Obama's Intelligence Agenda: More of the Same from the "Change Administration"

[Paul Rigby]

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10948

Obama's Intelligence Agenda: More of the Same from the "Change Administration"

By Tom Burghardt

Global Research, November 14, 2008

Antifascist Calling

While expectations may be high that the incoming Obama administration will reverse many of the worst features of the Bush regime--from warrantless wiretapping, illegal detention, torture, "targeted assassinations" and preemptive war--now that the cheering has stopped, expect more of the same.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party."
With hyperbolic "change" rhetoric in the air, Obama is relying on a gaggle of former intelligence insiders, warmed-over Clinton administration officials and "moderate" Republicans, many of whom helped Bush craft his administration's illegal policies.

With U.S. street cred at an all-time low, due in no small measure to Washington's hubristic fantasies that it really is an empire and not a rapidly decaying failed state, ruling elites have literally banked on Obama to deliver the goods.

During his run for the White House, the Illinois senator may have mildly criticized some of the administration's so-called "counterterrorism" policies including the Bushist penchant for secrecy, the disappearance of "terrorist" suspects, driftnet surveillance of American citizens and legal residents, CIA "black site" gulags and the crushing of domestic dissent.

But in the few scant days since the November 4 general election, the contours of what Democratic party corporatist grifters will roll-out come January 20 are taking shape. Citing Obama's carefully-crafted public relations blitz on the campaign trail opposing illegal spying, the Journal reports:

Yet he ... voted for a White House-backed law to expand eavesdropping powers for the National Security Agency. Mr. Obama said he opposed providing legal immunity to telecommunications companies that aided warrantless surveillance, but ultimately voted for the bill, which included an immunity provision.

The new president could take a similar approach to revising the rules for CIA interrogations, said one current government official familiar with the transition. Upon review, Mr. Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight. (Siobhan Gorman, "Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact," The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2008)

The "current government official" cited by the Journal fails to specify precisely what it means to "keep the road open" when it comes to torturing prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Considering that top Bush administration officials "repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency," as ABC News reported back in April, and that "high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed ... some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed--down to the number of times CIA agents would use a specific tactic," one is left to ponder what "much greater oversight" would actually mean.

Perhaps such "oversight" entails a cosmetic shake-up at the top rungs of U.S. intelligence agencies? The Washington Post reports that "The nation's top two intelligence officers expect to be replaced by President-elect Barack Obama early in his administration, according to senior intelligence officials."

But would the replacement of Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, a former admiral who oversaw spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporate contracts with the "intelligence community," and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, an Air Force general who implemented Bushist warrantless wiretapping programs while NSA Director, represent "change" or continuity?

While some Democrats may oppose retaining America's top spooks because of their public support of Bushist policies, "other Democrats and many intelligence experts," according to the Post "give high marks to the current cadre of intelligence leaders, crediting them with restoring stability and professionalism to a community rocked by multiple scandals in recent years."

With a subtext arguing in favor of retaining McConnell and Hayden, Post journalists Walter Pincus (who has a dubious history of collaboration with the CIA as researchers Daniel Brandt and Steve Badrich note) and Karen DeYoung, cite unnamed "intelligence officials" who think their early departure "could be seen as politicizing their offices and setting a precedent for automatic turnover when the White House changes hands."

Hilariously (though I'm not laughing), Pincus and DeYoung cite the case of Bush's retention of George J. Tenet as CIA Director as a "stabilizing move," one viewed favorably within the Agency. Tenet, a Clinton appointee and political insider was a primary architect of intelligence forgeries, along with Bushist minions in the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President when "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy," prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

According to the Post, both men have expressed interest in keeping their perches atop the U.S. "intelligence community." And why wouldn't they? According to Secrecy News the October 28 release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that the 2008 budget for the National Intelligence Program amounted to $47.5 billion, not counting an additional $10 billion in spending on the Pentagon's Military Intelligence Program.

