Tag Archives: Obama

America in Turmoil: From Deep State Insurgency to Deep State Spying – WikiLeaks’ Vault 7, by Joachim Hagopian

Edward Snowden informed us that the government was watching. Wikileak’s Vault 7 release confirms its much worse than we thought. Joachim Hagopian may be a little overwrought, but not much. Fro Hagopian at lewrockwell.com:

Even those not following the latest evidence of the tyrannical noose tightening around our necks, know something has gone terribly wrong in America. Through NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations four years ago, we learned that US citizens, as well as foreign countries, are the most spied upon in human history. But this week’s latest massive WikiLeaks’ release, aka Vault 7, amounts to almost 9,000 pages of CIA documents collected from 2013 through 2016 that disclose highly classified hacking secrets. With this largest dump of confidential CIA files ever published, the world is beginning to realize just how far gone our privacy rights are, becoming virtually nonexistent under traitor Obama’s second term in office.

On the heels of last week’s bombshell revelations that outgoing president Obama illegally wiretapped and surveilled all of President Trump’s communications (both domestic and overseas) including his pre-administration officials, now we’re learning that the Orwellian nightmare of myopic control over us as a national population is far worse than ever imagined. This back-to-back, very much related unfolding events only demonstrate that not only is the legitimately elected American president apparently in the process of an overthrow attempt by treasonous subversive forces for the first time in US history, but through the ruling elite’s private army – the CIA, it has extended its technologically invasive beta test control over the most spied upon population ever on its way to imprisoning every human on earth with a one world crime cabal government.

To continue reading: America in Turmoil: From Deep State Insurgency to Deep State Spying – WikiLeaks’ Vault 7

 

 

Agents of Deception, Stewards of Deceit. by Uncola

It’s happened so many times you’d think the mainstream media would be wising up to it. Trump makes a claim that they deride as “outrageous,” only to see the claim subsequently substantially or wholly verified. The same thing is happening with Trump’s claims that he was under surveillance at Obama’s behest. From Uncola at theburningplatform.com:

What a week it has been since President Donald Trump addressed congress, just eight days ago. Within hours of his attempt to unify the nation with a heartfelt speech that was widely praised by his supporters and opponents alike, Democratic Party leaders and their collaborators in the mainstream media once again doubled down on their fabricated Russian election hacking ruse. Within days, their combined efforts compelled Trump’s newly appointed Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to recuse himself from any 2016 Presidential Campaign investigations.

On Friday, according to CNN and their White House Spy Cam, a “frustrated and angry” President Trump had a “fiery meeting” in the Oval Office with his advisors Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer, and Reince Priebus over the “fumbling” of the “situation with Sessions”.

By Saturday, March 4th, 2017, Trump evidently decided it was time to once more push back against those who wish to derail his administration. In a series of early-morning Tweets, Trump accused Former President Barack Obama of wire-tapping his phones at Trump Tower in New York City during the 2016 presidential campaign and made comparisons to Nixon, Watergate, and McCarthyism.

In response, Obama’s spokesperson, Kevin Lewis, denied Trump’s allegations and said:

neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen.

It was very interesting, in his carefully crafted response, how Lewis claimed Obama didn’t “order” any surveillance while at the same time, he did NOT deny any surveillance took place.

To continue reading: Agents of Deception, Stewards of Deceit.

Big Ears on Trump, from Branco

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/03/07/big-ears-on-trump/

Watergate Redux? by Hunter Lewis

There are some superficial similarities between the alleged surveillance of President Trump and Watergate, and some significant differences (such as the role of the Washington Post). However, SLL will wager that if anyone ever gets to the bottom of all this murk, it will be far bigger than Watergate. From Hunter Lewis at Mises.org via lewrockwell.com:

We would seem to be experiencing a pretty close duplicate of the almost fifty-year-old scandal that rocked the world and brought down President Nixon. But this time the Washington Post is trying to cover up the scandal, not bring it to light.

