Why the Washington Post's New Ties to the CIA Are So Ominous

American journalism has entered highly dangerous terrain.

A tip-off is that the Washington Post refuses to face up to a conflict of interest involving Jeff Bezos -- who's now the sole owner of the powerful newspaper at the same time he remains Amazon's CEO and main stakeholder.

The Post is supposed to expose CIA secrets. But Amazon is under contract to keep them. Amazon has a new $600 million "cloud" computing deal with the CIA.

The situation is unprecedented. But in an email exchange early this month, Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron told me that the newspaper doesn't need to routinely inform readers of the CIA-Amazon-Bezos ties when reporting on the CIA. He wrote that such in-story acknowledgment would be "far outside the norm of disclosures about potential conflicts of interest at media organizations."

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NSA Data Has ‘No Discernible Impact’ on Terrorism: Report

Bloomberg

A public policy group says a review of U.S. terrorist arrests shows the government’s collection of bulk phone records does little to prevent terrorism, adding fuel to a debate over whether the spy program should be ended.

The nonprofit New America Foundation, based in Washington, analyzed cases involving 225 people recruited by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups and charged in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The majority of cases started with traditional techniques, such as use of “informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations,” according to a report today from the group, which has been critical of the NSA spy programs.

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Taxpayers Will Pay: Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare

Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.”  How can this be?  Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them.  The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.

For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation.  Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies.

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Millionaires Are Now the Majority in Congress: The 1% Literally Rule Us

According to a new analysis by OpenSecretsBlog, "Millionaires' Club: For First Time, Most Lawmakers are Worth $1 Million-Plus":

Of 534 current members of Congress, at least 268 had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012, according to disclosures filed last year by all members of Congress and candidates. The median net worth for the 530 current lawmakers who were in Congress as of the May filing deadline was $1,008,767 -- an increase from last year when it was $966,000. In addition, at least one of the members elected since then, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), is a millionaire, according to forms she filed as a candidate. (There is currently one vacancy in Congress.)

Last year only 257 members, or about 48 percent of lawmakers, had a median net worth of at least $1 million.

Remember, of course, those in Congress who aren't millionaires have a very good chance of becoming ones after leaving office -- particularly senators -- by becoming lobbyists or working for corporations.

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US 'tried to oust Hamid Karzai by manipulating Afghan elections'

GUARDIAN

The US government tried to oust the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, by manipulating elections in 2009, in what amounted to a "clumsy and failed putsch", the former defence secretary Robert Gates has been quoted as writing in his memoir.

Karzai has long claimed that the US tried to manipulate the poll to remove him from office, while Washington insisted it was an impartial supporter of democracy. The revelations in Gates's account of his years in power, which is published next week and covers the war in Afghanistan, appear to vindicate the Afghan leader's suspicions.

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Karzai is unlikely to meet deadline on signing long-term security deal, U.S. envoy says

WASH POST

The lead American negotiator in talks over a long-term security agreement with Afghanistan has privately warned the Obama administration that its efforts to persuade President Hamid Karzai to sign the document on the U.S. timetable are likely to fail, according to officials.

The assessment, if borne out, could raise the chances of a hasty and messy troop withdrawal by the end of the year and would leave the administration with little time to assemble a military coalition to remain in Afghanistan after the pullout.

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The Lies The USTR Is Spreading About Fast Track Authority To Push TPP Through Congress

With the introduction of fast track authority (also known as "trade promotion authority") in Congress, by which Congress abdicates its constitutionally-granted sole power to regulate foreign commerce, the USTR (which gains that power) is out in force, spreading all sorts of lies about what this means. It's not exactly encouraging when the organization that has been hiding all the details of the TPP agreement for years is now trying to push it forward by directly lying to the American public. It's almost as if the USTR can't be honest or people might realize that it's spent the last few years pushing forward on an agreement designed to prop up old legacy businesses at the expense of the public and new innovators.

The USTR's statement on the fast track proposal is full of lies, half-truths and misleading statements. Let's look at a few.

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Feds move to block discovery in NSA lawsuits

The Justice Department moved Wednesday night to block the plaintiffs in the most successful legal challenges to the National Security Agency's call-tracking program from obtaining more details about how the surveillance effort operates.

In a motion filed with U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, government lawyers asked the judge to halt further proceedings before him while appeals go forward in a pair of lawsuits brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman. The suits led last month to Leon's landmark ruling that the NSA's call database, aimed at making it easier for the government to trace leads in potential terrorism cases, likely violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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Suicide rate among young male vets spikes: VA

There has been a sharp increase in the suicide rate among the youngest U.S. male veterans, and a smaller but still significant jump among women who served in the military, the Department of Veterans Affairs said Thursday.

However, the VA found "no clear change" in the overall suicide rate among all veterans using VA health facilities. 