It should be kept in mind the $57.5 billion doesn't include the Pentagon and other intelligence agency's "black budget" for undisclosed programs and "special operations" hidden within ultra-secretive "special access programs" (SAPs) kept off the books. According to defense and security analyst William M. Arkin,

There are also additional categories "above" Top Secret called "special access programs" that are used to protect presidential, military, intelligence, anti-terrorism, counter-drug, special operations, and "sensitive activities," as well as classified research and development efforts where it is deemed that extraordinary secrecy is needed to protect capabilities and vulnerabilities. Special access programs are regulated by statute and are defined as deliberately designated programs where "need-to-know" or access controls beyond those normally provided to classified information are created. The clearance and access requirements are identical to, or exceed, those required for access to sensitive compartmented information, and SAPs require special (and expensive) security, access, and communications measures. (William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World, Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p.18)

Additionally, we have no way of determining what other secret slush funds are available to the "intelligence community" from a welter of illegal ventures such as the laundering of illicit funds by CIA intelligence assets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Balkans, Colombia and Mexico. Derived from the international narcotics trade and "cleansed" as they pass through a series of off-shore banks and U.S. financial institutions, far-right narcotrafficking assets involved in the murder of trade unionists, journalists, leftist opponents or indeed, the 9/11 attacks which kick-started America's "war on terror," are readily available for planetary-wide U.S. "special operations."

The Obama intelligence transition team is led by former National Counterterrorism chief John Brennan and former CIA intelligence analysis director Jami Miscik, according to the Journal. But what the Journal fails to mention however, is that Brennan was a former president and CEO of the The Analysis Corporation (TAC) and the first chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), as investigative journalist Tim Shorrock reported in his essential book, Spies For Hire.

Much of TAC's business is with with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) where Brennan worked for three years. As Shorrock points outs, "In fact, the NCTC is one of the company's largest customers, and TAC provides counterterrorism support to 'most of the agencies within the Intelligence Community,' according to a company press release."

During the 1990s, TAC developed the U.S. government's first terrorist database, called Tipoff, for the State Department. In 2003, management of the database was transferred to the NCTC which Brennan managed. By 2005 Tipoff had morphed into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), the mother of all federal counterterrorism databases and the "wellspring" for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates world-wide. According to Shorrock, in 2005 TAC won a $2.3 million contract in partnership with CACI International "to integrate information from the Defense Intelligence Agency into the TIDE database."

INSA, according to Shorrock is one of three "business associations representing intelligence contractors" and the "one with the closet ties to the government," which "primarily represents contractors working for the NSA and the CIA." And SourceWatch reports that among INSA's leading members can be found such corporate heavy-hitters as the scandal-plagued BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Computer Science Corporation, General Dynamics, Hewlett-Packard Company, Lockheed Martin, ManTech International Corporation, Microsoft and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Indeed, current DNI Mike McConnell, was INSA chairman between 2005-2007 before heading up the Office of National Intelligence.

According the The Washington Post, Brennan "is one of several names that have surfaced, including Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), as possible replacements for McConnell or Hayden." One can almost hear the clink of glasses amid popping corks in corporate suites across Virginia and Washington!

What do we know about Jami Miscik, Obama's other intelligence transition team leader? According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Miscik "served as Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration from 1995 to 1996." In the run up to the Iraq war, Miscik played a key role in concocting fake intelligence about Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" and "links" to al Qaeda that were used by the Bush administration to sell the war to the American people. During this period, as head of the CIA's analytical division she suppressed reports from Company analysts that rejected Bushist claims as unfounded.

More recently, Miscik was "the Global Head of Sovereign Risk at Lehman Brothers" according to the CFR. "In this capacity," Miscik's biographers write with a straight face, "she assesses geopolitical and economic risks for the firm's senior management and clients." But with the multi-billion dollar collapse of Lehman Brothers amid allegations of massive fraud and management corruption, the failed firm is now under investigation for dodgy "structured products" and "mini-bonds." One can only wonder what advice the incoming Obama administration would seek from Miscik or indeed from CFR!

Once the Obama team is in place come January 20, will the crimes of the Bush regime be investigated by Congress or will gross criminality be prosecuted by a new team at the Department of Justice? Don't hold your breath.

