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Since the Dilly, Dally, Delay & Stall Law Firms are adding their billable hours, the Toyota U.S.A. and Route 44 Toyota posts have been separated here:

Route 44 Toyota Sold Me A Lemon



Showing posts with label John Kiriakou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Kiriakou. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

RSN: John Kiriakou | The CIA Is Worse Than Trump




Reader Supported News
15 October 19

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15 October 19
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RSN: John Kiriakou | The CIA Is Worse Than Trump
John Kiriakou. (photo: WP)
John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
Kiriakou writes: "Last week I made an appearance on Fox News's Tucker Carlson Show. The question from Tucker was whether this [CIA] 'whistleblower' really was a whistleblower."
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Wednesday, October 9, 2019

FOCUS: Matt Taibbi | The 'Whistleblower' Probably Isn't





Reader Supported News
09 October 19

We are back to nothing coming in. Saw this developing this morning, tried to get out in front of it. No much so far. Who out there can donate … today.
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09 October 19
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FOCUS: Matt Taibbi | The 'Whistleblower' Probably Isn't
 Real American whistleblower, Chelsea Manning. (photo: Tom Nicholson/LNP/REX/Shutterstock)
Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
Taibbi writes: "It's an insult to real whistleblowers to use the term with the Ukrainegate protagonist."

EXCERPT:
Americans who’ve blown the whistle over serious offenses by the federal government either spend the rest of their lives overseas, like Edward Snowden, end up in jail, like Chelsea Manning, get arrested and ruined financially, like former NSA official Thomas Drake, have their homes raided by FBI like disabled NSA vet William Binney, or get charged with espionage like ex-CIA exposer-of-torture John Kiriakou. It’s an insult to all of these people, and the suffering they’ve weathered, to frame the ballcarrier in the Beltway’s latest partisan power contest as a whistleblower.
Drake, who was the first to expose the NSA’s secret surveillance program, seems to have fared better than most. He ended up working in an Apple Store, where he ran into Eric Holder, who was shopping for an iPhone.
I’ve met a lot of whistleblowers, in both the public and private sector. Many end up broke, living in hotels, defamed, (often) divorced, and lucky if they have any kind of job. One I knew got turned down for a waitressing job because her previous employer wouldn’t vouch for her. She had little kids.








Sunday, June 23, 2019

RSN: John Kiriakou | With Trump’s Iranian Misadventure, Putin Wins Again






RSN





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23 June 19
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RSN: John Kiriakou | With Trump’s Iranian Misadventure, Putin Wins Again 
John Kiriakou. (photo: The Washington Post)
John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
Kiriakou writes: "Well, we walked right up to the brink of war with Iran last week. Again. It didn’t happen, of course, and The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other journals of record are replete with minute-by-minute explanations of what happened when and why. Much of it is nonsense. And much more of the coverage ignores the bigger-picture analysis."
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Friday, June 21, 2019

RSN: John Kiriakou | Biden Has No Idea What He Did Wrong






Reader Supported News
21 June 19

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21 June 19
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RSN: John Kiriakou | Biden Has No Idea What He Did Wrong 
Joe Biden. (photo: Getty)
John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
Kiriakou writes: "Joe Biden says some dumb things. He admits to it." 

JOE BIDEN'S PLAGIARISM AND LIES! 
A MUST READ IN ITS ENTIRETY - THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO SUPPORT RSN: EXCERPT: 

Take this wonderful Biden quote from The New York Times: “When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program. I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes. And we changed attitudes!” That’s great, except that Joe Biden never marched in the civil rights movement. Never. His aides, according to the Times, have “gently reminded him” that the story simply isn’t true. But he keeps telling it anyway.
This penchant for hyperbole and weakness for plagiarizing the work of others has caught up with Biden in the past. He had to drop out of the 1988 race for president after a Dukakis campaign staff member gave a Washington Post reporter a videotape showing UK Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and Biden side-by-side. Kinnock said, “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?” Then referring to his ancestors, some of whom worked in the coal mines, he said, “Was it because all our predecessors were thick? Those people who could sing and play and recite and write poetry? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football?”
Biden, in his own speech, said, “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and graduate degree? That I was smarter than the rest? Those same people who read poetry and wrote poetry and taught me how to sing verse? Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?”


