Our "terrorist" tracking system by the numbers

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux (The Intercept, "Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers"

Support independent cartooning: join Sparky's List—and visit Tom Tomorrow's Emporium of Fun, featuring the new book and plush Sparky! (The Nation/ThisModernWorld.com).

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Biggest group on watchlist not terrorists

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

 

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database -- a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments more -- than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category -- 280,000 people -- dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

1984: The numbers are shocking and aimed at something far more sinister than "terrorism."

 

Peter, are you targeting American citizens?

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the “terrorist” screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than tenfold, to an all-time high of 47,000 -- surpassing the number of people barred from flying under [Unprecedented President] George W. Bush.

 

Obama and Nixon (TTDB)

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

 

The classified documents were prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to international terrorism. Stamped “SECRET” and “NOFORN” (indicating they are not to be shared with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date. Among the revelations:

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When Guns Are Everywhere in police hands (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)

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• The second-highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by the government is in Dearborn, Michigan -- a city of 96,000 that has the largest percentage of Arab-American residents in the country.
• The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records/day.
• The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract  data to add to the watchlists.

Puppet "Capt. America" and Nixon (thenation)

A U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with watchlisting data told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. More

Where is the OCCUPY movement today?

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Climate Change/Chaos is real, and British doctors are divesting to save Gaia (occupy.com)

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Let's make our democracy real (occupy.com)

What ever happened to the Occupy Movement? It's alive and well (occupy.com) trying to organize for the common good.

Some say the new .com appearance of the movement is tapped by the NSA to better know whom to keep an eye on.

 

So it's better to be anonymous rather than trying to be a Facebook-activist being tagged and followed by one's iPhone and other electronic eavesdropping equipment.

Can we all at least agree on backing Israel? (AP)

Little to nothing is said about Israel, but as for the many other arms of the military-industrial complex -- excluding the massive weapons sales of the U.S., Israel, and other UN Security Council members and the wars they arm, fund, salvage, and indebt through the IMF and World Bank and the Fed (a collection of 18 major banking institutions and many hundreds of other banks -- there are many actions.

Thank You for Your Service: How One Company Sues Soldiers Worldwide

With stores near military bases across the country, the retailer USA Discounters offers easy credit to service members. But when those loans go bad, the company uses the local courts near its Virginia headquarters to file suits by the thousands.

// Read more

Parasite #1: The Shadow Banking System

Despite the 828-page Dodd-Frank Act, the derivatives pyramid has continued to explode to a value now estimated to be as high as $2 quadrillion.

// Read more

Investor Sues Three Banks Accused Of Rigging Price of Silver

HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of attempting to rig the daily global price of silver in the latest price fixing scandal to rock the banking industry.

// Read more

- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/british-doctors-vote-divest-fossil-fuels#sthash.5Rw8yViE.dpuf

Chris Hedges and Lawrence Lessig on getting money out of politics: 3 parts (occupy.com)

"The IMF was here" - leaving debt and slums in their wake by design (occupy.com).

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Parasite #1: The Shadow Banking System

Despite the 828-page Dodd-Frank Act, the derivatives pyramid has continued to explode to a value now estimated to be as high as $2 quadrillion. More
 

Investor sues three banks accused of rigging price of silver

HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of attempting to rig the daily global price of silver in the latest price fixing scandal to rock the banking industry. More

Thank You for Your Service: How one company sues soldiers worldwide

With stores near military bases across the country, the retailer USA Discounters offers easy credit to service members. But when those loans go bad, the company uses the local courts near its Virginia headquarters to file suits by the thousands. More
 

Welcome to the global Occupy community (commons.occupy.com)

Who is "Siri," Goddess of the iPhone?

Amber and Bela Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Jennifer Van Grove (mashable.com)

Sri Sri Lakshmi devi, the Indian mythological source of "Siri" (amijha)

Siri was not blond like Marvel's Goddess Thor until Scarlett Johannson made her so in "She."

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"Who are you?" I ask Siri, attempting to unravel some of the mystery behind the iPhone 4S virtual assistant by going directly to the source. No such luck. "Who I am isn't important," she tells me.

 

Let's stop being coy, Siri. Who you are is important. We both know that. So important that you may be a threat to Google's Android platform.