The Washington Post reports that while "political considerations affected every crevice of the department during the Bush years," Ron Klain, Al Gore's former chief of staff who now occupies that position for Vice President-elect Joe Biden, dismissed calls to overhaul the Department and compared "preelection brainstorming sessions of Democrats" to "an escalating composition of woes." Post reporter Carrie Johnson writes,

Obama will have to do a careful balancing act. At a conference in Washington this week, former department criminal division chief Robert S. Litt asked that the new administration avoid fighting old battles that could be perceived as vindictive, such as seeking to prosecute government officials involved in decisions about interrogation and the gathering of domestic intelligence. Human rights groups have called for such investigations, as has House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

"It would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time calling people up to Congress or in front of grand juries," Litt said. "It would really spend a lot of the bipartisan capital Obama managed to build up." (Carrie Johnson, "Obama Team Face Major Task in Justice Dept. Overhaul," The Washington Post, November 13, 2008)

But as we've come to expect from the corporate media, Johnson failed to investigate Litt's own conflicts of interest when it comes to probing Bushist crimes by CIA and other intelligence officials. As Glenn Greenwald observes, "This brazen defense of lawlessness articulated by Litt is now as close to a unanimous, bipartisan consensus across the political establishment as it gets."

Indeed, Litt's argument in favor of impunity for mass murder, torture and lawless spying by high political officials, particularly the President and those closet to him such as Vice President Richard Cheney, mean they literally are exempt from the rule of law.

Greenwald reports that during his tenure at the Justice Department as the head of the criminal division under Bill Clinton, Litt

...spent much of his career as a federal prosecutor, aggressively prosecuting and imprisoning all sorts of ordinary Americans. He was one of the most vocal advocates for prohibiting government-proof encryption technology in order to preserve the Government's ability to access people's computer communications as part of criminal investigations, and was part of a Clinton DOJ that very aggressively pursued even garden-variety drug cases and used mandatory sentencing guidelines to ensure harsher sentences for common criminals. (Glenn Greenwald, "Post-Partisan Harmony vs. the Rule of Law, Salon, November 13, 2008)

While prosecuting and imprisoning low-level drug offenders and the poor is an absolute moral obligation for Litt and his ilk, hauling lawbreaking corporate and political clients before a court of law, like the impeachment of felons occupying high-office, is "off the table." Greenwald points out that as a partner at Arnold & Porter, an "up-armored" corporate legal behemoth, the company brazenly announced on Litt's Arnold & Porter page that he represented several employees of intelligence agencies "in connection with criminal investigations. None has been charged."

While the Post may depict him as an objective analyst, Litt is no more than a shill for well-heeled, "covered" clients. Indeed, if he represents CIA, NSA or White House officials involved in illegal intelligence and surveillance programs Greenwald writes, "that obviously motivates his insistence that investigations not be pursued." And so it goes...

Memo to Obama supporters: the new product roll-out is a smashing success, "change" has come to Washington, the corporate grift continues. Any questions?

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily and Pacific Free Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

[Magda Hassan]

Looks like they're already talking 'smooth transition' in other words - no change Status quo forever. So much for the 'Change we can believe in' mantra BS. Obama is just standing quietly by letting all these criminals get away with the looting. Have they got his wife and kids hostage or what?

[Peter Lemkin]

It is not a surprise and is disappointing, but the most important factor here is how the US Public will react - as they were expecting a modicum of real change. If they don't get it - perhaps both the Republican AND the Democratic Party are finished. I will happily dance on both of their graves! I wonder who will be head of the various intelligence agencies, and if he'll change the status of such things as the JFK Records Act et al.; investigate any assassinations etc. I would imagine the man, while intelligent, is not fully up to speed on the Deep Political Cabal [though he does seem to understand how at least MLK was done-in!] and now 'they' are whispering sweet lies and nothings into his ears, and showing him fake (or selected!) documents and intelligence reports in order to move him to their position. He never was in an opposition camp. But all that said, neither was JFK when he took office. People can be changed by events - they can grow and wake-up. We will see. Nothing was ever given by those at the top - it was always won hard-fought by those on the bottom forcing the change. Americans are lazy and have no idea what constitutes participation in a democracy - voting in semi-rigged elections every 4 years certainly doesn't quality.