Trump called off a strike on Iran with planes in the air and ships ready to fire. (photo: AFP)
Trump called off a strike on Iran with planes in the air and ships ready to fire. (photo: AFP)

Trump Ordered an Attack on Iran, but Called Off the Operation at the Last Minute
Erin Cunningham, Missy Ryan and Dan Lamothe, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "President Trump ordered an attack on Iran on Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a surveillance drone in the Strait of Hormuz but called the operation off just hours before it was due to occur because it would have caused extensive casualties, he said Friday."
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Central American migrants are seen inside an enclosure where they are being held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (photo: Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters)
Central American migrants are seen inside an enclosure where they are being held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (photo: Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Hundreds of Infants and Children Are Being Denied Adequate Food and Water in a Texas Border Patrol Station
Cedar Attanasio, Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza, Associated Press
Excerpt: "A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they've been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there's inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station."
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Oregon's governor Kate Brown. (photo: Sarah Zimmerman/AP)
Oregon's governor Kate Brown. (photo: Sarah Zimmerman/AP)

Oregon's Republican Senators Flee Capitol to Delay Vote on Emissions Reduction Plan
Susie Cagle, Guardian UK
Cagle writes: "Oregon is poised to become the second US state after California to impose a cap and trade program aimed at reducing industrial carbon emissions. But ahead of a vote on the legislation Thursday, all 12 Republican state senators fled the capitol in a bid to delay the process."
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Ivanka Trump. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty)
Ivanka Trump. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty)

Watchdog Seeks Hatch Act Probe of Ivanka Trump
Alexa Lardieri, U.S. News
Lardieri writes: "The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel alleging that the president's daughter violated the act by using her social media accounts to post messages about her father that included his campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again.'"
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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi King Salman. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi King Salman. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

In Rare Rebuke to Trump, Senate Votes to Block Saudi Arms Sales
Amy Held, NPR
Held writes: "Amid rising tensions in the Middle East, the Senate voted to rein in President Trump's powers, passing three bipartisan resolutions on Thursday blocking the administration from selling billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia."
READ MORE 

People wear masks while walking through the Financial District in the smoke-filled air in San Francisco. (photo: Eric Risberg)
People wear masks while walking through the Financial District in the smoke-filled air in San Francisco. (photo: Eric Risberg)

US Air Quality Is Getting Worse Under President Trump
Associated Press
Excerpt: "After decades of improvement, America's air may not be getting any cleaner."
READ MORE




Wednesday, June 12, 2019

RSN: John Kiriakou | Why Is NPR Carrying Water for Trump on Venezuela?




Reader Supported News
11 June 19

We get at least 3 feedback messages a day giving us advice on how to better "monetize" RSN. Which completely misses the point. We are not trying to build an empire on Wall Street ... we're trying to derail the empires that already exist there.
We focus on our mission, which is social justice. The money is a necessity for the organization's survival.
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11 June 19
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RSN: John Kiriakou | Why Is NPR Carrying Water for Trump on Venezuela? 
John Bolton. (photo: Darren McCollester/Getty Images/JTA)
John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
Kiriakou writes: "If I told you that NPR, National Public Radio, was fronting propaganda operations for Donald Trump and John Bolton, would you call me crazy? If I said that NPR was just another voice for an imperial media, would you believe me? That's the situation we find ourselves in on Venezuela."
READ MORE




Friday, June 7, 2019

WSJ Says CIA Chief Wouldn’t Do Anything ‘Inappropriate’—Despite Record of Torture and Coverup