Dr. Jan Kemp, who oversees suicide prevention efforts at the VA, said she expected to see an increase among the youngest veterans based on rising suicide rates in the military, but called the numbers alarming, particularly for those in their early 20s. She said too many younger veterans are going to the VA to get care for their physical wounds, but many don't seek treatment for longer-term mental health issues as well.

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Leno: ‘Now That Christie Is Denying Everything He Sounds Even More Presidential’

As the Hillary-loving media predictably pile on embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R), they’ve completely forgotten how many scandals the current White House was involved in last year that the President claimed he had no knowledge of and his always dutiful press backed his play.

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CIA sued for records on possible role in Nelson Mandela arrest

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student sued the Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday to compel release of its records on Nelson Mandela, the former South African president and anti-apartheid activist who died last month at age 95.

Shortly after Mandela’s death, transparency research Ryan Shapiro filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the CIA - as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency - for any records that mentioned Mandela.

Shapiro says the CIA did not respond to his FOIA request, which included an appeal for expedited processing, which was due on Dec. 29. He filed the lawsuit in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

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NWO: We want a United States of Europe says top EU official

A campaign for the European Union to become a "United States of Europe" will be the "best weapon against the Eurosceptics", one of Brussels' most senior officials has said.

Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission and the longest serving Brussels commissioner, has called for "a true political union" to be put on the agenda for EU elections this spring.

"We need to build a United States of Europe with the Commission as government and two chambers – the European Parliament and a "Senate" of Member States," she said.

Mrs Reding's vision, which is shared by many in the European institutions, would transform the EU into superstate relegating national governments and parliaments to a minor political role equivalent to that played by local councils in Britain.

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9/11: Will OIG open an investigation to address CRITICAL omissions by NIST?

Mr. Todd J. Zinser

Office of the Inspector General

1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20230

Dear Mr. Zinser:

Re: The NIST Report On the C

ollapse of WTC Building 7

Challenged by 2,100

Architects and Engineers

I write to you at the request, and on behalf of the professional organization of more than 2,100 professionally, degreed architects and engineers who come from a large number of states across the country.

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Top military brass kept from pension cuts that budget deal brings to soldiers

WASH TIMES

December’s congressional budget deal will shave the pensions of many career soldiers via cost-of-adjustment changes — but top brass will be unaffected.

Retirement benefits for senior officers that were changed in 2003 to retain them during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then 2007 for similar purposes, will not have their pensions altered, USA Today reported.

Currently, four-star officers who retire with 40 years of experience will receive a pension of $237,144, the Pentagon said. Officers with 38 years of service saw an $84,000 pension jump due to changes to the system in 2007, USA Today reported

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Christie Faces Scandal on Traffic Jam Aides Ordered

NY TIMES

The mystery of who closed two lanes onto the George Washington Bridge — turning the borough of Fort Lee, N.J., into a parking lot for four days in September — exploded into a full-bore political scandal for Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday. Emails and texts revealed that a top aide had ordered the closings to punish the town’s mayor after he did not endorse the governor for re-election.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, emailed David Wildstein, a high school friend of the governor who worked at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: If the Currency Collapses & You Try to Flee Into Gold,There Won't Be Any

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Health officials respond to beach radiation scare

An amateur video of a Geiger counter showing what appear to be high radiation levels at a Coastside beach has drawn the attention of local, state and federal public health officials. Since being posted last week, the short video has galvanized public concerns that radioactive material could be landing on the local coastline after traveling from Japan as a result of the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.

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NSA statement does not deny 'spying' on members of Congress

The National Security Agency on Saturday released a statement in answer to questions from a senator about whether it “has spied, or is … currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”, in which it did not deny collecting communications from legislators of the US Congress to whom it says it is accountable.

In a letter dated 3 January, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont defined “spying” as “gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business”.

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ReThink 911 Fall 2013 Campaign Recap

ReThink911 is a global ad campaign to raise public awareness of the freefall collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 at 5:20pm on September 11, 2001.

http://www.rethink911.org/donate

51% of respondents are sure or suspect that Building 7's collapse was caused by a controlled demolition, compared to just 18% who are sure or suspect fires caused it, and 31% who don't know" -- ReThink911's Canadian YouGov Poll

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“Surveillance breeds conformity”: Salon’s Glenn Greenwald interview

Longtime Salon readers will have known for some years that Glenn Greenwald is an unapologetically opinionated journalist with an unwavering skepticism about corporate-government power. In 2013, the rest of the world learned the same. It was an intense, banner year for Greenwald, who has played a principal role in releasing startling revelations about the National Security Agency through Edward Snowden’s leaks.

Without Greenwald’s work with Snowden (and fellow journalists like Laura Poitras), it’s safe to say we would be considerably less informed about the sprawling, totalized surveillance state in which we live.

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