[Myra Bronstein]

Looks like they're already talking 'smooth transition' in other words - no change Status quo forever. So much for the 'Change we can believe in' mantra BS. Obama is just standing quietly by letting all these criminals get away with the looting. Have they got his wife and kids hostage or what?

Exactly.

"When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign."

Naomi Klein (http://www.alternet.org/workplace/107000/wall_street%27s_bailout_is_a_trillion-dollar_crime_scene_--_why_aren%27t_the_dems_doing_something_about_it_/?page=2)

Presumably he made a deal with the devil to get in the history books. The nation's first African American president. Hooray.

[Paul Rigby]

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10948

Obama's Intelligence Agenda: More of the Same from the "Change Administration"

By Tom Burghardt

Global Research, November 14, 2008

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10960

Obama transition points to more war and repression

by Bill Van Auken

Global Research, November 14, 2008
World Socialist Web Site

President-elect Barack Obama owes his victory, both in the Democratic primaries and the general election, in large part to the overwhelming hostility of the American people to the years of military aggression, torture, extraordinary rendition, domestic spying and all of the other crimes that will constitute the indelible legacy of the Bush administration.

Thanks to his carefully calibrated criticisms of these policies, as well as his indictment of his principal Democratic opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton, for her October 2002 vote authorizing the US invasion of Iraq, Obama’s “change you can believe in” was perceived by many, both in the US and abroad, as a promise that his election would signal an end to militarism and attacks on democratic rights.

As the transition to the new administration unfolds, however, belief in Obama’s promise of change can be sustained only to the extent that one fails to examine the political record of those who are involved in this process.

For the most part, the Obama-Biden transition team is staffed by veterans of the Clinton administration, associated with the US wars in the Balkans and the policy of regime change in Iraq that set the stage for the war that followed under the Bush presidency.

Symbolic of this relationship is Obama’s decision to send Clinton’s former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, to this weekend’s Group of 20 meeting in Washington as his personal emissary. Confronted in a 1996 interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” with the fact that US sanctions against Iraq had led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, Albright replied, “It’s a hard choice, but the price, we, think, is worth it.” She subsequently became a key architect of the US-backed dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the subsequent war against Serbia, which was marked by the widespread bombing of civilian targets. Such is Obama’s face to the world.

In terms of the military policy of an incoming Obama presidency, the most telling indication of the narrow character of the change that can be anticipated are the persistent reports that Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, may be kept at his post after the change in administrations.

Citing two of the president-elect’s advisers, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that “President-elect Barack Obama is leaning toward asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his position for at least a year.”

The retention of Gates, as the Journal points out, would send the clearest signal of essential continuity with the militarist foreign policy of the Bush administration. “Like the president-elect, Mr. Gates supports deploying more troops to Afghanistan,” the paper noted. “But the defense secretary strongly opposes a firm timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq, and his appointment could mean that Mr. Obama was effectively shelving his campaign promise to remove most troops from Iraq by mid-2010.”

The substantial support within the Democratic leadership for keeping Gates on was expressed last weekend by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat of Nevada) in an interview with CNN. “Why wouldn’t we want to keep him?” said Reid. “He’s never been a registered Republican.”

The other figure most often cited as a potential pick as defense secretary is former Clinton-era Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. Last June, Danzig delivered his own endorsement for retaining Gates, telling the Times of London, “My personal position is Gates is a very good secretary of defense and would be an even better one in an Obama administration.”

Whether Gates stays or goes, Obama’s selection of key personnel on his Pentagon transition team signals that the incoming administration “will handle Iraq and Afghanistan differently from the Bush administration—but will stop well short of a complete restructuring of American military strategy in the two war zones,” the Journal’s Yochi Dreazen reported in a subsequent column.

The co-leader of this team, Michele Flournoy, who was in the Defense Department under Clinton, is the current president of the Center for New American Strategy, a bipartisan think tank on military policy. She has publicly opposed the idea of setting a fixed timetable for withdrawing US troops from Iraq. In March 2007, she co-wrote a position paper on Iraq for the center, declaring, “The US has enduring interests in that besieged country and the surrounding region, and these interests will require a significant military presence there for the foreseeable future.”