President Trump gave President Obama and the Democrats lifesaving wiggle room by using words like “ wire tap” instead of “electronic surveillance” or “spying and “ Trump Tower” instead of “ Trump campaign” or “Trump campaign personnel.” By focusing on Trump’s exact words, the guilty parties think they can issue denials without outright lying.

President Obama further confused things ( but also in an indirect way clarified them) by asserting, through a written statement issued by an assistant, that neither he nor anyone in the White House had “ ordered” wiretapping of Trump. This confused the matter because he did not have to order the spying in order to know about it and encourage it, but also clarified the matter in that such a careful choice of words virtually amounted to confirmation that others, perhaps from the Justice Department, had ordered it with his knowledge and perhaps encouragement. That both the president and Valerie Jarrett referred to the written statement and have refused ( at least so far) further questions strongly suggests that, yes, there was spying on the Trump campaign, yes, they knew about it, and, yes, they did nothing to stop it.

This might be a good moment to remind our young readers it was precisely this behavior, an administration in power spying on an opposing presidential campaign, and then trying to cover it up, that led to President Nixon’s removal from office. This was precisely what “Watergate” was all about. There are of course notable differences. This time the insurgent campaign won, the spying was done by administration agencies using the highest tech means, and papers like the Washington Post and New York Times are themselves complicit in the cover up rather than unmasking it.

To continue reading: Watergate Redux?

Jay Sekulow: Obama Should Be “Held Accountable” For The “Soft Coup” Against Trump, by Tyler Durden

Just before he left office, Barack Obama made it very difficult to track down leakers within the intelligence agencies. It’s surely just a coincidence that the intelligence agencies have been copiously leaking since Trump took office. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

In light of the recent flurry of leaks by the so-called “deep state”, which includes such agencies as the NSA and FBI and which last week lead to the resignation of Mike Flynn after a phone recording of his phone conversation with the Russian ambassador was leaked to the WaPo and other anti-Trump publications, an article published on January 12 by the NYT has generated renewed interest. One month ago, the NYT reported that “In its final days, the Obama administration expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.”

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches. The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.

While previously the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and furthermore N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information, following passage of Obama’s 11th hour rule, “other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions.”

To continue reading: Jay Sekulow: Obama Should Be “Held Accountable” For The “Soft Coup” Against Trump

DHS IG Who Let Obama Defy Court Rulings Against Illegal Amnesty Acts Probes Trump Muslim Order, by Judicial Watch

Try to contain your shock. The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security had one set of rules for Obama, and has another set of rules for Trump. From Judicial Watch at judicialwatch.org:

The Obama-appointed inspector general who looked the other way when his boss enacted illegal amnesty programs and ignored federal court injunctions blocking them has launched an investigation into President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The political grandstanding is behavior unbecoming of a federal agency watchdog, which is charged with independently investigating wrongdoing and rooting out fraud, waste and abuse at 64 of the biggest and most important government agencies.

In this case the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General (IG) appears to be selectively investigating based on his ideology and perhaps loyalty to the former commander-in-chief. Just days after Trump signed the controversial executive order “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” Obama’s DHS IG, John Roth, fired off a press release announcing his probe. “In addition to reviewing the implementation of the Executive Order, the OIG will review DHS’ adherence to court orders and allegations of individual misconduct on the part of DHS personnel,” the announcement states. “If circumstances warrant, the OIG will consider including other issues that may arise during the course of the review.” The probe was initiated in response to “congressional request and whistleblower and hotline complaints,” according to the announcement.

Trump issued the order on January 27 halting for 90 days the entry of citizens from notorious terrorist nations—Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—in the name of national security. “Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement program,” Trump’s order explains. “The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans.”

To continue reading: DHS IG Who Let Obama Defy Court Rulings Against Illegal Amnesty Acts Probes Trump Muslim Order

Barack Obama Is Now The Only President In History To Never Have A Year Of 3% GDP Growth, by Tyler Durden

Average growth during Obama’s two terms was 1.48 percent. If inflation was understated by 1.48 percent, there was no real growth during that time. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Following today’s extremely disappointing US GDP growth data, we have the final nail in the coffin of President Obama’s economic reign. Not only is the average annual growth rate of just 1.48% during Obama’s business cycle the weakest of any expansion since at least 1949, he has just become the only President to have not had even one year of 3% GDP growth.

