use of a .38 caliber revolver, the presence of a suicide note and Webb’s close friend and ex-wife, Sue Bell, claiming that Gary, “had been depressed about being unable to obtain employment from another major newspaper for some time.” The San Jose Mercury News, on orders from “on high,” had terminated Gary Webb’s career progression after they claimed they had discovered errors in trivial matters of fact in his career-capping exposé, “A Dark Alliance” (ADA).

Hurricane Sandy and What Heals Hurts

By Betsy L. Angert

Human beings are a fascinating bunch.  We gather information through observation, and the reading of facts, figures, and formulas.  We draw inferences and deduce. Granted conversations too play a role in what we conclude; however, mostly humans rely on the readable. What we cannot see is thought less significant.  Take Hurricane Sandy for example.

Meteorologists  saw the signs.  Citizens, who merely glanced at the papers understood what was visible in print; Sharp Warnings as Hurricane Churns Inc People began to do as people do when warned of an impending storm. They prepare for the worse.  Individuals and families evacuated the area.  Transit Authorities shutdown the system.  Cities and counties hunkered down.

Now, after the tempest took its toll, young ones do as the adults had done. An eight-grader’s account  looks at what appears on the surface. As do most, she too attends to material concerns.  Rarely, do we know what else to do. Society and school curriculums that reflect a standardized surface reality do not give us the critical thinking tools needed to assist persons who have experienced an emotional trauma.  Today, we have one. We have Psychological First Aid. This relief is not as a “kit” filled with bandages, cotton balls and antiseptic; nor is a box full of funds or quick-fix tricks. No, this Aid is much like cake you bake or the casserole you might make for family or friends in distress.  Either is a gift of love.  Each opens the door for conversations that reveal feelings.  So what is this Aid?

Election Fraud, November 6 – Watch for Vote Flipping and Fixed Exit Polls

By Michael Collins

(Washington, DC) Our elections are officially privatized.  They are hidden from our view by design.

On November 6, your votes will be cast and tallied on voting machines manufactured and serviced by private companies.  The computerized voting machines run on software that is closely held as a trade secret by these companies.  Our elections officials are barred from examining the most important aspects of the software.  Why?  Because those same officials signed away our right to open access and inspection of the voting systems that tell us who won and who lost each and every election.  (Image: WikiCommons)

This is the most profound election fraud imaginable.  It affects every citizen, all 311 million of us.

Rigged Elections for Romney

By Michael Collins

A group of independent researchers caught a pattern of apparent vote flipping during the 2012 Republican primaries that consistently favored Mitt Romney. A form of election fraud, vote flipping occurs when votes are changed from one candidate to another or several others during electronic voting and vote tabulation.  (Image:  Dean  Terry)

Vote flipping is difficult to detect because the vote totals remain the same for each precinct. In one of several possible scenarios, an instruction is given to a precinct level voting machine or to a county-level central tabulator. The corrupted totals from precincts are sent from county election officials to state elections board and published as final results. (Primary documents for this article: Republican Primary Election 2012 Results: Amazing Statistical Anomalies, August 13, 2012and2008/2012 Election Anomalies, Results, Analysis and Concerns, September 2012).

Just One More Thing….

By Volaar

I understand that Native Americans resent our imperial relish over Christopher Columbus’ discovery of what he wanted his padrones to believe was Asia; I also understand that we, an imperial army of herded sheep, ran the ancestors of our indigenous people into near-extinction by being more in number, racked by pestilences of flesh and blood too putrid to be considered wholly human and by being less conscious of our surroundings and more willing to commit atrocities for the sake of putting one in the “W” column.  Thanks for pulling us through those first couple of Winters, gang.

The Innocence of U.S. Foreign Policy

 

By Robert C. Koehler
COTO Report

The Saturday headline in the Wall Street Journal was: “Anti-U.S. Mobs on Rampage.”

The next day, a NATO airstrike killed eight women collecting firewood in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, an event that garnered virtually zero mainstream U.S. headlines.

Somewhere in the gap between these two phenomena — the overheated news about our violent, irrational enemies in the Middle East and the silence surrounding our war and occupation of the region — lies American politics, values, the presidential race, the national identity. Beyond that gap lies the truth about who we are, and only when we have access to it does the future turn into creative possibility and peace become possible.

Totalitarianism in the US: An Accident Waiting to Happen

By Numerian
First appeared in The Agonist

Listening to Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention, I couldn’t place where I had come across something quite like this before. Then it struck me – Pravda! I used to subscribe to Pravda in high school and college, first to learn Russian, and second, to pursue a college program in Soviet studies. Pravda was a newspaper that specialized in the Big Lie – the Five Year Plan was always ahead of schedule, Soviet industrial capabilities exceeded that of any other country, people were starving on streets all across America. The newspaper was a non-stop stream of lies, just as Paul Ryan’s speech was studded with Big Lies – lies that were easily disprovable, such as Barack Obama did nothing about the Simpson-Bowles recommendations to reduce the budget deficit (Paul Ryan didn’t mention he voted against these recommendations when the House killed any chance of enacting them); or that Obama made it easier for people to live off welfare (the President altered the enrollment rules of welfare at the request of Republican governors); or the Romney favorite – Obama cut over $700 billion of Medicare benefits for individuals (the cuts were imposed on hospitals and insurance companies, not beneficiaries, and Romney has the same cuts in his economic plan). (Image: Wikipedia)