Another prominent member of the transition team is Sarah Sewall, a Harvard University “human rights” specialist who served as an adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq and participated in the drafting of the military’s counterinsurgency field manual.

Also serving as senior adviser to the Pentagon transition effort is Sam Nunn, who was chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services from 1987 to 1995. A right-wing Democrat and cold warrior, Nunn left the Senate after leading a campaign against President Bill Clinton over the proposal to lift the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

The character of this transition team is in keeping with the real intentions of the incoming Obama administration: the continued occupation of Iraq by tens of thousands of US troops and a sharp escalation of the ongoing colonial war in Afghanistan.

The same picture emerges with the transition team at the Central Intelligence Agency. According to published reports, the leading figure in that effort is John Brennan, who headed up what is now known as the National Counter-Terrorism Center and previously served as CIA deputy executive director and former CIA Director George Tenet’s chief of staff. He left the agency in 2005.

It must be assumed that Brennan, a senior operator in the so-called global war on terrorism, was intimately familiar with and involved in decisions to carry out torture, assassinations, extraordinary rendition and domestic spying that were implemented during his tenure at the CIA.

Also figuring prominently in Obama’s intelligence transition team is Jamie Miscik, who headed the CIA’s analytical operations under Tenet. She played a leading role in manufacturing the phony intelligence about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and ties to Al Qaeda that was used to sell the war, and in suppressing reports from agency analysts that rejected both claims as unfounded. After leaving the agency at the end of 2004, she found a lucrative—though relatively short-lived—position as the head of global sovereign risk analysis at the now-bankrupt Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers.

While on the campaign trail, Obama on occasion denounced the Bush administration’s intelligence abuses—warrantless wiretapping, waterboarding, indefinite detention without trial—but when it came to a vote in the Senate last summer, he supported vastly expanded domestic spying powers for the National Security Agency and retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that collaborated with the Bush administration in carrying out the illegal wiretapping.

As with Gates, it is not ruled out that those in charge of US intelligence under Bush will stay on under Obama. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden have both indicated they are prepared to remain at their posts in the incoming Democratic administration. McConnell, who gave Obama a presidential-style intelligence briefing last week, described the president-elect’s team as “very smart, very strategic.”

While Obama’s overall transition chief, John Podesta, stressed last weekend that the incoming president would swiftly repeal a number of executive orders issued by the Bush administration, the specific ones he cited—stem cell research, domestic oil drilling, etc. —did not include the multiple directives authorizing US military and intelligence forces to carry out acts of aggression around the world.

Given that Obama has vowed to escalate cross-border raids against Pakistan and prosecute the so-called war on terror—the pretext used to justify Washington’s use of military force to dominate the oil-rich regions of the globe—he will in all likelihood adopt these orders as his own.

It is only 10 days since Obama was swept to victory in the presidential election by a wave of popular hostility to the Bush administration. Yet the actions of the president-elect and his advisers are already making it clear that the longing of millions of Americans for an end to the growth of US militarism and international criminality are not to be realized after the inauguration in January.

I'm afraid I've already reached the stage where I find Obama's rhetoric laughable. The message from the transition couldn't be clearer: "Thanks, and good riddance, suckers!"

[David Guyatt]

It is not a surprise and is disappointing, but the most important factor here is how the US Public will react - as they were expecting a modicum of real change. If they don't get it - perhaps both the Republican AND the Democratic Party are finished. I will happily dance on both of their graves! I wonder who will be head of the various intelligence agencies, and if he'll change the status of such things as the JFK Records Act et al.; investigate any assassinations etc. I would imagine the man, while intelligent, is not fully up to speed on the Deep Political Cabal [though he does seem to understand how at least MLK was done-in!] and now 'they' are whispering sweet lies and nothings into his ears, and showing him fake (or selected!) documents and intelligence reports in order to move him to their position. He never was in an opposition camp. But all that said, neither was JFK when he took office. People can be changed by events - they can grow and wake-up. We will see. Nothing was ever given by those at the top - it was always won hard-fought by those on the bottom forcing the change. Americans are lazy and have no idea what constitutes participation in a democracy - voting in semi-rigged elections every 4 years certainly doesn't quality.