An average annual GDP growth of 1.48% during Obama’s two terms…

As a reminder to a few blinkered media types, this means President Obama’s “recovery” has officially been the worst recovery in US history (despite adding almost $10 trillion to the national debt)…

And worse still, Barack Obama is the only president in US history to never have a year of economic growth over 3.0%…

As we noted previously, every other president in American history, even the really bad ones, had at least one year when U.S. GDP grew by at least 3 percent. But this has not happened under Obama even though he has had two terms in the White House.

As a reminder, this dismal economic track record came at the same as President Obama almost doubled the National Debt…

When ‘fake news’ and ‘peddling fiction’ meet ‘alternative facts’.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-27/barack-obama-now-only-president-history-never-have-year-3-gdp-growth

Obama Bequeaths A More Dangerous World, by Robert Parry

Obama’s biggest foreign policy failure stemmed from his unwillingness to directly challenge neoconservatism. From Robert Parry at strategic-culture.org:

Any fair judgment about Barack Obama’s presidency must start with the recognition that he inherited a dismal situation from George W. Bush: the U.S. economy was in free-fall and U.S. troops were bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly, these intertwined economic and foreign policy crises colored how Obama viewed his options, realizing that one false step could tip the world into the abyss.

It’s also true that his Republican rivals behaved as if they had no responsibility for the messes that Obama had to clean up. From the start, they set out to trip him up rather than lend a hand. Plus, the mainstream media blamed Obama for this failure of bipartisanship, rewarding the Republicans for their nihilistic obstructionism.

That said, however, it is also true that Obama – an inexperienced manager – made huge mistakes from the outset and failed to rectify them in a timely fashion. For instance, he bought into the romantic notion of a “Team of Rivals” with his White House trumpeting the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln (although some of Lincoln’s inclusion of rivals actually resulted from deals made at the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago to gain Lincoln the nomination).

In the real world of modern Washington, Obama’s choice of hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State and Republican apparatchik Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense – along with keeping Bush’s high command, including neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus – guaranteed that he would achieve little real foreign policy change.

To continue reading: Obama Bequeaths A More Dangerous World

No Difference Between Capitalism and Communism, from The Burning Platform

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/03/29/no-difference-between-capitalism-communism/

Obama’s Historic Visit to Cuba Is the Right Policy, by Ivan Eland

From Ivan Eland at antiwar.com:

President Obama’s historic opening to Cuba has come under fire from Republican and even some Democratic hawks because Cuban President Raul Castro did not greet him at the airport and because the Cuban government arrested members of a dissident group while Obama’s plane was en route to the island. Those Cuban actions are a reflexive reaction because Obama’s visit is the biggest threat to communist rule there in decades.

The Cuban people likely would have thrown the Castro brothers out of power long ago if previous U.S. presidents had done what Obama is now doing. US hostility to Cuba has allowed the Castros to blame their external nemesis to the north for the abysmally backward state of their country caused by their own failed economic and social policies. Now, the Castros’ policies will need to stand on their own merit – or lack thereof – because they won’t have the United States to rhetorically kick around anymore.

Grandiose expectations by the American media and Obama’s Republican opponents about a rapid liberalization of the Cuban political and economic system as a trade for the US opening are as misplaced as they are arrogant. Yes Cuban human rights policies are abhorrent, yes the communist economic system oppresses and impoverishes Cubans unnecessarily, and yes the United States should keep an eye on the fate of Cuban dissidents and protest any mistreatment or injustice. However, continuing the harsh economic embargo in the hopes of remaking the country in the American image has proven a folly for more than a half century. Given the survival of the Castro regime through eleven US presidential administrations and their futile grinding economic sanctions and failed attempts to either overthrow or assassinate Fidel Castro, is it a wonder that Cuba has genuine concerns about its sovereignty? Maybe its time, as Obama said, to try something completely different.

To continue reading: Obama’s Historic Visit to Cuba Is the Right Policy