 

The world's best app is Audible not Siri.

And so I went to one of Siri's makers, Gary Morgenthaler, venture capitalist, Siri investor, and Siri board member, for a better answer to the question, Who is Siri?

Let's start with her name. Like any doting parent, Morgenthaler and the founding team behind Siri, especially CEO Dag Kittlaus, felt the newborn's existence was of such significance that she warranted a very special moniker. And so they turned to baby name books. 

[The Hindu Goddess Siri]

Is "Siri" (Inc.) based on Lakshmi or Freyja?

The team put together a shortlist of potential names, but Siri stood out.

Siri, a variant of Sigrid, is a Scandinavian and Norwegian girl name that means beautiful or fair victory.

The Indian name Siri is associated with Goddess Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity.

 

Siri, to those who gave her life, became an amalgam of those meanings; they defined her appellation as, "beautiful woman that leads you to fair victory and wealth." [Obviously, they overlooked some of Siri's more colorful meanings.] More

• Ven. Uppalavana Theri: a Historical Lakshmi
• Sri Lakshmi in Buddhism, Goddess of Luck
• Christian God Yahweh had a wife: Asherah

Lakshmi

Koausa.org, edited by Wisdom Quarterly

Meditating Lakshmi, mother of Cupid (Kama)

The  devi  or goddess Lakshmi represents wealth and prosperity, material and spiritual. The word lakshmi (laxmi)  is derived from the Sanskrit laksme, meaning "goal."

Lakshmi, therefore, represents the goal of life, which includes worldly as well as spiritual prosperity. In ancient Vedic and more recent Hindu mythology, the Goddess Lakshmi, who is also called  by the honorific Sri, is the divine spouse or consort of Lord Vishnu, whom she provides with wealth for the maintenance and preservation of Great Brahma's creation (this world-system).

 

Sri Lakshmi is depicted in female form. [In Buddhism devas are transformational beings capable of adopting whatever form they please as Alexander Pope notes of Greco-Roman-European fairies (woodland dryads)]:

For when the Fair in all their Pride expire,

To their first Elements the [Spirits] retire:

The Sprights of fiery Termagants in Flame

Mount up, and take a Salamander's Name.

Siri, who sent this picture?

Soft yielding Minds to Water glide away,

And sip with Nymphs, their Elemental Tea.

The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome,
In search of Mischief still on Earth to roam.

The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the Fields of Air.

Know farther yet; Whoever fair and chaste

Rejects Mankind, is by some Sylph embrac'd: 

For Spirits, freed from mortal Laws, with ease

Assume what Sexes and what Shapes they please.
 

...When kind Occasion prompts their warm Desires,
When Musick softens, and when Dancing fires?
 

'Tis but their Sylph, the wise Celestials know,
Tho' Honour is the Word with Men below....

Lakshmi is shown with four arms and four hands. She wears red clothes with a golden lining and is standing on a lotus. She has golden coins and lotuses in her hands. Two elephants (sometimes four) are shown next to her, symbolism conveying the following spiritual themes:

• Her four arms represent the four cardinal directions in space and symbolize omnipresence and omnipotence of the goddess. The red color symbolizes activity. The golden lining (embroidery) on her red dress suggests prosperity. The idea conveyed here is that she is always busy distributing wealth and prosperity to devotees. The lotus pedestal signifies that while living in the world, one should enjoy its wealth but not become obsessed with it. Such a living is analogous to a lotus that grows in dirty water but is not wet or defiled by it.

• 

  Radha, divine consort (WQ)

  Her four hands represent the four ends of human life: dharma (duty, social obligation, righteousness), kama ([Buddhist chanda] genuine desires beyond the sensual), artha (wealth), and moksha (liberation from death and rebirth). Whereas the front hands represent activity in the physical world, the back ones indicate the spiritual activities that lead to spiritual perfection.
• Since the right side of the body symbolizes activity, a lotus in the back right hand conveys the idea that one must perform his or her duties in the world in accordance with dharma [a Vedic idea distorted by the Indian caste system]. Fulfilling one's real duties as a human being on a spiritual quest leads to moksha (liberation), which is symbolized by a lotus in Lakshmi's back left hand. Golden coins falling on the ground from her front left hand illustrate that she provides wealth and prosperity to her devotees. Her front right hand is shown bestowing blessings... More

NSA: Greenwald to speak in L.A. (June 19)

Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; HaymarketBooks.org; KPFK.org

Sponsored by Haymarket Books, The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, Metropolitan Books, and KPFK FM (Pacifica Free Speech Radio, Los Angeles).

Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State

• Thursday, June 19, 2014 - 7:00 pm
• Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (JACCC)
• 244 S. San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 See map
• TICKETS only $6

Glenn Greenwald

In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet a source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels.
 

Read a chapter free (truthdig.org)

That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA spy, teacher, and Booz Allen Hamilton (mole) contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency’s widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security and information privacy.

As the arguments rage on and the government considers various proposals for reform, it is clear that we have yet to see the full impact of Snowden’s disclosures.
 

Best pres we never had: Emperor 0

In April 2014, Greenwald and his colleagues at The Guardian received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. See Greenwald live and in-person as he puts all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity 11-day trip to Hong Kong but more importantly examining the broader implications of state surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA’s unprecedented abuse of power with never-before-seen documents entrusted to him by Snowden himself.

Greenwald will be signing his new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. Coming at a landmark moment in American history, No Place to Hide is a fearless, incisive, and essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S. surveillance state.

• Part of the Glenn Greenwald Speaks: Edward Snowden, NSA, and US Surveillance State

(Iraq and Obama)(Ukraine)(Free your mind, the rest will follow?)(Soccer)

NSA book ("No Place to Hide" excerpts)

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; truthdig.com; Glenn Greenwald via TomDispatch.com

First appeared at TomDispatch; see Tom (Engelhardt)’s introduction. [This is a shortened, adapted version of Chp. 1 of Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Security State, with permission of Metropolitan Books.]

  

Greenwald, author, investigative journalist

On December 1, 2012, I received my first communication from Edward Snowden, although I had no idea at the time that it was from him.

 

The contact came in the form of an email from someone calling himself Cincinnatus, a reference to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer who, in the fifth century BC, was appointed dictator of Rome to defend the city against attack. He is most remembered for what he did after vanquishing Rome’s enemies: he immediately and voluntarily gave up political power and returned to farming life. Hailed as a “model of civic virtue,” Cincinnatus has become a symbol of the use of political power in the public interest and the worth of limiting or even relinquishing individual power for the greater good.

 

The email began: “The security of people’s communications is very important to me,” and its stated purpose was to urge me to begin using PGP encryption so that “Cincinnatus” could communicate things in which,  he said, he was certain I would be interested. Invented in 1991, PGP stands for “pretty good privacy.” It has been developed into a sophisticated tool to shield email and other forms of online communications from surveillance and hacking.

 

In this email, “Cincinnatus” said he had searched everywhere for my PGP “public key,” a unique code set that allows people to receive encrypted email, but could not find it. From this, he concluded that I was not using the program and told me, “That puts anyone who communicates with you at risk. I’m not arguing that every communication you are involved in be encrypted, but you should at least provide communicants with that option.”

 

The United States of Fear

“Cincinnatus” then referenced the sex scandal of General David Petraeus, whose career-ending extramarital affair with journalist Paula Broadwell was discovered when investigators found Google emails between the two. Had Petraeus encrypted his messages before handing them over to Gmail or storing them in his drafts folder, he wrote, investigators would not have been able to read them.

• When the US National Intelligence Council issued its latest report meant for the newly elected Obama administration, it predicted that the planet's "sole superpower" would suffer a modest decline and a soft landing 15 years hence. The United States of Fear makes clear that Americans should don their crash helmets and buckle their seat belts, because the U.S. is on the path to a major decline at a startling speed.

“Encryption matters, and it is not just for spies and philanderers.”

  

“There are people out there you would like to hear from,” he added, “but they will never be able to contact you without knowing their messages cannot be read in transit.” Then he offered to help me install the program.  He signed off: “Thank you. C.”