It would be nice to think that the public will do something abut it Pete, but history tells us that they probably won't and if even they try, their efforts will be most probably be ignored.

I keep boring people with the same message: there is no democracy. It's a myth to keep you slumbering. The law is not fair or impartial. It is written to favour the wealthy and corporations so that they can pick your pockets and plunder our assets with impunity.

Only when enough people wake up to these hardball facts can any change even be possible and even then it would be a remarkable achievement as entrenched power would never give up without a fight -- and theyhold all the aces...

[Myra Bronstein]

...
I'm afraid I've already reached the stage where I find Obama's rhetoric laughable. The message from the transition couldn't be clearer: "Thanks, and good riddance, suckers!"

And I've reached the stage where I find his rhetoric laughable and his silence a sad confirmation of business as usual.

[Peter Lemkin]

It would be nice to think that the public ill do something abut it Pete, but history ells us that they probably won't and if even they try, their efforts will be most probably be ignored.

I keep boring people with the same message: there is no democracy. It's a myth to keep you slumbering. The law is not fair or impartial. It is written to favour the wealthy and corporations so that they can pick your pockets and plunder our assets with impunity.

Only when enough people wake up to these hardball facts can any change even be possible and even then it would be a remarkable achievement as entrenched power would never give up without a fight -- and theyhold all the aces...

David, I don't want to get into a contest as to which of us here is the most cynical [as I may well win]. I disagree with nothing you said and reiterate your point that ONLY if people wake-up to the millenia-old control by the Elites nothing can be done. If they do - anything is possible. Otherwise, we might as well all commit suicide [or have another joint or scotch and laugh at it all awaiting the end with a whimper]. We must have just a modicum of hope against hope. I'm not of the optomistic persuasion, myself, but I do have that tiny sliver of hope - as I know what is possible IF ONLY the sleeping and hypnotized/propagandized masses would awake from their trance and slumber. Let us hope and let us endeavor [as I assume this Forum is for] to aid in that awakening - otherwise we are only documenting the end of humanity and life at the hands of greed and avarice on the part of the upper-upper-class. F**k 'em.

[Paul Rigby]

It would be nice to think that the public ill do something abut it Pete, but history ells us that they probably won't and if even they try, their efforts will be most probably be ignored.

I keep boring people with the same message: there is no democracy. It's a myth to keep you slumbering. The law is not fair or impartial. It is written to favour the wealthy and corporations so that they can pick your pockets and plunder our assets with impunity.

Only when enough people wake up to these hardball facts can any change even be possible and even then it would be a remarkable achievement as entrenched power would never give up without a fight -- and theyhold all the aces...

Amen, Brother Guyatt!

[David Guyatt]

David, I don't want to get into a contest as to which of us here is the most cynical [as I may well win]. I disagree with nothing you said and reiterate your point that ONLY if people wake-up to the millenia-old control by the Elites nothing can be done. If they do - anything is possible. Otherwise, we might as well all commit suicide [or have another joint or scotch and laugh at it all awaiting the end with a whimper]. We must have just a modicum of hope against hope. I'm not of the optomistic persuasion, myself, but I do have that tiny sliver of hope - as I know what is possible IF ONLY the sleeping and hypnotized/propagandized masses would awake from their trance and slumber. Let us hope and let us endeavor [as I assume this Forum is for] to aid in that awakening - otherwise we are only documenting the end of humanity and life at the hands of greed and avarice on the part of the upper-upper-class. F**k 'em.

Cynical? Moi? Vouz?

But we are agreed. We only can hope that something remarkable will happen to surprise us all. My point though - miracles aide - is that it will either be through a major calamity or via the spilling of blood ---- as entrenched power is not going to be relinquished without a fight.

But you're entirely right in saying that the underlying motive of this forum is to spread the word about the reality in which we live - rather than the myth stuffed down our craws everyday of our lives by the puppets of the mainstream media.