FAIR

WSJ Says CIA Chief Wouldn’t Do Anything ‘Inappropriate’—Despite Record of Torture and Coverup

view post on FAIR.org

by Joshua Cho
WSJ: Under CIA Chief Gina Haspel, an Intelligence Service Returns to the Shadows
The Wall Street Journal (5/25/19) says “returns to the shadows” like that’s a good thing.
Wall Street Journal report (5/25/19) by Warren Strobel whitewashed CIA Director Gina Haspel’s career and put a positive spin on the CIA’s insulation from public accountability with its turn towards its greatest opacity “in decades.”
While one might expect CIA officials to support greater secrecy around the organization, it’s odd that ostensibly independent journalists—with a mission to hold official organizations accountable by informing the public—would treat less information coming from the agency as a positive development.
Yet that’s exactly what the Journal report did, depicting Haspel’s strategy of avoiding backlash from the Trump administration by not publicly contradicting its dubious claims as “protecting the agency” from “the domestic threat of a toxic US political culture.”
“She and her agency have adopted their lowest public profile in decades,” Strobel writes—just before summing her up as a “CIA director who has been warmly received by the workforce she has spent her life among.”
In other words, for the Journal, a public intelligence agency sharing its intelligence with the public is a bad thing, unless it supports US foreign policy by agreeing with whatever the Trump administration is saying. This position is echoed in the piece by official sources, like former CIA official and staff director of the House Intelligence Committee Mark Lowenthal, who assures us, “It’s not going to be any good for her [Haspel] to be out there attracting lightning bolts.”
However, the most egregious part of Strobel’s report is its whitewashing of Haspel’s disturbing record in the CIA by uncritically transmitting glowing endorsements by other CIA officials:
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said he is absolutely confident that Ms. Haspel will push back if policy makers ask the agency to do something it shouldn’t.
“I was told that somebody asked that the agency do something that was inappropriate. Her response was, ‘No. And don’t ask again,’ ” said Mr. Morell, who hosts the Intelligence Matters podcast. He said he did not have details of the incident.
Strange: That’s precisely the opposite of what Haspel did when she was asked to violate domestic and international law by torturing post-9/11 prisoners (euphemized by Strobel as “controversies” over “treatment of detainees”), and peddling lies about torture’s effectiveness (National Security Archives4/26/18).
Nor did Haspel say “No. And don’t ask again,” when told to destroy videotape recordings of the CIA inflicting torture on its captives, which was condemned as “obstruction” by 9/11 Commission chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean (Intercept3/13/18New York Times1/2/08).
Haspel actually supervised Detention Site Green in Thailand, one of the US’s notorious “black sites” where suspects were sent to be tortured after being kidnapped and held in another country to evade legal accountability in the US (Washington Post11/2/05). Sondra Crossby, a US Navy Reserve doctor with extensive experience treating torture victims around the world, described one of Haspel’s prisoners as “one of the most traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”
John Kiriakou, a former CIA official not cited in this laudatory profile, said that Haspel was known to other colleagues as “Bloody Gina” because people like her “tortured for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information” (Democracy Now3/14/18).
Donald Trump, John Bolton and Gina Haspel
Detail of Wall Street Journal photo (5/25/19) of Gina Haspel with Donald Trump and national security advisor John Bolton, all overseen by the spirit of Andrew Jackson. (photo: Zuma Press)
Many of Haspel’s champions have offered the irrelevant and unacceptable “Nuremberg Defense” of “just following orders” to shield her from criticism. Morell himself is one of those people, as he praised her nomination as deputy director specifically because she obediently follows immoral orders (Cipher Brief2/2/17):
Haspel does not shy away from the toughest jobs; in fact, she gravitates toward them.  Some of the assignments that she took on have later come under political fire, but in each case she was following the lawful orders of the president.
Morell, as FAIR (10/29/13) has noted, is a propagandist who denies that the CIA engaged in what is indisputably torture, and echoes CIA lies about drone strikes being a “very precise weapon,” with “very low” collateral damage. Such dishonesty is par for the course for CIA higher-ups (Guardian1/7/13).
Strobel presumably knows this, as FAIR (Extra!4/06) has also noted that Strobel provided some of the most critical reporting on the Bush Jr. administration’s WMD hoax in real time, as Morell was doing his best to advance it. That Morell would defend Haspel is predictable, given that he conducted an internal investigation “clearing” her of any wrongdoing (Intercept5/14/18).
Since Strobel’s report depends on current and former intelligence officials as sources, it’s unsurprising that Haspel is considered to be “a good steward” of the CIA precisely because she won’t be a “transformational leader” who would dare to do radical things like respecting the US Constitution’s rejection of “cruel and unusual punishment” and international humanitarian law. The piece downplays the CIA’s illegal activities as mere “controversies,” and presents Haspel and the CIA’s attempts to avoid scrutiny and accountability as “no small accomplishment.”
Perhaps if outlets like the Wall Street Journal provided less adulatory coverage of the CIA’s leaders and the organization’s illicit activities, it would be harder for its members like “Bloody Gina” Haspel to get away with lying. Perhaps instead of getting promotions, they’d face accountability for their actions (FAIR.org5/20/09NBC2/9/11).

