RT’s Crosstalk: Russian Foreign Policy
Ray joins Martin McCauley & Nebojsa Malic in discussion (24 min.)
Ray gives interview to TeleSUR/English on the long awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture
(5 min., from 2:20 to 7:30)
Not to hold your breath; it is a case of Waiting for Godot – a pas de deux being danced by CIA Director John Brennan and Sen. Dianne Feinstein with Obama humming the music. A brief year ago, Feinstein sat atop Brennan’s dance card, but he kept stepping on her feet.
The elderly Senator has shown she can still dance. Indeed, she cannot afford to be a wallflower, because she and her co-opted colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee have had guilty knowledge of horrific (as well as just plain unconstitutional) intelligence abuses and have kept their mouths shut. And so the complicity is uneasily shared by both sides (three, if you count the faux judges who acquiesce in frequent invocation of the “State Secret Privilege,” as well as the co-opted judges of the feckless FISA court).
And so the dance goes on and Obama keeps humming. He would probably like to stop the music and release the report on CIA torture but, in doing so, he would cross Establishment Washington. Besides, he lacks the guts. So does Feinstein, who is empowered under the law to publish the report herself, with the approval of the whole Senate (though nobody seems to know that). Ray thinks Obama and Feinstein live in fear of retaliation from the unsavory thugs let loose during the Cheney/Bush years – who are cut from the same cloth as those who killed John F. Kennedy.
US Intelligence Vets Criticize Obama for Peddling Weak MH17 Evidence
by Matthew Phelan, August 18, 2014
When you’re not part of the Fawning Corporate Media, you can do a creditable job assessing what VIPS is, and what we’ve been trying hard to do since Jan. 2003.
http://blackbag.gawker.com/u-s-intelligence-vets-criticize-obama-for-peddling-wea-1615618579
A USS Liberty Hero’s Passing
Were it not for the bravery and ingenuity of young seaman Terry Halbardier, Israel would have achieved its mission to sink the Liberty and kill all 294 crew.
The Berlin Wall and Missed Opportunities
The East Germans started building the wall on August 13, 1961. It fell 28 years later. But like Humpty Dumpty, lasting peace in Europe could not be put together again. Here Ray (and Bill Bradley) discuss why. Don’t miss the embedded 6-minute video showing Bradley’s frustration.
“If you blow the whistle, you should be thanked … and certainly shouldn’t be punished:” President Obama, Aug. 7, 2014
Comment, including Ray’s, posted by the COURAGE FOUNDATION
“The world needs truth tellers; they need COURAGE.”
https://couragefound.org/2014/08/obama-if-you-blow-the-whistle-you-should-be-thanked/
Posted on August 13, 2014
“If you blow the whistle, you should be thanked. You should be protected for doing the right thing. You shouldn’t be ignored and you certainly shouldn’t be punished.”
These were the surprising words of President Obama on 7 August 2014, as he signed a $16 billion bill to improve veterans’ access to medical care. The bill followed a report from the Department for Veterans’ Affairs, which confirmed many of the complaints whistleblowers had been making – waiting lists were indeed being manipulated to hide how long veterans were having to wait for medical appointments.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claims that the Administration has “made important progress” in “protecting whistleblowers” and “disclosing previously classified information.” Earnest cites the 2012 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act as evidence that the Administration has “fought for and won better protections for whistleblowers.”
But the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that the White House claims offers better protections for whistleblowers is limited. …Blowing the whistle within official channels does not guarantee public disclosure of the information and does little to facilitate what Yochai Benkler has called “accountability leaks… that challenge systemic practices.”
At any rate, it is not the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act for which this Presidency is likely to be remembered but the intelligence whistleblowers who have faced severe reprisals on its watch. The Obama Administration, famously, has initiated eight prosecutions under the Espionage Act – more uses of the 1917 Act than all previous US presidents combined.
Ray McGovern, a former CIA senior analyst, founder of whistleblower group Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), responded to Obama’s comments saying, “President Obama is giving hypocrisy a bad name.”
McGovern, who is also a member of Courage’s advisory board, said: Obama’s record speaks for itself; he has prosecuted more than twice as many whistleblowers – for espionage, no less – than all former presidents combined. As for those whose crimes have been whistle-blown upon, like those who did the torture, Obama continues to call them ‘patriots.’ Former CIA operative John Kiriakou, who opposed torture, sits in a Pennsylvania prison allegedly because he revealed the name of one of the torturers.
Too bad Kafka is dead.