 

Using encryption software was something I had long intended to do. I had been writing for years about WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous, and had also communicated with people inside the U.S. national security establishment. More

• Af/Pak Daily Brief - Anand Gopal, Global Dispatches - Atlantic Wire - Rethink Afghanistan

Alternet - Antiwar.com - Arts & Letters Daily - Black Agenda Report -The Browser - Buzzflash - Commondreams - Counterpunch - The Daily Beast-Dollars and Sense - Environment 360 - Fabius Maximus - Foreign Policy in Focus - History News Network - Huffington Post - Israeli Occupation Archive-Lew Rockwell - Mondoweiss - Naked Capitalism - Open Democracy - Opposing Views - Pacific Free Press - Politico - Real Clear Politics - The Smirking Chimp - Talking Points Memo - ThinkProgress - TomPaine - TPM Muckraker - Truthdig - Truthout - Stephan M. Walt - War in Context - War Is a Crime - Wikileaks - ZNET 

Meeting NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden (video)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman

 

Intercepting the National Spying Agency

In part two of Democracy Now's extended interview, Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald tells the inside story of meeting National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras were the journalists who first met Snowden in Hong Kong last June, going on to publish a series of disclosures in The Guardian, a venerable 190-year-old British newspaper, that exposed massive NSA surveillance to the world.

Host Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

Greenwald has just come out with a new book on the Snowden leaks and their fallout, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.

Recalling his first encounter with Snowden, Greenwald says: "The big question was: 'How are we going to know that it’s you? We know nothing about you. We don’t know how old you are, what you look like, or what your race is, or even your gender.' And [Snowden] said, 'You’ll know me because I’ll be holding in my left hand a Rubik’s cube.' And so he walked in, was holding a Rubik’s cube, came over to us, introduced himself, and that was how we met him." More

More from The Intercept

British spies face legal action over secret hacking programs

The United Kingdom’s top spy agency is facing legal action following revelations published by The Intercept about its involvement in secret efforts to hack into computers on a massive scale. Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, has been accused of acting unlawfully by helping to develop National Security Agency surveillance systems capable of covertly breaking into More

• British spy chiefs begged to play in NSA’s data pools

British surveillance agency GCHQ secretly coveted the NSA’s vast troves of private communications and sought “unsupervised access” to its data as recently as last year, classified documents provided NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal.

• Der Spiegel: NSA put Merkel on list of 122 targets

Secret documents newly disclosed by the German news magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday shed more light on how aggressively the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have targeted Germany for surveillance.

• Inside the NSA’s secret efforts to hunt and hack system administrators

Across the world, people who work as system administrators keep computer networks in order – and this has turned them into unwitting targets of the NSA for simply doing their jobs.

• Foreign Officials in the dark about their own spy agencies’ cooperation with NSA (Glenn Greenwald)

Top political officials in other nations have repeatedly demonstrated, or even explicitly claimed, wholesale ignorance about their nations’ cooperation with the NSA, as well as their own spying activities. Were these top officials truly unaware, or were they pretending to be?

• How the NSA plans to infect "millions" of computers with malware

Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process.

• The NSA has an Advice Columnist. Seriously.

An NSA official, writing under the pen name “Zelda,” has served as a Dear Abby for spies. One of her most intriguing columns responds to an NSA staffer who complains that his (or her) boss is spying on employees.

• New details of DRONE attack on Yemeni wedding prompt more demands Obama explain assassination policy

A new report on the U.S. drone missile strike that killed 12 members of a Yemeni wedding convoy has renewed calls for the Obama administration to make public its own investigations into the incident -- and explain how such strikes are consistent with international laws of war.

• UK Court: David Miranda [Greenwald's partner] detention legal under terrorism law

A British lower court has ruled that London police acted lawfully in employing an anti-terror statute to detain and interrogate David Miranda for nearly nine hours at Heathrow Airport last summer, even while recognizing that the detention was “an indirect interference with press freedom.”

• Snowden documents reveal covert surveillance and pressure tactics aimed at WikiLeaks and its supporters

Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.

• SHOW MORE TOP STORIES

Dismantling Ukraine, CIA blunder or Russia?

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS); FEMEN.org; DemocracyNow.org; Greg Palast (Connect the Dots with Lila Garett, InfoWars with Alex Jones); Dennis Kucinich

Vlad Putin gives topless FEMEN protester the reptilian snake eyes as Germany's Merkel and others make a mad dash to get out of the way (femen.org)

FEMEN coming to the USA

Who fomented the uprising in Ukraine -- the progressives of Kiev and the powerful women of the Maidan?