You can send letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal at wsj.ltrs@wsj.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.


FAIR/Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
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New York NY 10001
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Saturday, June 1, 2019

RSN: John Kiriakou | Julian Assange: Prisoner of Conscience





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01 June 19
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RSN: John Kiriakou | Julian Assange: Prisoner of Conscience 
John Kiriakou. (photo: The Washington Post)
John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
Kiriakou writes: "Federal authorities in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) last week issued a superceding indictment and charged WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of espionage. Along with a charge of conspiring to gain access to a government computer, he faces 175 years in prison. Julian's current plight is well-known."
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Nadler: 'There Certainly Is' Justification for Impeaching Trump
Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio, Politico
Excerpt: "House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said on Friday that there 'certainly is' justification for launching impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, but cautioned that the public first must agree that it's warranted."
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Scott Warren. (photo: No More Deaths)
Scott Warren. (photo: No More Deaths)

Aid Volunteer Scott Warren Faces 20 Years in Prison for Helping Migrants
teleSUR
Excerpt: "A United States federal court is weighing in on the case of volunteer Scott Warren, who is on trial and facing 20 years in prison on 'smuggling' charges for aiding a pair of undocumented migrants in Arizona."
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Virginia State Police block the entrance to the Municipal Center following the deadly mass shooting. (photo: Getty Images)
Virginia State Police block the entrance to the Municipal Center following the deadly mass shooting. (photo: Getty Images)

12 Dead, 4 Injured After Virginia Beach Shooting
Justin Carissimo, April Siese and Caroline Linton, CBS News
Excerpt: "Armed with a .45-caliber handgun, a disgruntled city employee opened fire inside a municipal building Friday in Virginia Beach, killing 12 and wounding four others, authorities said."
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A Fight for $15 rally. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
A Fight for $15 rally. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

10 Stats That Disprove Trump's Claim We're Enjoying the "Best Economy and Jobs EVER"
In These Times
Excerpt: "Despite Trump's frequent suggestions that his tax plan has led to the 'Best Economy & Jobs EVER,' the CRS analysis indicates that the law has had limited overall impact - and delivered its benefits almost entirely to corporations and the rich."
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A hospital in Venezuela. (photo: AFP)
A hospital in Venezuela. (photo: AFP)

US Blockade Deprives Venezuelan Cancer Patients of Treatment
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The U.S. blockade is putting the lives of hundreds of chronically ill patients at risk, the Latin American Foundation of Human Rights (Fundalatin) denounced Friday."
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Pollution from a factory. (photo: Science Focus)
Pollution from a factory. (photo: Science Focus)

Which 2020 Candidates Make the Grade When It Comes to Climate Action?
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes: "Washington Governor Jay Inslee is at the top of the class, and former Vice President Joe Biden is struggling near the bottom with a D minus. Those are the results of Greenpeace USA's #Climate2020 Scorecard, the latest tool designed to rate the 2020 presidential candidates based on their plans for tackling the climate crisis."
READ MORE