Or was it the CIA working behind the scenes hand in hand with Sen. John McCain, who was creeping around the country for weeks, while topless demonstrators were calling attention to the plight of westward-leaning cosmopolitans? 

Dirty girl, cover your dirty body! (FEMEN)

Then there was the U.S. Ambassador making statements about who would be installed once Pres. Yanukovich was deposed. It's true the wealthier city dwellers wanted to move into the Euro zone and out of the Soviet sphere, but not so most of the rural residents.

Pres. (Dictator) Putin and Russia caught on to the spread of N.A.T.O. and stood in the way. Not content to lose a strategic region, they took some of it back. No doubt they would gladly take all of it back and more. They must have a long-term plan: military aggression and overreach builds an empire like it did in the time of the czars.

The way to peace is proactive (codepink.org)

Who's side are we on to question the source of the Western-style freedom aspirations of Ukraine? We are progressive, cosmopolitan city dwellers, so it's easy for us to side with FEMEN and say GO EURO MAIDANS! 

But we cannot deny that this "revolution," like many recent uprisings, hasn't been what it seems. We think and are told by the mainstream media that it is grassroots and inspired by the "unintended consequences/benefits" of social media. Bull.

The attempt to depose Castro and the Cuban regime with ZunZumeo shows that these things are carefully plotted and implemented. Facebook, Twitter, and cellphones are not instruments of liberation -- but all part of the spying apparatus. Manipulated to stir up trouble for governments and police departments with predictable results. 

"Stop racism" (femen.org)

If the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS wanted people to get on the Internets and make trouble (Arab Spring, Occupy, Orange Revolution, Green Revolution, Saffron Revolution, Pink Revolution, Red Shirts vs. Yellow Shirts, Kill Kony Kampaign, and the next brainchild of some shy college nerd who never thought of him/herself as a revolutionary but was just trying to bring a little attention to some social justice cause), why do these clandestine operations look the other way or actively help police departments when they come down hard on participants? 

Occupy LA protest of racism and injustice, Spring St. (citizenside.com)

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Balaclava-clad protester (latimes.com)

Mass arrests, mass incarcerations, jail sentences, fines, probation, police records, suppression by attention because "We've got our eye on you!" And everyone is still walking around carrying their own shiny, sleek monitoring devices proudly sporting/supporting their corporate brands.

• AUDIO: Greg Palast, David Swanson, Sen. Alan Grayson, Bernie Sanders, Public Citizen Pres. Robert Weissman (Exposing the Koch Brothers) all Connects the Dots
• OverturnMcCutcheon.org (Public Citizen)

Nadia, Pussy Riot (willworth.co.uk)

Brands are for cows, and branding is for slaves. Apple logo, anyone? An F for your Facebook cause? How about a "little bird" that quickly flies back to the police chief and whispers in his ear: "It was so-and-so talking, here's what they said, arrest them for saying it" [but develop a pretext first since our eavesdropping evidence can't be used without a warrant]. It's a whole new way to police, spy, control, and pit us against one another.

*Mocking* No, social media's the best! Look, I can save the warbler in my community and stop LAPD spying by liking this movement then spreading the message to all my Facebook friends and tweeting about it on my iPhone and ultralight Mac book, while I stand in line to buy a pair of Google Glass glasses to ogle for G-men. They sit in their cubicles, and I do the footwork then incriminate myself and my friends on email, top-secret SnapChat exchanges. Then I'm free to get a little sexting in on the side with all my UK friends.

NSA: We will end "privacy" until no one in America remembers what that ever meant.

 
It's not true. While the "instruments of change" can be anything from a strong voice and a point of view to a private meeting, we have to be aware when we are being monitored and manipulated. The solution is not to say, "Let them spy on me." 

Make out, not war (CP)

The answer is to resist and avoid being spied on or taking it as given then doing all the organizing we normally would. Listen to Snowden, listen to Manning, listen to Greenwald, Scahill, Poitras, and Assange -- and their are plenty of other voices in the wilderness. Listen but think. We know network news is lying and spinning all day long. Even good voices can be twisted and spun to work against themselves.

Greg Palast exposes US/NATO meddling in foreign countries